Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [124]
Unhappy though I was and despite the warnings of my friends, who could see no future for me in this relationship, I went crawling back for more, time after time. One day, while I was entertaining my friends Chris and Richard Steele in Antigua, I confided in them about my troubles and showed Chris a letter I had written to Francesca to get her opinion. She looked at me as if I had landed from another planet. “Why are you giving this woman all your power?” she asked. I had no idea what she was talking about, but I was intrigued. Chris was at that time director of the alcohol and addiction unit of the Priory Psychiatric Clinic in Roehampton, but I had heard that she also conducted one-on-one, private counseling sessions. I asked if she would see me, and she said yes. For a while I didn’t really know what I was getting into. I thought that I could pick her brains to find ways to control Francesca, but I was to find myself going in a very different direction altogether.
Chris’s first question to me, at our very first session, was, “Tell me who you are,” a very simple question you would think, but I felt the blood rush up to my face and wanted to yell at her, “How dare you! Don’t you know who I am?” Of course, I had no idea who I was, and I was ashamed to admit it. I wanted to appear that I was ten years sober and fully mature, when in fact I was only ten years old, emotionally speaking, and starting from scratch. Her attitude to the relationship was pretty novel, too. While everyone was saying get out and that the girl was no good for me, her view was that my troubles had nothing to do with Francesca. In fact, she liked her. What I needed to address, according to Chris, was what I was doing there in the first place. In short, her counsel was that I should stay there until either I’d had enough or learned whatever it was I needed to learn.
The essence of this period of my life was that the recovery work I was doing balanced the chaos in my personal life. The crazier it got with Francesca, the deeper I delved into recovery, especially therapy. Along with Paul Wassif, a friend I had met through Francesca, I began doing peer support work at the Priory, which involved taking a short training course and, among other things, allowed us to sit in on group therapy sessions with clients at the beginning of their day. I loved it. It gave me a sense of real responsibility, and at times it was like living theater; you never knew what would happen next, and the results could be extremely positive, sometimes miraculous. I also began working with a therapist who specialized in John Bradshaw’s methods, in particular looking at family history as a guide to undoing present dysfunctional behavior. My mum and my uncle were definitely suitable cases for treatment, and my past was riddled with weird scenarios. No wonder I was living it all out again in the present.
As much as I was engaged on a voyage of personal self-discovery, I was also rediscovering my roots. Having opened the door to my true musical tastes with Unplugged, I decided it was time to say thank you to the blues, and to the players and singers who had inspired me so much throughout my life, people like Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Jimmie Rodgers, and Robert Johnson. I went into the studio with the approach that everything would be recorded live, and having chosen the songs, we would play them as much like the original versions as possible, even down to the key they were played in. It was great fun, and I loved every minute of it. It was what I had always wanted to do. Unfortunately, Roger didn’t agree. I think he felt that having scored so strongly