Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [55]
I completely ducked the responsibility of being a group member and settled for the role of just being the guitar player. This frustrated many people who felt that I should play a more dominant role, not least of all Steve, who became more and more annoyed by the fact that I would not step forward and do more vocal work. The Blind Faith tour made us all very rich, pushing the album straight to the top of the American charts, but it ended with the disintegration of the band. This was entirely my fault and due to one thing. As I became more and more disenchanted with what we were doing, I was falling increasingly under the spell of our support group, Delaney & Bonnie.
Sometime early in the summer, my friend Alan Pariser had sent me an acetate of a band he was managing, consisting of a husband and wife, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, who both came from the South and sang under the name Delaney & Bonnie. They had the distinction of being the first white group ever to be signed by Stax, the Tennessee-based record company founded by Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton that had pioneered the sound of Memphis and Southern soul music. I immediately loved the album The Original Delaney & Bonnie: Accept No Substitute, which was hardcore R&B, and very soulful, with great guitar playing and a fantastic horn section. When I told Alan how I felt about them, he asked if he could put them on the bill with us when we toured America.
For me, going on after Delaney & Bonnie was really, really tough because I thought they were miles better than us. Their band had all these great Southern musicians, who put out a really strong sound and performed with absolute confidence. The rhythm section consisted of Carl Radle on bass, Bobby Whitlock on keyboards, and Jim Keltner on drums; the horn section had Bobby Keys on sax and Jim Price on trumpet; and Rita Coolidge joined Bonnie on vocals. They turned out to be big fans of mine, and of Steve’s, and they started to court us, and it wasn’t long before I dropped all my responsibilities as part of Blind Faith and started to hang out with them.
Their approach to music was infectious. They would pull out their guitars on the bus and play songs all day as they traveled, while we were much more insular and tended to keep to ourselves. I took to traveling with them and playing with them, which I think quite upset Steve, who must have thought I’d become a bit of a traitor. The truth, which I found hard to tell him, was that I was lost in Blind Faith. I was the man in the hallway who has come out of one door, only to find it has closed behind him while another one is opening. Through that door were Delaney & Bonnie, and I was irresistibly drawn toward it, even though I knew it would destroy the band that we had put so much blind faith into.
If Delaney & Bonnie had never played on the same bill as us, it is possible that Blind Faith might have survived and regrouped at the end of the tour, and tried to figure out what was wrong and move forward. Maybe. But the temptation Delaney put in my way was irresistible. He confronted me with the same issue that Steve had, which was that I had to develop, and not just as a guitarist. Steve had said, when I wanted him to sing my song “In the Presence of the Lord,” “Well, you wrote it, so you ought to sing it.” I had insisted that he should, and while we were recording it I kept interrupting him and suggesting that he sing it in such and such a way, until he finally said, “Please don’t tell me how to sing it. If you want it sung that way, sing it yourself!” He was quite aggressive about it, and I was a little taken aback and decided to just let him get on with it. Looking back, I know he was right. I had written that song