Clapton (4 page)

One day I was kneeling in front of the mirror miming to a Gene Vincent record, when one of my mates walked past the open window. He stopped and looked at me, and I’ll never forget the embarrassment I felt, because the truth is that, driven though I was by the music, I was equally driven by the thought of becoming one of those people I had seen on TV, not English pop stars like Cliff Richard, but the Americans such as Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Gene Vincent. I knew then that something was calling me, and I wasn’t going to be able to stay in Ripley.

Though I still hadn’t quite got to grips with the actual playing of the guitar, I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing and tried to cultivate the image of what I thought a troubadour should look like. I got a Biro and I wrote on the top surface of the guitar, in huge letters, the words LORD ERIC because I thought that’s what troubadours did. Then I attached a string to the guitar to serve as a strap and imagined myself with a girlfriend, also dressed in beatnik gear, going to play folk music in a coffee bar. The girlfriend materialized in the shape of a very pretty girl, Diane Coleman, who was also attending Hollyfield. She lived in Kingston, and we had a short but intense little fling until sex reared its head, and I panicked. Until then we had become very fond of one another and would spend hours listening to records together in her mum’s front room. My initial career as a troubadour was just as brief. We went out together to a coffee bar about three times, complete with the LORD ERIC guitar, and were both embarrassed, me by being too shy to play and she by witnessing it. Then, just when I thought I’d hit a brick wall, I found another guitar.

There used to be a kind of flea market in Kingston, and I was wandering around one Saturday when I saw a very odd-looking guitar hanging up on one of the stalls. It was acoustic but it had a very narrow-shaped body, almost like a medieval English guitar, and a painting of a naked woman stuck on the back of it. Intuitively I knew it was good. I picked it up and, though I didn’t play it because I didn’t want anyone to hear, it felt perfect, like a dream guitar. I bought it there and then, for two pounds ten (shillings). Don’t ask me where the money came from, possibly cadged from Rose, or “borrowed” from her handbag. I have no real recollection of my financial arrangement back then with my folks. I think I was getting a pretty decent amount of pocket money each week, but it wouldn’t have been beyond me, I’m ashamed to say, to supplement my spending in any way that was open to me.

By now I had mastered some clawhammer, and tried out a few of the folk pieces I had learned on this new guitar. Compared to the Hoyer, I found it very easy to play. The body was quite small and slim, and it had an unconventionally wide and flat fingerboard like a Spanish guitar. The strings were spaced very far apart so you could get your fingers quite easily onto each string without your hand feeling crowded, and it was shallow all the way down, making it delicate and fragile but at the same time easy to play high on the fingerboard as well as low. It turned out to be a George Washburn, a vintage American instrument of great value, originally manufactured by a company in Chicago that had been making guitars since 1864. On the back of the rosewood body someone had stuck on that piece of paper painted with a pinup, and then varnished it over. It was difficult to scrape this off without damaging the wood, and it pissed me off that someone had done this to such a beautiful instrument. At last I had a proper guitar, meant for folk music. Now maybe I could become the troubadour that I thought I was meant to be.

B
y the time I took my Art A Level, at the age of sixteen, and moved on to Kingston School of Art, on a year’s probation, I was becoming quite proficient as a player and learning new things all the time. I used to frequent a coffee bar in Richmond called L’Auberge. It was on the hill just by the bridge, and across the river in Twickenham was a funky old place called Eel Pie Island. This was an island in the middle of the river, which had a massive dance hall built on it. It was an ancient, creaky wooden gin palace, and on a Saturday night they would have New Orleans jazz bands playing there, people like Ken Colyer, and the Temperance Seven, and we loved it. The routine was to start out at L’Auberge in the early evening, have a couple of coffees, and then wander over the bridge of Eel Pie. I’ll never forget the feeling as you got about halfway across the bridge, and you’d suddenly realized you were in the middle of a swelling crowd of people who all looked vaguely the same. There was a tremendous sense of belonging back then. In those pre-hippie, beatnik days, it did seem to be all about the music. Drugs were rare, and even the drinking was fairly moderate.

I used to play there with Dave Brock, who later went on to found Hawkwind, and I fell in with the crowd of musicians and beatniks who used to hang out there. Sometimes we’d all jump on the train and go up to London to the folk clubs and pubs around Soho, places like the Marquess of Granby, the Duke of York, and the Gyre and Gimble coffee bar in Charing Cross. The first time I ever got beaten up was outside the “G’s.” A bunch of squaddies lured me outside and gave me a good kicking for absolutely no other reason, as far as I could see, than to let off steam. It was a pretty nasty experience, but in a perverse way I felt like I had made my bones, another rite of passage completed. It did teach me, however, that I was not cut out for fighting. I made no attempt to protect myself, maybe because I intuitively knew that would make matters worse, and from then on I seemed to develop an alert instinct for potentially violent situations and from then on avoided them like the plague.

