9 interesting facts about Eric Clapton

Today is Eric Clapton's 72nd birthday, and we're celebrating the English rocker with nine interesting facts about the legend: 

1. Eric Clapton is a MASSIVE football fan. So much so that he requested a foosball table be placed in a special room on each leg of his 1995 North American tour.
   
   
2. Clapton has been a member of or played with nine different bands or artists. 
   
   
3. Sometimes the guitarist will play so hard that he breaks his guitar strings. Audiences wait patiently and slow clap while he changes them, and is the origin of his nickname “Slowhand.”
   
   
4. At one point, Clapton was so drunk at one of his own concerts that he played and sang while lying on the floor with the microphone next to him.
   
   
5. Clapton is a petrol head and an avid collector of Ferraris, with one SP 12 EC that reportedly cost him £3 million.
   
   
6. Clapton has been romantically linked to musician Sheryl Crow and he was the basis of her song “My Favourite Mistake.”
   
   
7. If Eric didn't pursue music, then he would be a stained-glass designer, as he studied the craft at Kingston College of Art in 1961. However, he only lasted a year before he turned to music.
   
   
8. The cheeky guitarist once hit actress Shirley MacLaine in the face with a pie. It took place on the set of the 1970 short film Circasia. MacLaine had no clue it was going to happen, and was so furious afterwards that she refused to speak to the musician for months.
   
   
9. He has an asteroid named after him. Pictured below, Harvard University named minor planet 4305 as “4305 Clapton” after it was discovered in 1976.