Whatever Gets You Through The Night
In the end, Eric Clapton's summer wasn't so hot. He played holiday camps where the heat rose off the bingo cards with the stench of stale greed and afterwards he fell asleep listening to his own album. He had drunk too much and slept uneasily. Bad dreams.
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Whatever Gets You Through The Night
by Simon Frith
In the end, Eric Clapton's summer wasn't so hot. He played holiday camps where the heat rose off the bingo cards with the stench of stale greed and afterwards he fell asleep listening to his own album. He had drunk too much and slept uneasily. Bad dreams. Foreigners slipping silently across the beaches, black men coming to get their riffs back. In Birmingham E.C. cracked. He addressed the audience, warned them of the dangers, recommended Enoch Powell. The audience wasn't amused and neither were the music papers. Later, poor old Eric wrote to Sounds to apologize.
Meanwhile, at Reading's Annual Festival of Blues, Jazz and Rock, angry long hairs booed and beer canned thp Diamonds and U.Roy, Virgin's reggae acts. A West Indian was stomped by hippies and the racist slogans would've made Clapton pause. When the same acts appeared at London's Lyceum, crowd power had a different color. White couples stuck uneasily together. Purses were snatched, pockets picked and one by one London's rock venues are refusing to book reggae.