Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [20]
Most of our gigs were on the Ricky Tick club circuit, a series of clubs in the Home Counties run by Philip Hayward and John Mansfield, two promoters who were into great music and who at that time had a virtual monopoly on the club scene. We also played a couple of times at the Marquee, as support to Manfred Mann, the band Paul Jones was now singing with. The truth is that although I was having a great time, starting to make my mark as a guitarist and enjoying the semi-bohemian lifestyle that went with it, the band was deeply flawed because it didn’t really have the wherewithal, either the commitment or the money, to go anywhere. As a result we lasted only six months, the final gig being at the Marquee on July 25.
Though the Marquee had made its reputation as a jazz club, where quite famous musicians like Tubby Hayes used to come and play, it was beginning to get more and more into the rhythm and blues scene. I used to go there every Thursday night, which was blues night, traveling up on the train to Waterloo, then taking the tube to Oxford Street. Since I rarely had anywhere to stay, the evening would usually end with me walking the streets till dawn, when I could catch the first train home. It was at the Marquee that I first came across John Mayall, and the saxophonist and keyboard player Graham Bond, playing in a trio with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. Everyone in the R&B scene hung out there.
After the demise of the Roosters, Tom McGuinness was approached by a Liverpudlian, Brian Casser, to join a new band. A lot of guys had been playing the Mersey clubs before the Beatles, and he was one of these. In 1959 he had fronted a group called Cass and the Casanovas before moving down to London to run a nightclub, the Blue Gardenia in Soho. With the enormous success of the Liverpool sound and the rapid rise of bands like Gerry and the Pacemakers and singers like Billy J. Kramer, he had begun to feel left out, so he set about forming a new group to be called Casey Jones and the Engineers. He recruited Tom, and since I was also at a loose end, Tom recruited me.
The best thing about playing with Casey Jones was the experience it gave me; it was the first time I had done any kind of touring. We played in various clubs up north, mostly round Manchester, including one open-air gig at the Belle Vue Amusement Park. Cass made us all wear matching black outfits and cardboard Confederate army caps, which both Tomand I hated. Gigs were so different then; compared to today, the sound systems were so tiny. We would be playing through small amplifiers, like Voxes or Gibsons, and we’d have one each, so most groups would then be comprised of three amps plus the drum kit. Only the most well-off groups had their own PA systems, and even those had an output of only about one hundred watts, nothing by modern standards. The repertoire of the Engineers consisted of some rock ’n’ roll—Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and things like that—but the majority of the material was heavily pop based, top-twenty covers, and I couldn’t stand doing that for very long. I was too much of a purist, and after six weeks both Tom and I left.
Casey Jones and the Engineers played only about seven gigs. In between these I was still working on building sites for my grandfather and hanging out on the local music scene, which was then blossoming. Alexis Korner had started his own