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

Author:Boyd, Pattie & Junor, Penny [Boyd, Pattie]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2008-05-26T22:00:00+00:00

George in southern India in 1968 before going back to London to the launch of Apple and the stress of business. It was the last time I saw him looking so calm and relaxed.

NINE

Leaving George

Cooking was my thing. Having given up modeling full-time, and with no children, I needed to find some role for myself, some raison d’être. Preparing wonderful meals for George and all the people who came to Friar Park became a passion. I was good at it and loved the whole process. I took cookbooks to bed with me and woke up in the morning knowing what new dish I wanted to create. Driving into Henley and buying all the ingredients was a pleasure. I loved finding new shops and buying the best of everything, finding new brands, new tastes, specialized cheeses, unusual vegetables, different-shaped pastas, exotic varieties of wild rice, fruit, nuts, beans, olive oils, vinegars, and spices. I loved bringing it all home and unpacking it, laying it out on the kitchen counter, and the business of washing and chopping. Then at last the cooking: I was insane about getting the sauces smooth, and I loved combining tastes and textures to see what worked, and creating delicious, nutritious, and exciting dishes. As we were vegetarian, it was a challenge to keep meals interesting, but I threw myself into it.

I never knew how many people I was feeding, but we had some great dinner parties, George seemed to love my food, there would be plenty of wine, and afterward everyone would sit around and smoke dope. From time to time there might be some cocaine, which had crept into our repertoire. George developed an interesting and extreme relationship with it. He was either using it every day or not at all for months at a stretch. Then he would be spiritual and clean and would meditate for hour after hour, with no chance of normality. During those periods he was totally withdrawn and I felt alone and isolated. Then, as if the pleasures of the flesh were too hard to resist, he would stop meditating, snort coke, have fun, flirting and partying. Although it was more companionable, there was no normality in that either.

I think owning that huge house and garden created confusion in him. It was a constant reminder of how rich and famous he was, and that gave him a sense of power, but in his heart he knew was just a boy from Liverpool who was extremely talented and had got lucky. He had embraced spirituality with an obsessive intensity, yet he wanted to experience everything he had missed by becoming famous so young. He once told me that he felt something in life was evading him. But he wouldn’t—perhaps couldn’t—go out and be normal.

I remember Boo once asking George if he wanted to go to the pub for a drink. The guys who protected him froze; George never went to the pub. “No,” I said. “George never goes to the pub because of the Beatlemania.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.