Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [88]
When the ceremony was over, we all returned to our hotel, where they’d put aside a room for the reception. The table was dominated by the usual wedding cake, about five tiers tall, and Roger had hired a photographer to take pictures. Typically, after the cutting of the cake, when he came over to photograph me and Nell together, I threw a piece of cake at him, covering his beautiful Nikon camera. He obviously felt completely out of his depth, because he didn’t dare make a fuss, and then a food fight started. Soon everyone was covered in cake. We didn’t eat the cake, we just wore it. The following night we played our first show of a three-month tour at the Community Center in Tucson, and when we played “Wonderful Tonight,” I brought Nell up onstage so that I could sing it to her. The reception from the crowd was ecstatic.
However much I might have thought I loved Pattie at the time, the truth is that the only thing that I couldn’t live without was alcohol. This really made my need or ability to commit to anything, even marriage, pretty inconsequential, and anyway it was only a matter of time before the “no women on the road” rule was invoked, and then I’d be off and running again. Pattie came with me to Albuquerque, New Mexico, then to El Paso, Texas, and from there to all the gigs till we got to San Antonio. At each show I would bring her up onstage and sing “Wonderful Tonight” to her. But after the San Antonio gig, I told her that she must go back to England. It was men-only time again; I had had enough of domestic bliss. She was not at all happy about this, and of course as soon as she was gone, it was back to business as usual.
One of the first things Pattie did when she got back to England was to start organizing a party for all our English friends to celebrate our wedding. It was set for Saturday, May 19, when there was a break in my tour schedule, and was to take place in the garden at Hurtwood, where a huge tent would be erected. Guests were instructed to turn up “about 3:00 P.M.” and told that they didn’t have to bring presents if they didn’t want to. “If you are free,” we had printed on the invites, “try and make it, it’s bound to be a laugh.” There was no real form to the party. People were just expected to arrive whenever they wanted, wearing whatever they liked, and have a good time.
The first person I remember showing up was Lonnie Donegan, who came far too early, at about 10:00 A.M., followed closely by Georgie Fame. I didn’t have a clue what to do with them, and we ended up going upstairs to a small bedroom where Georgie began rolling joints. I stayed up there for most of the day getting stoned and becoming more and more paranoid as people were arriving. I really had no idea how to be a host and couldn’t cope, so instead of being around to greet everybody and offer them drinks, I hid. Eventually, sometime during the evening, I went downstairs to the tent to find this huge party going on, with hundreds of people, from all my famous musician friends to the grocer and the butcher and all the Ripleyites, milling around, chattering, eating and drinking, and making out in the bushes. It actually looked like the kind of party I would like to go to.
A stage had been set up in the tent, the idea being that the band would consist of anyone who felt like getting up and playing. A succession of great musicians joined in the jam session that took place later in the evening, including Georgie and Lonnie, Jeff Beck, Bill Wyman, Mick Jagger, Jack Bruce, and Denny Laine. I remember Denny’s wife, Jo Jo, getting up to sing, and then we couldn’t get her off, so whoever was at the mixing board had to keep switching off whichever mike she was using, and she would