CLISP has adopted ASDF 3 a few years back in their source code repo (currently at 3.1.7 from 2016), but since they haven't released since 2010 and many distributions stick to the "latest release", CLISP often comes with no ASDF, or sometimes an ancient version of ASDF from 2011, at which point Quicklisp installs its own ancient version of ASDF 2.26 from 2012.
Upgrading from 2.26 to 3.x is only supported if done very early in the build. If for some reason you're doing it mid-build, things are going to break badly. I recommend using a recent Lisp with a recent ASDF. If you really need CLISP rather than say SBCL or CCL, please use a recent checkout rather than the "so stable it's dead" release from 2010.
Another potential hack is to replace the ~/quicklisp/asdf.lisp by a recent one and clear the quicklisp cache (in ~/quicklisp/cache/ I presume but I'm not sure). Or, if CLISP comes with an asdf.fas somehow, replace it with one compile-file'd from a recent ASDF.
Happy hacking!
—♯ƒ • François-René ÐVB Rideau •Reflection&Cybernethics• http://fare.tunes.org — Question authority! — Yeah, says who?