Driven to distraction by his continuing obsession with Pattie Boyd, then wife of his good friend George Harrison, Eric Clapton took the opportunity to consult American singer songwriter and self-styled voodoo Dr. John, when he attended the live debut of Clapton's new band Derek and the Dominos at London's Lyceum Ballroom on 14 June 1970. In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton reports: I told him I was deeply in love with the wife of another man, and that she was no longer happy with him, but wouldn't leave him. He gave me a little box made out of woven straw, and told me to keep it in my pocket, and gave me various long-forgotten instructions as to what to do with it... A few weeks later, purely by chance, or so it seemed, I ran into Pattie, and we just kind of collided, to the point where there was no turning back. Sent on 10 July 1970, this enigmatic telegram appears to date from around this time, when according to Clapton, the pair began a semi-clandestine affair. Boyd's own autobiography, Wonderful Tonight, similarly notes that the pair saw each other from time to time during the spring and summer of 1970: One day we went to see a film called Kes together, and afterward we were walking down Oxford Street when Eric said, “Do you like me, then, or are you seeing me because I’m famous?” “Oh, I thought you were seeing me because I’m famous,” I said. And we both laughed. He always found it difficult to talk about his feelings - instead he poured them into his music and writing... On another occasion I drove to Ewhurst and we met in the Hurt Woods. He was wearing a wonderful wolf coat and looked very sexy, as he always did.

With Boyd refusing to leave Harrison, despite Clapton's repeated pleas, he would retreat into the seclusion of his Surrey estate and a growing heroin addiction. “If you’re not going to come with me,” he said, “that’s it. I’m off.” And he went. I hardly saw him for three years.