Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me | Pattie Boyd, Penny Junor

Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me | Pattie Boyd, Penny Junor | hard to imagine

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Wonderful Tonight:...

	Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me Pattie Boyd, Penny Junor Harmony, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 240 reviews view larger image
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Wonderful indeed!

As a woman of the same age as Pattie Boyd, I was quite excited to read her story. I think most of us in the Beatle Generation have had some questions about her life. She answers these quite well, and kindly, especially considering the difficulties of fame, along with relational problems associated with substance abuse. Of course, in common with folks in other substance abusing families, she really was less in control of things than she later realized she needed to be. She also inspired two of the most acclaimed musicians of our times. I sense her extraordinary strengths, and her resiliency, partly due to her upbringing in Africa. However, she also shares her vulnerabilities with us, which is courageous. I was especially intrigued by the way she explained why she ended up leaving George, and how with the wisdom gained by time and experience, she actually realized later how she might have handled their problems in a better way and they might have grown together as a couple. Despite the problems in their marriage, he is the one she remembers with the most love. For those who are disappointed in some aspect of the story, either the writing style, or what she chose to report, remember, she didn't need to write this book. It is a personal perspective on some of the charm and tragedy in the lives of several extraordinary, famous people, as well as a journal about one woman's journey of self-discovery while surviving relationships which included substance and domestic abuse. This woman clearly has a knack for making and keeping friends, and she surely has some interesting stories to tell. I think I would like knowing her in person. Best wishes to you, Ms. Boyd, and I hope you make even more of your dreams come true.

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hard to imagine

incredible story, well written and almost impossible to believe if it were not true. sheds light on the wild time of late 60's / 70's

Very sweet.

I loved it. Ms. Boyd comes across as very sincere and very sweet. I am glad she took the time to share wtih us. I adore the 60s. I love to visit through the eyes of those who lived the 60s who have keen powers of observation and sincerity in their writing. Ms. Boyd seems like a very nice and dear lady.

Fascinating life story, poorly told

Pattie Boyd was a successful model in the 1960s whose main claim to fame is that she was married to George Harrison and then Eric Clapton. Her autobiography is both easy to read and very interesting - particularly the first half when she is with George. The second half of the book gets increasingly disjointed as she and Eric lurch from one drunken episode to another.

Pattie grew up in Kenya and went to boarding school. When she came home at the end of term, her father was gone and her mother introduced her to a stranger with the words "meet your new father". Not surprisingly, she went on to have unhappy relationships with all the men that she was involved with. She met George when she was given a small part in a Beatles movie and they immediately fell in love. She paints an intriguing portrait of life with the Beatles. Brian Epstein took control of all their affairs, so for example they would go on holiday and arrive having no idea where they were staying or what they'd be doing. Another time they all ate out in restaurant and no one had any money for the bill, as they had never had to pay before.

As I read the book I got frustrated because Pattie never gives you much sense of what people were like. Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull were ever-present in the 60s, but there's no sense of what kind of people they are. She and George met Frank Sinatra: we learn that he drove a limo but not what they talked about. Joni Mitchell is described as "great fun" - why? I've no idea. Even the other Beatles are only described in very cursory ways: John's indifference to Cynthia and Paul's interest in business being dominant themes. And when Eric Clapton appears, it is near-impossible to say what Pattie ever saw in him, other than that he was interested in her when her ego was badly bruised by George's infidelities and religious obsession. I couldn't help feeling that a better co-writer might have drawn more out of her and not let her get away with such a topline account.

The book jumps around all over the place and it's very hard to get a sense of when things actually happened. For example, at one stage she refers to an event being 3 years ago, when the dates that she gives mean that it could only have been 12 months earlier. So you are always trying to work out how different pieces fit together. At another stage Pattie refers to the fact that of course she is painfully shy - not something that has been evident up until that point. The book badly needed more structure.

The epilogue is quite interesting. Pattie talks about the way that her childhood and modeling career ate away at her self-esteem and how she perceives that affected the choices that she made in her relationships. It would have been nice if she had put herself under more self-scrutiny throughout the book. There were all kinds of little things that I wanted to call her out on - the way that she said she would never have an affair with a married man but somehow it was okay to sleep with Eric Clapton when he was dating her sister. Or her belief that Eric's heroin addiction was "because of her" and that she should leave her husband because she owed Eric for the hell that he went through. It's an interesting book, but its flaws mean that it was only a three star read for me.

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Worth the read for nostalgia alone but short on insight

This woman has an interesting, no fascinating story to tell. Fortunately curiosity is enough to make you keep reading even though the writing is really not good. Pattie Boyd was a model, the wife of two famous rock stars, and is now a successful photographer. She never claimed to be a writer. Presumably this is why she used a coauthor. But that coauthor really did not do well by her.

The story is often disjointed and comes across as stream-of-conscience with no real structure except that it follows a rough chronological order. Often it's hard to tell why one thing leads to another. We never really know what Ms. Boyd thought while some of these amazing things were happening. She just tells the story with very little analysis. We don't ever get to understand what she was going through with the breakup of her first marriage or the abuse in her second. She does give some thoughts and reflections in the last chapter of the book but it is not enough. In the end it makes her seem shallow, which I'm sure she is not. I imagine she purposely withheld a lot of details to protect the reputations of these two beloved rock icons. That's understandable. She obviously loved both of them. However, she could have benefited greatly by having a more talented writer coax more of her feelings and reactions from her and help her tell a more cohesive story.

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