Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me

by Pattie Boyd

  Roger had organized everything—the hotel, the church, the limos, the reception—and because of Eric’s needle phobia, he had even persuaded a member of the band who looked a bit like Eric to have the rubella test for him. To confuse the press he had booked the ceremony in every church in Arizona. We ended up in the Apostolic Assembly of Faith in Christ Jesus, a funny little building with a Mexican priest.

  I wasn’t allowed to see Eric on the night before, so the next morning Jenny, Chris, Myel, and I went to the church together and into a little room at the back where we changed, chatted, and drank champagne. They were having a lovely time and I had to shut them up to ask, “What about me? Do I look all right?”

  I wore a cream silk-satin dress with a lace jacket. Roger gave me away, Rob was Eric’s best man, as promised, and Alfie and Nigel Carroll were ushers. Nigel had been going out with Paula, which was how we’d met him, and he made Eric laugh so much that Eric had asked him to come and work for him. The road crew and the band had rented the most unbelievable black and powder-blue tuxedos with string ties, but they had forgotten to order shoes so they were wearing filthy trainers.

  The service was lovely and Eric looked wonderful. At the end the minister said, “I would like to give you Mr. and Mrs. Clapton,” and clapped, so everyone else did too.

  The reception was in the hotel—if you could call it a reception. Eric and I had no sooner cut the cake than we were in the midst of a cake fight. I think Eric probably threw the first slice. He had been behaving really well, then suddenly went berserk—perhaps because he had realized he was with his playmates. So the beautiful tuxedos were soon covered with cream and icing. Everyone was drunk and the whole thing turned into chaos. Not the traditional wedding but perfect rock ’n’ roll.

  I couldn’t have been happier, but there was no question of a honeymoon. The next day Eric’s tour began and he insisted on bringing me onstage and proudly introducing me as his wife, then singing “Wonderful Tonight” to me. It was touching and so joyous. The audience went wild.

  After Tucson they played Albuquerque, El Paso, and Dallas, and at each gig I stood in the wings, watched him, and felt so proud, happy, and in love. Then it all changed. The next stop was New Orleans, which I was really looking forward to, but Eric told me he wanted me to fly to Los Angeles, collect my luggage, and go home. I couldn’t understand it. We were having such a lovely time, why did he want to get rid of me? And then one of the roadies told me that Jenny McLean had checked into the hotel in New Orleans. Eric and I hadn’t even been married a week. When the band realized what was going on, the roadies practically mutinied and Roger ejected her.

  It would have been a joy to marry someone who was faithful to me, but I had grown up with strange values. I knew my father and stepfather had had affairs, and in my subconscious I probably accepted that this was what men did. It had seemed so obvious to me as a child that Bobbie was having an affair with Ingrid, and I couldn’t understand why Mummy didn’t notice. Perhaps she knew what was going on but decided to ignore it, afraid to confront him, maybe, for fear of losing him. And history was repeating itself. I had let George be unfaithful to me—just as my mother had with Bobbie—and now I was letting Eric be unfaithful too. It hurt like hell but I found excuses.

  Being a musician on the road, I thought, was a bit like being a soldier away from home. They got lonely and they felt that what they did on tour didn’t count. How could I expect him to resist all those girls fawning over him, telling him how great he was, and taking their clothes off for him? Besides, his idea of fidelity, like most men’s, was totally different from mine or most women’s. In his eyes a one-night stand wasn’t love, it was sex; it didn’t mean anything. So either I could be forgiving and understanding because Eric couldn’t help himself, or I could think, I would never do it, so why should he? Stupidly perhaps, not wanting to lose him, I chose to be forgiving.

  In May, when Eric was home briefly between tours, Roger organized the most extravagant wedding party for us at Hurtwood Edge. Three hundred people came—Eric’s family, my family, the Ripleyites, the local farmers and tradespeople, and lots of great musicians, who jammed together. We had Jeff Beck, Ronnie Wood, Bill Wyman, Donovan, Robert Plant, Robert Palmer, and Jack Bruce. George, Paul, and Ringo came—for some reason John wasn’t invited, but he said he would have come if he’d been asked, which was sad because if he had, it would have been the first and last time the Beatles played together since the breakup—because the next year he was dead.

