Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me

by Pattie Boyd

  I tried to tell him he was drinking too much, which didn’t go down well. Then I began to pour his drinks for him, so I could put in more lemonade. Later I marked the bottle so I could keep a check on how much brandy had gone, but nothing made any difference to Eric. I even tried not drinking myself, thinking he might notice and cut down, but he didn’t. After a couple of days I would tire of that and get hopelessly drunk with him, which of course he loved. But the next day I’d feel lousy. The real problem was that I didn’t know how dangerous alcohol could be or that drinking in the way Eric did was an illness. In those days, well-known people did not stand up, as they do today, to admit they were alcoholics. Nobody spoke about it.

  Even the Ripleyites had trouble keeping up. They usually drank at the Ship, which was a hard-core drinking-man’s pub in Ripley, and would often come home with Eric on Sunday for lunch when the pub closed. I would cook for however many appeared, usually at four or five in the afternoon. They would appear bearing the most hideous presents bought en route in Shere, under the influence of too many beers. And the drinking would carry on into the night. There was a snooker table on the first floor at Hurtwood Edge to which everyone gravitated. Eric slept badly and never wanted to go to bed, but the others all had nine-to-five jobs and had to be compos mentis on Monday morning—when Eric would bring them a cup of coffee laced with vodka. I don’t know how they ever got to work. If he was bored and had no one to play with in the early morning, he would go into the kitchen, fill a saucepan with spoons, and rattle it to wake everyone up. He had to have playmates.

  It wasn’t until later that I realized how shallow and narrow my life was becoming. On a normal day we would wake in the morning, have breakfast, and suddenly it was lunchtime and we’d go to the pub. It was always cozy and welcoming there and, of course, everyone was thrilled to see us—the locals, the publican, and his wife had become friends. But there was something sinister about other people who came in. They wanted to get Eric drunk so that they could watch him turn into the village idiot. I hated it, but Eric couldn’t, or didn’t want to, see it happening, and although I tried to explain, it didn’t penetrate. Explaining anything to someone who has had too much to drink is useless: they can’t hear you properly, and I always chose the wrong moments to try.

  The problem was that when Eric was at home it was playtime and he wanted playmates. He was a wonderfully entertaining person when he was in the right mood—funny, wild, unpredictable, and forever playing practical jokes; exciting to be with. He bought Ferraris, which he drove too fast, racehorses—he gave me one for Christmas—Armani suits, and life was one big party fueled by vast amounts of alcohol. And because Roger or Alfie was always around to pick up the pieces, he had no responsibilities, and neither did I. All I had to do was try to feed him, make sure he got to the studio on time when he was recording, and pack his suitcase when he went on tour. I tried to be what he wanted me to be, and to make life wonderful for him, but we were like a couple of children playing at being grown-ups.

  When Eric was a little boy he had always wanted an animal, so he invented an invisible horse or dog that he called Bushbranch, which was what we called the racehorse he bought me. She never did very well but we had a lot of fun watching her run. Eventually she was bought by Lester Piggott, who won two or three races on her. We had others, too, one called Nello; Eric’s name for me—Nell or Nello and I called him El—and another called the Ripleyite, but the only one that did well was Via Delta, which won at Ascot. We were there, and so were the lads from Toby Balding’s yard in Hampshire, where the horses were in training. The breeder and everyone else came back to Hurtwood Edge for fish and chips. But the horses didn’t last; Eric had fads, then moved on to something else.

  There were other times, though, when Eric didn’t want to play. He had the most disconcerting ability to switch off, regardless of what was going on around him or who he was with, and withdraw so deeply into himself that he wouldn’t communicate, just gave off a dark vibe so that whoever was around would know he didn’t want to see them and slink away. That included me.

  I hated it when he did it to me, but when he did it to visitors it was infinitely worse. I’d say, “Don’t you realize that your friends have come to see you?”

  “Well, they shouldn’t have turned up. I don’t want to see them. I’ve got nothing to say.”

