Layla Lady Layla
You'll try, but you won't be able to look away from the excerpts of Pattie Boyd's forthcoming autobiography, Wonderful Tonight, that appeared in Monday's Daily Mail. (For some strange reason perhaps involving copyright laws, Boyd's book is titled Wonderful Today in the UK.) In "My Hellish Love Triangle With George and Eric," the former Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Clapton recounts the druggy but otherwise fairly banal circumstances that led to her leaving George for Eric. My favorite part describes a guitar duel Harrison sets up to shame Clapton, or something:
One evening the actor John Hurt was with us. Eric was due to come over too and George decided to have it out with him. John wanted to make himself scarce but George insisted he stay.John remembers George coming downstairs with two guitars and two small amplifiers, laying them down in the hall, then pacing restlessly until Eric arrived - full of brandy, as usual.
As Eric walked through the door George handed him a guitar and amp - as an 18th Century gentleman might have handed his rival a sword - and for two hours, without a word, they duelled. The air was electric and the music exciting.
At the end, nothing was said but the general feeling was that Eric had won. He hadn't allowed himself to get riled or to go in for instrumental gymnastics as George had. Even when he was drunk, his guitar-playing was unbeatable.
Boyd inspired Harrison's most successful song, "Something," which Frank Sinatra deemed the greatest love song ever. But Clapton raised the stakes with "Layla," which he wrote while living with Boyd's sister. Boyd eventually succumbed to Clapton's "intoxicating, overpowering" passion after Harrison fell in love with Ringo's wife, Maureen. The whole sodden mess makes me almost sorry I missed "The Beatles' Women," which premiered Wednesday on A&E's "Biography." But I'm sure it will be back.