I imagine that the context of that second picture was that Jack Bruce came into the living room to get some drugs, but Clapton and Baker had already taken them all. Now he’s looking mournfully at the empty baggie laying on the floor, obscured by that Ottoman with the board game on it.

I think the “helmet hair,” if you mean what he has on the Bluesbreakers album, is just a faux-mop top haircut that’s too neat to work. It needed to get a little longer and shaggier to look cool. I like it here (probably early-Cream, so late 1966 or early 1967):

He was trying to look like Hendrix with the Afro. As Roger Waters would say, he’s got the “obligatory Hendrix perm.”

You’d think that a guitar book opting for that version of Clapton would at least find a picture of him with his psychedelic SG