Clapton (29 page)

Deciding to go ahead with the treatment center was one of the first decisions I had made for myself, and it felt great. It took my mind off of the disastrous goings-on with Francesca and gave me cause to feel good about myself. But I had written some songs I needed to finish and realized these had to be done before I could feel completely at peace with myself. For this I turned for help to Simon Climie. We had met at Olympic Studios, and though I knew him best as a songwriter and one-half of the group Climie Fisher, I also knew he was producing modern R&B records, so it seemed for me like a natural progression. We also had a lot of musical tastes in common. In fact, our relationship as collaborators began when my affair with Francesca limped into oblivion, as he was one of the few who would still listen to my tale of woe. I would go to his house, and he’d make me tea and provide a sympathetic ear, and then we would play. It was powerful stuff. Most of it was done on his computer, using Pro Tools, with me jamming away or writing melodieson top.

We managed to persuade Giorgio Armani to let us do the music for one of his fashion shows, and took that and turned it into an album called
Retail Therapy
. We called ourselves T.D.F., for Totally Dysfunctional Family, and launched our music onto the club scene with twelve-inch singles and radical remixes. We decided that we would remain totally anonymous in the hope that the music, on its own merit, would provide our credibility. Sound familiar? It was totally ignored until someone got wind that I was somehow involved, and then the whole thing became completely untouchable. It was a shame really, because it was a good album. In truth, however, it was just a warm-up for
Pilgrim
.

I had told my friend, legendary drummer Steve Gadd, that I wanted to make the saddest record of all time. He said he could identify with that. It was a dangerous ambition, but in the aftermath of Francesca, it was one that I felt I could accomplish. We booked the studio and made the whole album up as we went along. The only prewritten songs I had ready were “Circus” and “My Father’s Eyes,” neither of which seemed to have found their right incarnation yet. For almost a year we worked day and night, sometimes just perfecting little guitar motifs, or honing and reshaping tracks with the Pro Tools system that Simon is a master of. The result was one of my favorite albums; I poured my soul into this one, and I believe you can hear that.

Every now and then Roger would visit us in the studio, and I knew he was not happy. I don’t think he liked the music much, and we were running up incredible studio costs. I could see his point, but I was convinced there was no other way to make this record. It had to bleed out of me until there was nothing left to be said or done, however long it took.

The situation with Roger and me had been getting increasingly strained and tenuous over the last two years, and there was very little we did agree on anymore. I was becoming more and more interested in the overall direction of my career and had almost entirely stopped asking Roger for advice. Also, I no longer felt the need to have hits or be overly concerned with what was expected of me, either from my audience or the record company. It was borderline arrogance, but I needed to spread my wings. Artistic integrity became more and more important to me, and ina distorted way it all started to resemble my last days with Giorgio Gomelski and the Yardbirds.

Then one day I received a letter from Roger in which he told me that I might not have been aware of it, but when he was working on my behalf, I sold this number of records and made that amount of money. He then proceeded to list all the areas in which he was in disagreement with me regarding the way I was now running things for myself, and the mistakes I was making, and they were numerous, everything from the way I made my albums to audience seating at concerts. I found it really insulting and offensive. It was time for a showdown.

I had been collecting Tibetan
dzi
beads for quite a while. These rare stones are found in the earth in Tibet and are thought by local people to have been dropped from heaven. They are supposed to be pre-Buddha and have great power and meaning. I put together a string of them and, wearing them round my neck tucked underneath my T-shirt, I went to Roger’s office to dissolve our partnership. Since he had always claimed that contracts meant nothing, I didn’t expect there to be any serious legal ramifications, but I was totally unprepared for how badly he took it. He was visibly shaken, even though I had taken great care not to lay criticism at his door. I simply thanked him for all he had done for me over the years and told him I had learned everything I could from him, but now it was time to fly the nest. He was quiet for a minute and then said, “Well, I thought there was going to be something like this, but I thought you were just going to ask me to stay out of your private life, and would still want me to handle the money and the business.”

He then offered to find me a new manager. “If I need a new manager, Roger,” I told him, “I’m quite capable of finding one myself.” Looking faintly amused, he wished me luck, though I don’t think he meant it. I remember coming out of the office and walking back toward Chelsea, feeling three feet off the ground. Roger’s contract officially ended three months later, although my financial obligation is still tailing off today. I haven’t set eyes on Roger since that day, and that saddens me. The humor and fun we shared were phenomenal, even after I’d stopped drinking. We had an incredible journey together, and he had successfully restarted a career that was as good as over. Maybe we will meet again and laugh at our memories one day. I hope so. They were precious times.

