Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [60]
I began to get into the habit of dropping into Friar Park, in the hope that George might be away and I might catch a few moments alone with Pattie. One evening I went over there and found the two of them together with John Hurt. I was slightly taken aback, but George took over the situation and gave me a guitar and we started playing, which by now was a common occurrence with us.
There was quite an atmosphere in the house that night. A roaring fire was going, candles burning, and as the intensity of our playing increased, John sat there with a rapturous look on his face as if he were privy to some fantastic meeting of the giants, or battle of the sorcerers. With his actor’s imagination, I could see him creating this scenario in which George and I were somehow engaged in a musical duel for the hand of Pattie, who wafted in from time to time bringing us tea and cakes. The truth is, we were just jamming, although the mythical rumor of that night may have passed around a few dining room tables.
George was working on his first solo album, All Things Must Pass, and one day he asked if the Tulsa guys and I would play on it. I knew he had Phil Spector producing for him, so we made a deal whereby he would get Spector to produce a couple of tracks for us in return for having the use of our band for his album. After my dalliance with Ronnie Ronette, who had later told me how much I reminded her of her husband, I was curious to meet Phil Spector, and noticed that we actually did have the same kind of facial profile. We recorded two songs with him, “Roll It Over” and “Tell the Truth,” at Abbey Road Studios before turning ourselves over to George as his session musicians.
Working with Spector was quite an experience. I thought he was a really sweet guy, maybe just a bit eccentric, but the rumor was that he carried a gun, so I was a little bit wary. Most of the time, though, he was hilariously funny, and he and George really seemed to hit it off. His method of working was to get a lot of players in the room and have them all playing at the same time, creating the famous “wall of sound.”
Other than my group and George, there seemed to be hundreds of musicians in the studio—percussionists, guitarists, George’s group, Badfinger, Gary Wright and Spooky Tooth—all hammering away like mad. To my ears it sounded great and big. A lot of drugs were also around, and I think this was when heroin began to come into my life. A particular dealer used to come around whose deal was that you could buy as much coke as you wanted on the condition that you took a certain amount of smack at the same time. I would snort the coke and store all the smack in the drawer of an antique desk at Hurtwood.
On a Sunday night in June, we tried the band out in front of an audience at a charity concert at the Lyceum in the Strand, in aid of Dr. Spock’s Civil Liberties Legal Defense Fund. In the excitement of just forming the group, one thing had slipped our minds, and that was, right up to the last minute before we were to go onstage, we had no name for ourselves. Ashton, Gardiner, and Dyke were the opening act, and Tony Ashton always used to call me Del and suggested that we should be Del and the Dominos. When he did finally announce us, without any mention of our real names, it was as Derek and the Dominos, and the name just stuck. Our set consisted of songs from our Delaney days, like “Blues Power” and “Bottle of Red Wine,” a couple of blues numbers, “Crossroads” and “Spoonful,” and, because Dave Mason had joined us for this one show, a Traffic song, “Feelin’ Alright.”
The thing I remember best about that whole evening was not the show, but a weird meeting I had afterward with Dr. John, who had been in the audience. I had come across the legendary “Night Tripper” before, in New York City,