Clapton (33 page)

Nothing much had changed at the house, except for some repainting, and the overall style of the house was going through another transition. I had asked my friend Jane Ormsby-Gore to help put the house into a Georgian mode, from having been modern Italian for the last ten years. She has a great eye, and I totally trust her judgment. The only family plans we had was some shooting between Christmas and New Year’s, this time with Melia in attendance. She had been taking lessons and was ready to enter the field. Needless to say, she was a fast learner and is rapidly becoming a good shot. I’m so happy I have a wife I can share these pastimes with, not only because it helps our friendship, but because she can then understand my passion for them, too.

Ruth and Derek were coming to visit on Christmas Eve, and I had received an e-mail from Derek a few days earlier asking to speak to me about something urgent. It seemed that he and Ruth were thinking of getting engaged, and he wanted to do the proper thing by asking me for her hand. I was a little shocked, because although Ruth had talked about getting engaged a long time ago, I now knew that she was seriously considering a career in music, and I thought there might be a conflict between the two different directions. My God, everything was becoming so normal in my life. It was hard to believe that I was having to consider things like this, and that life was unfolding in this way, for me, and for all of us.

Christmas was wonderful. Richard and Chris, and Ruth and Derek, came down the night before, and after dinner Richard did the the honors with the Santa Claus outfit. Julie had suddenly been expressing a certain amount of skepticism about the whole thing, and since she was only five years old, it was sad to think that the bubble would probably burst quite soon. We all had a great time. Melia cooked a delicious lunch, and all day we opened presents. My favorite was a white Mexican Stratocaster with a gold anodized scratchplate that Melia had seen me eyeing up in a local guitar store. On the back of the guitar she had written a lovely dedication, and all the girls had signed their names. It’s the best present I’ve ever got.

On Boxing Day, I went out for a drive with Derek and we talked about his prospects for Ruth and himself. I thought he was a really good guy, and they had been seeing each other for a couple of years, so I had no real objections to their marriage and happily gave my consent. I asked him if he wanted me to make a formal announcement before we all parted company, but he said he had not actually proposed yet and wanted to bide his time. I was impressed by his sense of prudence. After lunch we said good-bye to everybody and drove down to Jamie Lee’s to set up camp for our shoot. Jamie and his wife, Lydia, have two lovely girls, Jessica and Georgia, who are a little older than ours and get on famously with them; also, Paul Cummins was coming down later with his wife, Janice, and their little boy Jamie, so we were all excited and looking forward to the next few days.

We shot at three different venues, back to back, all high and difficult birds, and had a great time. Melia shot really well, with Alan Rose, the famous instructor from the West London Shooting School, standing beside her, giving her tips and the occasional word of encouragement. The company was good, the weather was fine, and the shooting was great. I was really pleased that Melia actually enjoyed the day, and that shooting game and not clay pigeons didn’t put her off. It’s obviously not everybody’s favorite sport, and some people can get quite worked up about it. I remember a few years earlier, with trout fishing, I actually hit a kind of brick wall myself. I was fishing down on the Test when I suddenly stopped and thought, “Why am I doing this?” I had caught a couple of fish, killed them, and put them in my bag, and I thought, “This is not right.” I was confused, because I really enjoyed fishing, but it seemed that if I couldn’t justify it to myself, at that exact moment, then I was going to have to stop. That’s when I decided that, from then on, I was going to eat everything I caught, and that catching large numbers of fish was no longer really an option. I have tried to apply the same principle to shooting, which is all well and good, but it’s a tall order, trying to eat all the pheasant and partridge I shoot. Nevertheless we try.

The Christmas break had been a welcome rest from touring, and all in all the horizon looked good. What had seemed like an impossible mountain to climb was, for the most part, now behind us, with three more months to go. The only bad news to come in over the holidays, which unfortunately was as equally devastating as last year’s news, was that Ahmet Ertegun had passed away, after having been in a coma for several weeks after a fall at a Rolling Stones concert. Shortly before that, his colleague and companion from the early days of Atlantic Records, Arif Marden, had also died. It was a massive loss to the music world.

