Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [105]
Another piece of shocking news that reached me on my return from the Roger Waters tour was in a letter from Yvonne, who wrote to say that she was pregnant and that the baby was mine. She emphasized, however, that she wished to keep this news secret and that she didn’t have any expectations from me. She was married and had decided to try and raise the child within her existing marriage. She had told me that things were not good between her and her husband, and I presumed that she was hoping that the baby might save her marriage.
Considering my own behavior, I suppose I should not have been so surprised to find that, during my absence on the road with Roger, Pattie had begun an affair with a society photographer. The irony was that he was the brother of Roger’s wife, Carolyn, and I later found out from one of my crew, Peter Jackson, that this had been an open secret on the Pros and Cons tour. They had met socially while I was working on the album. I was devastated, but in many subsequent conversations with Pattie, it became clear that I had been totally blind to the things that had driven her away from me, namely my chauvinistic behavior and my drinking and depressions. I pleaded with her to come back to me, to no avail, and it was eventually decided that we should have a trial separation. I agreed to rent a flat for her in London, and she moved into an apartment in Devonshire Place. “I kept on thinking,” I wrote in my diary on October 2, 1984, “this can’t be happening to me.”
I was getting ready for an Australian tour, and I was falling to pieces. I spent the mornings in therapy, which helped me, and the afternoons working, which often knocked me back. “The problem is that the rehearsals,” I wrote, “contain all the songs I ever wrote about Pattie, and by the time we’re finished, I’m back where I started—jealous and rejected…” The evenings back at home were the worst, “sad, melancholy and negative,” I wrote. I could not stop brooding about her and her boyfriend, who I considered a complete wimp. One evening, after getting “further and further down in my pit…finally I got in the car and drove…with the intention of dragging her back, caveman style. She wasn’t there of course.”
Over the next few weeks, during which I was also rehearsing for the upcoming tour, my state of mind went steadily downhill. “I feel so lost and desperate,” I wrote on October 12, “…and miss her so much that I can’t see the way ahead.” A week later I experienced “the worst day yet! A complete relapse with all the fears and guilt of the old drinking days, the coke was the worst part of it—never again! The whole day I spent getting more and more suicidal, until finally the phone rang in the evening and it was Roger W., who just by being gentle brought me out of it. I stopped drinking, threw the coke away and drank glass after glass of water until finally I came back to a feeling of clarity and ease. I must never let this happen again…”
Two things helped me during this dark period. First and foremost was my music, the one thing that was always there for me. “I want to express all my pain in my music,” I wrote in one entry in my diary. “I don’t want to stifle it, I want it to reach others in pain so that they can know they are not alone.” I also started to see a brilliant therapist whom Roger Waters had recommended. “I saw Gordon today,” I wrote on October 16, “and he gave me some good insights on both me and the situation—it seems I must use my head to control my emotions or they will destroy me…he is giving me a good foot forward no matter how slow. I wrote and recorded ‘Behind the Sun’ at Phil’s house tonight. It’s rough, but it says it all…I intend giving it to Nell on Thursday.” This song, which consisted of me on guitar and vocals and Phil on synthesizer, expressed all my feelings of sadness over our breakup. I took the title