by Peter Brown
That didn’t stop the three of them from socializing together, however, and the dangerous chemistry between them led to some explosive moments. One of the worst was on the opening night of Oh Calcutta! in London. Oh Calcutta! was being produced in London by Robert Stigwood, who was also managing Eric Clapton’s career. Since George was toiling in the studios on All Things Must Pass on the night of the premiere, I took Pattie to the opening as my date. After the show, Stigwood threw a gala party at his newly purchased £100,000 estate, the Old Barn, on the far side of Stanmore.
When George finished his work in the studios in the early hours of the morning, he set out for the Old Barn to join Pattie and me. Unable to find a parking space near the gate, he drove his Ferrari up the long driveway to the main house. Exhausted from his recording session, he wanted only to find his wife and take her home with him. He searched all over for her, but she was nowhere to be found. George came up to me and asked what had happened to Pattie. I found myself in the difficult position of telling George that I didn’t know where Pattie was, but she was last seen with Eric Clapton.
George was furious that the two of them had gone off together so long ago and still hadn’t returned. He stalked back to his car and set off down the driveway. He had gone only a few yards when in the early-morning mist his headlights picked out two figures walking hand in hand at the side of the driveway. It was Pattie and Eric. George stopped the car with a screech of brakes and burning tires, flew out of the car, and launched into a terrible tirade that could be heard by the guests in the house. He forbade them to ever see each other again, practically shoved Pattie into the car, and tore off into the night with her.
Eric’s consuming passion for Pattie eventually wore him down. He withdrew to his baronial mansion, Hurtwood Edge, in Ewhurst and started to shoot heroin to dull the pain of his longing. In desperation he began a new relationship with Alice Ormsby-Gore, the daughter of Lord Harlech, whom some said bore an eerie resemblance to Pattie. Locked away in Hurtwood Edge for months on end, Eric was ravaged and withered by the effects of the heroin. During this time he read the great Persian love poem, Nazimi’s Layla and Majnum, about the obsessive love between a lovesick man and a married woman. Pattie became his Layla. Now in perilously ill health, Eric flew to Miami to record his pained but beautiful masterpiece, Layla, for her, perhaps the most impassioned love song of the pop era. Even as the album hurtled up the charts, he moved back to Hurtwood Edge and continued shooting heroin. We all worried that he would not survive.
During the summer of 1971, George received worldwide acclaim for his concert for Bangladesh, which took place on August 1 at Madison Square Garden. This charity affair was organized to raise funds for the starving people of war-torn Pakistan, and he invited a sparkling array of superstars to appear on stage with him, including Ringo, Leon Russell, Ravi Shankar, and surprise guest Bob Dylan. The plan was to raise money not only through ticket sales but through the release of a live album and a documentary movie as well. Even Eric Clapton, despite his illness, managed to show up. George had invited the other Beatles to join them, but Paul flatly refused, not wanting to confuse the public with what might seem to be a Beatle reunion. John accepted George’s invitation and flew to New York and checked into the Park Lane Hotel with Yoko. The morning of the concert, John and Yoko had a fierce fight. When John got in touch with George, he was infuriated to learn that George didn’t want Yoko on stage with them. He thought it would be insulting to ask the greats of the rock and roll business to share the stage with John’s wife. John was so angry that he checked out of the hotel within fifteen minutes and took the next flight back to London, leaving Yoko behind to catch up with him forty-eight hours later.
Ostensibly, the concert was a huge success, but the euphoria over this achievement would not last George a fortnight.
Bangladesh had turned out to be something of an embarrassment, too. All the recording artists who had blithely signed record and film releases for the album and movie were now involved in a legal spiderweb with all the different record companies they recorded for. The unraveling and permissions went on for years. So did the tax problems. The Inland Revenue Service insisted that taxes be paid before any money from the album or film could be released, and George wound up paying the taxes himself. On July 25, 1973, he had a meeting with Patric Jenkin, the chief financial secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, at which he wrote a National Westminster Bank check for one million pounds payable to the IRS. There was also more than a touch of scandal when New York magazine reported that some of the Bangladesh concert proceeds had allegedly found their way into Allen Klein’s pockets. Klein responded with a $100 million lawsuit, which was eventually dropped.
