Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [22]
For the first time in my life, I now had a full-time job as a musician, which meant giving up working for my grandfather. My grandmother was delighted, as she knew where my talents lay, while my grandfather was quietly amused, so they gave me their blessing. This time there was a contract, signed in October 1963, in the front room of Keith’s house in Ham, with all the parents of the band present. At first I lived at home, drawing a weekly wage packet, and commuted to rehearsals and gigs, but after a while Giorgio rented us a flat on the top floor of an old house in Kew, and we all moved in together. This was a great period for me, as it was the first time I had lived away from home. In the first few weeks, before his American girlfriend arrived, I shared a room with Chris Dreja, and we became really good friends. He was a quiet guy, shy and kind, and I trusted him completely, a rare thing for me. I liked the fact, too, that, unlike the others, he was not driven by ambition. He was just enjoying the ride.
Our gigs were all divided between various Home Counties venues such as the Ricky Tick, the Star Club, Croydon, and the CrawDaddy. This was my first experience of playing night after night—in the first three months we played thirty-three gigs—and I lapped it up. What I immediately liked about being in the Yardbirds was that our entire reason for existence was to honor the tradition of the blues. We didn’t write any songs at first, but the covers we chose to do defined our identity, personified in songs like “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” by Sonny Boy Williamson, “Got Love If You Want It” by Slim Harpo, and our most popular number, which we’d play most nights, “Smokestack Lightning” by Howlin’ Wolf.
We may have thought that we could play the blues, but one man wasn’t so sure. Hardly had we signed the contract when Giorgio told us that he had arranged for us to join Sonny Boy Williamson on his forthcoming tour of England. I wasn’t a particular fan of Sonny Boy’s—my favorite harmonica player was Little Walter—and it was not a happy experience. I knew for example, in my role as blues expert of Ripley, that he was not the Sonny Boy Williamson who had written “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” and been killed with an ice pick, but that his real name was Rice Miller. So when we were first introduced to him at the CrawDaddy, I couldn’t wait to show off, and tried to impress him with my knowledge, asking him, “Isn’t your real name Rice Miller?” At which point he slowly pulled out a small penknife and glared at me. It went downhill from there. But he was a famous bluesman, and to all intents and purposes the real thing, so we were in awe of him, and followed where he led. At one point in the show, he made us kneel while he did a sort of blues moonwalk along the stage. It was more than a little strange. But he was little impressed with us too for that matter. He is said to have commented at the time, “Those English kids want to play the blues so bad—and they play the blues so bad.”
I think Giorgio had an agenda from day one. What he had missed out on with the Rolling Stones, he would make up for with the Yardbirds. He would take us up a notch, make us bigger than the Stones. Early in 1964 he got us signed up to Columbia Records, and into a recording studio, a tiny place in New Malden called R. G. Jones, to record a cover of a song called “I Wish You Would” by Billy Boy Arnold. It was a simple, very catchy song, but though I thought it was great, I was in two minds