Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [63]
Though Jimi was left-handed, he always played right-handed guitars upside down, a tradition in which he was not unique. Albert King used this style, as does Doyle Bramhall II, who plays with my current band. One afternoon I was browsing through some instrument shops in the West End when I saw this white, left-handed Stratocaster, and I bought it on impulse to give to Jimi. The scene was so small then that I knew I would be seeing him that night, as I was going to a Sly and the Family Stone concert at the Lyceum and Jimi was bound to be there. I took the guitar with me to the show so that I could give it to him afterward, but he never turned up. Then the next day I heard that he had died. He had passed out, stoned on a mixture of booze and drugs, and choked on his own vomit. It was the first time the death of another musician really affected me. We had all felt obliterated when Buddy Holly died, but this was much more personal. I was incredibly upset and very angry, and was filled with a feeling of terrible loneliness.
Six weeks later, while touring the States with the Dominos, I had a call from Stigwood telling me that my grandfather had been taken into the hospital in Guildford with suspected cancer. I flew home to see him. He was a sad figure in his hospital bed, diminished both by his illness and by a stroke he had suffered the previous year, which had left him paralyzed down one side. I felt stricken with guilt. In my arrogance, I believed that I had somehow contributed to his decline by having bought him a house and given him enough money to take early retirement. I felt that I had offended his pride by depriving him of his way of life. Of course, in reality, I was just doing what any grateful child would do, trying to pay back the love and support I had always received from him. But nevertheless, I couldn’t help feeling that I was to blame for it all. It never occurred to me that perhaps I wasn’t responsible for everything that happened in the world.
Finally, there was my unrequited love for Pattie. I had convinced myself that when she heard the completed Layla album, with all its references to our situation, she would be so overcome by my cry of love that she would finally leave George and come away with me for good. So I called her up one afternoon and asked her if she’d like to come over for tea and listen to the new record. Of course, it was blatant emotional blackmail and doomed to failure. By this time I’d already applied quite a lot of pressure, and this was just more of the same. Having said that, the quality of the music was pure, and I really did need to share that with someone, and who better than her? Anyhow, she came over and listened, and I think she was deeply touched by the fact that I had written all these songs about her, but at the same time the intensity of it all probably scared the living daylights out of her. Needless to say, it didn’t work, and I was back at square one.
Over the next few months I blindly kept on trying to persuade Pattie to leave George and come and live with me, but I was getting nowhere. Until one day, after another session of fruitless pleading, I told her that if she didn’t leave him, I would start taking heroin full-time. In truth, of course, I had been taking it almost full-time