Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [75]
Some of the best times I ever had in my drinking years were when I was surrounded by Stigwood and Co. We loved high-stakes pranking, with virtually no limit, and it could get quite rough, until there would eventually have to be some kind of truce in order to keep someone from getting hurt. Stiggy liked to play the role of the indignant victim who, pushed too far, would suddenly lash out in furious self-defense, and he always gave as good as he got. It sounds pretty childish, and it was, but we had great fun. Apart from me, two of Stiggy’s most vicious tormentors were Ahmet, and Earl McGrath, who ran the Rolling Stones’ record company. I once heard that they stripped him to his underpants in the middle of an airport and emptied the contents of his briefcase all over the floor.
One Christmas I had a full-size stuffed camel delivered to his house, and in return three dairy cows were delivered to Hurtwood, and so on it would go. Once in Barbados, Ahmet, Earl, and I went to visit him in his rented villa, where we set about totally trashing the whole place while he sat in a hammock outside, crying and whimpering, “How dare you? I’ve never been so humiliated in my whole life.” We were like kids, and if one of us switched sides and went to Stiggy’s aid, then there would be an immediate change of power and the victim would become the aggressor. On reflection, it required a lot of love and trust to play games like this on a large scale, and that was definitely there for all of us, drunk or sober.
The 461 Ocean Boulevard tour opened on June 28, 1974, at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut, playing to a capacity crowd of seventy thousand. The band had the same members who played on the album—Carl Radle, Jamie Oldaker, Dick Sims, George Terry, and Yvonne Elliman—but the set also included songs such as “Badge” and “Crossroads” from my Cream days, “In the Presence of the Lord” from Blind Faith, and “Layla” and “Have You Ever Loved a Woman?” from the Dominos’ repertoire. This was, after all, supposed to be my comeback tour.
It was a flamboyant show, and we went out with Legs Larry Smith as our opening act. He was the drummer with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and would often wear a tutu and come out from behind the drums to do a tap dance. On our tour, his act was to come onstage dressed as a Roman centurion and mime to the Who song “My Generation” with a ukelele. We made his life a misery. We would all stand at the side of the stage and throw things at him—fruit, bread rolls, or whatever came to hand. Sometimes we used to fill up his ukelele with soup just before he went on. It was quite an extraordinary act. The audience had no idea how to take it, and he would invariably be booed off, feigning terrible grief and humiliation, which was also part of the act.
Legs and I became good friends and drinking buddies. He liked to wear very warm clothes in hot climates. For instance, in New Orleans in the middle of July, I remember him wearing a three-piece Harris tweed suit with an overcoat folded over his arm. He also had a beautifully tailored suit made from Holiday Inn towels. He was extremely stylish, and his taste in clothes began to rub off on me. My standard outfit became a pair of worn-out Lee bib overalls that I’d bought in a secondhand store, with a plastic see-through mac over the top adorned with hundreds of badges.
I wasn’t too concerned about what people thought; I was drunk most of the time and having fun, fooling around and playing with the guys. Brandy was my drink of choice, but I couldn’t drink it neat. Like most alcoholics I have met since, I didn’t like the taste of alcohol, so I would mix it with something sweet, like ginger ale or Seven-Up. I drank round the clock, and it didn’t matter to me whether or not there was a show that night, because I was always convinced I could handle it. Many times, of course, I couldn’t, in which case I’d just wander off the stage and somebody, usually Roger, would have to try and persuade