From about age 12 to sometime in my early to mid 40s, Eric Clapton would always have been in my list of Top 5 favorite artists. And dismissing his entire body of work, as has been trendy for 20+ years now, is beyond silly, unless you think avowed fans like Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan and the various Beatles all either know much less about music than you do or are simply lying. (Which isn't to say you're not obviously free to dislike his stuff, of course--you like what you like and don't what you don't and that's fine. But to imply that he was never any good is simply silly unless, again, you think Hendrix was unable to recognize good guitar playing.) I had hundreds of hours of his live shows from over the years. I'd seen him live more times than anyone except Springsteen, I think.
And then at some point in the past decade I realized that not only was he no longer in my Top 5, but he wasn't even in my Top 10 anymore. For whatever reason—maybe 25+ years of putting out music that didn't do much for me?—we'd grown apart. I still liked and sometimes loved some of his earlier stuff; Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, for example, remains an absolute stone classic--yes, largely but far, far from entirely due to Duane Allman's involvement, as the songwriting is also outstanding. His album with John Mayall also remains a classic, as do a few of his solo albums. (As yet another sign of just what an outlier I am, while I love some of his stuff with Cream, and think they are incredibly important in the history of rock, I think their actual recorded output is spotty at best and has in general not aged terribly well.)
But...yeah, dude has issues, to put it mildly. To see him (and Van the Man, an absolute certified genius) turn into yet another old crank who got his scientific info from YouTube during a global pandemic is disappointing in the extreme. What a shame.