Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [138]
Several months before, a new man had come to work at Hurtwood, Cedric Paine. We had been friends for a very long time. Cedric had done odd jobs for me and quite a few other musicians over the years, and up until now he had been freelance. Then I heard a rumor that he was looking for a steady job, for one boss, and I snapped him up. He is a good man, and we needed somebody really trustworthy to take over the job of caretaker. The former one, Ron Mapstone, had expressed a desire for retirement, and he would be a hard man to replace. Ron had been with me since the seventies, having taken over from the original family, Arthur and Iris Eggby and their son Kevin. Throughout my career there has been a steady wave of “loonies” showing a fairly unhealthy interest in my private life, and the need to have someone with good resolve and a bit of authority up at the gatehouse is essential. Cedric more than fills the bill, having been a policeman in one of his incarnations. I don’t think he ever arrested anybody, but it gives him a bit of grit. All in all he is a lovely man, and a comforting presence to have around.
In the spring of 2002, Brian came around for dinner and we started talking about George. I wanted to know how it had been for him during his illness. Brian assured me that George was fully aware of his circumstances and had been calm and happy. I ventured the remark that it was sad that there would be no memorial for George, at least in a musical sense, and Brian said, “Not unless you do something.” So that trap was sprung, and I happily walked into it.
The program was a labor of love into which I threw myself. Over the next few months, Olivia and Brian and I planned the event, discussing who we would ask and what songs we would play. Olivia was the mastermind of the whole thing, and I simply assembled the rock part of the musical end. Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka were writing music specially for the show, and it was decided that this was how it ought to begin. I thought the band that regularly played the New Year’s Eve gig would be ideal as a nucleus, and that was Henry Spinetti, Andy Fairweather Low, Dave Bronze, and Gary Brooker. Then we could ask people who had been special in George’s life to come and sing a song. All went well, and we managed to get the Albert Hall for the night of the twenty-ninth of November, a year to the day after George’s death. The only minor difficulty arose over who should sing “Something.” Olivia thought I should sing it. Paul McCartney had been doing it on the ukulele in his shows and wanted to do it that way, and I wanted Paul to sing “All Things Must Pass,” which I considered the key song of the whole event. In the end we compromised and Paul and I did “Something” as a duet, and later in the show he performed a brilliantly soulful version of “All Things.” It was a great night, and everybody who was there or has seen the DVD agrees that it was the perfect sendoff for a man we all loved, and who gave us over the years so much beautiful music.
During this year, Graham decided that he needed to be back in the States with his family, so we needed to find his replacement. He had helped me through a sticky patch, and although his days in the office were over, I knew that we would get together again soon. As long as I had been living in Chelsea, we had been doing quite a lot of business with the local Mercedes dealer, and had got to know their sales manager pretty well. His name was Cecil Offley, and the first time I actually met him, he had run from his office to help me push a Ferrari that had broken down. I knew from this little incident that he had a good heart, and with Graham’s blessing, I asked him on board. He has been with me ever since, and has proved to be an absolute godsend in every way imaginable.
At home it was a period of settled domestic bliss for me and Melia, made even happier by the arrival of a second daughter, Ella Mae, born on January 14, 2003. I was now determined to stay at home and learn how