I, Dynamo

Pattie & George

A Review

Wonderful Tonight:

George Harrison, Eric Clapton, And Me

by

Pattie Boyd

I of II

Review by R.E. Prindle

Boyd, Pattie: Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, And Me, Three Rivers Press, 2007

I don’t believe in boogie bars,

Macro biotics or souped up cars.

I don’t believe the price of gold;

The certainty of growing old,

But, I believe in you.

–Don Williams.

     Perhaps it’s because I lived through the era experiencing what I did and vicariously the rest that I was thoroughly charmed by Pattie’s autobiography.  I hope I will be excused for calling Pattie by her first name throughout but Boyd sounds so brutally unisexual eliminating amything but female sexual aspects that it doesn’t  seem fitting and I don’t wish to sound formal otherwise.

     This part of the review will cover pretty much Chapter 3: Modeling, 4: George and 5:  Mrs Harrison.  The chapters brought back the glittering memories of the sixties, memories created more by magazines and television shows than reality for most people but perhaps more or less real for some.  If it wasn’t real for Pattie than it probably wasn’t real for anyone.  But then it’s hard to tell where you are at any given moment in time.

     She was there in what was called ‘Swinging London’ at the time.  From a distance it was just dazzling.  We were entranced by the possibility.  As the late great Roger Miller put it:  London swings like a pendulum do.  By the time I got there in the seventies the pendulum was stationary.  Pattie herself began life as a hair stylist but in a top notch salon.  While there she was given an intro to a modeling firm and was lucky enough to catch on.  From the looks of the photos whe was in the Twiggy line.  She could have become a high fashion queen.

     And London was a place where staying on top of fashion was a full time job.  The scene was perhaps best captured by Ray Davies and the Kinks  in their song: Dedicated Follower Of Fashion.  If memory serves it was written about Marc Bolan.

…his clothes are loud but never square

It will make him or break him

So he’s got to buy the best

‘Cos He’s a dedicated follower of fashion.

He does his little rounds

Amongst the boutiques of London Town

Eagerly pursuing all the lates fads and fashions.

     Pattie was in the thick of it mentioning the people she associated with,  mere names to us, like Ossie Clarke, Twiggy, Mary Quant, David Hockley, photographers, artists, fashion designers who  were realities to her although the glitter is brighter than the shabby fabric beneath.  But then, how else could it be?

     One feels envy at her luck.  I was on the West Coast viewing it all from a distance with wonder, but owning a record store.  By the time I got to London in the early seventies the swing had swung.  Carnaby St. was deserted when I strolled down it all alone past the shops empty of customers.  What sounded so good in song looked effete in reality.  Of course I was straight Beverly Hills, dressed completely Eric Ross, quite a standout, but strange and exotic to Londoners.

     Oh well, there were always the great book stores.

     Pattie had begun her career as a fashion mdoel when she received a call to appear on the set of the Beatles movie in progress, A Hard Day’s Night.  I suspect that George Harrison had seen her about town and requested her by name, only a guess, but he certainly glommed on to her when she arrived.  Honorable intentions too.  The couple got together and it was on.  Thus she entered the charmed circle of the Beatles.  You couldn’t get no higher.

     The Beatles?  Who cared really? other than the millions.  Whatever was happening there passed me flatter than the Grateful Dead, and that’s flat.  I was cool to both the Beatles and the Stones.  I wasn’t really a dedicated fan of anybody; I liked certain records- Superlungs by Terry Reid.  The first Jeff Beck with Rod Stewart when he still had intact pipes, the second with Bob Tench  wasn’t bad either, lousy cover.  Beck  apparently hated vocalists because he played so loud, on purpose, I was backstage once and watched him do it, that he blew out their pipes.  Donovan’s Sunshine Superman was tops, Procol Harum’s first, Alan Price’s This Price Is Right, stuff like that. Dillard and Clark, Flying Burrito Brothers’ White Line Fever, some Johnny Rivers.  Nice stuff.  Two or three Byrds.

