Note: This is a pre-production script and may deviate from the finished show.
Hey there, Cousiiiin! Welcome to the next episode of How Good It Is, and today we’re meeting the queen of the inspirational women. Do it to it, Jenna!
[♫HGII♫]
I’m Claude Call, and I’m proud to be amongst you. And again, since we’ll be talking about Beatles songs, I’ve got a bit of Beatles trivia for ye. August 22 has a special significance in Beatles history because of an interesting coincidence. What’s so special about August 22?
I’ll have that answer near the end of the show.
We’re more than halfway through this series of women who inspired hit songs, and this time around it’s the queen of them all, Pattie Boyd. Now, this turned out to be one of the more complicated episodes to research because in some cases there’s a lot of dispute over what’s about Pattie and what isn’t, in some songs. But we’ll get to that as we go along
Pattie was born in Taunton, in the Somerset county of England, in March of 1944. Before she was two, the family moved to Scotland, where her brother Colin was born. By 1947 they were back in England, this time in west Surry, where her sister Jenny was born. All that moving around was because her father was in the Royal Air Force. After he was discharged, the family spent five years living in Kenya, and it was there that the youngest sister, Paula, was born.
One day in 1953, Pattie returned home from her boarding school to learn that her parents had divorced. A few months later her mother Diana and her new husband took the kids back to England.
In 1961, when she was 17, she got a job as a trainee beautician, and it was there that a client who worked for a fashion magazine suggested that she sign with an agency and seek work as a model. Pattie, along with Jean Shrimpton, became the face of the British female look, with the mini-skirts, the long, straight hair and the doe-eyes look. And because British Invasion bands were getting big in the early 60s, that look became an international style for women all over the Western world.
In 1964 Pattie was cast in an ad for potato chips, which was directed by Richard Lester. He liked her enough that he cast her as a British schoolgirl for a film he was directing called A Hard Day’s Night. That’s where she met George Harrison, and because of her association with him, her modeling career absolutely skyrocketed. George and Pattie got engaged on Christmas Day in 1965 and were married just a few weeks later in a civil service ceremony.
Now, I don’t want to get too deep into the who-cheated-on-who of this relationship because everybody kind of stinks here. But let me give you some of the outlines. In the late 1960s George Harrison met and befriended Eric Clapton. You probably already know that Clapton provided the guitar for the song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” which may have been a tactic to get the other Beatles to improve their behavior with each other during the White Album sessions. It was around this time that Clapton found himself falling in love with Pattie, but other than dating her sister, he didn’t act on it.
George and Pattie split up in 1974 and officially divorced in 1977. By 1979 she’d married Clapton, though he and Harrison were still close friends; in fact Clapton has referred to Harrison around that time as his “husband-in-law.” What’s more, their wedding day was the closest that the Beatles ever came to having all four of them in the same place at the same time since the breakup, except John Lennon wasn’t there, saying he hadn’t been invited. But Pattie and Eric were a troubled couple before long, with the both of them abusing alcohol at one time or another, and of course he had a whole lot of infidelity going on. They finally divorced in 1989 after a two-year separation.
In 1991 Pattie met a property developer named Rod Weston, and she married him in 2015, again in a civil ceremony. And while she released an autobiography which detailed her years with both Harrison and Clapton, she’s lived a relatively quiet life since. She’s not as reluctant as Jane Asher to talk about those days, but neither is she overly interested in any further publicity about it.
Okay, now that you have the timelines, it’s on to the songs.
Harrison wrote “I Need You” in early 1965, at the beginning of the recording sessions for the Help! album.
[CLIP, using pedal]
That interesting sound he’s getting out of the guitar comes from the use of a volume pedal, in fact it’s the band’s first use of that pedal in a song. There’s speculation, though it’s not positive, that the pedal was being operated by John Lennon, kneeling on the floor, while Harrison played.
Harrison had submitted this song and “You Like Me Too Much” for consideration in the movie, but this is the one that was chosen for the film, though both songs appear on the album. It’s an interesting song from the standpoint of its subject matter; as far as I know the couple wasn’t having any problems at that time, but the song is definitely about a boy who’s lost someone but who also feels some level of confidence that she’ll be back.
“If I Needed Someone” was released on Rubber Soul at the end of that same year, and it was George’s first commercial success as a songwriter, although that’s because the same day that Rubber Soul was released, the Hollies released their cover of the song, where it reached Number 20 on the UK charts. You can definitely hear the influences that The Byrds are having on The Beatles in this song, with that jangly 12-string guitar riff that sounds like it was lifted from Roger McGuinn’s playing on “The Bells of Rhymney.” Coincidentally—or perhaps not—McGuinn was lifting his sound from George’s playing on the Hard Day’s Night album. So, what goes around, comes around.
