Book Reviews: Or, survivors tales
Aug. 13th, 2011 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI read two very different books recently, both compelling sort-of-memoirs written by women but about utterly different subjects.
Patentöchter ("Goddaughters") by Julia Albrecht and Corinna Ponto is a dialogue in letters that deals with an incredible painful mixture of family and history. In the so-called "German Autumn" (well, we refer to it as der deutsche Herbst, no idea whether anyone outside of Germany does) of 1977, one of the most shocking acts by the RAF (that's not the Royal Airforce but the Rote Armee Fraktion, aka the Baader-Meinhoff-Gang for English speaking people) was the murder of banker Jürgen Ponto for the way in which it happened. The three terrorists that visited his house could do so because one of them, Susanne Albrecht, was the daughter of dear friends. She called him "Uncle". He was the godfather of her younger sister, Julia (one of the authors of the book), just as her father had been the godfather of his own daughter, Corinna (the other author of the book). Not that surprisingly, all contact between the families ended shortly after the murder, until recently when the two women started to correspond.
An ongoing issue for the families of the victims here in Germany is that generally the media (whether we're talking newspapers, biographies or fictional media, like films or tv shows) pay far more attention to the terrorists. (The director of one of the more recent films, Der Baader-Meinhoff-Complex, went as far as admit that to him the victims were "dull".) Yet in the case of this particular murder, the two stories, of the victim and (one of) the killer(s), are inextricably intertwined. It makes for very raw emotional reading, with both women coming across as trying to be as honest as they can of what it felt like to lose your father because of such a betrayal, to live with the fact that your adored older sister murdered your godfather. The searching for explanations, rationalizations: Julia's parents and Julia herself clung to the hope that Susanne had been blackmailed/was already repentant, only to discover that when she was arrested 13 years later that actually neither had been the case. Meanwhile, Corinna is downright obsessed with proving that the entire RAF and their 70s actions were part of a conspiracy of secret services, primarily the East German one, and increasingly bitter with every RAF terrorist released from prison or statements that "it's hard to be sorry for the fat cats" (by which victims like her father the banker were meant), a statement that came from our former secretary of foreign affairs, Joschka Fischer. And then there are the memories of the time before, when her father was still alive and Julia's sister - whom she can't bring herself to call by her name and only refers to as S. - was visiting for non-lethal reasons, or, from Julia's side of the childhood where she now wonders how real her memories are at all. There is the memory of hero-worshipping her older sister and Susanne being protective and close to her, and the reality of seeing Susanne, now talking with a Saxonian accent after years in the GDR, seeing her again as an adult and telling her indifferently "I had almost forgotten you existed". If you can read German, a highly recommend book.
A story of the 70s (and last two years of the 60s) in a very different vein is Chris O'Dell's Miss O'Dell (with the lengthy subtitle "Hard days and long nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton and the women they loved"). The subtitle is a bit sensational, which wouldn't have been necessary because it really is a compelling story, unusual and most interesting among similar books because the boys in the band(s) are really only part of the subject; our narrator's intense friendships with two of their wives, Pattie Boyd and Maureen Starkey, are given as much narrative space and importance as George, Ringo, Mick 'n Keith (and far more than Bob who shows up, is being enigmatic, has a random one night stand and leaves) et al. Chris O'Dell started to work for the Beatles' Apple Company when it was new, during the brief idealistic period before things went to hell in a hand basket, toured with the Stones (she's also the woman on the Exile on Main Street cover), had a front row seat to the collapse of the Harrison and Starkey marriages (and is the subject of George Harrison's song, Miss O'Dell), the later of which she was involved with, managed tours for Linda Ronstadt and had a rueful friendly rivalry with Joni Mitchell - she's basically a female Forrest Gump of the late 60s and throughout the 70s. As opposed to Forrest, this was not conductive to her health. She already did drugs before she ever met her first rock star, but by the mid 70s she snorted enough daily cocaine to impress Keith Richards (but as opposed to Richards couldn't afford the doctors to clean up her blood). Being slapped around by a drug dealer is a wake-up call but it doesn't last long, and as opposed to how a Hollywood movie would go, marriage with an English aristocrat is anything but a happy ending (he turns out to be an addict as well, which I say didn't exactly surprise me; blame my Jacobin father), though after leaving him she does get her life back together again.
Chris O'Dell and her co-author have the gift of bringing the various characters to life, which especially with the women is much appreciated. For example, this book is the first that gives you a sense of what Maureen (Ringo's first wife) was like, as male biographers basically tend to decribe the first wives of the Beatles (minus Jane Asher, who of course wasn't married to Paul) as shy doormats, and don't bother to reconcile this with the woman who as an insensed Pattie Boyd reports responded to her "how can you do this to me, how can you do this to your marriage?" about the affair with George simply replies with an unrepentant "tough!" Says Chris, in one memorable description of Maureen: "I loved Maureen's fabulous collection of Liverpudlian colloquialisms. 'Bloody hell!' or 'sodden hellfire!' she'd say when she was frustrated or angry. 'It's breaking me brain,' she'd say when she felt overwhelmed. 'They've got more front than Selfridges,' she'd say when someone was brazen or belligerent. But my favorite Mo expression, which I heard her say just once or twice, and only after she'd had a good amount of drink, was a simple reflection on her life. 'I haven't done badly, but never mind,' she'd say with a little shrug. 'I'll do better.' There wasn't an ounce of bullshit in Maureen. She was authentically, wholly herself."