     But, the Beatles were gods and here were George Harrison and Pattie Boyd trying to fashion a normal lower middle class life in a hundred room mansion.  The Beverly Hillbillies in London.  Good luck boy and girl.  And that was not taking into account drugs.  Pattie’s story of the maniac dentist sends a chill through the marrow; a real demon dentist, the Sweeny Todd of the profession.  Lord, deliver us from evil.  It was he who introduced Pattie and Harrison to LSD, surreptitiously of course.  Spiked their coffee just as they were about to leave his house.

     Then the stuff came on, a little like the Airplane’s song, White Rabbitt- one side makes you larger, one side makes you smaller.  Pardon me for writing myself into the story but the pen is in my hand:

     Happened to me once.  I was down in Berkeley at what was supposed to be a party.  Pot parties in that time and place meant everyone sat around self-absorbed looking out vaguely at what could possibly have been you, or possibly just empty space.   This particular set played draggy jazz so possibly they weren’t even looking out, their eyes were just open.  As I was to learn  it wasn’t pot.  I had never smoked before anyway.  Nobody could have ever been busted for whatever it was I smoked.   Nothing was happening except the draggy jazz, maybe John Coltrane going around in fifths, and I was getting bored so I said I was leaving.  As with the dentist of Pattie’s experience I was abjured not to leave.  I never knew really what it was until I read Pattie’s story.  It hit me a couple blocks down the street. The  ‘tobacco’ must have been laced with acid.

     Getting out of the maze of streets of Berkeley always required a little concentration on my part anyway and now I didn’t have any.  I didn’t even know where I was or where I was going.  Fortunately for me the car drove itself.  I did have to keep my hands on the wheel though it wasn’t always uppermost in my mind.  The car did strange things when I took my hands off the wheel, wandering here and there.  A voice spoke saying:  Keep your hands on the wheel.

     The car found its way to the MacArthur Freeway which, although it was a road I knew by heart I couldn’t recognize.  Plus everything had turned a shiny patent leather black, the highway just glittered and shown so.  Colors had disappeared; the lights of the cars shot through my eyes to the back of my brain.  They were all driving very slowly it seemed but passed me going very fast.  Of course I was driving about twenty-five per which was as much as I could handle.  I got in the slow lane.  A good thing because it seemed like I was going around this curve for twenty-five minutes.  Everytime I looked it seemed like I was in the same place.  I decided to put my foot back  on the gas.

     The next problem was that the sky and highway were bonded together.  Fortunately the car was able to separate them and they moved apart before us- the car and me.

     My next big problem, after a seeming eternity, was that in order to make a left exit to Castro Valley I had to cross three lanes dotted with cars moving at varying speeds in different lanes.  I had to time it just right to get in between cars in two different lanes.  Sort of a Rubiks Cube kind of problem.  While I was dithering my car changed lanes for me and I was on the off ramp with a smile.

     An underpass lay before me where the most miraculous event in my life took place.  As I began to enter the underpass this set of ram’s horns, you know, like a male sheep, began to grow from my forehead.  Great white curling things they were, magnificent.  It was at that moment I realized I was Master Of The World.  Just as I was about to assume the mantle I came out the other side losing my spectacular rack and my crown.  While I was pondering the imponderable my car finding its way back gliding noiselessly up the street into the driveway where it pertly came to a halt.  Heaving a sigh of relief I got out and entered the house.

     I don’t know what I looked like, perhaps fierce because of the loss of my horns, but my wife and mother-in-law seemed to run from me.  Entering the kitchen I saw my brother-in-law about to have some tacos he’d cooked up.  The guy was a wizard with hamburger; he could do things with hamburger than no chef had ever done.  I had issues with him which I won’t go into.  When I saw the tacos I became ravenous and wanted them.  He was experienced.  He took one look at me and realized the situation his hand stopping before his open mouth.

