Pattie Boyd Harrison Clapton – possibly the most written-about woman in all of rock.
As recorded above, Pattie became the third Beatle Wife on January 21, 1966, two years into their relationship. In the interim, George became the second Beatle to write a song directly to his partner: “I Need You”, on the album Help! 14
“I Need You” was George’s second successful songwriting effort for the band (the first was “Don’t Bother Me”, from With the Beatles). John gave him a hand with it, working on the song at John’s Weybridge home on the day of Ringo and Maureen’s wedding – February 11, 1965.
There are two interesting things going on in the song. The first is George holding Pattie up as his shelter in the storm, against the exhausting onslaught of Beatlemania, which he more than the others found intolerable. The second is found in lyrics that subtly refer to a brief separation between the two, before the song was written:
Oh, yes, you told me
You don't want my lovin' any more
Please come on back to me
I'm lonely as can be
Pattie had left George briefly because she was fed up with the band’s endless roiling ocean of female fans.15
Next came “If I Needed Someone”, which George produced for Rubber Soul. George wrote the song for Pattie, though it reads as unsettlingly ambiguous:
Carve your number on my wall
And maybe you will get a call from me
Had you come some other day
Then it might not have been like this
Somewhat patronizing in tone, he’s sounding like a true Liverpudlian man of his times. But next comes:
But you see now I'm too much in love
Tim Riley calls the song “qualified flirtation.”
“It’s All Too Much”, from the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine, was inspired by George’s first acid trip in March 1965, an experience he shared with Pattie and the other Beatles and their wives. Though he includes the line, With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue, nominally a reference to Pattie, that line in fact occurs in the McCoys tune “Sorrow”.
“For You Blue” was the last Beatles song released that Pattie inspired, but was in fact recorded earlier, during the January 1969 Get Back sessions that became the belated swansong album Let It Be. An unlikely country-blues tune with an exuberant tone, it unabashedly declares George’s love for Pattie:
Because you're sweet and lovely, girl, I love you
Because you're sweet and lovely, girl, it's true
I love you more than ever, girl, I do
I want you in the morning, girl, I love you
I want you at the moment I feel blue
I'm living every moment, girl, for you
Beatles musicologist Alan Pollack describes the song as “unusually unmuddled romantic euphoria.”
Finally, there “Something”, George’s uncontested masterpiece, and the second-most-covered song in the Beatles catalog (behind “Yesterday”).16
Though George was noncommittal in interviews about his inspiration for the song, Pattie wrote in her autobiography that “he told me in a matter-of-fact way that he had written it for me. I thought it was beautiful and it turned out to be the most successful song he ever wrote.”17
Beautiful, certainly. It’s impossible not to think so...
Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
Something in the way she woos me
I don't want to leave her now
You know I believe and how
Something in the way she knows
And all I have to do is think of her
Something in the things she shows me
I don't want to leave her now
You know I believe and how
And then there’s Eric Clapton.
The legendary blues/rock guitarist, called “God” by his millions of fans, met George in 1964 and their friendship culminated in his signature work on George’s White Album gem, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” - a Beatles first. Eric would go on to form Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos before launching a decades-long solo career as one of rock’s true masters. And his friendship with George persisted through the latter’s death in 2001.18
After his White Album appearance, Eric took notice of Pattie – and sent her a letter, signed “E”, in hopes of beginning a relationship with her. By this time, her marriage to George had begun to fray, and she later confessed to being “intrigued.” Eric’s pursuit of her became obsessive, and by the time the Beatles were truly over – December 31, 1970, when their legal partnership was dissolved – he had written his passion for her into song, with no less than four Pattie-inspired tracks on his Derek and the Dominos supergroup album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
“Layla”, the title track, is a sonic and lyrical maelstrom of emotional torment.19 It is Clapton prostrate for all the world to see:
Let's make the best of the situation
Before I finally go insane
Please don't say I'll never find a way
And tell me all my love's in vain
Layla, you've got me on my knees
Layla, I'm begging, darling please
Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind
The inspiration for “Bell Bottom Blues” can be taken at face value: Pattie asked Eric to bring her a pair of bell bottom jeans from the United States, and this is what popped out:
Do you want to see me crawl across the floor to you
Do you want to hear me beg you to take me back
I'd gladly do it because I don't want to fade away
Give me one more day, please
I don't want to fade away
In your heart I want to stay
Not far afield of the sentiments of “Layla”; emotional torment, indulged to the fullest.
Lesser known are “Why Has Love Got to Be So Sad” and “I Looked Away”.
From the former:
Got to find me a way
To take me back to yesterday
How can I ever hope to forget you?
Won’t you show me a place
Where I can hide my lonely face?
I know you’re going to break my heart if I let you
Why does love got to be so sad?
And from the latter (the album’s opening track):
It came as no surprise to me
That she'd leave me in misery
It seemed like only yesterday
She made a vow that she'd never walk away
She took my hand
To try to make me understand
That she would always be there
But I looked away
And she ran away from me today
I'm such a lonely man
No question, Eric was one messed-up guy that year.
How did Pattie feel about being the object of this torrent of romantic angst?
She and Eric had a secret meeting at a South Kensington flat in London where the Dominos had moved. He played the newly-recorded “Layla” for her, several times, on a tape machine. She thought the song was “the most powerful, moving song I had ever heard.”
At the same time, she thought, “Oh, god, everyone’s going to know who this is. I felt uncomfortable that he was pushing me in a direction I wasn’t certain I wanted to go. But the song got the better of me, with the realization that I had inspired such passion and such creativity. I could resist no longer.”
And then Eric gave her a “Something” - a timeless romantic ballad that would become an instant classic:
“Wonderful Tonight”.20
We go to a party
And every one turns to see
This beautiful lady
Who's walking around with me
And then she asks me
"Do you feel all right?"
And I say, "Yes, I feel wonderful tonight"
I feel wonderful because I see the love light in your eyes
Then the wonder of it all is that you just don't realize
How much I love you...
This one was as literal as could be. “One night, Eric and I were going out, but I couldn’t decide what to wear. I was taking a very long time to do my makeup and hair, putting on one dress, then another and another, throwing them all in a pile on the floor. Poor Eric had been ready for hours and was waiting patiently. He was so sweet – at least in the early days.
“When I finally got downstairs and asked the inevitable question, ‘Do I look all right?’, he played me what he’d written:
It’s late in the evening
She’s wondering what clothes to wear
She puts on her makeup and brushes her long blonde hair
And then she asks me, ‘Do I look all right?’
And I say, ‘Yes, you look wonderful tonight...’
“It was such a simple song,” she wrote in her autobiography (which was titled after that song), “but so beautiful and for years it tore at me.”
Putting it all together as she looked back on those years of her life, she wrote, “To have inspired Eric, and George before him, to write such music was so flattering. Yet I came to believe that although something about me might have made them put pen to paper, it was really all about them. And I think the depressions they suffered were to do with the creative process – the need that all creative people have to delve deep inside themselves to bring to the surface whatever they’re creating.”
Comments