In the Presence of the Lord

was one of the better known Blind Faith songs. It seems fitting because not too long before the advent of Blind Faith, "Clapton is God" grafitti began appearing. All of this is brought to mind because I just noticed on Barnes & Noble new releases, that there is a Clapton autobiography. "Wow, man," I thought, reverting to the early seventies.

I was a bit too young for Woodstock and all that, not to mention that my Cuban parents thought it was all Sodom and Gonorrhea, as my mother would say. It was only in high school when I went to see The Concert for Bangladesh with friends that I discovered Clapton. It was love at first sight. I became enamored of his music and started buying any album where he had ever played from Mayall to Delany & Bonnie to his solo album. I spent long hours in the basement, my really cool headphones jacked into my carefully researched stereo system, just grooving out on the music. Unfortunately, this was the period in Clapton's life when he was battling heroin addiction and had dropped from sight.

So when it was announced he would be playing Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey, I forced my parents to cut short a vacation to Puerto Rico. (Knowing how crazy I was about Clapton, they actually did it.) Since it was general admission, my friends and I went early in the morning. By the time the opening act came on, we were hot, tired, and most of the crowd was under the influence of some mind altering drug. Surprisingly we weren't, maybe we were still too young. To make matters worse, the opener was some sort of clownlike comedian prancing around the stage in tails with a flower in his hand. He did not exactly connect with the besotted bikers sitting behind us, who demonstrated their displeasure by lobbing projectiles over our heads toward the stage.

Clapton came out and was understandably miffed. Actually, he was so miffed, he only played 45 minutes. So, I had forced my parents to come home early and spent hours in the hot sun to hear less than an hour's worth of music. I can't say I stopped listening to Clapton. I only did that after "Money and Cigarettes." To this day, the strains of "Layla" still have the power to lift my spirits, and "Please be with me" is one of my all time favorite love songs, rivaled only by Dave Mason's "You are Every Woman in the World to me" and some of my father's Javier Solis songs like "Bonita."

So I didn't give up on his music, but I never went to another Clapton concert. By the way, anyone know what Bangladesh is called today?