Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [33]
Returning to England in late October 1965, I found that my place in the Bluesbreakers had been filled by a brilliant guitarist, Peter Green, later of Fleetwood Mac, who had aggressively pestered John to employ him, often turning up at gigs and shouting from the audience that he was much better than whoever was playing that night. Though I barely knew him, I got the impression that here was a real Turk, a strong, confident musician who knew exactly what he wanted and where he was going, but who played his cards close to his chest. Most important, he was a phenomenal player, with a great tone. He was not happy to see me, as it meant rather a sudden end to what had obviously been a good gig for him. One change that didn’t particularly surprise me was that McVie had finally been given the boot, and had been replaced by Jack Bruce, the bass player from the Graham Bond Organisation, whom I had seen play at the Marquee. Jack stayed for just a few weeks before moving on to join Manfred Mann, during which time we toured the club circuit in the south of England, but doing those few gigs, we had a chance to take stock of one another. Musically he was the most forceful bass player I had ever played with. He approached the gig almost as if the bass were a lead instrument, but not to the point where it got in the way, and his understanding of time was phenomenal. All this was reflected in his personality, fiery and quick witted. I’m glad to say it seemed like a mutual admiration, and we fit together brilliantly, a taste of things to come.
Nineteen sixty-six turned out to be a momentous year. In March, John decided to throw a party for my twenty-first birthday at his house in Lee. This was the first time he had met any of my new friends from the Long Acre flat, and I was quite proud to show off these extraordinary people, who appeared to me to be the elite of intellectual society. The theme for the party was fancy dress.
My costumes were hired from Berman’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, the windows of which I used to gaze in on my many post-Marquee night walks, and consisted of one penguin suit, which had a beak you could open with a piece of string so that you could look out of it, and a gorilla suit. I started the evening as a gorilla, but when it got too hot I changed into the penguin suit.
For some reason, during the course of the evening, I remembered the saga of my grandmother and the cigarettes, so I got hold of a pack of twenty Benson & Hedges, which came in a gold box and were the trendy cigarette of the day, and lit one after the other till I had all twenty in my mouth simultaneously, and smoked the whole lot. (I carried on smoking for another thirty years, finally giving it up at the age of forty-eight, by which time I was smoking about three packs a day.) Finally, at the end of the night, I wound up in bed with a very pretty Chinese girl, who would later become a very good friend. When the party was over, I considered myself well and truly grown up, a man of the world, a bit rebellious and anarchistic, but most of all experienced. It felt like my life was really taking off. Looking back, it felt like I had closed the door on my past. I had little or no contact with my old friends from Ripley, and my family ties felt very weak. It was as if I was starting a brand-new life, where there was no room for any excess baggage. I was very confident of my capabilities and very aware that this was the key to my future. Hence I was extremely protective of my craft and ruthless in cutting away anything that stood in my path. It was not a path of ambition; I had no desire