  I used to excuse him in the same way I would excuse George when he went into himself or started chanting. Both men were so creative that I think there were times when they had to retreat from the world and listen to what was going on in their heads. The creative process never stopped. Sometimes I would watch Eric when he was asleep and his foot—or both feet—would tap in time to whatever he was hearing. Eventually it dawned on me that when he switched off, whether he was asleep or had just pulled down the shutters, he was listening to music. And that I could understand. But where most people in that situation would think, I can’t do anything about this idea now, it will have to wait, I’ve got people here to entertain, Eric was like a child: his wants and needs were immediate and paramount and he had no understanding that other people’s had to be considered.

  At times his eccentricities made me laugh—particularly his need to get into the right mood to watch TV. When the Test match was on, he would change into his cricket whites, and if he was planning to watch a film like The Godfather, he’d insist on pasta for supper.

  Having lived with George for ten years and spent so much time around other musicians, I accepted Eric’s behavior and I suppose I fell into the trap of doing the same as everyone else. I looked after the house, and I packed his suitcases. And if something wasn’t exactly as he wanted it, I knew about it. He had at least two hundred shirts and he’d go berserk if I couldn’t find the one he wanted that day. He’d describe it in minute detail and I’d find him one that was similar. It wouldn’t do. My life revolved around him. I played the part of the little woman.

  After a lovely wedding ceremony in a Tucson church we were driven to the hotel for a reception.

  ELEVEN

  Mrs. Clapton

  I had known little about Eric when I had allowed him to seduce me away from George. I had seen him as a romantic character, impetuous, free-spirited, and talented, not just as a musician but as an artist, and I had built him up so much in my imagination that in the flesh he could never have lived up to my idealized image. I was madly in love with him, but as I negotiated the moods, the depression, the destructiveness that went with the drinking, I began to wonder whether I had made a mistake in leaving George, whether I should have tried a bit harder when things had gone wrong, fought for our marriage, and not walked away. After all, I had never stopped loving him. I’d thought he had stopped loving me, but he was so upset when I left that perhaps I’d been wrong.

  Not long after our year on Paradise Island, Eric and I were in Jamaica, where he was recording, and to my joy Chris O’Dell, my friend from Apple days, turned up. She had been touring with the Rolling Stones and was staying in the same hotel, the Terra Nova, in Kingston. It was so nice to see her and have someone to talk to who knew George and the ghastly situation I had left behind, who had been there and whom I could confide in. Inevitably we spent a lot of time talking about the past and Friar Park, and I began to feel miserable and to miss George. In a rather drunken moment, we decided to telephone him. When we got through, George sounded so pleased to hear my voice that I was going to ask him whether I had made a mistake—or maybe tell him I thought I had—but Eric walked in and I had to hang up.

  Eric did such a lot of touring and spent so much time in airports and hotels, and got so sick of them, that Roger decided he would make the next tour of Europe more interesting by hiring the Orient Express. We had three carriages, one for dining, one for sleeping, and one for sitting in, which were ours for the tour, but as there was no engine we had to hitch up to other trains, which pulled us from A to B. Every morning a man woke us with a glass of champagne, plus tea or coffee, and it went on
from there. It was the best tour, but, again, we behaved like mischievous children; Roger was the headmaster, trying to keep everyone under control. A newspaper reporter was on board until everyone got fed up with him. When the train slowed down in the middle of nowhere, we threw him off without his passport. And then we got hold of the passport that belonged to one of the promoters and embellished the photograph so that he looked like a monkey. He had a terrible time trying to get back into Britain.