Now came the rub for George Harrison. His long-awaited second solo LP, Living in the Material World, released the summer of 1973, was an artistic disaster. Although his spirited “Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)” single drove the album to the top of the charts, on the whole the LP was a long, repetitive diatribe on God, Krishna, and the Hindu religion. The lyrics were preachy, sanctimonious, and worst of all, boring. It seemed that with All Things Must Pass George had put all his eggs in one basket.
Even more painful for George, his marriage had come to an ugly end. His relationship with Pattie ended with such explosive force that it took Ringo and Maureen’s marriage with it. George was cheating on Pattie a great deal by then, and it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that he had reverted to his old Don Juan ways. He seemed to want to seduce every woman he laid eyes on. He even once suggested to Neil Aspinall that they swap wives. As much as Neil was amused by the offer, he was happily married and said no. In a story revealed here for the first time, another object of George’s amours was Maureen Starkey. Why he should suddenly want to seduce the wife of one of his closest friends after knowing her for ten years remains inexplicable.
Maureen and Ringo had moved into Tittenhurst Park after John had moved to America, and one night they invited George and Pattie to join them for dinner. After a hearty meal with much wine, they all sat around the long white dining room table, with George strumming his guitar and singing love songs. Suddenly, he put down his guitar and blurted out that he was in love with Maureen.
The others were speechless. Maureen turned bright red and shook her head, Ringo stormed off, and Pattie burst into tears and locked herself in the bathroom. The couple left Tittenhurst soon after.
Just a few weeks later, Pattie returned to her own home, Friar Park, from a shopping spree in London, reportedly to find George in bed with Maureen, just as Cynthia and Jane Asher had found their men with other women. Neither Maureen nor Pattie will confirm that this often-reported incident actually took place, but they pointedly will not deny it either. Says Pattie on the subject: “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”
When George was later asked why of all the women in the world he had to choose his buddy’s wife, George shrugged his shoulders and said, “Incest.”
So much for the spiritual world.
In retaliation for catching George at play, Pattie began to lead an independent life and pursue her career against George’s explicit wishes. She agreed to model again and appeared at an Ozzie Clark fashion show. She had her first extramarital affair, with Ron Wood, the pixieish guitarist from the group the Faces (and now with the Rolling Stones), and not long after packed and left Friar Park while George was in London. She told him she was taking a vacation, and he never questioned it. Pattie moved out of England altogether for a while, to settle in Los Angeles with her sister Jenny, who had married rock star Mick Fleetwood. It was no coincidence that Eric Clapton was also living in the United States, in Miami.
Eric Clapton had made a near-miraculous recovery from heroin. Concerned friends led him to Dr. Margaret Patterson, who had experienced promising results in treating heroin withdrawal symptoms with electro-acupuncture. This reportedly not only eased the pain of withdrawal but was an invaluable aid in staying off the drug. Clapton, encouraged by the r
eports of the breakup of George and Pattie’s marriage, went through Dr. Patterson’s treatment. He was finally “clean” in 1973 when he went back to Miami to record what they were calling a “comeback” album, 461 Ocean Boulevard. The album was an enormous success and gave Clapton the confidence to launch a national tour of the U.S. and England. When Clapton went out on tour, Pattie joined him on the road, and they have been together ever since. They were finally married on March 27, 1979, but that was only a formality, for rarely have two people ever been so deeply committed to each other. To this day they continue to be as romantic and playful as they were at the start. They still live in Hurtwood Edge, and Clapton continues to pursue his successful career.
