Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [28]
Less than a month after I joined the Bluesbreakers, John asked me to go down to a studio to play on some tracks he had been asked to work on with Bob Dylan. He was very excited about this, as Dylan, who was over to tour England, had specially asked to meet him after hearing his song “Crawling Up a Hill.” My feelings about Dylan at the time were rather ambivalent, colored by the fact that Paul Samwell-Smith had been a big fan of his, and anything Paul liked, I didn’t. So I went down to the studio where the session was taking place and was introduced to Bob and his producer, Tom Wilson.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t open to any of it at the time. I hadn’t really listened to any of Bob’s stuff and was developing a healthy prejudice toward him, based, I suppose, on what I thought of the people who did like him. As far as I was concerned, Dylan was a folkie. I couldn’t understand all the fuss, and it seemed like everyone around him was patronizing him to death. However, one person in his entourage whom I did take to instantly was Bobby Neuwirth. I think he was a painter, or a poet. It seemed like he was Dylan’s pal, but he took the time to talk to me and tried to clue me in on what was going on. I’m not sure it did any good. I was like “Mr. Jones” in “Ballad of a Thin Man,” but it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship. I don’t remember Dylan talking to anybody; maybe he was shy like me. As for the session, I don’t remember much about it. I don’t think any of the songs got finished, and then Bob suddenly disappeared. When somebody asked where he was, we were told, “Oh, he’s gone to Madrid.” I didn’t think much about Bob Dylan for a while, and then I heard “Blonde on Blonde,” and thank goodness, I finally got it.
The moment I said yes to John, I joined a working schedule the likes of which I had never experienced. If there had been eight nights a week, we’d have played them, as well as two shows on Sunday. Our bookings were handled by two brothers, Rick and Johnny Gunnell, who owned the Flamingo Club on Wardour Street, a tiny basement club that was the most authentic soul music venue in London. Both edgy and cliquey, it catered to tough, mostly black audiences who were hard-core R&B, blues, and jazz followers. The Gunnells represented a lot of the bands who played the London nightlife circuit, people like Georgie Fame, Chris Farlowe, Albert Lee, and Geno Washington. Rick and Johnny were a couple of lovable rogues who represented the soft side of the London underworld at the time, enjoying good relations with the police so they could keep their club open till 6:00 A.M. They had their own territory and were treated with respect by gangland figures, like the Krays. John, the younger of the two and very good-looking, had a big scar across his face from where he’d presumably been bottled. His elder brother Rick used to get very drunk and would walk in and demand of the entire club, “Why aren’t the band playing?” Though undoubtedly tough guys, they were music lovers, too, and always very kind to me, possibly because they realized how seriously I took the music.
Another club I used to hang out in was the Scene, in Windmill Yard, run by Ronan O’Rahilly, who went on to set up Radio Caroline, England’s first pirate radio station. I used to watch and finally made friends with a small group of guys who hung out there and had a big influence on how I wanted to look at the time. They wore a hybrid of American Ivy League and the Italian look, as personified by Marcello Mastroianni, so on one day