Of course, I had made contingency plans for this day, and the first was to let my attorney, Michael Eaton, know what I was about to do and tell him what I had prepared for the aftermath. In truth I was abysmally unprepared for the reality of breaking up with Roger, and I knew that the only way to play it out was to follow my heart. This I did by asking two of the closest people who already worked for me, Vivien and Graham Court, to come in closer and help reestablish my business situation. Graham came into my life on the recommendation of my production manager, Mick Double.

At the time, I was being stalked by yet another crazy woman, who was convinced that I had stolen all my songs from her, through the ether. It sounds mildly funny, but she was deadly serious, following me around the world, once even showing up at the gates of Hurtwood. The final straw came one day when she turned up at a gig, and when she was searched, a gun was found in her handbag. Enough was enough, and it was deemed that I needed proper protection. Graham has been at my side almost ever since. He is a brilliant companion and exceedingly reassuring to have around. These were the people I wanted to help me manage my life from now on. For a little while it was amateur city, and at Vivien’s urging, I asked Michael to become my business manager, thereby putting some structure into the company, and he has been at the helm ever since, adding the much-needed ingredients of sanity and reason to the equation.

By the time Roger and I had parted company, the Crossroads Centre had opened its doors and was up and running, with Anne Vance at the helm and a weekly program, based on the twelve steps, in place. When Anne started to talk about advertising, however, I became nervous because I saw a dichotomy that might prove hard to resolve. While a “treatment center” depends for its existence on being quite vocal and self-promoting, the twelve-step fellowship relies on anonymity and secrecy. Yet we needed publicity and it had to be honest.

I got an idea from an event I had attended just before Christmas 1998, when Bobby Shriver, whose mother Eunice is the founder of the Special Olympics, invited me to play in front of the Clintons at a concert at the White House to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the SO. The event, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, consisted of the artists, who included Mary J. Blige, Sheryl Crow, Jon Bon Jovi, and Tracy Chapman, performing Christmas songs like “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “Merry Christmas Baby.” It took place in a tent on the White House lawn. I remember being desperate to pee, but since finding a toilet would have meant going through complicated security and back into the main building, I decided to sneak out and water the lawn. I opened a flap in the tent and walked out into the darkness and had just undone my fly when I heard “Don’t move!” and there was a SWAT man there, all in black and camouflage, pointing an M-16 at me. The event made a huge amount of money for the SO through the release of an album of the show, and it occurred to me that this was the kind of road we should be on.

This was a busy and exciting time. Having let go of Roger, I was traveling all over to try and round up my business, spending time in New York and visiting LA to talk to record companies. I’d bought a house in Venice, California, and was footloose and fancy free, beginning to really enjoy life again. In LA, I talked to Lili Zanuck about the White House concert and what she thought might be the best way to promote Crossroads. She suggested that we do a show in Hollywood, and came up with the idea of a concert combined with a guitar auction. It sounded like a great idea.

In early March, I got a call from my sisters Cheryl and Heather to say that my mother, who had moved to Canada after my grandmother’s death, was dying. She had been ill for a while, and they had been keeping me aware of the growing uncertainty of her condition, so it didn’t come as much of a shock. I flew up to Toronto to be with them. I still had such mixed feelings about Pat. The last few years of her life had inspired a lot of disturbance in my own. Even though I was in my mid-fifties, it seemed like I was still looking for someone to take her place. I tried to kid myself that all my girlfriends since Pattie had been different from one another, all originals, and on the face of it, you could be fooled into thinking that.

But in one or two essential elements, they had all been the same; always unavailable, sometimes unstable, and in terms of my sobriety, even dangerous. Were these the conditions that had governed my feelings about my mother, and was I still unconsciously trying to replicate that relationship? I think so. My low self-esteem had dictated all my choices. I had chosen what I knew and was comfortable with, but they had all been unworkable situations. I had done a lot of family-of-origin work in my recovery, but it seemed like I would never be able to break the mold.

My mother’s passing was difficult, for everyone. A dreadful dilemma was created, as it wasn’t really clear among any of the family whether she was truly aware of her plight, that she might be dying. I went looking for a counselor in the hospital to see if this had been broached with her. When I was told that the subject had not been discussed, I said I thought it was important that we talk to her about it. I tried to instigate a discussion, with the counselor present, but Pat didn’t want to know. As much as we tried to introduce the reality of her situation to her, she clung on to the notion that she was going to get better. So we went along with it.