  Lonnie Donegan turned up, uninvited, and said, “Where are they all?”

  I took him up to the smallest room in the house where they were smoking joints and said, as I opened the door, “Guess who’s here?”

  They all jumped up and tried to hide the evidence, then George said, “I remember when I was a little boy and I knocked on the door of your house and asked for your autograph,” and Donegan said, “That’s why I’m here. I want it back!”

  Mick Jagger came with Jerry Hall, who had been engaged to Bryan Ferry but had left him for Mick. Moments later Bryan Ferry arrived and asked who was there. When I told him that Mick and Jerry had just arrived, he turned on his heel, jumped into his car, and zoomed off, taking half the drive with him.

  The party started at three or four in the afternoon and went on with people coming and going until morning. We had two marquees, a small one for the children, which was full of toys and games, and another with a dance floor, a stage for the musicians, and loads of guitars. Roger had asked his friends from the East End to come as security, and as Eric was walking down the drive in the middle of it all, out jumped a guy from the bushes with a sawed-off shotgun and aimed it at his head. “I live here,” said Eric indignantly.

  Fireworks began at about midnight. Roger had asked Paines, the manufacturers, to design the display and it was the most amazing fireworks show I have ever seen. Half the village could see them and the noise was loud enough to wake everyone in Surrey. The village policeman was with us (wise move), and when Roger said, “Oh, God, I’m going to get complaints about these fireworks,” he replied, “Fireworks? What fireworks?” He was great. He used to come in for a drink in the early hours of the morning and we’d give him a brandy or two and send him on his way. We never had any trouble.

  By the time Eric and I went upstairs to bed it was daylight. We were ready to drop—but Mick and Jerry were tucked up and fast asleep in our bed, with little Jade, his daughter with Bianca Jagger, sleeping sweetly beside them. Trust Mick to have found the best bed in the house.

  Eric at home in Surrey.

  TWELVE

  Spiraling Out of Control

  One snowy winter’s afternoon when Rob and Myel Fraboni were staying, the doorbell rang. That’s odd, I thought. It was practically dark and the snow was deep on the ground. We were getting stuck into Bloody Marys. The day before, Rob and Myel had arrived from France, laden down with cheese, wine, and chocolates. I had cooked some pheasants and we’d stayed up far too late, drinking and laughing. The next day we were rather hung over, and, after tea and toast, it had seemed to be getting dark again so we moved on to Bloody Marys.

  I opened the door to find a bedraggled Spanish girl standing in the cold. She had fallen over in the snow and torn her jeans. I waited expectantly for her to speak. She explained, in broken English, that she had come to see Eric. “Have you?” I said. This was going to be theater!

  I invited her into the kitchen and called Eric. “There’s a girl here,” I said, “and you must know her because I certainly don’t.”

  Eric was squirming with embarrassment. He had obviously met her on the road and given her his address, then forgotten about her. Her name was Conchita, Little Shell. Rob and Myel looked interested.

  Eric asked if I could lend her something to wear because of the tear in her jeans. I said I was too tall; nothing of mine would fit. So he turned to Myel and she said, “No,” equally firmly. So, still in her torn jeans, this curious little girl began to follow Eric and
Rob into the study. “What on earth’s going on?” asked Myel, and called after Conchita in French. She was in love with Eric, she said, and he had told her she could come to England and stay with him.

  It was ghastly but hysterical. There was no way we could kick her out; it was snowing, she had no money, and Ewhurst is miles from anywhere. She stayed for two days, after which we sent her back to Spain. She continued to write to Eric, telephone, and send Christmas cards, saying she hoped they would see each other in the coming year. In the end I came to feel rather sorry for her.

  If I had expected there to be a change in Eric after our marriage, that he might suddenly, having made vows in church, become faithful, I was to be disappointed. Jenny McLean had been sent packing but I was under no illusion: she would be replaced in the next town or on the next tour. When they were one-night stands, they didn’t threaten our marriage and I could cope.

