Vol. 4, No. 4, April 2008
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Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Me
Book Review
She was the archetypal dolly-bird of the swinging ’60s, and inspired two of the era’s greatest love songs: “Something” by George Harrison and Eric Clapton’s “Layla.”
Pattie Boyd’s memoir, Wonderful Tonight (which takes its title from another Clapton ode), provides a perfect counterpoint to the legendary guitarist’s autobiography. Read them together for a fuller understanding of the lives they led, with seemingly limitless sex, drugs, celebrity and riches, none of which led to contentment or enduring love.
Both point to childhood trauma to explain some of their later recklessness. Boyd was raised in a chaotic household where, due to finances or infidelity, the cast of characters constantly changed. Clapton did not learn until he was nine that his parents were actually his grandparents, and his “sister” his mother; he never became close to her.
Surprisingly, these accounts dovetail almost perfectly. No “he-said-she-said” here; Boyd and Clapton are scrupulous in their acknowledgement of the flaws, mistakes and meannesses that marked their lives, together and with others.
They also admit that, for all its poetry and epic passion, the love they felt for each other was immature and largely illusory. A bond remains; Clapton even let Boyd quote extensively from his personal letters and verse (they’re glorious). And their relationships with George Harrison, fractured when Boyd left him to marry Clapton, were mended by the time Harrison died of lung cancer in 2001.
Clapton’s book contains horrific accounts of his drug addiction and painstaking recovery, and the final section sounds like something out of Recovery 101. The tragic death of Conor, Clapton’s son, is briefly but movingly recounted in both books.
Yes, read them together. You’ll walk away feeling you’ve met two people who struggled mightily to wrest from their profligate lives some sense of deeper meaning.
