Clapton (6 page)

The Roosters were a tiny outfit, with virtually no equipment. Guitar, vocals, keyboard all went through one amplifier. We had no proper transport, just Robin’s Morris Oxford convertible, into which we had to pile all our equipment as well as ourselves, ownership of the car giving him a certain amount of power in the band. We met for rehearsals in a room above a pub somewhere in Surbiton. I would come up from Ripley and plug my guitar into Tom’s amplifier, and we would just learn things, mostly blues and R&B covers. We taught ourselves a couple of Chuck Berry songs, “Short Fat Fanny” by Larry Williams, and some stuff by Muddy Waters. The most significant event for me was when Tom one day brought out a record by black artist Freddy King, a 45 rpm instrumental called “Hideaway” that he was mad about. I’d never heard Freddy King before, and listening to him had an effect on me similar to what I might feel if I were to meet an alien from outer space. It simply blew my mind.

On the B side of “Hideaway” was “I Love the Woman,” which had a guitar solo in the middle of it that took my breath away. It was like listening to modern jazz, expressive and melodic, a unique kind of playing in which he bent the strings and produced sounds that gave me the shivers. It was absolutely earth-shattering for me, like a new light for me to move toward. Up until that moment I had always thought of guitar playing as being little more than an accompaniment to the singing, except in one or two rare cases that I had always noticed and wondered where the players were coming from. A good example of this was the Connie Francis number “Lipstick on Your Collar,” which has an incredible guitar solo by George Barnes; and Ricky Nelson had a guitarist, James Burton, who would play country-blues electric guitar solos. Hearing Freddy play explained where all of this had come from.

The Roosters rehearsed more than we played. Even though we did a gig every now and then, mostly in upstairs rooms in pubs, it was more about the excitement of meeting like-minded blues people. Virtually nobody in Ripley had any interest in blues. Pop was the order of the day, with the current craze being the Mersey sound. The Beatles were just starting to be popular, and once a week a radio show called
Pop Go the Beatles
came on, which consisted entirely of them playing their own songs and covers of other people’s. They were taking off really quickly, and everybody wanted to be like them. It was the beginnings of Beatlemania. All over the country people were dressing like them, playing like them, sounding like them, and looking like them. I thought it was despicable, probably because it showed how sheeplike people were, and how ready they were to elevate these players to the status of gods, when most of the artists I admired had died unheard of, sometimes penniless and alone. It also made it look like what we were trying to do was already a lost cause.

The gradual increase in popularity of the Mersey sound forced musicians like me to almost go underground, as if we were anarchists, plotting to overthrow the music establishment. It seemed that the “trad jazz” movement was dying, and was taking folk and blues with it. So the thing with the Roosters was that, as much as anything, we needed each other for identification. It was not like we were going anywhere, so we just met up and talked and played, and had a cup of tea, and compared any records we might have heard, and tried to learn some of them. The repertoire was a mixture of blues numbers by John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Freddy King, and others, regular numbers being “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Boom Boom,” “Slow Down,” and “I Love the Woman,” which gave me the opportunity to show off the solos I was developing. Altogether we played no more than a dozen gigs, for a few quid and free drinks, and since I was still working on building sites for my grandfather, I would often turn up onstage covered in plaster.

Most of our gigs were on the Ricky Tick club circuit, a series of clubs in the Home Counties run by Philip Hayward and John Mansfield, two promoters who were into great music and who at that time had a virtual monopoly on the club scene. We also played a couple of times at the Marquee, as support to Manfred Mann, the band Paul Jones was now singing with. The truth is that although I was having a great time, starting to make my mark as a guitarist and enjoying the semi-bohemian lifestyle that went with it, the band was deeply flawed because it didn’t really have the wherewithal, either the commitment or the money, to go anywhere. As a result we lasted only six months, the final gig being at the Marquee on July 25.

Though the Marquee had made its reputation as a jazz club, where quite famous musicians like Tubby Hayes used to come and play, it was beginning to get more and more into the rhythm and blues scene. I used to go there every Thursday night, which was blues night, traveling up on the train to Waterloo, then taking the tube to Oxford Street. Since I rarely had anywhere to stay, the evening would usually end with me walking the streets till dawn, when I could catch the first train home. It was at the Marquee that I first came across John Mayall, and the saxophonist and keyboard player Graham Bond, playing in a trio with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. Everyone in the R&B scene hung out there.

