"My Father's Eyes" is a song written and performed by Eric Clapton and produced by Clapton himself and Simon Climie. It was released as a single in 1998 and was featured on the album Pilgrim. The song reached the top 40 on the Billboard Airplay chart, peaking at number 16, and spent five weeks at number two on the Hot Adult Contemporary chart. "My Father's Eyes" won a Grammy award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

Clapton performed this track for the first time in 1992 and again in 1996, in both electric and unplugged versions. These versions of the song were completely different from the version released as a single released in 1998. He would later retire the song in 2004, along with "Tears in Heaven", until the 50 Years Further On Up The Road world tour in 2013.

The song is inspired by the fact that Clapton never met his father, who died in 1985. Describing how Clapton wishes he knew his father, "My Father's Eyes" also refers to Clapton's son Conor, who died at age four after falling from an apartment window. "In it I tried to describe the parallel between looking in the eyes of my son, and the eyes of the father that I never met, through the chain of our blood", said Clapton in his autobiography.

Fade in. A basketball is bouncing rightward across the frame, while the camera tracks its trajectory. We are in what appears to be a barn, darkly lit by only the sunlight entering through the cracks in the wall. The opening bars of the song are playing: a slide guitar, bass, and drum machine.

As the basketball strikes the ground for the seventh time, it doesn't bounce, but shatters as though made of ceramic. This shattering is accompanied by a tonal shift in the song's chord progression.

As the instrumental intro ends, the scene fades out and back in again on Clapton's face, framed off-center to the viewer's right. There is no discernible setting; he is bathed in shadow. As he begins to sing, it's clear from his breath that wherever we are, it's cold. This is additionally confirmed by what appears to be a black scarf around his neck.

Part way through the first verse, the scene is superimposed with glinting footage of some twirling or spinning silver object. It's not clear at first what this is. Through an additional series of dissolves, we see that the object is in fact a large "hamster wheel," with a man running inside of it. We see him from a high angle, emphasizing his smallness compared to the wheel. As we move closer, we see that he is bald, and wearing only white shorts and a white tank top.

...
Wikipedia