The whole rehab thing is just a bloody con to make money and take advantage. I still get a lot of royalties flowing in from radio play and the use of Cream music in commercials and movies, which is a good earner.Margrit manages our portfolio of investments along with my advisers and I know she has chosen to invest in a lot of ethical companies and ethical funds.
I was also involved in starting up a commercial catamaran operation in Majorca which ran aground. Asked if contemporaries such as John Bonham or Keith Moon ever measured up to Baker, Clapton is emphatic: "No. He had assumed I would join him at the factory and never imagined I could actually make money in music. Completely. It was easy do with young musicians who were naive and didn't care about contracts. An unpleasant-tasting preparation for application on bandages, casts, tape, and other wound dressings to deter self-mutilation.
But my second mistake was drugs – way too much of my money was squandered on that.© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2020Growing up in inner-city Glasgow, it sometimes seemed to me money hadn't been invented. Investing doesn't excite me – I think it's like gambling, which is not one of my vices. Today there is usually a clause in most contracts warning you to get independent advice, but in those days there would usually be a clause forbidding you to get independent advice.At the age of 16 I started performing with a dance band in the evenings and began earning more money than my father, but he was pleased for me. Offstage, Cream’s drug abuse was mythic.
It was very rewarding, very hard work but very good therapy." Then after my liver transplant in 2003 I bought a three-bedroom villa on the Canary island of La Palma for around £320,000 because the climate aided my recovery. "That's when I got clear of it all. But my background made me very insecure and ignorant about how to deal with money and when I hit the big time with Cream, I made some blunders.I don't give a damn about it – money has never meant anything to me. "I don't have fond memories of it at all. I got involved in 1960 when people were getting more than they were using on prescription and selling it. And I'm downloading all the time from iTunes.Initially yes, it was tremendous fun to be able to buy a house in central London and furnish it without worrying about the cost. "If it doesn't swing, it doesn't swing. It wasn't until 1981, when he moved to Italy, that Baker kicked the drug for good. If I'm enjoying the music, that overrides everything. We lived in a council flat, my dad worked in a factory and my mother worked in a baker's shop and scrubbed floors at the local hospital. It was called a 'jack', one sixth of a gram of heroin in one tiny white pill."
So what would have happened if Cream had stayed together? All three indulged in grass, acid and coke.
I now strongly advise people not to get involved in multihull commercial boating.In 1986 I bought our six-bedroom farmhouse near Halstead for £79,000 and we have since spent around £200,000 renovating, moving the kitchen and adding a large conservatory. It is filled with cellos, Hammond organs, grand pianos and guitars.My mother once worked as a waitress so I am generous because I know how people can rely on tips to make a decent living. I'm doing more and more online every year – I hardly ever buy anything in the normal way any more.
Sometimes I have had a lot of it and sometimes not so much, but I have always been able to do what I want.