Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [39]
Murray “the K” Kaufman was the most successful radio DJ in New York, and he was running a series of shows at the RKO theater on Fifty-eighth Street called Music in the Fifth Dimension. Never having had a hit record, we were at the bottom of the bill of a pretty good lineup, which included Wilson Pickett, the Young Rascals, Simon and Garfunkel, Mitch Ryder, and the Who. There were five shows a day, and each artist, except for the headliners, was expected to play for no longer than five minutes. The shows started at 10:30 in the morning and went on till 8:30 at night.
Murray’s wife, Jackie, was head of the chorus line, and her girls, go-go girls really, would perform a routine called “Jackie and the K Girls’ Wild Fashion Show” between acts. Murray ran the show like a sergeant-major, giving strict instructions that on no account were musicians allowed to leave the theater between sets, ensuring that boredom soon set in, which led to all manner of pranks like flooded dressing rooms, and flour and smoke bombs. He kept telling us to make our set shorter and shorter, and even when we were doing just one song, “I Feel Free,” he said it was still too long. The whole thing was absolutely chaotic.
On the first day, while I was sitting in the theater during rehearsals, watching the various acts do their turn, a very beautiful blond girl came and sat next to me. We struck up a conversation, and at some point she asked if I would like to stay with her while I was in town. She was gorgeous, and seeming to sense my shyness with women, did her best to put me at ease. Her name was Kathy, and she took care of me the whole time I was in New York.
She had her own apartment, and I moved in with her. She showed me around, taking me to the various places where I could tick off the list of things I wanted to experience. I remember her taking me to various coffee bars in the Village, and we went to one or two music stores, like Manny’s on Forty-eighth Street. She also took me to a big saddler’s called Kauffman’s, which sold western gear, where I bought my first cowboy boots, and with this beautiful girl on my arm, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
Because Murray the K kept us on such a tight leash, we had very little time on this trip to really explore New York, though not all my after-hours time was wasted. I hung out a lot with Al Kooper, keyboard player and guitarist with the Blues Project, who were also appearing on the show. The music scene in the Village was flourishing at the time, and loads of clubs and bars were really taking off.
One night Al took me to the Café Au Go Go on Bleecker Street to see a new band he had formed called Blood, Sweat and Tears. On another night when we went down there, I met B. B. King for the first time, and the two of us ended up jamming after the show. We just sat on the stage and played with what was left of the house band for a couple of hours. It was fantastic. On return visits to New York, I used to go down to the Village with Jimi Hendrix, and we’d go from one club to another, just the two of us, and play with whoever was onstage that night. We’d get up and jam and just wipe everybody out.
The last day’s gig on the Murray “the K” Show took place on Easter Sunday and coincided with the first ever New York “be-in,” a gathering of twenty thousand hippies that took place on the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. We managed to slip out of the theater to join in with these incredible long-haired