  What was far more worrying was Eric’s drinking, which got worse and worse. I, too, was drinking far more than was good for me—as Eric cruelly pointed out in the song he wrote called “The Shape You’re In.” But I always felt I was in control and at least I was eating and sleeping normally. Eric wasn’t.

  I felt isolated by his drinking. Alcoholism was taboo in the seventies and eighties and, to begin with, I hadn’t wanted to admit there was a problem, but I knew I couldn’t go on pretending. Anthony Hopkins, who is a recovering alcoholic, kept leaving messages for Eric and asking to meet him. This was what he did, I discovered; he encouraged people he knew were having trouble to come and meet him, but Eric didn’t know Anthony Hopkins so he took no notice. I spoke to a few doctors about it but no one in the medical profession seemed prepared to acknowledge there was a problem. And most people who knew Eric thought it was funny and laughed at the crazy things he did. But it wasn’t funny for me when he climbed onto the roof of the house, or when I had to drive back from Ripley with him sitting on top of me, trying to drive too.

  Guy Pullen, Nigel Carroll, and his wife Jackie came to Spain on holiday with us once. In the mornings I cooked everyone fried eggs for breakfast. One day I didn’t have enough eggs so Eric went to get some and came back saying it had cost him sixty pounds. I said I’d only wanted eggs, but he had found a bottle of vintage port so we had to drink it for breakfast. That same holiday Nigel and Guy went golfing and left Eric passed out in the house, but during their game he woke up and went to look for them—stark naked. At this even Guy recognized that Eric was in trouble. He sat him down one day and told him so. “When the first thing you have in the morning is a packet of cigarettes with a large brandy and lemonade, you have a problem,” said Guy. “Have you never heard of Shredded Wheat?”

  Another year we went on a sailing holiday around the Greek islands with Roger and Annette Forrester and their children. One day we arrived at a little port and spotted Robert Stigwood’s boat Jezebel across the harbor. It was beautiful, built in the 1920s, about 160 feet long with a magnificent clipper bow. We thought we should go and say hello, and Robert invited Eric and me to dinner. The Jezebel had wood paneling in the drawing room and library, and wood fireplaces in both.

  At the end of the evening, instead of allowing Robert’s driver to take us back to our boat, Eric insisted on borrowing the Jezebel’ s Riva, another lovely boat that was used as a tender, and going back across the harbor. We got on and Eric insisted on driving, but he was so drunk that it was careering all over the place. When I tried to take the controls, he wouldn’t let me and there was a bit of a fight. Eventually we made it—goodness knows how—and by some miracle Eric managed to stop without damaging either boat.

  The next bit didn’t go so well. He tried to step from one boat to the other, and when he had a leg in each, the tender pulled away and he fell into the water. The headline flashed before me: “Rock Star Dies.” Eric couldn’t swim under normal circumstances, but he was so drunk that he didn’t even try. He sank like a stone with his arms by his sides. Then his head came up and I yelled, “Give me your arm!” He raised it and I hung on for dear life, but he was heavy, slipping away from me and making no effort to help himself. He went under again, then bobbed up, and I shouted for help as I tried to keep his head above water. Finally someone on our boat heard me and came to the rescue.

  Clearly Eric had nine lives. I can’t remember how many times he crashed his cars and miraculously came out of the wreckage alive. In 1980 he cheated death again, in America. He had just started a forty-five-concert tour and for months beforehand had been complaining about a pain in his back. Other than taking mega-quantities of painkillers, washed down with brandy and lemonade, he had done nothing about it. After the first couple of gigs he was doubled up, and the only thing that kept him going was huge doses of Vega-nin. His condition went downhill so quickly that when they arrived in Minneapolis, Roger took him straight to hospital. When they X-rayed him, they discovered he had five enormous ulcers, one of which was on the point of exploding into his pancreas. The doctors reckoned he was forty-five minutes from death.

  I was at a children’s birthday party when I had a call from Roger: “Come immediately. Eric’s in hospital.”

