Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [66]
The best heroin looked like brown sugar. It was in little nuggets the color and consistency of rock candy, and it came in clear plastic bags with a red paper label that had Chinese writing and a little white elephant on it. We’d get a pestle and mortar and grind it up, leaving us with about an ounce, which ought to last us about a week. But we were wasteful junkies and chose to snort it like cocaine rather than inject it, mainly because I was terrified of needles, a fear that went back to primary school.
One day, without warning, we were all herded from the classroom and taken to the village hall in Ripley for our diphtheria jabs. It was a horrible experience, frightening and painful, and I can still remember the smell of the chemicals they were cooking the needles in. But as a result I have never injected drugs, and for that I am very, very grateful. But that meant we went through copious quantities of heroin, about five or ten times what a person injecting it would use. Not only that, but within minutes of taking our initial snort, I would think “I need some more” and top up, even though the effect of what I had originally snorted would last at least another five or six hours. It was a very expensive way of getting stoned.
During those lost years I scarcely saw my family. I was no support to Rose, who of course was deep in mourning for my grandfather and who certainly must have suspected that something was going on, even if she wasn’t aware that it was drugs. I later learned that she decided to stand back, hoping and praying that whatever was wrong would eventually run its course, and that everything would come out all right in the end. I also avoided even my oldest friends. The front gates of Hurtwood were always left open, so from time to time people would come and visit me, knock on the door, and then leave when there was no reply.
When Ben Palmer drove down all the way from Wales to see me one day, I hid upstairs and watched him from the top window sitting in his car, waiting for him to go away. Ginger even came once with a plan to kidnap me and take me off to the Sahara Desert in his Land Rover, reasoning that that was one place where I really wouldn’t be able to score. The phone went unanswered. Inside, I would sleep most of the day and get up in the late afternoon. I played the guitar for hours, recording songs onto cassettes, most of which were pretty dreadful. I never labeled the cassettes, so a great deal of time was passed playing through them on the tape recorder to find whichever song I was last working on. I also drew a lot, making Escher-like renderings with a Rapidograph. My only other pastime was building model airplanes and cars.
One of the few people I did see at this time was Pete Townshend, whom, during a rare period of my wanting to work, I had asked over to help me finish off some tracks I had recorded with Derek and the Dominos. By the time he arrived, however, I had lost interest in the project, and in an effort to explain my total inertia, I confessed to him that I had a problem. I was horrified when he told me that he had known for some time. It turned out that, though I had not seen him personally, he had been to the house several times to talk to Alice. I felt embarrassed when he told me that he was keen to help me, because I’d begun to hate myself for dragging Alice down with me. It may have been a bit late to start developing a moral conscience, but nevertheless it was there, and I felt confused and ashamed by people being concerned about me.
One day Pete told me that he and Alice’s father had devised a plan to help me get back on my feet. It was to be a comeback concert, with all my friends playing. Alice’s father, David Harlech, was an extraordinary figure. Tall, with a prominent nose and a rather languid voice, he had been the best friend of President Kennedy and acted as British ambassador to Washington throughout his presidency. From the moment I met him we got on very well, and my relationship with him was very loving and