Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [21]
I’d known Mick, Keith, and Brian throughout their long gestation period when they were playing nothing but R&B. Our first meeting had been at the Marquee. It was only the second time I went to see Alexis play, and they were all there. At some point in the evening they all got up to play with Alexis’s rhythm section that particular night. I got talking to Mick, and we became friends. He always used to carry a microphone in his pocket, a Reslo, and I borrowed it off him to do a gig in Richmond, which was just me and a drummer doing Chuck Berry songs. The mike had no stand, so I had to stack two chairs one on top of the other and tape the mike to the top of this improvised stand.
Mick, Keith, and Brian played wherever they could, at Ken Colyer’s 51 Club on Charing Cross Road, at the Marquee, and at the Ealing Club. I would occasionally stand in for Mick there when he had a sore throat, and for a time we were all quite close. Then they got the residency at the CrawDaddy and really took off, going in four weeks from audiences of just a handful of people to several hundred. One night the Beatles came in to see the Stones. They’d just released “Please Please Me,” which was a huge hit. As they walked up and stood right in front of the stage, all of them were wearing long black leather overcoats and identical haircuts. Even then they had tremendous presence and charisma, but to me the weirdest thing was that they appeared to be wearing their stage outfits, and for some reason that bothered me. But they seemed friendly enough, and there was obviously a mutual admiration thing going on between them and the Stones, so I suppose it was only natural that I would be jealous and think of them as a bunch of wankers.
Giorgio Gomelsky, proprietor of the CrawDaddy, was a Georgian by birth who was brought up in France, Switzerland, and Italy. A very effusive, charismatic man who peppered his speech with the word “baby,” he was big and round, with black hair slicked back and a beard, a bit like Bluto with an Italian accent. Flamboyant, worldly, and a bon vivant, he also happened to love jazz and the blues and had a fantastic ear for talent. He did an incredible amount of work for the early English R&B scene and was, I think, the first real champion of the Stones. A few months into their stint at the CrawDaddy, they were signed up right under his nose by Andrew Loog Oldham, who at the time was working as a PR man for Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles. One minute Giorgio had the hottest club in London, featuring the hottest band in England, and the next thing he knew, they were out of the club, had put out a single, “Come On,” and were on tour with Bo Diddley. I think it was a disappointment that Giorgio never really got over, but he was a pragmatist and immediately went looking for a replacement for the Sunday night slot. He eventually set his eyes on the Yardbirds, an R&B group fronted by guitarist and singer Keith Relf. Under his guidance and encouragement, they were soon making their own mark at the CrawDaddy. They had a problem, however. Their lead guitarist, sixteen-year-old Anthony Topham, was under severe pressure from his parents to leave the band so he could concentrate on his studies.
One night I was at a party in Kingston listening to Keith and another guitarist, Roger Pearco. They were playing Django Reinhardt stuff together, and really well, too, although Roger would speed it up a bit when he got excited. Keith told me he was the singer with the Yardbirds and asked if I’d like to come down and listen to them at the CrawDaddy, as their lead guitarist was likely quitting and maybe I might be interested in taking over. I went to check them out. They were playing good R&B, songs like “You Can’t Judge a Book” by Bo Diddley, and “Smokestack Lightning” by