I loved this book and could not put it down. I'm sure it took a lot of courage for Pattie to go back and recall the heartache as well as the happiness she found with two of the greatest musicians of our time. She is a beautiful person inside and out. Buy this book!

At age four I feel for George Harrison when he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Something about him struck me as a young child which has remained with me into middle-age. Having heard for the past 38 years that his song, 'Something", was written about Pattie, I expected to find in her book insight as to what that 'something' is. I came up empty handed.

It seems as if her life has been one long ride on the merry-go-round of dysfunctional relationships, self destructive behavior, addictions to drugs and alcohol, and to sick people.

I found very little reflection in one who is leaving middle-age and heading firmly into her senior years. She seems to lack the ability to honestly and fiercely turn her lens for viewing life on herself. In the preface to the book, and later in her story, she cites being a member of Al-Anon and attending its twelve-step meetings. What I find lacking in her life story is a fourth step: "Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." Lacking this, she hasn't moved into Steps 5 & 6. She seems very emotionally stunted.

It is a quick read; I checked it out of the library on Thursday evening and finished it Saturday evening. For this I was grateful because I found the chapters about her life with Eric Clapton to be dreary. By the time she leaves him the first time I was bored with their relationship. By the time she left him for good I was grateful that she never had children as she demonstrated that she would not make a good parent.

It was an interesting read to gleam a bit of day-to-day life in the lives of two famous rock artists. The chapters of her time with George and having the other Beatles and their wives in her life were more intersting than the years she spent with Clapton.

I found no sympathy for the incestuousness of the relationships to which she is drawn. It made my skin crawl to learn that her younger sister was living with Clapton and having a sexual relationship with him when he wrote 'Layla' for Pattie. There is something creepy about Pattie leaving her husband to begin a relationship with a man who just recently shared his bed with her sister. (Let's not even go into the fact that Clapton and Harrison were friends.)

This pattern repeats itself later when, after finally leaving Clapton, Pattie strikes up a relationship with Rod, who had had a ten+ year relationship with a friend of Pattie's.

There is something unstable in such behavior. Spooky.

She did not have a 'normal' childhood. For this I have sympathy for her for it seems to have permanently messed her up for life in terms of healthy relationships.

What I found most poignant about the book is that at the end, after she well documents George's emotional abandonment while married to her, and Eric's very destructive addictive behavior,she did not look at her own behavior. She drank and drugged alongside both of her husbands and then wondered why her marriages were not working. She focused on their behavior and never really takes responsibility for her own, though she makes talk of doing such. In the end, I do not see a woman who walks the talk.

I also find it very telling that after being married to Pattie, George moved on to find a healthy relationship, over came his addiction to cocaine, fathered a child, and remained married to the chid's mother until his death. He does not seem to have been the one, or only one, in his marriage to Boyd who couldn't fully emotionally commit or achieve true emotionally intimacy.

Though I have never been a fan of Clapton's personality (he rubs me the wrong way), I, too, find the same result in his life after Boyd finally broke from him. He cleaned up his addictions to drugs and alcohol, committed to a woman, married her, and is rearing children with her.

Pattie moved on to a relationship with yet another alcoholic which did not withstand the test of time.

And, she continues to drink herself.

Her great pride and joy in life is to have inspired beautiful songs.

Whoppee!

She, too, appears to be full of dichotomies. She goes on and on how Eric's drinking wore her down and was destroying him, so he left him. She writes of how she was finding peace in her days during the two weeks being away from him when she agrees to marry him.

Later she writes of how the not knowing how each day will be with him grew too exhausting and that she needed stability in her life. In the post-being-Mrs.RockStar era of her life, she writes how she thrives on not having plans and having the unexpected happen each day. I got the impression of a woman who is a crazy-maker. Her words and actions do not meet. It is her ex husbands who moved on to create stable, lasting marriages; not Pattie. She is the one who seems to be the addict who hasn't come to terms with her addictions. I laughed at the line in her end chapter of how she is glad that she did not "inherit the addictive gene." If she read her own story with open eyes she would see that she is a very addictive personality and is drawn to addictive personalites.

Her contradictions are tiring by the end. She claims to have been the mother-hen to her younger siblings, yet, she was mean to them when young and then engaged in a sexual relatioship with Clapton who had been living with Pattie's sister. How is such behavior protecting and nurturing ones younger siblings?

I found Pattie to be ultimately a very emotionally immature and unstable personality. She moves from relationship to relationship in a way that is frightening. She fears being alone and until she confronts her fears she will continue living lies.

She too claims that she and Eric had a very passionate relationship. This I did not find in her story. I found a very co-dependent, drug and alcohol fueled relationship. Pattie seems to confuse addiction with passion. She seems to be very emotionally confused.

I wish her well. I wish her growth. I wish her recovery. I wish her peace. I wish she would stop dying her hair blonde and trying to look the part of a young rock and roll muse. She is growing old in body. It would be wonderful to see her accept this rather than deny it. Maturity would do her well, but she still seems lost in the first verse of Clapton's song, "Beautiful Tonight." I've never liked this song as I have found it always very shallow (the blonde in the song has always struck me as a very shallow woman) and the last verse is anything but romantic and loving. How romantic is it to be with a man who is so drunk that he needs help to getting into bed? Pattie still is trying to live verse one of the song. Eric has moved beyond the last verse and into a new and better song of life.

May Pattie do the same.

As for the book: Fast read. It does offer insights into lives of rock and roll from the 1960s-1970s. It is not a book worth buying and keeping. Check it out of the library and save your money for good literature.

Interesting rock history and worth reading. Insights about the Beatles, George Harrison, and Eric Clapton. If you're a fan of these artists and those times, it's fun to read. Neither George or Eric were quite the "knights in shining armor", in fact, sadly, speaks poorly of Eric. Only annoying thing, P. Boyd is not a writer and tends to ramble on, so you have to get past that throughout the book.