Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [129]
I felt let down by Roger, which was symptomatic of a general decline in our relationship. Over the course of a year we had disagreed on just about everything, a lot of it being to do with my growing need to take responsibility for myself. Now that I was actually a thinking human being again, with a modicum of self-respect and pride in what I was able to do, I wanted to become more involved in the decision-making process of my business, and the more this became clear, the more it set Roger and me at odds. A perfect example of this, which happened while we were in the middle of all the problems in Antigua, was when I got a direct call on my home phone from Luciano Pavarotti, asking me if I would play at his annual concert in Modena to benefit children affected by war. I said I’d love to and thanked him for asking me.
Speaking to him directly was wonderful and a brand-new thing for me, because for so long I’d been kept away from any kind of contact like that. I then called Roger and told him that I had been asked, and had accepted the invitation, to play at Pavarotti’s event. I passed on the phone number of Pavarotti’s agent, asking if he would attend to the business end of things. It seemed like a reasonable request to me, but I could feel a bristling at the other end of the line. This was not the way he wanted to work it.
Deciding to go ahead with the treatment center was one of the first decisions I had made for myself, and it felt great. It took my mind off of the disastrous goings-on with Francesca and gave me cause to feel good about myself. But I had written some songs I needed to finish and realized these had to be done before I could feel completely at peace with myself. For this I turned for help to Simon Climie. We had met at Olympic Studios, and though I knew him best as a songwriter and one-half of the group Climie Fisher, I also knew he was producing modern R&B records, so it seemed for me like a natural progression. We also had a lot of musical tastes in common. In fact, our relationship as collaborators began when my affair with Francesca limped into oblivion, as he was one of the few who would still listen to my tale of woe. I would go to his house, and he’d make me tea and provide a sympathetic ear, and then we would play. It was powerful stuff. Most of it was done on his computer, using Pro Tools, with me jamming away or writing melodieson top.
We managed to persuade Giorgio Armani to let us do the music for one of his fashion shows, and took that and turned it into an album called Retail Therapy. We called ourselves T.D.F., for Totally Dysfunctional Family, and launched our music onto the club scene with twelve-inch singles and radical remixes. We decided that we would remain totally anonymous in the hope that the music, on its own merit, would provide our credibility. Sound familiar? It was totally ignored until someone got wind that I was somehow involved, and then the whole thing became completely untouchable. It was a shame really, because it was a good album. In truth, however, it was just a warm-up for Pilgrim.
I had told my friend, legendary drummer Steve Gadd, that I wanted to make the saddest record of all time. He said he could identify with that. It was a dangerous ambition, but in the aftermath of Francesca, it was one that I felt I could accomplish. We booked the studio and made the whole album up as we went along. The only prewritten songs I had ready were “Circus” and “My Father’s Eyes,” neither of which seemed to have found their right incarnation yet. For almost a year we worked day and night, sometimes just perfecting little guitar motifs, or honing and reshaping tracks with the Pro Tools system that Simon is a master of. The result was one of my favorite albums; I poured my soul into this one, and I believe you can hear that.
Every now and then Roger would visit us in the studio, and I knew he was not happy. I don’t think he liked the music much, and we were running up incredible studio