Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [144]
Toward the end of our holiday, Brian came back on board for a few more days, and it was great to see him relaxing and having fun. We were sailing around the south coast of Corsica and had fallen in love with the port of Bonifacio, and every other day we would go shopping for clothes in the local boutique, buying trendy things that were much too young for us. Also, little Ella had fallen in love with Brian, calling him “my friend Frian,” and for that short, sweet time they became very close. It was a magical time for all of us. Sicily never saw us. It had no beaches apparently, so for the rest of our holiday we lurked around Corsica until it was time to go back to port in Cannes. On the way there we stopped off on Elba, where crowds of Italian holidaymakers would gather in the evening on the quay and stare at our boat, sometimes ten people deep. I knew how they felt. It was dream-inspiring, and soon it would be mine.
Through the summer of this year, we started making preparations for Vivien’s retirement. This was a big one. She had been with me for fifteen years, was always supportive, totally loyal, and one of my closest friends. Vivien probably knew me better than anyone else on earth, and had never turned away from me, even at my worst. Cecil had recommended a previous workmate of his named Nici, and after a couple of short meetings, I knew she was as good as we could hope to get. Replacing Vivi’ was not going to be easy. After a couple of months of overlapping, with Vivi’ coaching Nici in the niceties of what is an extremely difficult job, she finally left, with plans to set up home in France. I shall miss her.
I fished in Iceland for the first week in July, as I do every year if possible, and then after another week at home set off for the States, where I was due to start recording with John “J. J.” Cale. He had sent me a collection of songs for my approval, and initially three of them jumped out. The more I listened, however, the more I liked them all, and I knew that we would have to use them because, with all that was going on in my life, I had had no time to write anything myself. Once we got to America, Melia and the girls set up camp in Columbus, Ohio, and I went on to LA. We had bought a house near Melia’s parents in Columbus the year before, so that we could visit them and yet still have some space of our own. I really liked it there, too. It was very countrified and exactly the way I imagined the Midwest to be, plus, I could tool around in my hot rod without getting a second look; the ideal situation, in fact—quiet and anonymous. It was also going to be our home base while I was touring the following year. We needed to get Julie started in full-time school, and it made more sense for Melia and the girls to be near her folks while I was away, although we planned to visit one another whenever we could.
I moved in with J. J. for a week, before we ever went into the studio, to go over the material and get to know one another. He has a modest little house in the hills just outside Escondido, and we had a great time listening to music, talking about the old days, and just generally hanging out. Not a lot of work got done, but that wasn’t the point. We were getting ready to play. His idea was to bring in a lot of musicians and try to record as much “live” as we could, overdubbing only when we needed to. This was fine with me—that’s the way I like to work, too—but I thought we might have a problem now and then capturing the groove that I’d heard on his demos, which is usually created with drum machines and the like and is such an important part of his sound.
I had decided to change my band lineup for the forthcoming tour and wanted to use the Cale sessions as a “get to know you” process with