     I didn’t hesitate, I remembered being Master Of The World.  I snatched his tacos from his hands saying:  I want those.  He was knowing.  He made no resistance, just said, sure.  Smart move because I wouldn’t have taken no for an answer while still feeling superhuman.  I wolfed those suckers down; best tacos I ever ate.  But now there were fireworks going off in my head.  I got in bed and watched the light show going off behind my closed eyes for a couple hours.  I woke up grouchy and ragged.  I took care in the future to make sure that never happened again.  Wherever I had been I didn’t want to go back.  I sure missed those horns though.

     Apparently Harrison and his band mates liked it going back repeatedly.  But then Pattie discovered that old fraud the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and his Transcendental Meditation.  What a fraud.  She turned Harrison on and the band followed.  First it was Bangor, Wales and then on to the big temple in the Himalayas of India.

The Cosmic Joker

     There are many wondrous stories of their Indian sojourn at the ashram.  The upshot was that the holy man liked girls as much, perhaps more, than the rest of the fellows.  This tore a rent in his spirituality and disillusioned the group who left in a huff.

     Pattie does tell a good story about Ringo who was wary of spicy Indian food having had digestive problems as a youth.  He took along a suitcase full of Heinz Baked Beans.  Imagine going through customs with that.  Imagine watching the guy in front of you opening a suitcase full of  cans of Heinz Baked Beans.  US Customs would have made him open each can on the spot.  I’d be laughing yet.

     After their marriage George wanted her to give up the job of modeling.  she had regrets but as far as modeling went she was getting old.  Younger women were pushing up.  The Twiggy look was dated from the start anyway.  She might have been near the end of her career whether she liked it or not.

Mick & Marianne

      Couple intesting points before this idylic phase of  her life and life with George Harrison ended.  Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull came to their house one night.  Jagger wrote on the Harrison’s wall:  Mick and Marianne were here.  Strange action for guests.  The only thing I can figure is that Mick was marking out the limits of  his territory like one of the big cats who go around peeing on bushes to set up their territory.   As a Beatle and tops of the pop world it was incumbent on each Beatle to establish their priority, their dominance over the lesser princes.  When Mick wrote that on Harrison’s wall without demurrer he was establishing  dominance over his superior.  Eric Clapton would later do the same when he took Harrison’s wife while defeating him, as some say, in a guitar duel.

     If you watched the 2009 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame show you saw Jagger and Bono dueling it out for the crown.  A very haughty Jagger beat Bono into absolute submission having him groveling before himself worse than Obama before the Emperor of Japan.  Jagger was so taut that after he flipped off Bono he almost dismissed the audience but then caught himself and gave a dismissive back hand wave in acknowledgment.   That was somethin’ else man.

     Jagger as leader of the Rolling Stones also foisted Allen Klein on the Beatles also demonstrating the priority of the Stones over the Beatles.  And lastly Jagger, how shall I say, induced Bob Dylan to open a show for the Stones placing Dylan therefore beneath the Stones.  I would have to say that the Stones have finished as the undisputed Kings of Rock of Roll.  There’s always more going on than you think.

     And then Pattie and Harrison were in attendance at the famous first drug bust of Jagger, Richards and Marianne Faithfull.  As Pattie tells it she and her husband left the party at 3:00 AM.  Immediately after they left the police raided.  She believes the fuzz waited until they left as they were Beatles.  The Beatles were thought of as clean at that time while the Stones and Marianne were monsters.  She may be right.  If the type of glamour achieved by the Beatles and Stones was new to them and difficult to manage perhaps the same was true of society.  The Phenomenon of the British Invasion was so spectacular that you just had to stand back and ask:  What’s this?  So maybe the cops did honor The Top Of The Pops.

     Whether she was slapping back at Mick for writing on her wall by the observation I can’t tell although both stories found a prominent place in her narrative.  High school never ends.

     The contest for her favors by Harrison and Clapton is very complex, a lot of psychology involved.  I’ll have to work on it some but that will be covered in my review of the second half of the book to follow.

    https://idynamo.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/a-review-ii-of-ii-wonderful-tonight-by-pattie-boyd/