Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [125]
My absorption with the blues project also blinded me to the whole revolution that was taking place in the English music scene. Britpop and DJs, jungle and drum and bass, it was all going on and I had no idea. Plus, from what I could gather from Francesca, who was deep into all of this, the culture was heavily fueled by Ecstasy and various other “designer” drugs. I felt very much the same as when punk had burst onto the scene in the eighties, scared and threatened, because even though I didn’t view myself as “the establishment,” I was fully aware that the punkers did.
From the Cradle, my new album, did very well, going to the top of the charts in the States, which was pretty good for a no-frills blues record. I toured on the strength of this for nearly two years, playing nothing but the blues all over the world, blissfully unaware of the way the music industry was changing. While I was on the American leg of this tour, I got the call from Francesca telling me she had gone back to her old boyfriend and that it was finally over between us. I was devastated, and poured my heart out to anyone who would listen, and by this time that list had got quite short. In fact, the whole weary business dragged on for another year, but the real heart had gone out of it, for both of us. To give her credit, like Carla several years earlier, Francesca had tried to make it clear right from the start that she didn’t really want a full-time relationship. I just didn’t want to hear her.
The end of the affair, when it finally came, coincided with an electrical fire in my London house, which seemed like an omen. I also saw it as an opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start again from scratch, so I emptied the house, sold all the contents, and began again. Now that Francesca was out of my life, I started to investigate the culture that she was so much a part of. I listened to everything I could get my hands on, and I woke up to what was happening with street fashion, too. It was weird, because a lot of it tied in with the old fifties and sixties street look that I had worn in the Yardbirds—Levi’s and windbreakers, hoods and sneakers, but there was a new angle on it. I started looking at graffiti art and began collecting it. It was like a whole new world was opening up to me; the only problem was, I felt I was too old to be getting into it. I hated the idea that I was this old guy trying to come across as a hip young street dude, but the culture was drawing me in, it was powerful, and I felt I understood it. What could I do? I was hooked again.
I began designing things. I knew that if I was accepted as a designer, my age would be of next to no consequence. I met a couple of ex-skaters named Simon and William who had a head shop called Fly on Kings Road, and we started a label called Choke. With me sharing most of the design duties, we made some very nice apparel for a couple of years, until the business end of it became unmanageable. Then, through Simon and his friend Michael Koppleman, I met Hiroshi Fujiwara, who had become a very close friend over the last few years. Hiroshi is a great designer, among other things, and a large influence in modern street culture. When I first met him, he was involved with the Goodenough label and starting some others. I also became very close to the graffiti writer Crash and bought a lot of his work. So Francesca, for all her obstreperousness, indirectly turned me on to a whole new lifestyle, and also, accidentally, was involved in the founding of Crossroads Antigua. Not bad for someone whom I literally wanted to strangle every time I saw her.
One day during the summer of 1994, I got word from her family that Alice, who had disappeared for a while in France, had shown up again in England and was seriously ill in a hospital in Shrewsbury. This didn’t come as a great surprise to me, since over the years I had heard that she