Guest Book Review - Clapton Style
From one of our sister sites, Mooey has posted a good review of Wonderful Tonight a biography of the woman at the center of the George Harrison/Eric Clapton love triangle. We are always hurting for book reviews over here and Mooey “plows through” books, so I decided to pinch this one. (Many our writers have yet to learn how to read). The review and a link to Mooey’s site after the jump!
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Wonderful Tonight
In high school, I was in a musical performing group. There were probably about 40 kids who sang and danced and then another 10 who made up the instrumental section (brass, drums, guitars, and keyboard). I played the keyboard. One of the guitarists was extremely talented–sort of an “eric clapton” musical genius on the guitar. I remember giving him a huge book on Clapton for Christmas one year. During the school year, our group would do a few concerts and the kids could sign up to sing solos. My musical genius friend would take their cds/tapes, listen to them, and then come back to the band and give us all the chords and we’d accompany the singers. Every now and then he’d also do a solo…did I mention that he could sing beautifully? Anyway, he introduced me to a lot of songs which to this day I love–one of them was “Wonderful Tonight”. One afternoon while they were practicing it…I jokingly (some might say obnoxiously) told them it sounded like they were singing about me (long blond hair…beautiful…etc…etc…you get the picture right?). If you haven’t heard it, go listen to it…you’ll get a good laugh. Anyway, when it came concert time, he got up there and before singing–he dedicated it to me. I remember standing in the back by the keyboard, being only slightly mortified. The song was just to good to be sidetracked by a little dedication 
So when I went took the kids to the library this week (I know…I know….Mother of the year right??? seeing as how we only seem to go once a year…) I went and browsed the popular book section and saw the book “Wonderful Tonight, George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Me” by Patti Boyd.
I remembered that my musical genius friend had told me about the love triangle between George Harrison’s wife and Eric Clapton (George and Eric were best friends…doesn’t this sound crazy????) anyway I was hooked and plowed through it in two nights. It was as insane as it promised to be–aside from the drug use, and mega-affairs–the music history was incredible and she ended up becoming a photographer. She had great pictures in the book and it was just incredible to put history with songs. One of my favorite Beatles’ song “Something” was written by George for her; and of course “Layla” was the first one Eric wrote for her and then “Wonderful Tonight”. Highly recommended…
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Comments
I have wanted to read this for a long while… I read a long article on her life and an interview she gave 30 something years after everything went down. She is incredibly interesting.
For a shorter version (you’ll miss out on all the affairs, drugs and big name dropping check out wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattie_Boyd
very very interesting…afterwards though, you realize she did a lot lot lot of drugs too ’cause you kinda feel like somehow they rubbed off on you because she was very “mellow” writing about all the affairs her “hubbys” had…
And fritop–the guy who dedicated it is probably some evangelical minister now…he went very very religious after that sophomore year
I read an article recently, perhaps part of that interview trn mentions…sounds like a good read.
I remember the dedication, seriously, I was there. And I’m sure we could find it on someone’s parents videotapes from high school.
I was there that night, I remember. Isn’t your friend still playing in Phoenix somewhere, Tai-Pan used to know. He wrote a Jazz essay for me about them because I wasn’t old enough to get into the joint at the time.