The folk scene had a real following in those days, and in the clubs and pubs I began to meet loads of like-minded people and musicians. Long John Baldry was a regular, and I know Rod Stewart used to sing at the Duke of York, although I never saw him there. Also, two guitarists who used to play regularly in these places had a big influence on me. One was a guy called Buck, who played the first Zemaitis twelve-string I ever saw, and the other was Wiz Jones, another famous troubadour of the time. They’d play Irish ballads and English folk tunes, mixing them with Leadbelly songs and other stuff, which gave me a unique view of the world of folk music. I’d sit as close to them as possible, which was often difficult as they were so popular, and watch their hands to see the way they played. Then I’d come back home and practice for hours and hours, trying to teach myself to play the music I’d heard. I’d listen carefully to the recording of whatever song I was working on, then copy it and copy it till I could match it. I remember trying to imitate the bell-like tone achieved by Muddy Waters on his song “Honey Bee.” It was the first time I ever got three strings together on my guitar. I had no technique, of course; I just spent hours mimicking it.

The main man for me was Big Bill Broonzy, and I tried to learn his technique, which was to accompany yourself with your thumb, using the thumb to play eighth notes on the bass strings while you pick out a riff or countermelody with your fingers. This is a staple part of blues playing in one form or another and can be developed into a folk pattern, too, like clawhammer, where you move your thumb rhythmically between the bottom strings alternately while picking out the melody on the top strings with your first, second, and sometimes third fingers. My method of learning was pretty basic; I’d play along with the record I wanted to imitate, and when I thought I’d mastered something, I’d record it on the Grundig and play it back. If it sounded like the record, then I was satisfied. As I slowly began to master the art of finger-style acoustic playing, I learned new songs, for instance, the old Bessie Smith song “Nobody Knows When You’re Down and Out,” “Railroad Bill,” an old bluegrass song, and Big Bill Broonzy’s “Key to the Highway.”

Around that time I met, and followed around for a while, an American female folk singer named Gina Glaser. She was the first American musician I had been anywhere near, and I was starstruck. To make a little extra money, she posed naked for still life classes at Kingston Art School. She had a young child, and a slightly world-weary aura to her. Her specialty was old Civil War songs like “Pretty Peggyo” and “Marble Town.” She had a beautiful, clear voice and played an immaculate clawhammer style. I was smitten with her, and I think she found me attractive, but she was twice my age, and I was still pretty green around women.

As my playing improved, I started to go to a pub in Kingston called the Crown, where I used to play in a corner by the billiard table. This particular pub attracted a suave crowd of beat people, who seemed a cut above the kind of music fans I’d been hanging out with. This was an affluent crowd. The guys wore Chelsea boots, leather jackets, matelot shirts, and Levi 501s, which were incredibly hard to find—and a kind of harem of very-good-looking girls moved around with them. Bardot was then the icon for women to follow, so their uniform was tight jumpers, slit skirts, and black stockings with duffel coats and scarves.

They were very exotic, very fast, and very well educated, a tight group of friends who seemed to have grown up together. They’d usually meet at the pub, then go off to hang out at someone’s house, and there always seemed to be a party going on around them. It became my ambition to be accepted by this group, but since I was an outsider from the word go, and working-class, the only way I could really get their attention was by playing the guitar.

Hanging out with this bunch, and especially seeing all these beautiful girls, really made me want to belong, but I had no idea how to go about it. When I was still at secondary modern, a friend of mine, Steve, one of the lads from Send who was into clothes and looking cool, took me out on a blind date. I was obviously elected to divert his girlfriend’s mate, who wasn’t the most beautiful girl in the world. I wasn’t interested in her at all, but I was very horny, and although I wouldn’t kiss her, I did try to get my hands on her upper torso. She wasn’t amused and created a bit of a scene. That was as far as I got with sex until Diane at Hollyfield, and we hadn’t got much further. I was terrified of going too far and then being held responsible in some way. Ever since finding that pornography on the Green, I felt compelled to discover for myself what it was all about, but my experience of female rejection, stemming from my mother, left me quaking with fear at the threshold.

At Kingston, I set my sights on a girl who was completely out of my league. I think she was the daughter of a local politician from Chessington. Her name was Gail, and she was absolutely gorgeous, dark-skinned, tall, and voluptuous, with long, dark, curly hair.

She seemed very aloof when I first saw her, but after I had observed her for a few weeks, I could see that she was also pretty wild. I quickly became obsessed with her, and somehow got it into my head that the best way to get her attention was by regularly getting blind drunk, as if that would make me more appealing or more manly in some way. On any given night in Kingston, I would be drinking up to ten pints of Mackeson’s milk stout, followed by rum and black currant, gin and tonic, or gin and orange. I learned to try and drink so that I’d stop just short of passing out, but I would invariably end up getting very ill and throwing up. Needless to say, as a courting tool it failed miserably. Gail was not impressed, but if nothing else, I was learning a lot about the power of alcohol.