  Then Eric did a tour with Ronnie Lane and his band—they did the warm-up before Eric came on—and I was persuaded to go onstage with Ronnie’s wife Kate and Roger’s wife Annette—all dressed up with lots of red lipstick and feathers in our hair—to do the cancan. We flew to Nice, where we decanted into two rather scruffy-looking tugboats—one took the two bands, plus wives and girlfriends, the other was for the roadies—and set off for Cannes. In Cannes the captain said the weather was too bad to sail for Ibiza, but Roger insisted we go on because the boys were due to play at the bullring there. Of course, we hit a storm. The boat had no stabilizers—a pool table and a piano but no stabilizers—so it rolled terrifyingly. Charlie, a member of Ronnie Lane’s band, was playing the piano as it slid from one side of the cabin to the other, while the rest of us played poker, money and cards falling everywhere. It was so scary I thought we were going to drown. I even put a message in a bottle. Eric, though, was calmly toting up his winnings.

  For the most part touring wasn’t much fun for wives and girlfriends—it was such a male thing, boys bonding, working hard and giving a lot of themselves through their music, then wanting to play hard. They’d laugh, drink too much, and pick up girls. Often a musician will choose a pretty girl in the audience and sing to her, then the roadies will invite her with a few other pretty girls to come back after the gig for a drink. Musicians have so much energy when they are onstage, but afterward they are exhausted. When they get back to the hotel, though, they’ve found a second wind—and all those girls are throwing themselves at them, not considering for one moment that there may be a wife or girlfriend in the picture. If I was with him, Eric would tell me to go upstairs and warm the bed to get me out of the way. And I’d be so irritated, but I thought I had to accept that this was what happened on tour. Often I would fly home and leave him to get on with it, but I knew what was happening in my absence.

  Then Eric decreed that wives and girlfriends were banned from touring. We used private planes most of the time, and Jamie, the drummer’s wife, got on one day and started knitting. Eric flipped. Knitting didn’t go with rock ’n’ roll and he told Roger to get rid of us all.

  Although I had found touring difficult, Eric’s ban meant I didn’t see him for weeks on end. I sometimes felt that out of sight was out of mind. He didn’t phone or write as George had done when he was away. While I was still with George, Eric had written passionate and compelling letters that arrived almost daily, but now that I was installed in his home and his life, he didn’t bother. It was as though the excitement had been in the chase, and once the quarry had fallen, he no longer valued it. I had to sit at home for up to six weeks at a time, imagining what he was getting up to. It wasn’t easy.

  During one of his long absences I became friendly with a set of twins who were models, Jenny and Susie McLean. We saw quite a bit of each other, and once time when Eric was at home Jenny came for the day and I invited her to stay the night. The next morning, when I got up, she and Eric had gone shopping together and then to the pub, so I went to see my sister Jenny, who was living nearby.

  When I got home after lunch, Eric and twin Jenny were sitting close to one another on the sofa, and there was a horrible atmosphere as I came into the sitting room. I said nothing and left them alone. An hour or so later I went back and they hadn’t moved. I started to say something to Jenny, but Eric butted in: “Can’t you see we’re having a really intense and intimate conversation here?” He was very drunk.

  I said, “Why?”

  “Because I’m in love with this girl. Go away and leave us alone. Just fuck off.”

  I was so shocked that what he had said took a moment or two to sink in. This was exactly what had happened with George and my French friend after Cilla Black’s New Year’s Eve party all those years ago. I ran upstairs and sat on the bed, shaking. I didn’t know what to do. After all we had been through, all the letters, the passion, the pain, and the hurt, how could he reject me and move on to someone he had known for five minutes? I sat upstairs, tears streaming down my face, feeling a complete and utter fool. I had given up George for this.

  Eventually I rang my sister Jenny, who said I should spend the night with her. She came to collect me in her car. It was dark, pouring with rain, and I met her in the drive, soaking wet and distraught, my umbrella blown inside out. I must have looked like something out of a black-and-white forties movie. All I could think was, Thank God I’ve got Jenny. I was so wounded.

  Jenny and her two little girls, Amy and Lucy, were living in a house called Willow Cottage, which—the way she drove—was about ten minutes from Hurtwood Edge. Her marriage to Mick Fleetwood was finally over. It had fallen apart in 1974 after they had moved to Los Angeles, which was when Fleetwood Mac became successful and Mick was constantly away touring. Jenny had found it very difficult and leaned increasingly on drink and drugs. When they divorced, she came to live in England, but after a few months she moved back to Los Angeles and they remarried. It didn’t last. She and the girls returned to England again, moved into Willow Cottage, then she and Mick divorced a second time. They still loved each other but they couldn’t live together. However, it was wonderful for me to have her so close.

