According to Wikipedia, Clapton was given the nickname 'Slowhand' by Giorgio Gomelsky, the Georgian–born owner of the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, Surrey (now in Greater London). The club opened in 1963, and its first resident band was the Rolling Stones; after the Stones started to have hits and tour nationally, the residency was taken over by the Yardbirds. Chris Dreja, the rhythm guitarist in the Yardbirds, recalled that whenever Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert, he would replace it on stage. While waiting for the resumption of the band's performance, the audience would start a 'slow handclap'. (Wikipedia feels it necessary to explain what this is – it being, apparently, a peculiarly British custom.)
Clapton later used 'Slowhand' as the title of one of his solo albums (released in 1977). It was also the title of a biography published in November 2018, which (the Daily Mail reported) portrays Clapton as "rock 'n' Roll's greatest survivor". The book details "three car accidents, one near helicopter crash, the dreadful toll of heroin addiction and the devastating death of his son." All three car accidents involved Ferraris; the wreckage of one of them was pictured on the cover of the Slowhand album. The luckiest escape of all was from the helicopter crash, in which all five persons on board lost their lives. One of them was the American blues revivalist Stevie Ray Vaughan, who was a member of Clapton's touring entourage at the time – performing with his band Double Trouble as the opening act on a US tour. Clapton had reportedly been due to travel on the flight, but changed his mind at the last minute.
The saddest of all the tragedies was the death of Clapton's four–year–old son Conor, who in 1991 fell from the window of a 53rd–floor apartment in New York City, which belonged to a friend of the boy's mother. Conor's funeral took place at the parish church in Clapton's home village of Ripley, Surrey. Clapton famously expressed his grief in Tears in Heaven, which first appeared on the soundtrack of the 1991 crime/drama/drugs film Rush. It was his best–selling single in the United States, and won three Grammy Awards. In the UK it reached No. 5 and spent twelve weeks on the chart.
There is obviously no small amount of irony in the nickname 'Slowhand', with its implications of ponderous musicianship. Something else, you might think, that may need to be explained to our American cousins. In his 2007 autobiography, however (Wikipedia reports on another page), Clapton recalled that the name seemed to be well received by his American friends and fans, to whom it spoke of the Wild West.
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