Only a short time before this, I had gone with three friends on the train to Beaulieu for the jazz festival. We got there on a Saturday morning and were planning to stay till Sunday night. We decided to go to the pub for lunch before going on to the festival. The last thing I remembered that day was dancing on the tables with a guy I’d never met before in my life, who became my absolute brother. I can still recall the way he looked and everything about him, though I’d never seen him before or since. I thought he was just the most funny, charismatic person I’d ever met in my life, and we got legless together.

I had gone with some friends, with the intention of camping in the woods near the festival, and the next thing I knew I was waking up in the morning on my own, in the middle of nowhere. I had no money, I had shit myself, I had pissed myself, I had puked all over myself, and I had no idea where I was. There were signs, like the remains of a fire, that the others had pitched camp close by, but they’d all gone and left me there. I was stunned. I had to get home to Ripley in this condition, and I caught the train at a little country station nearby. The stationmaster took pity on me and gave me a handwritten I.O.U. on a piece of paper, which I dejectedly gave to Rose when I got home. I was heavily disillusioned with my friends, shocked that they could have just left me there in that state, alone and without any money, but the really insane thing was, I couldn’t wait to do it all again.

I thought there was something otherworldly about the whole culture of drinking, that being drunk made me a member of some strange, mysterious club. It also gave me courage to play and, finally, to get off with a girl. Saturday nights in Kingston always followed the same routine. We would all meet up at the Crown and I would play. One guy who was always there, Dutch Mills, was a smooth character who played blues harmonica, and most Saturdays he would have a party at his house. I remember going back there one night with about a dozen people, none of whom I knew very well, and at some point the lights went off and everyone went at it. That’s where and when I actually lost my virginity, with a girl named Lucy who was older than me, and whose boyfriend was out of town. I was terrified and fumbly, I still am for that matter, but she patiently helped me through, and although I know all the others were aware of what was happening, either they didn’t care or were so busy with their own endeavors that they just chose to ignore us. The following morning we parted company, and although we saw one another around often, it was never spoken of again. With what I knew about relationships and sex, I just assumed that was the way it was done, and went on my way.

Going so suddenly from the odd kind of groping session to full intercourse was very, very strange, and it was all over in the blinking of an eye. I didn’t use any protection, of course, as the whole thing was so unexpected, so the next time I thought it was going to happen, I went with a mate of mine to a drugstore to buy a packet of Durex. It was incredibly embarrassing. I had been told to ask for a packet of three, which I assumed was some kind of code. I remember the man behind the counter smiling at me and giving me a kind of wink, and then asking me questions like “Do you want lubricated or nonlubricated?” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about.

The next time I had the opportunity to use one of these things, it was at Dutch’s house. He had organized two girls, and we went back to his place in the afternoon. He went in one room and I went in the other, and I got this thing out of its wrapper, with absolutely no idea how to use it. I couldn’t quite get it on properly, and it was very slippery and weird, and I felt very embarrassed about it. Upon inspection, after the event, I realized that it had split, and I was filled with a sense of dread. Sure enough, a few weeks later the girl called me to tell me she thought she was pregnant, and that I had to get some money together for her to have an abortion. It gave me a shock even though such events were very commonplace at the time.

Sex was my only distraction from music, where I was beginning to seriously explore the blues. It’s very difficult to explain the effect the first blues record I heard had on me, except to say that I recognized it immediately. It was as if I were being reintroduced to something that I already knew, maybe from another, earlier life. For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall. This was the feeling I had when I first heard the Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee song on Uncle Mac, and the same thing happened when I first heard Big Bill Broonzy.

I saw a clip of him on TV, playing in a nightclub, lit by the light from a single lightbulb, swinging in its shade from the ceiling, creating an eerie lighting effect. The tune he was playing was called “Hey Hey,” and it knocked me out. It’s a complicated guitar piece, full of blue notes, which are what you get by splitting a major and a minor note. You usually start with the minor and then bend the note up toward the major, so it’s somewhere between the two. Indian and Gypsy music also use this kind of note bending. When I first heard Big Bill and, later, Robert Johnson, I became convinced that all rock ’n’ roll—and pop music too, for that matter—had sprung from this root.

Next I set about learning to play like Jimmy Reed, who usually plays a twelve-bar form, and whose style has been copied by countless R&B bands. I discovered that the key was to make a kind of boogie on the bottom two strings of the guitar by simply pressing down on the fifth string at the second fret and then the fourth fret to make a basic kind of walking figure, while playing the E string at the same time. Then I’d move it up to the next string to make the next part of the twelve-bar, and so on. The final step, and the hardest part really, is to feel it, to play in a relaxed rhythm so that it feels and sounds good. I am someone who can’t leave things unfinished, and if I’ve given myself a task to do in the day, then I can’t go to bed until I’ve done it. It was like this with the twelve-bar blues riff. I worked at it until it felt like it was part of my metabolism.