After I returned to my hotel, a call came to say that she’d had another attack and gone into a coma. We all went back to the hospital, and they told us that she’d signed papers saying that if things became bad, she did not wish to be resuscitated. We were all sitting there with her when she died, but it was very traumatic, because I don’t think she was fully aware of her predicament, and at the last minute she resisted. She didn’t want to let go. It was very painful, and it left me, and I think my sisters, too, angry and frustrated. I am still haunted by the sadness and loneliness of her last minutes. I really believe it’s important for people, at that stage of their departure, to know exactly what is going on, but what we have had to honor and accept was, whatever her reasons, that was the way she wanted it. I flew back to the West Coast and went into a sort of emotional blackout.

For a while I was mooching around in a state of shock until the necessity of organizing the Crossroads fund-raiser with Lili snapped me out of it. The idea was that I would donate a number of guitars—one hundred, to be precise—from my lifetime’s collection, to an auction at Christie’s, New York. First of all, however, forty of them would be previewed at a gala in Hollywood to be thrown by Giorgio Armani, who was a master party giver. The event took place at Quixote Studios in West Hollywood on the evening of June 12. The enormous space had been converted into a vast Moroccan tent. It was a fantastic party. Moroccan food was served, and the guest list of five hundred was sprinkled with movie stars. The evening included a concert given by Jimmie Vaughan and his band, with me jamming, as ever.

I had gone to the party with two dates, a couple of glamorous West Coast ladies whom I didn’t know very well, and was feeling very detached and numb, which is how I usually feel at big gatherings anyway. Suddenly a very beautiful girl, who was one of the staff showing people to their tables, came up to me with her friend and asked if she could have her picture taken with me. She said her name was Melia, and her friend was Satsuki. It was clearly against the rules, as staff had been instructed not to fraternize with the guests, but something about Melia got to me right away. I think it was her smile, so totally open and genuine, so I said I’d have my picture taken with them if I could take them both out to dinner the following night. They giggled and said yes, and we made a date. I left alone a little while later and looked back to try to see Melia in the crowd. I found her, our eyes locked, and I got that smile again. I can think of many times when this has happened in my life, but there was always some kind of device employed, seduction, aloof indifference, some act, some angle. This was different. It just felt honest, and great.

T
he following day, I dropped round the Emporio Armani store in LA, where Melia and Satsuki worked, and took them to lunch, and after that the three of us dated for about a month and had fun. We went to restaurants and openings together and were generally seen around town, and tongues soon began to wag, for good reason I suppose, since both these ladies were half my age. There was nothing sexual in it yet, however. We were just having the time of our lives. I didn’t care much what people thought then. It wasn’t supposed to be serious, and anyway I would be leaving town soon, to perform at a Crossroads benefit concert in New York, and that would probably be the end of it.

In the meantime I had the guitar auction to think about. I had picked out a hundred guitars to sell from my collection, together with several amplifiers and a number of Versace guitar straps. The guitars, predominantly Martins, Fenders, and Gibsons, were all good vintage instruments, not necessarily collectors’ items, just guitars that I particularly liked to play and that I had picked up over the course of my career, often in junk shops, pawnshops, and secondhand shops.

Christie’s had put together a fantastic catalog in which they had made a point of highlighting each guitar’s “career.” It was a brilliant idea because what made the collection intrinsically pretty valuable was the fact that each guitar had been used on something fairly significant. So, for example, a 1958 Gibson Explorer that had been used on the ARMS tour fetched $120,000, the 1974 “Rodeo Man” Martin, my main guitar during the 1970s, brought in $155,000, a 1954 Sunburst Stratocaster that had accompanied me on numerous tours, including the
Behind the Sun
tour, went for $190,000, and my 1956 Fender “Tobacco Sunburst” Start, known as Brownie and on which I played “Layla,” was bought for an astonishing $450,000.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend the sale as I was rehearsing in LA, so I watched it on a live feed on the Internet. Brownie was the last guitar to be sold, and when it was brought out onto the revolving rostrum, they played “Layla” over the PA, and the whole audience stood up. It really was an extraordinary event, raising $4,452,000 for the Crossroads Foundation, a sum beyond my wildest dreams. It also hugely raised awareness of what we were trying to do in Antigua, as did a documentary featuring the Centre made by
60 Minutes
, the U.S. TV show. Ed Bradley, the celebrated journalist, came down and spent a week researching and interviewing me and different members of the staff. It came out very well, and I revealed a great deal about my own journey, taking as much care as I could to protect my own anonymity. Whether or not I did that successfully, I cannot say, but the feature was brilliantly done, and has brought hundreds of clients to the Centre, people who would not have known about it otherwise, and many of them are still sober. I will never be able to express my gratitude to the people who made that program. They helped save a lot of lives.

