Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [36]
It was not a happy experience. I told him I was leaving because I had come to a fork in the road and I wanted to form my own band. I was quite surprised by how upset he was, and though he wished me well, I was left in no doubt that he was pretty angry. I think he was sad, too, because I had helped take the Bluesbreakers to another level. When John had been running the band, it was much more jazz-oriented and more low-profile, and I had stirred it up and pushed it in a new direction. Having been rather straight, he was beginning to enjoy this transition, and everything that went with it, the girls and the lifestyle, and was beginning to be influenced by it. He was upset, I think, that I was jumping off the train just as it was beginning to gather speed.
Ginger wanted to bring in the manager of the Graham Bond Organisation, Robert Stigwood, to handle us, a suggestion Jack railed against on the grounds that it would compromise our independence, and that it would be better for us to manage ourselves. He was finally persuaded, and came with us to meet “Stigboot,” as Ginger called him, in his office on New Cavendish Street. By the time we met, the Robert Stigwood organization had had some measure of success, but mostly with pop singers like John Leyton, Mike Berry, and Mike Sarne, and a new singer called “Oscar” (in reality, Paul Beuselinck).
Robert was an extraordinary character, a flamboyant Australian who liked to pass himself off as a wealthy Englishman. He would usually wear a blazer and gray slacks with a pale blue shirt and a smattering of gold, and was the epitome of a man of leisure. Seated behind an ornate desk, he launched into a very confident monologue, telling us all the things he could do for us and how wonderful our lives were going to be. Although it sounded like a lot of flannel to me, I was struck by his obvious artistic flair and thought he had a unique and interesting vision of life. He also seemed to be genuinely keen on what we were trying to do, and I thinkin some ways he truly understood us. It took me a while to tumble to the fact that he was partial to good-looking guys, but I had no problem with that, and in fact it made him appear rather vulnerable and very human to me.
Musically, we didn’t really have a plan. In my mind, when I had fantasized about it, I had seen myself as Buddy Guy, heading a blues trio with a very good rhythm section. I didn’t know how Ginger and Jack saw it in their heads, except I’m sure that our style would have leaned more toward jazz. Since Stigwood probably had no idea what we were doing, either, it is clear that the whole project was a colossal gamble. The very idea that a guitar, bass, and drum trio could make any headway in the era of the pop group was pretty outrageous. Our next step was to think of a name for the band, and I came up with Cream, for the very simple reason that in all our minds we were the cream of the crop, the elite in our respective domains. I defined the music we would play as “blues, ancient and modern.”
In the summer of 1966 the whole of England, bar us, was in the throes of World Cup fever, and it just so happened that our first proper gig, at my old stamping ground, the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, was on July 29, the night before the final. I had persuaded Ben Palmer to come out of retirement, not to play piano but to act as our roadie, and he drove us up north in a black Austin Westminster that Stigwood had bought for us. This was a pretty swanky car, a cut above the Ford Transit I was used to.
I remember Ben being horrified when we arrived to find out that the word “roadie” did not just mean “driver,” and that he was expected to lug all our equipment around. He was on a learning curve just as we were. The club was pretty quiet that night, as we were a last-minute unannounced addition to the bill, replacing Joe Tex, who had called off, but the show, consisting of