Rubber Soul was released shortly before George’s engagement and marriage to Pattie, and “If I Needed Someone” was described by him as a love song to Pattie. Having said that, some others have interpreted it a little bit differently, suggesting that it might be about one or more groupies, or some attempt by the singer to juggle multiple affairs. From my standpoint it’s got that groupie feel, but he’s turning her down because of Pattie, though he’s still taking the not-great route of suggesting that she keep herself available just in case.
“Love You To” is a song that’s kind of about Pattie Boyd, but it’s also got an overlay of philosophical concepts and maybe a smattering of his experiments with LSD. It’s got some cynical elements to it but what she’s got overcomes all that. George had been studying with Ravi Shankar, clearly, since it’s also best known for being the first pop song to incorporate non-Western form and instrumentation, using a tabla, a pair of hand drums, a sitar and that droning sound you hear comes from a tambura. And it all comes together very well, but I have to admit that one of my favorite parts of this record, musically, comes from this bit here:
[MAKE LOVE ALL DAY LONG]
That roaring, almost chainsaw-like sound you hear comes from an overdub of George playing a fuzz-tone electric guitar. Other than George’s voice and guitar, you have Ringo on a tambourine and that’s it. The song originally had Paul adding a couple of harmonies but those were taken out of the final mix. And so far as I know, John doesn’t have any real involvement in the track. I’ll also note that we hear a short clip of the song in the film Yellow Submarine, when George’s character first appears in the film. Speaking of which, some people think that “It’s All Too Much” might be about her because of the line he sings in the fadeout about “your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue,” but for me, that’s a bit thin.
Perhaps George’s biggest track about Pattie would be “Something”, which appeared on Abbey Road. In fact, from an airplay and sales standpoint, it’s consistently in the top five of Beatles song all-time. It’s also the second-most covered Beatles song after “Yesterday”, with over 150 different artists recording the song. But what you may not know is that George initially offered the song to Harry Nilsson, because he was having trouble getting his songs on Beatle albums. That said, I’m sure the band was happy to get the song because even John Lennon was once quoted as saying it was the best song on Abbey Road.
“Something” was originally written during sessions for the White Album, but George said he stopped working on it for a while because he was sure he’d lifted the melody from another song. Coincidentally, that’s something that Paul McCartney worried about with “Yesterday.” George also said in his autobiography that he had some trouble figuring out the bridge in the middle eight bars.
Now, for all that, it’s fair to bring up that around the time of the White Album sessions, George had started to write songs that were kind of nebulous about who his songs were about, suggesting that they had a dual focus of a woman and God, or love in general, or even Krishna, the Hindu deity representing love and compassion. So in later years he’d say in interviews that the song “Something” was actually about Krishna, and everybody assumed it was about her. But…Pattie Boyd herself has said in her autobiography that he told her it was about her when he played it for her in their kitchen. Do with that what you will. I will also note that “Long Long Long,” which did make it to the White Album, was about God, and the spiritual refuge he’d achieved through meditation.
“For You Blue”, the B-side of “The Long and Winding Road,” was written specifically as a love song to Pattie. He was especially jazzed about writing a country-blues song with a happy-go-lucky feel to it. But the day they first tried it out, George thought that the other Beatles were kind of half-hearted about it, and that’s the point where he briefly left the group. If you watch the Get Back documentary, the song appears at the point where the band moves from the movie studio back to the Apple Studio. And pay attention, there: while George is known for doing the slide guitar thing, that’s JOHN playing bottle-neck guitar on this track, hence George’s [GO JOHNNY GO w/ fade]
In 1974 George Harrison wrote three songs about his breakup with Pattie.
- “Simply Shady” is mostly about the problems involved with the overindulgent rock and roll lifestyle, and it makes a passing reference to that lifestyle affecting his relationship with Pattie.
- “So Sad,” on the other hand, is definitely about his breakup with Pattie.
- “Ding Dong Ding Dong” was the second single off of Dark Horse in the US, and it wasn’t well received in the US or the UK, though it was a Top 20 hit in several countries. It was a combination of distancing himself from The Beatles and saying goodbye to his marriage to Pattie, with a New Year’s overlay to it
- And also on Dark Horse is George’s cover of the Everly Brother’s “Bye Bye Love”, in which George added an extra verse where the parties involved are…let’s say thinly disguised…[CLIP]
All right, so let’s move away from George Harrison, and on to Eric Clapton. And let’s just spell it out: the entire 1970 Derek and the Dominoes album “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs” is about Pattie Boyd. Even the cover of the album, a blonde woman peeking out from behind a bouquet of flowers, is about Pattie Boyd. No, it’s not meant to be a portrait of her, but the painting by Emile-Théodore Frandsen de Shomburg, titled “La Fille au Bouquet”, reminded Clapton of Pattie, and he insisted that the painting—and only the painting—appear on the cover of the album, with no text or anything else identifying the album title or the band. At the time of release, the album did not do well critically; the critics liked the guitar work and the production value, but didn’t see the songs themselves as much more than fluff, and one critic noted that some of the vocal work was, in his words, pretty atrocious. The album didn’t chart at all in the UK initially, and topped out at Number 16 on the Billboard Albums Chart. It took…maybe ten years for the reappraisals to come out that gave it a little more credit. And by “a little more credit,” I’m talking about phrases like (quote) “arguably the best blues-rock album ever made”, and “one of the finest rock ‘n’ roll albums of the 70s.”
