SAN DIEGO — San Diego-bound Eric Clapton is keeping very busy for someone who, over the past decade, has declared his intention to retire more than a few times.

How busy?

Let’s take a quick tally.

In April, the 79-year-old guitar legend, singer and three-time Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee released “To Save a Child: An Intimate Live Concert,” a benefit album for the children of war-torn Gaza.

In May and June, he and his band — which features drummer Sonny Emory and former San Diego bass great Nathan East — performed concerts in the United Kingdom, France and Italy. After more concerts this fall in South America and Mexico, they kick off a three-city California tour on Oct. 8 at Pechanga Arena San Diego.

Nov. 29 will see the release of the two-DVD box set, “Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival 2023.” Filmed in Los Angeles last year, it features a slew of guest artists, including Stevie Wonder, John McLaughlin, Sheryl Crow, Santana, Gary Clark Jr., Taj Mahal, Molly Tuttle, Los Lobos, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram, Samantha Fish, Kurt Rosenwinkel, H.E.R., John Mayer, the Del McCoury Band and more.

On Oct. 17, Clapton will perform at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles as part of “Life is a Carnival: A Musical Celebration of Robbie Robertson.” The tribute to Robertson, who died last year and was the principal songwriter in the Band, will also feature Mavis Staples, Elvis Costello, Eric Church, Bob Weir, Margo Price, Van Morrison, Daniel Lanois and others.

On Friday, Clapton released “Meanwhile,” which features six new songs and eight that have been released as singles over the past four years. A good portion of the album was made long distance, with Clapton laying down his vocals and guitar parts in England, East adding bass in Los Angeles and Emory recording his drum parts in Atlanta.

“It’s a little inhibited because it was all home recorded but I need to get it out there,” Clapton said in a recent interview on the YouTube channel the Real Music Observer. “We’ll try some of those songs (on tour) but I’m more likely to play stuff that we know well that the audience expect to hear.”

Guests on “Meanwhile” include singer Judith Hill, guitar legend Jeff Beck (who died early last year) and Van Morrison, with whom Clapton teamed in 2020 and 2021 to record three songs that strenuously protested the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, vaccination mandates and masking requirements.

The lyrics to one of those songs, “Stand and Deliver,” compared the lockdown with slavery in such a poorly reasoned and heavy-handed way that American blues great Robert Cray — who is Black and a native of Georgia — withdrew in protest from his slot as the opening act on Clapton’s late 2021 U.S. concert tour.

Last September saw Clapton raise $2.2 million at a benefit for then-presidential candidate (and fellow anti-vaxxer) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Clapton has raised far more money over the years by auctioning off dozens of his guitars to raise funds for Crossroads, the nonprofit drug and alcohol rehab center in Antigua that he launched in 1989, not long after overcoming his own extended battles with drugs and drinking, His Crossroads festivals have raise millions more for the same, eminently worthy cause.

On his current tour, Clapton plays the song “To Save a Child” on a guitar that has been painted with the colors of the Palestinian flag.

In May, Clapton told a YouTube interviewer that “Israel is running the world.”

Not surprisingly, this fleet-fingered musician’s views and actions have been the subject of controversy in recent years. He has alienated some fans (and, presumably, gained some new ones for the exact same reason he has lost others).

In the process, he has raised a number of pertinent questions.

Can you like or admire music, or any art, while feeling conflicted about the artist who made it?

How much can the contentious words and actions of an artist diminish their work?

Does the more their work means to you make it harder, or easier, to disregard their contentious words or actions?

The answers are, well, complicated.

These same questions have been raised about everyone from Michael Jackson and Woody Allen to Kanye West, Bill Cosby, Sean "Diddy" Combs and others. And in their cases, it was actions they had taken, or were alleged to have taken, that deservedly created an uproar, not song lyrics they wrote or opinions they expressed, however ill-advised, during a global pandemic.

If Clapton sounds like a crank, well, that’s fine with him. “I’m a curmudgeon!” he proudly told me during an in-depth 2014 Union-Tribune interview that focused on his admiration for former Valley Center singer-songwriter JJ Cale.

At that time, as throughout most of his career, Clapton was resolutely apolitical. Much of the blowback against him in the wake of his response to the pandemic was fueled by the surprise and shock of some longtime fans that a rock legend — let alone a legend who had once been regarded as a counterculture hero — suddenly sounded like a right-wing reactionary.

If so, what does that make Ted Nugent? Or is it simply a matter of degree?

In concert, Clapton has rarely been less than stellar in the 10 or so times I have seen him perform over the years, be it leading his own band, or at the 1993 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony with his pioneering power-trio Cream, or performing with the surviving members of Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets, or when Clapton was joined in 2007 for a very rare appearance with the reclusive Cale.

Will Clapton sound less stellar now that he has expressed views that I, or others, may strongly disagree with?

To repeat an earlier question:

Can you like or admire music, or any art, while feeling conflicted about the artist who made it?

One of the best answers I have ever heard came from pioneering Black opera singer Jessye Norman, who once sagely said: “If I were not able to separate the art from the artists, I think I would limit myself a great deal, and life would be a lot less interesting.”

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(George Varga is the San Diego Union-Tribune music critic.)

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