These two men had been just as active and inspiring in recent years as they had been right from the start of their careers. They were also friends and colleagues. I had worked and collaborated with them both many times over the years, and Ahmet was the first heavy hitter in the business who truly saw and understood what I was trying to do, way back then. It was a terrible shock. I had Ahmet’s old number in New York, and on the off chance called to see if Mica, his wife, would answer. To my surprise, she answered herself straightaway, and we talked briefly. It was so good to be able to share her grief and tell her how much he had meant to me. There are not that many people left from those days that I would be able to express that to. I offered my services, if she should need them, and I hope I was able to ease her burden for a moment or two.

January signaled the final ascent on the tour. We would start in Singapore and head north into China via Thailand. Most of it was familiar territory, but it was everyone’s first time in Shanghai, and we were all excited about that. Melia and the girls left for Columbus just before me, so that Julie could begin school on time, allowing for a couple of days of jet lag. This was going to be another long leg of the tour, like Japan, and we would be depending on the computer for family support. I was also carrying the complete manuscript of my book so far, with the intention of doing a thorough correction check whenever I had time in my schedule.

The first week in Asia was like a blur for me. It seems my ability to transcend jet lag has completely disappeared in my old age, and my natural curiosity has also diminished a great deal, so that venturing out of my room became a highly debatable occupation. The change in climate was also a shock to the system. Having left an average English winter, we were suddenly planted in extreme tropical conditions, which did nothing to boost my energy, leaving me limp like an old lettuce leaf. Fortunately, we needed little rehearsal and quickly climbed back into a confident stride with the music.

Our daily schedule had quite a few decent holes, so I was able to get my teeth into my book quite early on. By the time we reached mainland China, I was pretty well hooked, and it was all I could do to stop writing, pecking away with my one finger like a demented chicken. I have always enjoyed the different aspects of English literature, ever since I was a little boy, and spelling and grammar have been a source of great fascination for me. The only classes I did well in at school, other than art, were English and English literature, though that doesn’t necessarily qualify me to write this and assume that it will be interesting to others.

With all the expectations I had about Shanghai, it was a huge disappointment. Flying in through the smog and blinking lights atop the bizarre array of new skyscrapers, it felt like I was entering a real-life version of the movie
Blade Runner
, and for some reason I was instantly on my guard. That feeling never really left for the next few days, and I was always on edge, from the fractious stare-down with the immigration officer when I arrived to the constant sidestepping of street hustlers, selling knockoffs of everything from DVDs to Montblanc pens. Thanks to Hiroshi, who was e-mailing street support and a heads-up to where all the “underground” stores were on my travels, I met some interesting people here. Tommy Chung was the man in Shanghai; he ran the only store to stock Visvim, my favorite shoe, and I thank him for his great hospitality while we were in his town. Overall, though, I was pleased to be moving on.

New Zealand and Australia were a big surprise. I loved it there, after having huge trepidations, all for nothing. It proved beyond doubt that my attitude and state of mind would always govern my impressions of people, places, and things. Meeting up with Ian “Beefy” Botham in Melbourne was an example of the same principle. I had spent half of my last year of drinking with him, back in 1987, and so have always been a bit nervous of him ever since. We have met up a few times since then, and it’s been fine, but in a way our friendship has been limited by the fact that he still likes a drink. This time was different. We really connected, perhaps because I have grown up a bit more and realize that his choice to drink is none of my business, and that anyway, I really love the guy a lot. We have a lot in common and he has a heart of gold, and best of all, we can make one another laugh. So now I look forward to spending a lot more time with him, farther on up the road.

It was summertime down under, and I was getting brown and healthy, while back in Ohio I knew they were in deep winter and getting snowed in. We had made a plan to meet in Hawaii, where Melia was born, for our next break, but had abandoned it because the traveling involved would be so convoluted that by the time we all got there and recovered from our respective jet lags, it would be time to leave again. So I was going back to Columbus for ten days. For the next twenty-four hours, I flew from eighty-five degrees of perfect weather to five below zero and blizzards. In fact, it was a skin-of-the-teeth ride getting into Columbus at all because the weather was so bad. While we were taxiing in, I saw them de-icing the wings of another plane that was getting ready to take off and said a silent prayer under my breath. I also made another vow, to stop all this wandering around.