  After a day or two I knew I had to get away from Eric. I phoned the house and I told him what I was planning.

  “Good,” he said. “We really need a bit of a break.” The twin Jenny, he admitted, was still there.

  I phoned some friends in Los Angeles, Rob and Myel Fraboni, and took the next plane out. I felt as though my heart would break and cried so much on the flight that the stewardess asked me to move to the back of the first-class cabin so I wouldn’t upset the other passengers.

  I stayed with Rob and Myel, a music producer and his wife whom I had met through Eric, for several weeks, wondering what to do with my life. I had no intention of going back to England and no plans to see Eric again. Then one morning, after a party on the beach in Malibu, I was woken by an agitated Rob. He walked me out onto the balcony. “Doesn’t that ocean look beautiful today?” he began.

  “No, Rob,” I said. “Nothing looks beautiful with the kind of hangover I’ve got.”

  Undaunted, he told me he had had a call from Eric in the middle of the night. “He said he wants to marry you, and he asked me to ask you on his behalf. He wants me to be best man and says that if you don’t want to marry him, then ‘On your bike!’”

  I was so hung over that his words just wafted through my befuddled head. Then he handed me the message, as he had recorded it, on the back of an envelope. Eric wanted me to marry him on Tuesday in Tucson, Arizona, just before the start of his next American tour. It was now Friday morning. I said, “What a strange message.”

  “He wants an answer very soon,” said Rob.

  “Oh, my God, Rob, I don’t know. Let me think about it.”

  I had a shower, got dressed, and the three of us sat down to talk about it. Myel thought I should definitely marry him—because we could have such a nice wedding and a lovely party and everything; it would be fun. Rob liked the idea of being best man, so we decided the answer was “Yes.” I rang Eric and, having ascertained that Jenny McLean was no longer in the picture, said I would marry him.

  I was thrilled. How could I not be? The drink was a problem, but other than that he was wonderful: the most exciting, creative, talented, interesting person—and I was in love with him. But in the bottom of my heart I knew this wasn’t right.

  On reflection I see that being in love with him was like a kind of addiction. If he was happy and
pleased with me, I was happy too, but I was deeply affected every time he went into one of his dark moods. My mood reflected his, which wasn’t healthy.

  What I didn’t know until Roger Forrester confessed a few days after the wedding was how the whole thing had come about. He and Eric had been playing an endless drunken game of pool at Roger’s house in Frimley Green and they had had a bet. Roger had bet Eric that he could get his photograph in the newspapers the following morning. Eric bet him ten thousand pounds that he couldn’t. So Roger went straight to the telephone and told Nigel Dempster, then gossip columnist on the Daily Mail, that Eric Clapton would be marrying Pattie Boyd on March 27 in Tucson, Arizona. By the time they woke up the next morning, the story, plus photograph, was emblazoned across the Daily Mail and the two went into a total panic. What to do? A few million people now knew about the wedding; the only person who didn’t was the bride. Hence the hasty phone call—and the desperation for an immediate answer.

  I had three days to find a dress, to have a blood test to make sure I didn’t have rubella—which you have to do when you marry in America—to gather together some friends and family and get to Tucson. The first person I rang was Jenny. I told her to jump on a plane straightaway and come be my maid of honor. She had been out the night before and had such a terrible hangover that she was in bed when I phoned. She said she couldn’t possibly get there, she had no money, so I rang the Windmill and arranged for her to collect some from the landlord. She made it to Tucson about an hour before the ceremony. Chris O’Dell was there, too, and Myel and Rob, then Eric and Roger arrived with the band, and we all stayed at the Sheraton Pueblo, a glorified motel.