Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [45]
Ahmet said to me, “I want you to go in there and play on this song,” and he pulled all these guitarists out of the room and put me in there on my own. I felt so nervous, because I couldn’t read music, and they were all playing from music sheets on stands. Aretha came in and sang “Be as Good to Me as I Am to You,” and I played lead guitar. I have to say that playing on that album for Ahmet and Aretha, with all of those talented artists, is still one of the highlights of my life.
Touring America is what made Cream as famous as we became. U.S. audiences really couldn’t get enough of us, and I think once Stigwood saw this, he saw dollar signs, not just for him but for us, too. Before we knew it, we were back on the road in the States, this time for a massive five months. Part of me loved these whistle-stop tours where we’d jump into the car after one gig to drive to the next. Musically we were flying high. The other great part for me was arriving in some faraway town and going off with my nose to the ground, to see what was happening.
I was really interested in American underground literature at the time. Two friends in London, Charlie and Diana Radcliffe, had turned me on to Kenneth Patchen and his book The Journal of Albion Moonlight. It had been my bible for a little while, and even though I had no real idea what it was about, it just felt great to read, like listening to avant-garde music. So I would seek out kindred spirits who looked like they’d be into the same kind of thing, and just go up and introduce myself, and then hang out with them and see where it led. Would I do it now? I’m not sure, but in this way I made a lot of friends all over America, and I met some incredibly interesting people.
I remember, for instance, playing somewhere on the East Coast, and as I was walking through the audience between sets, I smelt this very powerful smell of what turned out to be patchouli oil. The guy wearing it told me that his name was David and he lived in a tepee, and he asked me to come and visit him the following day. He was interested in Native American culture and had decided to try and live like them, in the old way. We became good friends and we still communicate occasionally, to this very day. I met people like him all over the country. Wherever I went I was always on a quest to find like-minded souls, eccentrics, musicians, or people I could maybe learn something from.
In LA, while hanging out with the guitarist and songwriter Stephen Stills, my career with Cream nearly came to an abrupt end. Stephen had asked me to visit his ranch in Topanga Canyon to watch his band, Buffalo Springfield, rehearse. I went there with a girl, Mary Hughes, who was the “it” girl in LA. We made ourselves comfortable while the band warmed up. It was a loud session, and a neighbor must have called the cops, who came knocking on the door. It didn’t take them long to cotton on to the fact that we were all smoking dope, as the smell was quite overpowering, and the next thing we knew, we were all being hauled off, first to the Malibu sheriff’s office and from there to the LA County jail. It was Friday night, and I was thrown into a cell with a group of black guys who I immediately concluded must be Black Panthers. I was wearing pink boots from Mr. Gohill in Chelsea and had hair down to my waist, and I thought, “I’m in trouble here.” Luckily for me, word of my predicament had somehow reached Ahmet, and he bailed me out. I then had to go to court and swear on the Bible that I had no idea what marijuana was. I was English, after all, and we didn’t do things like that in England. I walked out of there without a blemish on my character, but it really shook me up. It was a scary enough experience being locked up in LA’s county jail for the weekend, but a drug conviction would have put an instant end to Cream’s American career, and the future of mine, too.
The five months we spent touring were a time of deep political unrest in America, with antiwar demonstrations taking