I got instantly sick during this break—the climate change was pretty drastic, and it was the first time I had experienced an Ohio winter. I couldn’t believe how severe it was. That, coupled with the fact that I have a phobia about electric heating, far preferring radiators, left me feeling pretty low and physically vulnerable. All that aside, though, it was great to spend some time with the girls again, even though we were pent up inside the house most of the time because of the cold. They were excited to see me, too, and they fought a lot over who would sit next to me at mealtimes. I loved it, and needed it, too. Being out on the road for months at a time without any direct affection from another human being was having a pretty detrimental effect on my psyche, causing me to isolate myself in my room. The contrast between the empty hotel room and the roaring crowd in the auditorium can cause a lot of emotional confusion, too, but for the moment, that world could wait; I was safe with my loved ones again.

Picking up the thread again in Dallas, I was excited to think that this was the last stretch—only one more month and the tour would be over. Not that it had been a misery; in fact, it had been a tremendous success on every level. I had thoroughly enjoyed the music and the companionship, but the traveling itself had taxed me far more than I had ever imagined. When Peter Jackson and I had planned this venture, back in 2005, it seemed fairly straightforward, and I was more than a little blasé about it, but after only two months in Europe I began to realize what I had let myself in for.

From Texas we went on to California, and commuted to a lot of shows around the West Coast from LA. I had been looking forward to this part of the tour because I planned on flying the girls in for a few days of much-needed sunshine, plus I would be able to look up a couple of old friends. Nigel Carroll still works for me, and he has two sons, who are fully grown now. They are both extremely artistic kids with a lot of flair, who’ve grown into fine young men, and I know he’s very proud of them. I had also asked Nigel to trace Stephen Bishop, who had been a close friend during the seventies and whom I regard as one of the great singer-songwriters. I felt compelled to look him up again, because as I have grown older, I think a lot about the friends I no longer see, and it worries me that we have all drifted so far apart. In Stephen’s case, it was easy. When we met up it was as if time had stood still, and we were picking up where we had left off. So for two weeks or so, the tour hit a warm patch; the family came in, old friends were around, and life was good. Until, that is, we went north.

At the end of every leg of the tour so far, we had all agreed that it had been perhaps a week too long. In the case of this last leg, it was more like two weeks. The weather had got colder, the hotels were getting noisier, and I was running out of stamina. The amount of planning and day-to-day strategy involved in ensuring that I had enough energy for the gig in the evening was getting ridiculous. At this stage it was absolutely necessary for me to have an hour’s nap in the afternoon, and in order to get that hour, I had to create a three-hour vacuum—not as easy as it might seem. We were also now traveling on show days a lot, and that was wearing me out. In short, it was getting really tough. Another aspect that had stretched all of us was that Derek Trucks had to leave the tour to fulfill a prior commitment with the Allman Brothers halfway through this leg. We all knew this was coming, and there was nothing we could do about it, but it was hard to watch him go. It had been a great journey playing with him throughout the year, and had altered and influenced the way we all played together. Thank goodness his absence was not as problematic musically as I had thought it would be. In fact, Doyle and I really enjoyed playing more directly with each other. But in terms of pure energy, it was draining me unbelievably, and seemed to add more weight to the lead I felt in my legs.

In Canada, I got to see my half sister Cheryl and her family. We don’t see much of each other, and I felt poorly equipped to socialize, plus we were moving on right after the show, so time was short. It had been the same for my other half sister, Heather, in Toronto the year before, and I realized that times have changed. In the old days I would have made time to visit with them the day before or the day after the show, but now I was having to rest every chance I got. By the time we got to Fargo, North Dakota, on my birthday, I was exhausted, and had had enough, but Melia and the girls came to visit, and that did a lot to restore my equilibrium. We had a big party before the gig, and I got some wonderful presents from the band and crew. I found it really moving to have everyone in the same room together, and when I tried to speak to say thank you, I started choking up. I really believe that this crew of techs and managers, from the riggers to the computer boffins, are the best in the business. They have been with me forever, and I rarely give them enough credit. Funnily enough, the only present I can remember getting was a pair of ghastly pink Crocs (rubber sandals with holes) that Michele and Sharon had given me. Thanks for the memory, girls.