  For the next few weeks while he was in treatment, Roger and I were stuck in a hotel in Minneapolis with ten feet of snow outside. Minneapolis in winter is not the most exciting place. The lake is frozen and the locals’ idea of fun is to drive a car into the middle and place bets on when it will sink.

  Eric never did anything by halves. If he took up a hobby it became an obsession. Now it was fly-fishing, which he had got into with Gary Brooker, who owned the Parrot at Ockley, a neighboring village pub. Gary was a singer, songwriter, and keyboard player with Procol Harum—his big hit had been “A Whiter Shade of Pale”—and he and Eric had known each other in the sixties. They had found each other again by chance when we wandered into the Parrot for a drink one evening and Gary was behind the bar. From then on Eric and various friends used to play in the pub sometimes and Gary was a regular visitor to Hurtwood Edge, as was Phil Collins, another local musician.

  So when Eric was allowed forays from the Minneapolis hospital during his lengthy stay, he found a fishing shop, bought about twenty-five rods, and practiced casting in the hospital corridors. He also went to visit a fishing friend in Seattle—at which point I went home. While he was there he was involved in yet another accident. The car he was being driven in ran a red light and was hit by a taxi. Eric bruised some ribs, but after a few days the pain was getting worse, so he saw a doctor for painkillers and was told he had pleurisy. He was flown straight back to hospital in Minneapolis, and immediately wrote asking me to join him: “i know it’s hard for you to drop everything and jostle your way through the airports, but that’s what i am asking you to do, you are the only one i can truly rely on for strength and cheer, and you can spend as much money as you like while you wait for me to mend….”

  The day before he was due to go home Roger and I decided to have a word with Eric’s doctor about his drinking. We pleaded with him to tell Eric he mustn’t drink, explained the situation, told him how much he habitually drank, and how worried we were. The doctor told Eric it was fine to have the odd drink, but he wasn’t to drink a whole bottle of brandy. Eric saw this as the green light. He mustn’t drink a whole bottle of brandy…so he switched to whisky.

  There were some frightening moments. We once went to stay with some people in Rutland. One of Eric’s roadies had married into a very grand family and we had been invited to their house for the weekend. We were going to a well-known restaurant for dinner and Eric had tried not to drink all day; he was quite nervous about meeting these people.

  When we arrived at the house, Eric refused a drink and we went to the restaurant—the guy was called Womble and his wife Mia was a duke’s daughter. Her brother and other relatives were joining us for dinner. Eric was sitting on my right, and suddenly, not far into the predinner cocktails, he was shaking and convulsing. I thought he was having a heart attack and about to die. Someone s
aid he was having a fit, so while an ambulance was called, I rang Roger.

  When we arrived at the hospital, the doctor said Eric had had an epileptic fit caused by lack of alcohol. He spent the night in hospital and in the morning Nigel Carroll went to collect him. He never had another epileptic fit but, then, he never went without alcohol in quite that way again.

  Meanwhile, he was straight back to two bottles a day and touring. Roger was so worried about his health that he would bug Eric’s hotel room. He would hide a baby alarm in the bedroom, then he and Alfie would take turns to sit up and listen to make sure he was still breathing. Roger wasn’t a drinker: he was responsible—he had to be, among this huge mob of children that constituted the band. They thought he behaved like a schoolmaster and did terrible things to him, like throwing him fully clothed, briefcase in hand, into a swimming pool, or stealing his new shoes and using them for target practice with their air guns.

  But touring was big money. The ulcer episode had wiped out most of the American tour and cost them forty-two sellout concerts. Roger had to keep them on the road. It was like a military maneuver, organizing the cars, the planes, and the trucks, but in all the years they were together, they only ever missed one show, apart from the ulcer disaster, and that was because of a tornado. Roger hated everyone drinking too much on tour and taking drugs but he was on his own: if the boss partied, the crew partied. Roger’s drug was Valium, which he took on prescription in huge doses—I think it was the only way he could cope with Eric—and thirty cups of coffee a day. So Roger was my ally.