So here I am, Spring of ’64, sitting in the ol’ Purple Onion (in Northern England), a coffeehouse; I’ve got two cigarettes and it’s a nine mile walk home.

The door opens and conversation drifts quieter as everyone turns to see if it’s a “regular” who might have money. No-it’s some dumbo in a buckskin jacket, thinner’n’hell, with red velvet pants. He carries a guitar case, which means nothing ’cos most people in the “Purp” have guitars. He gets a coffee, and sits over by the staircase where the heater is-taking care to put the “box” where the heat won’t bend the strings out of tune. He doesn’t say anything to anyone-no one says anything to him. Alan, after a while, turns around and says “Can I try your box?” “Yes-alright”, replies the stranger in an accent that .says he’s from Southern England, of fairly secure financial status, and very polite.

Alan can play about nine chords and two or three much practiced. Steve Cropper leads which he plays, and then looks to the stranger for compliments. The whole room is watching this scene because there’s nothing else to watch when you sit in the “Purp” every day like we all did.

The skinny kid with Jean asks A1 if he's ever going to learn something else and we laugh. The stranger takes his box back from Al’s fingers and drags a pick from under the strings above the neck. He sticks his cigarette onto the sharp end of the cut-off bottom string and leans back into the shadows beneath the stairs so's all you see is the tobacco glow, and the thin red trouser legs pokin’ out. We listen, while one of the world’s greatest blues guitarists plays, just softly, to himself in the shadows. It isn’t beautiful? If anything, the whole scene is very savage, as the sound screams but to kill the conversation. The radio is blaring, but nobody hears it over the whimper of the shining strings. For twenty minutes, it happens. Every dejected note that anyone ever played comes zipping from the satin steel strings, and after it hits the air, it just hangs there, shivering. Then the whole thing splits, ’cos Mrs. Mac, who owns the place tells us, again, that if we have nothing better to do we can evacuate the place. So the dumbo in the buckskin jacket puts down his box throws a smile at everyone and splits.

The next time I saw Eric Clapton, he was wearing the same jacket, playing blues on the same guitar and had gotten much thinner. He also had two other weirdos with him. This time I knew who he was. I had followed his career up through the Yardbirds; and Mayall, and now he was at last with Jack and Ginger and they were big enough to destroy the world and they knew it. At first, the idea of forming such a perfect group had been too much for the public, and it had shown through. This was a disappointing setback for Cream (‘‘You thought the leaden winter/Would bring you down for ever” Dratleaf Music) but instead of stooping to the level of the public, they had continued to play their own blues, hard and tight, and agonizingly tortuous.

So, there I was-there they were. It’s five years later now.

I am still around-where are they?