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The Soundtrack to My Life

POSTED:Mon, August 11, 2008 @ 9:53PM

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Pattie Boyd’s Rock and Roll Fairy Tale

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Imagine being at the center of a real-life fairy tale—you fall in love with and marry a prince and lead a magical life, just like a story from a brother Grimm, but also, just as in the story, it comes with a dark side.

I just finished reading Pattie Boyd’s autobiography, Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me. Boyd tells her life story, beginning with her childhood in Africa, modeling in England in the sixties, and her marriages to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton.

Boyd’s tales of the African desert are interesting, but what fascinated me was her life with Harrison and the Beatles, and later on, her often volatile relationship with Clapton.

Boyd met Harrison after he and the Beatles were so famous that, when they would play concerts, they couldn’t hear themselves over the screams from their fans. At the time, she was a very famous model, working with many big names in the industry and being featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair magazines, among many others. She was offered a role in the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, playing the part of a schoolgirl.

Harrison and Boyd fell in love and got married a few years after their initial meeting. Boyd was not allowed to go with Harrison into the studio or on tour (as short-lived as the touring was) with the Beatles. However, she did accompany George on many foreign vacations with the Beatles, including the famous trip to India to learn about transcendental meditation from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who taught them all how to achieve enlightenment through meditation.

It was during this trip that the Beatles wrote many of their famous songs—including “Dear Prudence,” which John Lennon wrote about Prudence Farrow, sister of Mia Farrow, who had locked herself in a room for days, attempting to reach God by mediating. The boys would sit outside her door and sing “Dear Prudence,” persuading her to “come out and play.”

Boyd motivated both Harrison and Clapton to be the inspiration behind their most famous songs. Harrison wrote “Something” about her, which was released as the first A-side single from the White Album.

While Boyd was married to Harrison, Clapton was busy pursuing her, penning the songs “Layla” and “Bell Bottom Blues.” The name “Layla” came from a book titled The Story of Layla and Majnun about a man who falls in love with a woman who loves him but is unavailable. Clapton played the song for her a few times, each time watching her face for a reaction. It was his way of telling her he was madly in love with her.

Eventually, Boyd left Harrison, unable to deal with his infidelities, and went directly into the arms of Clapton. She had many wonderfully happy times with Clapton, but his drug and alcohol abuse ultimately put a damper on their relationship. She finally left him after she found out that he had gotten another woman pregnant while he was still married to her.

Boyd’s story is one of adventure, love, fortune, and anguish—she had many highs and lows as a model and the wife of two of the most musically creative men in history. She lived in castles and threw the most wondrous parties with famous models, actors, and musicians in attendance. She took lavish vacations to secluded exotic islands in the arms of her love, while at the same time, became the muse behind the most famous songs being projected on the radio.

Wonderful Tonight captures the essence of the sixties counterculture of peace, love, and freedom, as well as the drug-induced seventies and eighties through Boyd’s inner-circle stories and memories of a time gone by. When the relationships were shattered, Boyd had to learn how to live on her own and conquer her inner demons—left only with memories to last a lifetime.

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