And remember, Clapton and Boyd weren’t together at this point; the theme behind the songs was the pain and frustration of unrequited love. Clearly a powerful motivator.
I have to confess that when the MTV Unplugged version came out in 1992, Clapton introduces it by telling the audience, “Let’s see if you can spot this one.” He begins to play the song
[CLIP]
and the audience catches it right away, which you can see absolutely delights him. It’s in the same key, but it’s acoustic, of course, and much slower, like a blues shuffle, and to this day I have no idea how they got it right away.
I’m going to do one more here, and kinda race through some of the others.
“Wonderful Tonight” was written specifically on September 7, 1976. How do I know that? Because September 7 is Buddy Holly’s birthday, and Paul and Linda McCartney were holding annual Buddy Holly parties in those days. Eric and Pattie, who was his girlfriend by then, were invited to the party, and while he was waiting for her to get ready, Clapton wrote the song. Pattie tells the story in her autobiography.
It’s confession time; I think the statute of limitations is up on this one. When I was in high school, the senior class had to vote on the prom theme music. We’d take suggestions from students, pick the four best and play a clip over the PA system so the seniors could choose their favorite and vote. I was the guy in charge of assembling the music clips, and while the other three song clips were something like 15 seconds long, I played a full thirty seconds of “Wonderful Tonight”, which I think swayed the vote, because that was, indeed, our prom theme. And since I had a blonde girlfriend at the time, I got bonus boyfriend points for it.
Okay, one more that I’m going to go into in any depth, because we’re running a bit long now. Clapton’s first album for Warner Brothers, Money and Cigarettes, didn’t sell especially well, what’s more, his first submission for the 1985 album Behind the Sun was rejected by the label and they insisted that Clapton team up with songwriter Jerry Lynn Williams. Williams contributed three songs to the album, but the two big tracks on that album were “Forever Man” and “She’s Waiting.” By this time Clapton and Boyd were experiencing difficulties in their relationship and “She’s Waiting,” which Clapton wrote with Peter Robinson, reflects that. I gotta say, I’m not always a fan of synthesizers but that riff that carries the song is one of my absolute favorites. That would be Peter Robinson on those keys, incidentally. And, of course, you have Phil Collins, who produced the track, playing electronic drums plus a regular snare. “Forever Man” sounds like it could be about what’s going on in Clapton’s personal life, but that’s a Jerry Lynn Williams composition. By the way, check out the official video for “Forever Man”. You’ll see something at about the two-forty mark that amused MTV viewers to no end. However, before the first submission of the album was finished, Boyd had left Clapton for good, and he wrote the title track , which was used as the closer.
Got one more for you from Clapton. In 1989 Eric Clapton released the album Journeyman, which has the track “Old Love.” Now, he and Boyd had already separated as I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, but it was when Boyd learned that he’d had an affair with Lory Del Santo and gotten her pregnant with Conor Clapton that she ended the marriage for good. Clapton wrote “Old Love”, which clearly documents his regret over the events that led to the breakup.
I’m willing to bet that I haven’t captured all of them, so feel free to let me know what you think, in the email or in the socials, which I’ll give you on the other side of this:
[BUMPER]
And now it’s time to answer that trivia question. Back on Page Two I asked you about the significance of August 22 in Beatles history.
It all comes down to photography. On August 22, 1962, the Beatles were photographed with Ringo as a member for the first time. Fast forward to August 22, 1969. That was the last day that they were photographed together, exactly seven years apart. It’s strictly a coincidence, but it’s kind of a wild one given the circumstances.
[OUTRO]
And that, Cousin, is a full lid on yet another edition of How Good It Is. If you’re enjoying the show, please leave a rating somewhere or better yet, share it with a friend, or chat it up in your social medias. Speaking of which, you can find me on the socials as How Good It Is Pod. That would be your Twixter, your Insta and your Blue Sky, and we’re always lurking about at Facebook dot com, slash How Good It Is Pod. And if you’re doing the email thing it’s HowGoodPodcast@gmail.com. The theme music for the show is by Jenna Getty, and everything else you can blame on me. Next time around Mike is going to take you up the Green River. Thank you so much for listening, I’ll talk to you soon.