For a short time after Pattie moved out, George took up with a twenty-four-year-old girl named Kathy Simmonds, reportedly a onetime live-in of Rod Stewart’s. George’s drinking increased, and he became more gloomily religious than ever. Although he considered himself a great cocksman, he was very much alone. In an attempt to rejuvenate his career, he launched another album in the fall of 1974, Dark Horse, and embarked on a twenty-seven-city tour of North America, making him the first solo Beatle to tour the United States. The album and tour were equally disastrous. The album was yet another religious tract, the tour more of a Hindu revival meeting than a rock concert. The show opened with Ravi Shankar conducting twenty-four Indian musicians in an hour of pretty but boringly esoteric Indian music. The young audiences, anxious for their first chance to see a real live Beatle on stage, were at first politely restless, then resentful. When George finally took the stage himself for the second half of the show, he tried to coax his audiences into chanting mantras with him and singing Hare Krishna. When they wouldn’t respond with gusto he chastised them like a schoolmarm. He changed the lyrics of his best songs to reflect his religious beliefs and turned his performance into a pseudoreligious experience.
In October of 1975 he followed up with an equally boring and pedantic album called Extra Texture—Read all About It, but that didn’t stop A&M Records in Los Angeles from signing a $2.6 million deal to distribute George’s newly created record label, Dark Horse. The major attraction on this label was to be George himself, who was scheduled to deliver an album of his own in January of 1976, after his contracts with Apple Records ran out. When George’s first album for them,, was seven months late, George got a note from A&M President Jerry Moss saying either he’d turn in the album or they’d sue him for $10 million in damages. It was Warner Brothers Records that came to George’s rescue by offering to buy the album from A&M. Warner’s rushed the record into the stores, butwas another qualified flop.
But George had yet to face what was perhaps the single greatest embarrassment of his career. It had been widely remarked in the years following the release of All Things Must Pass that the big hit single, “My Sweet Lord,” bore an uncanny resemblance to the Chiffons’ hit single of the early sixties, “He’s So Fine.” In 1976 the publisher of “He’s So Fine,” Bright Tunes, brought a plagiarism suit against George. In a widely publicized trial, George appeared in court with his guitar and demonstrated for the judge how he had composed the song in the first place. George was found guilty of “unconscious plagiarism” and eventually paid $587,000 in damages to Bright Tunes. The great irony was that by the time the settlement was made, none other than Allen Klein had purchased the Bright Tunes catalog, and the money ended up in his company.
On George’s frequent visits to A&M Records before his legal run-in with the company, he made the acquaintance of a twenty-seven-year-old, Mexican-born secretary named Olivia Trinidad Arias. She was sweet, dark, and pretty, and it wasn’t hard for a man with even the most cynical heart to fall in love with her. George’s relationship with Olivia was probably the first time in his life that he was truly in love and not simply infatuated with a Brigitte Bardot look-alike. She moved into a rented house in Beverly Hills with him and later they traveled to Hawaii and London. They were together for over four years before, much to George’s great pleasure, Olivia gave birth to his first child, a son named Dhani, on August 1, 1978. George and Olivia were married a month later in a quiet ceremony at Friar Park.
Olivia remains a distant figure to all of George’s associates. He guards his relationship with her carefully, and perhaps wisely so. She is kept away from his celebrity life and is introduced to only his closest friends. The couple lead a quiet life at Friar Park, just the way George said he always wanted it, with plenty of time to spend with Dhani or at work in the garden.
Nevertheless, George doesn’t seem very content. As with the other Beatles, there is something gnawing away at him. One would like to think that it is the absence of his former associates or the loss of his glory as a Beatle, but it is not. Just the opposite, it is probably the omnipresent shadow of the four moptops still hanging over everything that he does. He has been unable to solve his problems with his spiritual tools, although he is as fervent as ever in his Hindu beliefs. The last time I saw him at Friar Park, he rattled on about Karma and gardening and will still lecture anybody who will sit still long enough to listen to him. Alas, he doesn’t record much anymore. He has recently developed a penchant for racing cars and has driven at several charity events. George is the third richest of the Beatles and has become a shrewd and successful investor in motion pictures. One of his more profitable investments was Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, which he helped bankroll to the tune of $5.5 million. The film grossed upwards of $70 million as of this writing. George’s other film investments, Time Bandits and The Long Good Friday, were relatively just as successful.
