Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [99]
About this time I started to blame Pattie for everything—“After all, hadn’t I got sober for her? Where was her gratitude?” That was how I was beginning to think. She, meanwhile, was perfectly capable of drinking wine and doing coke in moderation, and to a certain extent wanted to carry on with our old lifestyle, and who could blame her? But I had to practice abstinence, and for me, sobriety was becoming a drudge. I missed drinking and was jealous of her for being able to do all that stuff in moderation. I still had not really accepted the truth about myself.
The cracks in our relationship caused me to withdraw into myself. I began to spend a lot of time fishing. Though for many years I had been a novice fisherman, fishing primarily for perch, carp, and pike in the waters round Ripley, Gary Brooker had recently taught me to cast a fly. Pike fishing is a cumbersome affair compared to trout fishing. There’s an awful lot of gear to cart around, baskets full of stuff, rod stands, and so on, and green thermal suits to wear, and then when you get out there, you don’t really do very much, just sit and wait, and I used to look at Gary with amusement, with his little bag with some flies in it and a rod and reel. I mean he could walk around with this kit so easily. One day he gave me a lesson in casting, on his lawn, and once I’d got the line to go straight out for more than ten feet, I began to think of it as a skill, one that maybe I could master.
That first summer of my recovery was one of the most beautiful I can remember, perhaps because I was healthy and clean, and I began to rent some trout-fishing days for myself, mostly on stretches of water in the neighborhood that had been specially stocked for local fishermen. I fished on the Clandon estate and on the lakes at Willinghurst, and at Whitley Farm near Dunsfold. Fishing is an absorbing pastime and has a Zen quality to it. It’s an ideal pursuit for anyone who wants to think a lot and get things in perspective. It was also a perfect way of getting physically fit again, involving as it does a great deal of walking. I would go out at the crack of dawn and often stay out till nighttime, sometimes proudly returning with a bag of fish that I would present to Pattie to clean and cook. For once I was actually becoming good at something that had nothing to do with guitar playing or music. For the first time in a long time, I was doing something very normal and fairly mundane, and it was really important to me. However, the fact that it was increasing Pattie’s sense of isolation passed me by.
Believing that work would be one of my greatest therapies, I went on tour with my English band within four months of coming out of Hazelden. It was totally against what the counselors had recommended, and I imagine they’re used to that, but it was a rash decision. The fact is, I wasn’t yet ready for work. The first time I stood onstage, at the Paramount Theater in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, I thought to myself, “This sounds awful,” and I didn’t really know why. Like my problem with sex, I hadn’t played sober for a long time and had been used to hearing everything through a veil of alcohol and drug distortion, and I just couldn’t get used to the sound without it. I went all around America without really knowing what I was doing, but I did go to meetings. At the last show, in Miami, Muddy Waters made a guest appearance and we played “Blow Wind Blow” together. It was the last time I got to play with him, as he died in April the following year.
On our return from this tour, we went into Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas to cut tracks for a new album. The songs had a pub rock feel to them, and to me this was a continuation of what I’d been involved in with Ronnie Lane. In the beginning I was happy playing with these guys. We were doing it for fun and companionship