Eric Clapton and Tommy Dowd listened to both of Duane Allman’s impeccable slide guitar takes on ‘Layla’ and finally decided to use them both. A friendly guy was going on about the incredible session at Criteria the morning after, in our living room just a few blocks from Sailboat Bay. I liked the tinkling of the rigging in the gentle morning trade winds. It calmed me. I didn’t like this guy. He supplied people with dangerous powders. I had asked him to leave the last time he had dropped in unannounced. I was about to throw him out again when I noticed his clothing. His flowered shirt was peppered with tiny burn holes the size of buckshot. His white pants were also spotted with matching burn holes. “Why do you have all those burn holes in your clothes?”
“When I got home from the studio, I was so wired, coz I had done so much blow, I couldn’t go to sleep. I had to take some downers to try to get to sleep. That made me so depressed I wanted to kill myself. So I took my grandfather’s shotgun out of the closet, put the barrel in my mouth, but I couldn’t reach the trigger. That pissed me off, so I shot my dresser drawers full of all my clothes.
That’s when I heard a voice say, “Pay attention to this moment. This shows how stupid drugs are.”