Layla

I'm reading Wonderful Tonight by Pattie Boyd. She was George Harrison's first wife who fell in love with and married his best friend, Eric Clapton. The songs "Something" by Harrison and "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight" by Clapton were all inspired by her. Her story is another version of the one we've heard many times (life on the road, drugs, isolation, adulation, more drugs), but as a Beatles fan, and a George fan, it's a perspective I was particularly interested in hearing.

Ms. Boyd’s writing style is, well, not exactly writer-ly.

Of their drug bust she writes:

“I opened the door to find a crowd of uniformed policemen, one policewoman, and a dog standing outside. At that moment, the back-door bell rang and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, this is so scary! I’m surrounded by police.’”

Of life at home she writes:

"I also took up flying. I had a few lessons in a Cessna at a little airfield near Esher called Fairoaks. I gave it up in the end because math was involved and numbers had always been beyond me. I also did a cookery course, which I enjoyed, and George gave me a knitting machine so I took knitting lessons. I had been inspired by Twiggy, who also had one and could run off wonderful sweaters. I found it terribly difficult, I knitted George a Fair Isle one and that was it.”

Of her trust in their Indian Guru she writes:

“I thought, idiotically, Maharishi is so amazing, maybe he can bring Brian [the Beatles’ manager who had just died of an overdose] back to life. He couldn’t, of course, but he was calm.”

But she’s got some good stories to tell. I didn’t know that Pete Townsend (according to her) was the only one to keep trying to get through to Clapton when he had hidden in his English estate wasting away on heroin. I’d never heard the story of George inviting Clapton over to have a two-hour guitar duel in the hallway over their mutual love. (She says the feeling of those who had been there was that Clapton had “won” the musical duel.) And I didn’t know that George had an affair with Ringo’s wife, Maureen.

Boyd came out of a wacky childhood with a couple of unavailable parents. I’m hoping that the end of her tale finds her happily remarried to a nice, regular guy.