"This old girl is Layla?... This is the face that launched a thousand trips?"

The reviewer of Eric Clapton's autobiography begins with a personal account of seeing Clapton's (and George Harrison's) ex-wife Pattie Boyd in a restaurant:

The famous Pattie Boyd was like somebody's utterly conventional British aunt, somebody you would find permanently planted at the end of the bar in a pub in the Home Counties, perhaps after a cricket match, ciggie and cocktail in hand....

Well, now that Eric Clapton has written a confessional memoir, all has become clear. During their marriage, the long-suffering Pattie spent most of her time patrolling pubs with Clapton, then cleaning up his drunken messes at home.

That is, when she wasn't walking in on the guitar hero and his errant girlfriends or listening to him recount his most recent conquests on the road. Small wonder the poor woman looked a little faded that day in L.A. It's tough work playing nursemaid to a junkie drunk womanizer.

Of course. It's obvious. Yet somehow we were all so jealous of her. I listened to the audio version of Pattie Boyd's memoir "Wonderful Tonight" yesterday as I took a long walk. She was so lucky, so exactly where everything was happening, where we all longed to be, and yet it was horrible. She recounts the ordeal sweetly and says more than once that she wouldn't change a thing, but it's such a sad story.

... Clapton was withdrawn and surly, a blues purist, despising the Beatles as a "bunch of wankers."...

By 1970, he had become obsessed with Pattie Boyd. "I coveted Pattie," he writes, "because she belonged to a powerful man who seemed to have everything I wanted - amazing cars, an incredible career, and a beautiful wife." When he couldn't have Boyd immediately, inspired by Charlie Parker and Ray Charles, Clapton turned to heroin, spending thousands a week on his habit.

Finally, his manager produced Boyd for Clapton, as a kind of deal perk. Once he had her, naturally he didn't want her, racking up scores of one-night stands on the road and ignoring her when he came home....

By 1981,... Boyd was locking him in his bedroom so he wouldn't spoil Christmas for family and friends with his drunken antics.

Painful. Anyway, what does Pattie Boyd look like now? Like this, at age 63. More: