Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me by Pattie Boyd, Penny Junor Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me
Book Review: Pattie has maintained her silence
Summary: 2 Stars
I am a huge fan of the Beatles and George Harrison and eagerly anticipated this book. It was not worth the wait. It is poorly written and glosses over all of the Beatle years for someone who saw them from the inside. There is nothing new to be learned here that one would not already know if they had read the Anthology, Shout or any of the other better known books on the Beatles. There are many egregious factual errors, such as when the Beatles stop touring (1967!?), that the Mahareshi made a pass at Mia Farrow, John writing a line in "I am the Walrus" in 1967 to insult someone for an event which took place in 1969, etc. People will be mentioned with no explanation as to who they are. A chapter may include one event for the year and then an entire year will go by with nothing at all - and these are years at the height of Beatlemania! 1966 is not mentioned at all except for George and Pattie's wedding. At least eighty percent of the photographs in the book I have seen before in at least one other source. I didn't not expect all the dirty laundry to be aired, but thought it would be fascinating to learn about life from inside the Beatles inner circle, not a retelling of what has been told in so many books before. As far as I am concerned, Pattie has maintained her silence, at least as far as life with the Beatles is concerned, as nothing new is culled here. I cannot speak for the Clapton fans, as I did not buy the book for that reason, and stop reading after Pattie left George as I purchased it for the Beatles story and could no longer stand to read any further.Book Review: Badly written, certainly not wonderful
Summary: 2 Stars
This book -- "Wonderful Tonight" in America, "Wonderful Today" in the UK -- is really poor, and a huge disappointment since it's taken so long for Pattie Boyd to break her media silence regarding her marriages to not one, but two major rock icons.
Rambling, badly written, poorly edited, chronologically a total mess, it has more than its fair share of standout errors: watching "Monty Python" at home in the mid-Sixties (it didn't reach TV screens until the end of 1969); George away on tour in February 1967 (after already stating that The Beatles had permanently quit the road in August 1966); and my favorite -- after the 1969 drug busts of John, Yoko, George and Pattie, John somehow immortalizing Scotland Yard's Sgt. Pilcher as "semolina pilchard" (in "I Am the Walrus", recorded two years earlier). Maybe Pattie can be excused these and other goofs on the basis of the saying: "If you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there." However, the same can't be said for either her "co-author" or "fact checker". And I say this as a celebrity author/co-author who is frequently relied upon to not only ask the right questions and capture the subject's voice, but also have in-depth knowledge about -- and do extensive research into -- whatever I'm writing about. That clearly hasn't been the case with this project.
Indeed, the worst thing about it is that this book contains virtually nothing new. Events are reported (and more are omitted), but we get little idea as to what the subject or anyone else was feeling deep down, how they related to one another or what really motivated them. Accordingly, the two big relationships that are meant to sell this bio -- especially the one with George -- are essentially glossed over, and for me that makes the end result nearly as depressing as the marriages themselves.
Book Review: Pattie Boyd is lovely but the book could have been better written..
Summary: 3 Stars
Pattie Boyd was the quintessential 60's female icon and I, along with all of my friends wanted to copy her style.I have often wondered about Pattie Boyd and what her life had been like married to George Harrison and living in the thick of Beatlemania and beyond. But this book,just skims the surface of those years--in terms of information, writing style and depth. The same stories that have been written in many books are here and yet, Pattie doesn't really dig deep and give the readers any personal insight or her opinion about the major Beatle players or events. Perhaps it's because some of them (Paul,Ringo,Cynthia,Yoko,etc.) are still alive. So, the book feels like Pattie Boyd is holding back and underneath this bio-lite is probably a deeper richer story. For example, one chapter ends with the wedding to George Harrison in Jan. of 1966--the next chapter starts with 1967! What happened in 1966? The story of her life with Eric Clapton is a nightmare and here she opens up a bit more about this passage of her life. But even there she seems restrainted (in her writing) when she should have really let go! I think that Bob Dylan's bio (Cronicles:vol one) is probably the best biography written to date of someone from that era. He really raised the bar and it's hard to top that book! Well, the final word is that Pattie Boyd lived one hell of a life-- but not all as happy as we may have imagined. And one more person burned by being too close to the flame of the Beatles. Book Review: My Husbands and Me
Summary: 4 Stars
Pattie Boyd married two of the 60's English rock star icons, George Harrison and Eric Clapton. Without those marriages, she would still be a person of interest to the reader. With those marriages, a life-on-fire love triangle ensued as Eric Clapton pined for the wife of one his best friends (and poured out his torment in "Layla"). Eric Clapton does not come off well with his obsession for Ms. Boyd while George Harrison is more endearing. The story is interesting though it could have used more editing. Overall a book worth reading for music fans of the 1960's.Book Review: I'll try to be kind...
Summary: 2 Stars
I read Pattie's book because I was a fourteen-year-old Beatlemaniac when she married George Harrison (she broke my best friend's heart that day) and I was curious to see what light a true insider to the golden circle could shed on those amazing years in the sixties. Unfortunately, my expectations must have been way too high... or something. Pattie is almost unbelievably lacking in intropsection, and without that ability, we have only her corporeal presence in those historic days, and she is therefore unable to share more than dry facts such as: who wore what, and who drank what, and who snorted what, and where they did it.
I agree that some of the chronology should have been corrected before publication. We hear that Pattie's family moves into a house when she is 14, and much later her grandfather dies while they are living there, but now Pattie is 13? A minor discrepency, but it makes one wonder how carefully all this was remembered and recorded.
It was so confusing to hear about Pattie's first meeting with George and then skip right over the wedding and into the next year. Was there really nothing to share about the way she felt when she said "I do" to one of the most famous men in the world at that time? What happened to the honeymoon about which she has been quoted as saying was one of the happiest times of her life?
Some of the rest of what I've read so far (over half the book) is jerky and jumbled. I can't seem to keep it straight where they are living and what is going on with the group (or with their marriage) at what time. Boyd and Harrison are madly in love and having the time of their lives and the next sentence obviously jumps us years ahead as George tells Eric he'll trade her for Eric's girlfriend. Then the co-authors stop skipping and jumping around long enough to list in agonizing detail all the places the Harrisons went to eat or drink and who went with them, without really personalizing it or giving us an interesting angle on why we're hearing this. As a matter of fact, most of the first half of the book is completely impersonal and we are reminded of Pattie's lack of any insight. I finally put it down last night and picked up a thriller to clear my head.
Overall I think Pattie is one of those women who, like Napoleon's Josephine, and the Sun King's Madame Pompadour, has been a fitting consort to a high profile kind of guy (actually, like Cleopatra, it's been with TWO guys), but as with Josephine who had bad teeth, and Cleopatra who was said to be physically unattractive, and Madame Pompadour who stank to high heaven, Pattie has a fault that was obviously not intrusive enough to counter-affect her legendary appeal: she is unabashedly shallow and comes across much better in photos than in writing. She was, and will always be, an icon of the sixties - and that's how I will think of her after I ditch the book.