Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [107]
My resolve was soon strengthened by the news that my letter to the boyfriend appeared to have paid off and that he had backed off for a while. So after Christmas, which we spent apart, I decided to press even harder for a reconciliation. Pattie would never have considered this without first consulting “the committee,” as we called the group of close friends she hung out with. Also known as “the blond Mafia,” they were a formidable group of women who used to regularly lunch together and swap gossip. Much to my delight, they gave her the go-ahead, and we flew off together for a holiday in Eilat, Israel. It was just as unsuccessful as the trip to Florence. The problem was that I was convinced that if we could regain the intimate side of our relationship, then everything else would fall into place. So instead of just enjoying her company, I was always trying to push it to the next level. In spite of everything, I persuaded Pattie to give me another chance at making our marriage work, and on our return to England she came back to live at Hurtwood. Things did not improve. I had placed her on a pedestal, turning her into a person she could never aspire to be and that I would only abuse.
For most of 1985, apart from August and September, I was out on the road promoting Behind the Sun. In the early part of that summer I got a phone call from Pete Townshend asking if I would play in a charity event being organized by Bob Geldof to raise money for the victims of famine in Ethiopia. It was to be called Live Aid and to consist of two concerts, to be played simultaneously in London and Philadelphia on July 13 and broadcast live on TV across the world. As it happened, on that date we were to be in the middle of a North American tour. We were booked to play Las Vegas the night before, with shows in Denver on either side, so there were some pretty big leaps involved. I told Roger to cancel the Las Vegas show and called Pete to say we’d do it. Thank God we were in good shape, with the band playing really well, because had we just started our tour, I might have had second thoughts otherwise.
Landing in Philadelphia the day before the show, one couldn’t help but get swept up in the atmosphere. The place was just buzzing. The moment we landed, you could feel music everywhere. We checked into the Four Seasons Hotel, every room of which was filled with musicians. It was Music City, and like most people I was awake most of the night before the concert. I couldn’t sleep with nerves. We were due to go onstage in the evening, and I sat watching the performances of the other acts on TV during most of the day, which was probably a psychological mistake, as seeing all these great artists giving their best made me a hundred times more psyched up than I would have been for a regular gig. How could I ever match the performance of a band like the Four Tops, with their fantastic big Motown orchestra combined with all their energy?
By the time we got out to the stadium, I was in such a state of nerves that I was literally tongue-tied. It was also boiling hot, and the whole band felt faint. In fact, Duck Dunn and I later confessed to each other that we’d been close to passing out. The tunnel that we had to walk through from the dressing rooms to the stage was crowded with security, which was unnerving in itself, and things weren’t helped by the fact that we had been given different guitar amps from those specified by my roadie, who was subsequently screaming blue murder as we reached the stage. To say the whole band was jumpy would be an understatement. As I climbed onstage, I luckily saw the reassuring presence of my old mentor, Ahmet Ertegun, standing in the wings, smiling broadly at me, and giving me a big thumbs-up sign.
Things got off to a shaky start. When I moved up to the microphone to sing the first line of “White Room,” I got a great big shock off it, further unnerving me, and meaning that I had to sing the rest of the show with my mouth not quite touching the mike, but still