After the demise of the Roosters, Tom McGuinness was approached by a Liverpudlian, Brian Casser, to join a new band. A lot of guys had been playing the Mersey clubs before the Beatles, and he was one of these. In 1959 he had fronted a group called Cass and the Casanovas before moving down to London to run a nightclub, the Blue Gardenia in Soho. With the enormous success of the Liverpool sound and the rapid rise of bands like Gerry and the Pacemakers and singers like Billy J. Kramer, he had begun to feel left out, so he set about forming a new group to be called Casey Jones and the Engineers. He recruited Tom, and since I was also at a loose end, Tom recruited me.

The best thing about playing with Casey Jones was the experience it gave me; it was the first time I had done any kind of touring. We played in various clubs up north, mostly round Manchester, including one open-air gig at the Belle Vue Amusement Park. Cass made us all wear matching black outfits and cardboard Confederate army caps, which both Tomand I hated. Gigs were so different then; compared to today, the sound systems were so tiny. We would be playing through small amplifiers, like Voxes or Gibsons, and we’d have one each, so most groups would then be comprised of three amps plus the drum kit. Only the most well-off groups had their own PA systems, and even those had an output of only about one hundred watts, nothing by modern standards. The repertoire of the Engineers consisted of some rock ’n’ roll—Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and things like that—but the majority of the material was heavily pop based, top-twenty covers, and I couldn’t stand doing that for very long. I was too much of a purist, and after six weeks both Tom and I left.

Casey Jones and the Engineers played only about seven gigs. In between these I was still working on building sites for my grandfather and hanging out on the local music scene, which was then blossoming. Alexis Korner had started his own club, the Ealing Club, in a cramped basement room opposite Ealing Broadway station, while another blues enthusiast, Giorgio Gomelsky, had opened the CrawDaddy Club in the old Station Hotel in Richmond, where the resident band on Sunday nights was the newly formed Rolling Stones.

I’d known Mick, Keith, and Brian throughout their long gestation period when they were playing nothing but R&B. Our first meeting had been at the Marquee. It was only the second time I went to see Alexis play, and they were all there. At some point in the evening they all got up to play with Alexis’s rhythm section that particular night. I got talking to Mick, and we became friends. He always used to carry a microphone in his pocket, a Reslo, and I borrowed it off him to do a gig in Richmond, which was just me and a drummer doing Chuck Berry songs. The mike had no stand, so I had to stack two chairs one on top of the other and tape the mike to the top of this improvised stand.

Mick, Keith, and Brian played wherever they could, at Ken Colyer’s 51 Club on Charing Cross Road, at the Marquee, and at the Ealing Club. I would occasionally stand in for Mick there when he had a sore throat, and for a time we were all quite close. Then they got the residency at the CrawDaddy and really took off, going in four weeks from audiences of just a handful of people to several hundred. One night the Beatles came in to see the Stones. They’d just released “Please Please Me,” which was a huge hit. As they walked up and stood right in front of the stage, all of them were wearing long black leather overcoats and identical haircuts. Even then they had tremendous presence and charisma, but to me the weirdest thing was that they appeared to be wearing their stage outfits, and for some reason that bothered me. But they seemed friendly enough, and there was obviously a mutual admiration thing going on between them and the Stones, so I suppose it was only natural that I would be jealous and think of them as a bunch of wankers.

