Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [16]
Music began to take up so much of my life that it was no surprise that my work at art school began to suffer. It was my own fault that things went this way, because initially I had been really gripped by the experience of getting involved in a life in art. I was quite hooked by painting, and to a certain extent by design. I was a good draftsman, and when I enrolled at Kingston, they had offered me a place in their graphics department, which I accepted rather than going into fine art. But once I’d got into the graphics department, I knew that I was in the wrong place, and I dropped out. My motivation died. I’d go into the canteen at lunch and see all the students come in from fine art, long-haired, covered in paint, and looking completely detached. They were given almost total freedom, developing their talents as painters or sculptors, while I was set to do projects every day, designing a soap box, or coming up with an advertising campaign for a new product.
Apart from a short period when I managed to get into the glass department, where I learned engraving and sandblasting, and became quite interested in contemporary stained glass, I was bored to tears. Music was ten times more exciting, ten times more engaging, and as much as I loved art, I also felt that the people who were trying to teach me were coming from an academic direction that I just couldn’t identify with. It seemed to me that I was being prepared for a career in advertising, not art, where salesmanship would be just as important as creativity. Consequently, my interest, and my output, dwindled down to nothing.
I was still shocked, however, when I went for my assessment at the end of the first year and was told that they had decided not to keep me on. I knew my portfolio was a bit thin, but I really believed that the work I had done was good enough to get me through. To me it was much more creative and imaginative than most of the other students’ work. But they were judging by quantity, and they booted me and one other student out, just two of us out of fifty, which was not good. I was totally unprepared for it, but it threw me back into using the only other talent I had.
Being thrown out of art school was another rite of passage for me. I got brought up short by the sudden realization that all doors weren’t going to open up for me for the rest of my life, that the truth was that some of them were going to close. Emotionally and mentally, the shit hit the fan. When I finally found the courage to tell Rose and Jack, they were bitterly disappointed and ashamed, because they found out that I was a liar as well as a failure. Many times when I had told them I was at school, I was actually playing hooky, just wandering around playing the guitar or hanging out in a pub drinking. “You’ve had your chance, Rick,” Jack said to me, “and now you’ve chucked it away.” He made it quite clear that if I intended to stay living with them, I would be expected to work and bring money into the house. If I didn’t contribute, then I could get out.
I chose to work, and accepted a job working for Jack as his “mate” at fifteen pounds a week, which was a good wage. Jack was a master plasterer, a master bricklayer, and a master carpenter. In layman’s terms, this means he had “mastered” all of these trades and was entitled to the wages and respect this commanded. Working for someone as elevated as this was no laughing matter, of course. It meant mixing up lots of plaster, mortar, and cement and getting it to him quickly, so that he could lay bricks and put up plaster without taking his eyes off the job. One of the first big jobs we did together was at a primary school in Chobham, and the most demanding work for me was carrying semiliquid mortar in a hod up a ladder and onto a scaffold as quickly as my body would allow so that Jack could lay a true line of bricks.
I got extremely fit, and I really did love