Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [71]
Carl himself was a fascinating character. A Tulsa musician of German descent, he was quite European-looking. He always wore pebble-shaped glasses in front of hair balding at the front and long and straggly in back. Though only three years older than me, he had an age to him and a great deal of experience and wisdom. He was a natural philosopher as well as a musicologist and had a wide taste in music from all over the world. We could talk for hours about anything from movies to hunting dogs, and he was a real soul mate for me. But of course, more than anything, he was a brilliant bass player, with a minimal and melodic style that really swung.
During the Dominos period I had become very close with Carl, and he had held on to the idea that he would like to work with me again. He could see through all my nonsense and knew what I was capable of. As much as I had been moved by David’s intervention to help me, I was much more motivated by this approach of Carl’s, because as a musician who really had aspirations to be in America, to be holed up in the middle of nowhere in England was hell for me. All my heroes were in the States, and Carl’s message that “We’re waiting for you” was a real incentive to resurface. The memory of this little outfit stayed with me, and when I started piecing together the ingredients for this new album, up at Frank’s, this was the band that I pictured playing with.
When I am trying to write songs, I like to leave things as unfinished as I can, so that whoever I am going to play the song with has a chance to influence, by the way they play it, the way the song will end up. What I was doing in my mind, in this case, was preparing small groups of ideas that I could take to Carl, Jamie, and Dick, and say, “Let’s work on this.” Then, hopefully, when we actually came to play it, the song would almost finish itself. One of the songs I had started was coming along quite well, and I was very proud of my inventiveness in the verse. This was “Let It Grow,” and it was several years before I realized that I had totally ripped off “Stairway to Heaven,” the famous Zeppelin anthem, a cruel justice seeing as how I’d always been such a severe critic of theirs.
One day while I was at the farm, I had a call from Pete Townshend asking me if I would like to make a cameo appearance in the movie version of Tommy, being filmed at Pinewood Studios. He wanted me to play an old Sonny Boy Williamson song, “Eyesight to the Blind,” and I was to do this in the character of a preacher in a church that worshiped Marilyn Monroe. Even though I thought the whole idea sounded like a load of bollocks, I couldn’t resist the idea of trying it, of getting back into the work of playing and singing a song and recording a track. They sent a car for me at the farm and drove me to the studios for the day. It was a surreal experience, as I spent the whole time getting drunk with Keith Moon, and seeing him in full flight made me feel like I didn’t have a problem at all. Compared to him, I viewed myself as a lightweight.
Halfway through my time at Frank’s, Alice came up to join me, having been released from the clinic. It was a tense, edgy visit, as we were under strict instructions from Meg not to share a room or get involved in any way, the theory being that it might cause a relapse. This actually suited me quite well because, as my senses began to come back to life, so did thoughts of Pattie, which had been dormant the past three years. They were rekindled when George and Pattie turned up in Wales, quite out of the blue, to see how I was getting on. Touched though I was by their friendship, I remember thinking that I would rather Pattie had come on her own. We all went to a pub for a drink and, though they looked like they were still a couple, I got the distinct impression that she was looking at me with more than just friendly concern. All the old feelings came flooding back.
When I left Frank’s, I was fit, clean, and buzzing with excitement at all the possibilities