A week later I took Melia and Satsuki to New York, where I was to host and perform in a Crossroads benefit concert at Madison Square Garden. The show was called “Eric Clapton and Friends,” and was put together by myself, Peter Jackson, and Scooter Weintraub. I met Scooter back in the eighties when he was organizing commercial sponsorship for high-level artists such as Michael Jackson, and we had been friends ever since. He is a big music fan and loves the blues, so we get on like a house on fire. The lineup for the concert was Mary J. Blige, Sheryl Crow, and Bob Dylan guesting with my band. The music was fantastic, and was preserved on a DVD that was to rake in more money for the Centre. During these few days, I began to realize that I was beginning to take a serious interest in Melia. She just seemed so natural, a beautiful girl with a big heart, and no agenda or ambition, and I had the feeling she was getting serious about me, too. After the Crossroads concert, I went home to England for a break but couldn’t get her out of my mind. I knew I would have to go back to LA soon to finish up working on a film score, and I couldn’t wait to see her again. Unfortunately, when I eventually returned there a couple of months later, Melia was out of town visiting her family in Columbus, Ohio, so I dated Satsuki until she came back. At that point we hadn’t really talked about breaking up the threesome, but I knew I couldn’t put off making a choice any longer, and when Melia returned from Ohio, I asked her if she would like to come back to England with me. She said yes without hesitation, but she had no passport. There was a last-minute scramble for her to get one, and next thing I knew we were on the plane to England.

The big obstacle for any woman I had started to get close to up until then was Hurtwood. I loved this house, as I had been there a good part of my life, and it would be important for any woman who came into my life to feel comfortable there, too. Almost all of the women I brought there had found it overwhelming, even threatening. Maybe the atmosphere, with all its memories, was too daunting, who knows? But from the very start, Melia was fine. She loved it, and we had a great time there together. In the early days, our age difference was a bit of a problem for me, though only in terms of how it is viewed by others, for as much as I like to pretend that I don’t care what people think, I really do. I am a chronic, though recovering, people pleaser. But that soon passed, and the strength of our mutual attraction far outweighed anything as superfluous as age, and if she didn’t care, why should I?

When we started to live together, I suddenly felt as if a huge weight was off my shoulders. All the competitiveness and comparative thinking I had experienced in the past just disappeared. I suddenly found myself with a friend and a lover, and the two sides were actually compatible. I didn’t have to look around anymore. My age or her youth seemed pretty irrelevant because the fundamental ingredients were right. We enjoyed each other’s company, respected each other’s feelings, and shared very distinct similarities in our tastes. Most important, we were drawn to one another through love and friendship. Imagine how this felt for me, having just lost the one woman I could never get close to. I had finally found someone who was not only available, but also seemed to have my best interests at heart. The mold was finally broken. Maybe it broke when my mother died, I don’t know. The important thing was, at the age of fifty-four, I had probably made the first healthy choice in a partner in my entire life.

I was happy for the first time in as long as I could remember, and I didn’t really have a plan, workwise or domestically. I just wanted to live in the moment for a while without any resolution. I sensed, however, that Melia wanted, or maybe needed, to know where our life was going. We would talk about it, and I would evade the issue to a certain extent. I had become used to living on my own, and in the years of recovery had learned to enjoy my own company. Committing to a full-time relationship at this point in my life would mean giving up an awful lot of territory, as well as time, which I had only just learned to cherish. I also knew, intuitively, that this was as good as it was ever going to get for me, so really my choice wasn’t too difficult. I had had a good run, if you can call it that, and I was happy to know that my life was entering a new, fuller phase. I had achieved as much as I could on my own, and now I had a chance to find out what a real partnership was like. It would be pure insanity to walk away from this.

Musically, life was full, too. Over thirty years since we had first jammed together at the Café Au Go Go, I finally cut the album with B. B. King that he and I had been talking about for a long time. We called it
Riding with the King
. Working with B. B. was a dream come true, and I put together a band that I felt could rise to the occasion. I remembered the Atlantic session years ago with Aretha, where there were wall-to-wall guitar players, and thought I’d like to give that concept a try. On bass it was Nathan East as usual, Steve Gadd on drums, Tim Carmen and Joe Sample on keyboards, and Doyle Bramhall, Andy Fairweather Low, and myself on guitars. On one track Jimmie Vaughan joined us, and his contribution worked so well, I kind of wished I’d asked him to play on each song.

