After we returned to England, Led Zeppelin retreated to Headley Grange to record what would eventually become the double-record Physical Graffiti. I didn’t spend much time at those sessions, either at the Grange or later when the band moved to Olympic Studios. There wasn’t much for me to do there, and I was in the midst of my own soul-searching, trying to figure out the direction that was best for me. But during those days that I did visit the Grange, what I did see and hear showed that Zeppelin hadn’t lost any momentum.
One of the most engaging cuts created during those sessions was “Kashmir,” a song that years later the band would consider one of their classics. Jimmy initially called the song “Driving to Kashmir,” and it was inspired by a lengthy, deserted stretch of road connecting Goulimine and Tantan in the Moroccan Sahara, a road Jimmy had driven several times, always with the feeling that it would never end. There was no scenery other than an occasional camel and its rider to break the monotony. Jimmy had written the lyrics to the song, complete with its mystical references, while making that drive alone a few months earlier. The sometimes otherworldly, often dissonant quality to the music merged perfectly with Pagey’s words.
Jimmy turned to his Danelectro guitar for the recording of “Kashmir.” He had worked and reworked the song’s now famous riff, drawing upon a guitar cycle that he had created years before. He was so fascinated and intrigued by its structure that he felt driven to repeatedly fine-tune it. Later, Jonesy added an ascending bass riff and scored a truly magnificent string arrangement.
As always, the band was very conscious of keeping its creativity level at a peak. Jimmy knew that double albums were more vulnerable to criticism, with assaults that basically asked, “Why didn’t you cut out the repetition and just put out a single album?” Most critics had never been kind to Zeppelin anyway, and Pagey didn’t want to give their wicked pens any extra ammunition.
The band continued to amaze me with its ability to grow. Bonzo’s drum playing on “In My Time of Dying” was more gutsy and forceful than I had ever heard it. Robert’s vocals on “Down by the Seaside” were painfully sensitive.
As for Jimmy, he was constantly experimenting, spending many hours by himself in the studio, shaping his own guitar solos, laboring to the point of complete fatigue. He claimed that when others were there in the studio with him, he’d sometimes become self-conscious and insecure on those solos, and he preferred to do them in seclusion. When I used to see Jimmy onstage, keeping 30,000, 40,000, or 50,000 fans thoroughly entranced as he nurtured every note, caressed each chord, and somehow exhibited both gentleness and violence with subtle or sudden turns of the wrists or fingers, I found his supposed self-consciousness a tough story to buy. No one ever played the guitar with such finesse. On songs like “Ten Years Gone,” he worked endlessly, overdubbing more than a dozen guitar tracks, each harmonizing perfectly with the others.
When I’d hear cuts like that, I didn’t know how I could ever seriously consider leaving Zeppelin. “Nobody’s any better than they are,” I told Marilyn. Those were sentiments I had felt for years.
“Follow your heart,” she told me. “But if you have the opportunity to expand your own horizons, don’t dismiss it without giving it some thought.”
In May, with Zeppelin still at work on Physical Graffiti, that opportunity finally materialized. I was talking to Jack Calmes, a friend from Showco. As I described my personal conflict—the sense that I might benefit from getting away from Zeppelin for a while—he said, “Robert Stigwood [Eric Clapton’s manager] is looking for a U.S. tour manager for Eric. Robert and Atlantic think that Eric’s going to hit the comeback trail with a bang. You’d be perfect for the job.”
Jack helped get the word back to Stigwood that I was available. Stigwood was a bit wary about hiring me, concerned about my reputation for creating chaos and worried that he might anger Zeppelin if he “stole” me away. But he invited me to a party at his house, apparently to size me up. Near the end of the evening, he finally approached me and began discussing his need for a tour manager for Clapton.
“Well, if we can work out the numbers, let’s give it a try,” he said. There was a bit of trepidation in his voice.
The next day, we talked by phone. We agreed on a salary of $15,000 plus bonuses for six weeks of work. When I told Peter and Led Zeppelin about my new gig, none of them had much of a reaction at all.
I had been a fan of Eric’s for a long time, so it was a thrill to be invited to work with him. It felt like a new beginning, and I was eager to get started. My first assignment: Arrange the details for the upcoming tour, from making flight and hotel plans to selecting the venues themselves. Upon arriving for work each morning, I’d pour myself a brandy and ginger ale—and then another, and still another. Somehow, the job got done, despite my chronic state of drunkenness. As with Zeppelin, it seemed as though I could somehow override the intoxication and get the work finished without any major mistakes. Looking back, I don’t know quite how I managed.
Eric worked on a guarantee against a percentage, so once we were out on the tour itself, I would do the calculations at each venue, making sure the local promoters’ math agreed with my own. Repeatedly, I found mistakes in the way they had computed the bottom line.
