Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [78]
The fact is, I was trying to find my way. I was also beginning to discover, during this period, that the more I heard great musicians and singers, the more I wanted to step back. For example, we brought in Marcy Levy, a beautiful singer from Detroit who had sung with Delaney & Bonnie and Leon Russell, to work on this album, and in order to give her more opportunity to sing, I began to minimize my output. I found I liked playing the role of sideman, and was happy to push the others to the front. It was my band, after all, so there was no doubt as to who was the leader. I ended up asking her to join the band full-time, apparently much to the dismay of Leon, who had already accused me of “stealing” two other young musicians with whom he had been playing, Jamie Oldaker and Dick Sims. So far as they were concerned, however, it was probably a much more attractive proposition to come and work with me and tour the world.
The “honeymoon” that Nell and I had planned proved short-lived. She flew out to join me in Ocho Rios where, after a few days, I broke my toe trying to kick down the door of the bathroom, in which she had locked herself after a playful fight, and I had to be taken to Kingston Hospital to have it strapped up. This was followed by the news that my half brother Brian had been killed in a motorcycle accident in Canada. Though I hadn’t seen much of him since we were teenagers and we were hardly close, the news still saddened me because I had liked him a lot.
I asked Nell to accompany me to the funeral, but I don’t remember much about the journey there. It was a grand excuse for me to got blitzed. But it was a tough event for her. She had never met my family, and I had seen very little of my mother over the years. I recall that the funeral service was a Catholic one and that I had no idea what was going on, never having attended a Catholic ceremony before. The other thing I remember was being unable to feel my own grief, maybe because my mother’s was so strong. She was seriously devastated by Brian’s sudden death, and I was too numb to properly console her.
For the first year of our life together, Nell and I were constantly on the move. I had made so much money from the Ocean Boulevard tour that Roger insisted we move to the Bahamas for a year to save us from what would have been a punitive income tax. This was to be our real honeymoon. We rented an estate on Paradise Island, a beautiful, tiny island at the northeast end of Nassau that is connected to the main island by a bridge. Richard Harris had a house at one end while at the other was a large hotel complex. Smack in the middle, going right across the island, was an estate that belonged to a man named, coincidentally, Sam Clapp, a partner of the international financier Bernie Cornfeld, and it consisted of a big Miami-style house and another Polynesian-style one. It was all beautifully done and quite modern, and I loved it because the music system extended to every room. Having never seen anything like this, it all seemed quite revolutionary.
To begin with, life on Paradise Island was idyllic. We soaked up the sun, the sea, and the sand, and basked in the pleasure of being alone and together. My drinking ceased to be abusive or solitary and was restricted to enjoying a few beers throughout the day. It was a way of life that didn’t last long, however, because as I got used to Paradise, and I was brown and healthy, my tendency became more and more to live indoors in the air-conditioning. I couldn’t take the outside anymore. I just withdrew and started to drink, mostly brandy and vodka. Because drink was dirt-cheap there, hard drinking was a way of life for the residents. Virtually overnight my drinking escalated, and within the space of that year I became a 100 percent, full-blown alcoholic.
From Paradise Island I embarked with the band on a tour of Australia, where my drunkenness seemed to fit in, as if one was encouraged