In 1981 George published an exorbitantly expensive, leatherbound edition of his autobiography with a small, exclusive publisher in England. The book was ghost written for him by Derek Taylor, who works for him still. The volume is mostly full-color reproductions of the original lyrics to his songs, along with a few photographs, but precious little text. In his reminiscence of his days with the Beatles, he omits all reference to John Lennon, as if he never existed. Once, long ago, in what seems like another time altogether, young George Harrison worshipped John so much he followed him everywhere he went, dressing in similar clothes and combing his hair like him. Now the two of them had no use for each other during what were to be the last five years of John’s life.
Ringo
While John and Paul were fabulously rich, and George was about to be, everybody worried about what would happen to poor Ringo. Although a millionaire in his own right, he was by far the poorest, and he was a man of expensive tastes. His first two solo albums, the only major source of revenue for him, were hardly successes. So the three other Beatles decided to help him with a record. This was as close as the four Beatles would get to a reunion, a collaboration on tape but not in the same place at the same time. The Beatle magic was still working on this album, even long distance. Under producer Richard Perry’s excellent direction, each of the ex-Beatles contributed at least one song. Ringo became one of the most popular albums of the year, ringing up three hit singles, including two number-one singles, “Photograph” and “You’re Sixteen.” The success of the album both surprised Ringo and made the other Beatles a little jealous. John, half kidding, sent Ringo a telegram that said, “How dare you? Why don’t you write me a hit song?”
Heady with the success of Ringo, Ringo started putting out an album a year. With minor exceptions, each of these albums was so undistinguished that none of them would ever have been given any airplay if it weren’t for the fact that Ringo was an ex-Beatle. In December of 1974 the overhyped Goodnight Vienna album was released, with its moronic “No No” novelty song that became a short-lived hit single, and “Only You.” In 1975 he formed his own, ill-fated record label, Ringo Records, but closed the company down when running it turned out to be too much hard work with no immediate results. Ringo also invested in a furniture design company with Robin Cruikshank called Ringo or Robin Limited, which featured items like a Rolls-Royce grille table or chrome-plated circular firep
laces. This company, too, met its demise.
By 1976, having been released from his Apple recording contracts, Ringo signed a deal with Polydor Records in England and released another solo album called Rotogravure. Although the album sold reasonably well, it, too, was considered a commercial and artistic failure. In 1977 Ringo the 4th appeared, a desperately trendy disco album that was not only a failure but an embarrassment. His 1978 entry, this time on Columbia’s Portrait Records, Bad Boy, was equally unsuccessful, and his contract was canceled. Rolling Stone reported, “Bad Boy isn’t even passable cocktail music.”
Ringo acted in a few bit parts in films, most notably That’ll Be the Day and Mae West’s last movie, Sextette. Although he received some warm reviews, it was obvious he was no actor. He tried his hand at directing for a time and produced and directed glitter-rock star Marc Bolan in a concert film called Born to Boogie, but that, too, was doomed to failure.
So there was poor Ringo, a cameo part player without a part. He was an international celebrity and a wealthy man, but he had little daily purpose in life. Always fancying himself the lady’s man, he divorced Maureen in 1975. The poor girl was devastated. Even if it were true that she had gone to bed with George, even if she had strayed, Maureen still loved her “Ritchie” with as much passion and dedication as any northern girl could muster. She was his faithful servant and friend, always there for him, to cook and clean, to soothe him when he was tired and cranky. She turned her head when he started to fool around with other women, but she couldn’t hold him. Ringo made Maureen a wealthy woman with the terms of their divorce settlement, giving her a cash settlement of £500,000 with more to come as it was needed over the years. A short time later, when Maureen wanted to live in London, Ringo bought her and the kids a £250,000 house in Little Venice. He also bought Tittenhurst Park from John and Yoko and turned it into a rental property and recording studio. Then, for tax purposes, he signed the $1.7 million property over to his kids. Maureen pines for him to this day, and in the same sense that Cynthia waited for John, Maureen dreams that one day Ritchie will come home to her.