Giorgio Gomelsky, proprietor of the CrawDaddy, was a Georgian by birth who was brought up in France, Switzerland, and Italy. A very effusive, charismatic man who peppered his speech with the word “baby,” he was big and round, with black hair slicked back and a beard, a bit like Bluto with an Italian accent. Flamboyant, worldly, and a bon vivant, he also happened to love jazz and the blues and had a fantastic ear for talent. He did an incredible amount of work for the early English R&B scene and was, I think, the first real champion of the Stones. A few months into their stint at the CrawDaddy, they were signed up right under his nose by Andrew Loog Oldham, who at the time was working as a PR man for Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles. One minute Giorgio had the hottest club in London, featuring the hottest band in England, and the next thing he knew, they were out of the club, had put out a single, “Come On,” and were on tour with Bo Diddley. I think it was a disappointment that Giorgio never really got over, but he was a pragmatist and immediately went looking for a replacement for the Sunday night slot. He eventually set his eyes on the Yardbirds, an R&B group fronted by guitarist and singer Keith Relf. Under his guidance and encouragement, they were soon making their own mark at the CrawDaddy. They had a problem, however. Their lead guitarist, sixteen-year-old Anthony Topham, was under severe pressure from his parents to leave the band so he could concentrate on his studies.

One night I was at a party in Kingston listening to Keith and another guitarist, Roger Pearco. They were playing Django Reinhardt stuff together, and really well, too, although Roger would speed it up a bit when he got excited. Keith told me he was the singer with the Yardbirds and asked if I’d like to come down and listen to them at the CrawDaddy, as their lead guitarist was likely quitting and maybe I might be interested in taking over. I went to check them out. They were playing good R&B, songs like “You Can’t Judge a Book” by Bo Diddley, and “Smokestack Lightning” by Howlin’ Wolf, and for me, just the fact that they knew these songs was enough for me to enjoy them. Topham’s guitar playing was a bit stiff, but they were a good band, if a little rough and ready, and I had nothing better to do at the time. So when Topham finally resigned, and they did eventually ask me, I said yes. I was still a bit wary about joining another group, but I genuinely thought it would be no more than a stopgap. There were five of us: Keith on vocals and harp, Chris Dreja on rhythm guitar, Paul Samwell-Smith on bass, Jim McCarty on drums, and myself on lead.

For the first time in my life, I now had a full-time job as a musician, which meant giving up working for my grandfather. My grandmother was delighted, as she knew where my talents lay, while my grandfather was quietly amused, so they gave me their blessing. This time there was a contract, signed in October 1963, in the front room of Keith’s house in Ham, with all the parents of the band present. At first I lived at home, drawing a weekly wage packet, and commuted to rehearsals and gigs, but after a while Giorgio rented us a flat on the top floor of an old house in Kew, and we all moved in together. This was a great period for me, as it was the first time I had lived away from home. In the first few weeks, before his American girlfriend arrived, I shared a room with Chris Dreja, and we became really good friends. He was a quiet guy, shy and kind, and I trusted him completely, a rare thing for me. I liked the fact, too, that, unlike the others, he was not driven by ambition. He was just enjoying the ride.

Our gigs were all divided between various Home Counties venues such as the Ricky Tick, the Star Club, Croydon, and the CrawDaddy. This was my first experience of playing night after night—in the first three months we played thirty-three gigs—and I lapped it up. What I immediately liked about being in the Yardbirds was that our entire reason for existence was to honor the tradition of the blues. We didn’t write any songs at first, but the covers we chose to do defined our identity, personified in songs like “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” by Sonny Boy Williamson, “Got Love If You Want It” by Slim Harpo, and our most popular number, which we’d play most nights, “Smokestack Lightning” by Howlin’ Wolf.

We may have thought that we could play the blues, but one man wasn’t so sure. Hardly had we signed the contract when Giorgio told us that he had arranged for us to join Sonny Boy Williamson on his forthcoming tour of England. I wasn’t a particular fan of Sonny Boy’s—my favorite harmonica player was Little Walter—and it was not a happy experience. I knew for example, in my role as blues expert of Ripley, that he was not the Sonny Boy Williamson who had written “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” and been killed with an ice pick, but that his real name was Rice Miller. So when we were first introduced to him at the CrawDaddy, I couldn’t wait to show off, and tried to impress him with my knowledge, asking him, “Isn’t your real name Rice Miller?” At which point he slowly pulled out a small penknife and glared at me. It went downhill from there. But he was a famous bluesman, and to all intents and purposes the real thing, so we were in awe of him, and followed where he led. At one point in the show, he made us kneel while he did a sort of blues moonwalk along the stage. It was more than a little strange. But he was little impressed with us too for that matter. He is said to have commented at the time, “Those English kids want to play the blues so bad—and they play the blues so bad.”