Eric and his entourage traveled in a customized, twenty-seat private jet and included his five-man band, backup singers, and his girlfriend (and later wife) Patti Harrison. Mick Turner (who had worked with Eric during the Cream days) provided security, although I brought in Bill Dautrich for some advance planning, arranging for police escorts as well as on-site protection at each concert.
Throughout the tour, Eric’s guitar work was consistently brilliant, expressing all the joy, all the despair, all the achievements, and all the trials that had been part of his life in recent years. Having watched Pagey for so many years, I was used to guitarists using “super-slinky” strings on their instruments that easily bend. But Eric used ordinary gauge strings that had been traditional with the black blues guitarists. They’re murder on the fingers, but Eric had built up incredible strength in those fingers over the years. He had also developed calluses that showed just how long he had been in the business.
His musicianship was particularly astonishing because he was suffering from a bad case of conjunctivitis throughout most of that ’74 tour. He simply couldn’t see where his fingers were moving. He would stumble around the stage, probably looking as though he were inebriated. Near the end of the tour, the antibiotics finally began to work, and he got back his 20/20 vision and his equilibrium.
The medication, however, did not inhibit Eric from indulging in large amounts of alcohol during the tour. Jack Daniels is sweet and powerful, and Eric would sometimes drink to excess, although it never seemed to affect his ability to perform.
I found touring with Eric to be refreshing, even exhilarating at times. I rarely felt the pressures I had experienced with Led Zeppelin. Maybe that was because I didn’t know Eric as well as the boys of Zeppelin, and I knew that any mistakes wouldn’t be like letting down my best friend. A lot of responsibility was put on my lap with Clapton, yet I didn’t really feel the strain—except for the very first show we did at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut.
Because it was my first concert of the tour, I was feeling tense, and those anxieties intensified when it began raining the afternoon of the show. “We may have to cancel this gig,” I told Eric a couple of hours beforehand, although I promised to do everything possible to get it underway. We had set up large tents in which a preconcert party was held for record company executives and the press, and I just couldn’t see going through the stress of the day all over again.
As the rain continued, I also tried to calm down two city officials who were throwing tantrums backstage, claiming that our equipment trucks had caused $10,000 worth of damage to the grounds when they drove on the rain-soaked grass.
“We’re gonna sue!” one of them roared. “You’ve made a damn shambles of this place!”
“So now it fits in with the rest of New Haven!” I muttered under my breath.
Despite the threat of lawsuits and the continuing intermittent rains, the show went on as scheduled.
When I was in Memphis with Eric, I called Jerry Schilling, one of Elvis’s assistants whom I had met in Los Angeles earlier in the year. “Eric would love to meet Elvis,” I told Jerry. “Is there any chance we could come by Graceland and see him?”
Jerry said he would check with Elvis, and later that day he called back: “Elvis said, ‘Yeah, come and visit.’ But he’s going to the movies tonight at the Orpheum Theatre. He wants you guys to stop by and join him at the theater.”
Then Jerry began to laugh. “Oh, one other thing. Elvis said to me, ‘I know who Richard Cole is, but who the hell is Eric Clapton?’”
That night, Eric and I, along with Patti and my wife, Marilyn, arrived at the Orpheum at about 10 P.M. From the front row to the popcorn machine, Elvis had rented the entire theater. When we walked in, the King hadn’t yet arrived. The theater manager told us, “Elvis rents the theater a couple nights a month. It’s the only way he can get out to see a movie without being mobbed. Oh, once he arrives, no smoking will be permitted.”
About ten minutes later, Elvis showed up. He strutted down the aisle of the dimly lit theater surrounded by a retinue of aides and security men. He nodded to us and sat down two rows in front of us. During the evening, we didn’t exchange more than a dozen words with one another. Even so, with Elvis there, the screening of the movie—Murder on the Orient Express—had the feeling of a command performance.
I finished working for Clapton in August and decided to take a couple of months off. When I had been in New Orleans with Eric and had dinner with Ahmet Ertegun and Earl McGrath of Atlantic Records, Ahmet told me that he hoped I’d be returning to Led Zeppelin for the band’s next tour. “You’ve got to go back and sort out whatever’s been left hanging,” he said. “You’re the only guy who can work with them.”
More than anything, however, I was just interested in some time off, although that may have been a big mistake. Marilyn and I had more time to spend with one another, and our marriage began hitting hard times. Some friends gave me some heroin, and I started snorting it about once a week, sometimes less frequently. It was relatively inexpensive in those days, perhaps one-third the price of cocaine, and Marilyn didn’t seem to mind that I was using it.
But then I began using heroin more regularly, even daily, and it started driving a wedge between us. Marilyn was much more enamored of alcohol; I was becoming hooked on heroin. We stopped communicating as we once had. And we began to drift apart.
As I sunk deeper into my use of drugs, the gradual deterioration of our relationship didn’t disturb me as much as it should have. I had found a new lover of sorts, a new drug that could get me high in seconds.