All this time I was living in LA with Melia, in the house I had bought a year earlier, when I thought that I might move to LA. It was a beautiful modern construction built by the Japanese architect Isozaki. Situated one block back from the mellow end of Venice Beach, it made a perfect bachelor pad and I loved it. But now that life had taken a more domestic turn, I began to question my reasons for living there. Maybe because Melia was American, I continued to entertain thoughts of staying in California, and we began to look for places up north, maybe somewhere like Santa Barbara, but I knew we would never find anything to beat Hurtwood, and, finally giving in to homesickness, we went back to England for good.

The next album made in this period was
Reptile
, which was inspired by the death of my uncle Adrian. He passed away during one of our trips to England, and at his funeral Melia got her first taste of what was left of my crazy, wonderful family. It also hit me between the eyes how big an influence he had been in my life, and how much he had shaped, just by example, my view of the world. After the funeral, hosts of memories came flooding back—movies we had seen together, music he listened to, his whole stance haunted me for days. I also felt dreadful remorse that I hadn’t found a way to step in with regard to his drinking, which had become a problem. My principle has always been to mind my own business unless I am asked to help, but I now wonder if I shouldn’t have made an exception in his case.

I wanted to make the
Reptile
album using the same concept as the B. B. album, but there were two major additions; one was Billy Preston, and the other the Impressions. Billy had been part of my musical experience from the day I first saw him play with Little Richard, when we were both in our early teens, and I finally got to play with him when he signed with Apple and we recorded the album
Encouraging Words
back in 1970. Now he was at a loose end, and I asked if he would like to play on the album and join my touring band. I was delighted when he said yes. He had been my favorite keyboard player for as long as I could remember, and now we could finally play together. I had also been a lifelong fan of Curtis Mayfield and had the honor of being invited to sing with the Impressions at his memorial service in LA. I asked if they would come and sing on the album, and was over the moon when they said yes, too.

During a short break in the middle of the recording schedule, Melia and I flew up to Vancouver for some fishing. Melia had never picked up a rod before and took to it right away. We were fishing for pink salmon, and she caught far more than I did. She was a natural. The place we were staying in wasn’t too luxurious, and I knew from the fact that she didn’t complain that she was the girl for me. She didn’t mind at all; in fact, she seemed to quite like roughing it, and I do, too.

In the autumn of 2000, Melia and I were on holiday in Antigua when she told me she was pregnant. At first I was a bit taken aback. We had talked about having kids, and I had said I wasn’t sure if it was a good idea because of my age. I didn’t know if I would have the energy for such a huge commitment. But as I let the idea wash over me, I realized it was exactly what I needed, and I was overjoyed. The following year I began a world tour that had been planned before I knew of Melia’s condition. It was a little difficult, but all we needed to do was arrange the dates around the predicted birth date so I could be there.

The band for the tour was Billy Preston, David Sancious, from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Andy Fairweather Low, Nathan East, and Steve Gadd. It was a great outfit, and we benefited greatly from Billy’s presence. He was a natural leader himself, so for me it was almost like guesting with Billy. It was very tight and very creative. By the time we got to the States, Melia had gone back to Columbus to be with her folks for the approaching birth date. She wanted to establish a rapport with the local medical people well in advance. From my side, I enlisted Graham and Nigel to set up a home base for us, so that when the baby was born we would have somewhere of our own to stay until it was time to go home. I was getting very excited. I had been present at Conor’s birth, and that was miraculous, but this was different. For one thing, I was sober.

Peter Jackson, my tour manager, had arranged the dates so that I could stay with Melia during the day in Columbus and then commute to the shows in the evening by plane. Though it was a bit grueling overall, it was a good arrangement in that it meant I could provide support and attend prebirth counseling sessions. Then one day we went to see the doctor to finalize Melia’s hospital schedule, and she said she thought Melia ought to go in right away. I panicked. I wasn’t ready now that it was actually about to happen. I got scared. Ridiculous, really, because there would be very little expected of me. I would be on the sidelines, but I just couldn’t handle the unknown of it all.

We went straight into the hospital, and our daughter, Julie, was born that night, June 15, 2001, around ten o’clock. The bliss we felt on her arrival was slightly marred by some minor difficulties that we weren’t really prepared for. It has always been my understanding that babies feed on their mother’s breast on impulse, straightaway, without any coaching, just pure instinct. That wasn’t the case with Julie. She seemed confused and didn’t want to feed at all. We later found out when we got back to England that, just having entered the world from the womb, the bones in her head hadn’t completely decompressed, which made it difficult for her to swallow when she tried to feed, and she would gag. It was nothing serious, just an alignment issue with some of her bone joints, but we didn’t know that then and were really worried.