Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [48]
A couple of weeks later George dropped by the Pheasantry and left me acetates of the double album on which the song was going to appear. This was “The White Album,” the long-awaited successor to Sgt. Pepper. When I left the following month to go to America on Cream’s farewell tour, I took these with me. While I was in LA, I had been playing some of the songs on the album to various friends when I got a phone call from George. Word had got back to him that I was playing the album around town, and he was furious and gave me a huge bollocking. I remember being incredibly hurt because I thought I’d been doing a grand job of promoting their music to really discriminating people. It brought me down to earth with a bang, and it was a good lesson to learn about boundaries, and not making assumptions, but it stung like hell. For a little while I steered clear of him, but in time we became friends again, although after that, I was always a little wary of letting my guard down around him.
On November 26, 1968, Cream played its final two shows at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Before the gig started, I just wanted to get it over with, but once I was up onstage, I became quite excited. I thought it was great that we could do this and keep our heads high, and walk away from the whole thing with a fair amount of good grace. It also meant a lot to me knowing that out there in the audience were not just fans, but musician friends, and people on the scene who had all come to say their good-byes. My overwhelming emotion, however, was that we had done the right thing. I think we all knew that. At the end of the second show there were no parties, no speeches. We just went our separate ways.
For a while I was quite happy just to be a sideman. I would play with anybody and I loved it. One of the first gigs like this, only two weeks after the Albert Hall shows, was with the Rolling Stones. It was bizarre. I had a call from Mick asking me to come up to a studio in Wembley, where the Stones were recording a TV special called “The Rolling Stones’ Rock and Roll Circus.” I was intrigued because he told me that another of the contributing artists was Taj Mahal, an American blues musician whom I really wanted to see. It was certainly an amazing lineup and included, as well as Taj, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithfull, and the Who.
It was an interesting gig. Mick played “the ringmaster,” complete with top hat and tails, and introduced the different acts. Jesse Ed Davis, who played guitar with Taj Mahal, was brilliant, and there was a curious duet between Yoko Ono and Ivry Gitlis, a classical violinist. I played guitar with John Lennon on “Yer Blues,” in a band put together for the night that also featured Keith Richards on bass, Mitch Mitchell on drums, and Gitlis on violin, and which went by the name of Winston Legthigh and the Dirty Macs. Yoko added vocals. Unfortunately, the whole project was unhinged by the fact that the Stones were in pretty poor shape at the time. Brian, as good as sacked from the band, was clearly under a lot of pressure, and I could tell that they were all a bit depressed. The result was that their performance was lackluster and out of tune, and apparently when Mick saw the finished tapes, he made the decision not to release the show.
Not long afterward, I had a visit from Ginger at the Pheasantry. He told me that I had to get out of town,