Given I had read Pattie Boyd's memoirs earlier, it was interesting to find some of the same events reported. Sometimes identically, as with the way she and Chris became friends (and remain so to this day). ('I'm sorry, I've never said this to anyone before,' she said, 'but you will only be my friend as long as you don't let George have you.' I didn't have to think for one moment about my response. 'Okay, that's a deal,' I said. 'I'd rather be your friend.') Sometimes differently (for example, Pattie says Ringo's response to the George/Mo news was being devastated and muttering "nothing is real, nothing is real", whereas Chris has him jaw clenched, tightly controlled and muttering "Better you than someone we don't know" to George). Given what I wrote in my review of Pattie's book, it was interesting to me as well as amusing that Chris uses the same phrase I did - that there were three Georges around, though in her case she describes them not as Pattie did as young witty and adoring husband, cold jerk of a husband, and warm, helpful prince of an ex-husband, but as funny and witty friend, sarcastic and biting brooder, and spiritual man who may be deep but is not as much fun as the No.1 version. Chris' default George tends to be the first version, with sometimes the third turning up; she extremely rarely talks about No.2 (and I had the impression she wants to avoid thinking about how her generous friend - who at a later point in her life helps her out with 5000 dollars when she's in distress - could be the same guy who locks himself in a room with a friend of the family right in front of his wife. Sometimes, I also thought she was letting projection of her own emotions on the various people she describes take over, which of course is what we all do when narrating our memories, but here's an example, the description of how she went from working at Apple to basically becoming what she once calls a lady-in-waiting to Pattie and George.
At this point, Allen Klein, boo-hiss figure of many a memoir (except May Pang's, who worked for him before she worked for John and Yoko and describes him as gruff but nice; Keith Richards also despite admitting he robbed the Stones of their song rights describes with a certain admiration as an impressive rascal), has taken over Apple and is busy firing people left, right and center, which is when George comes to our heroine's rescue.
"What do you mean there isn't a job for you here?" George glanced sideways at Peter Brown, a look that conveyed his dislike and his distrust of Klein.
Stop. Pause. Rewind. Repeat. His what? Let's not forget, that would be the same George who at the very moment Chris is describing is busy fighting tooth and nail for Allen Klein as Beatles manager at John's side with Paul who kept refusing to sign Klein's contract. The same George who would keep Allen Klein as his personal manager for some years into the 70s, until Klein screwed him over with the Bangladesh concert earnings and then again re: the My Sweet Lord plagiarism suit. Now I'm perfectly willing to believe he distrusted Allen K. by then, but definitely not in the late 60s when John, George and Ringo all behaved as if Klein was the manager to end all managers. So when I read that description, I had the impulse to comment, Chris, dear, who do you think hired Allen Klein? Who gives him the power to fire people? Of all the people who get to play good cop and bad cop with Allen Klein as the bad cop, George isn't one of them.
And speaking of Allen the Blue Meanie, I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but let's be fair. Chris may have experienced the helping-other-artists anarchic Apple as a 60s paradise, but it was losing money at an incredible rate, and no matter who had become manager at that point, Allen Klein, Lee Eastman or Brian Epstein resurrected from the dead, they would have had to fire people and severely limit expenses. Chris herself describes a scene illustrating this rather obviously, though I'm not sure whether our narrator gets it.
'First of all, you're doing a great job and we appreciate it,' Paul said in his most diplomatic fashion. 'But we're also losing a lot of money on things we don't need.' I listened half-heartedly was Paul talked about the need to cut unnessary costs, such as taking minicabs home after work and charging the bill to Apple. And from now on, Paul continued, no more in-house Cordon Bleu lunches for anyone but the executives. (...) 'We're going through cases of Scotch every week,' Paul said. 'We're the pub of choice and it has to stop.' Fat chance! I thought. Everyone went to the pres office after work and we all kept Scotch in our offices to entertain guests (and each other).
You can see the problem. Anyway, Chris and her co-author, Katheirne Ketcham, are great with the descriptions, whether of events like the Apple Rooftop Concert (where Chris was one of the attendants) or people, and they have a penchant for black comedy, as when Chris is witnessing John's and Yoko's first press conference together:
John fielded the questions, while Yoko appeared to cling to him even as she sat straight backed in her chair, still as stone, never saying a word. Her long black hair was parted in the middle and looked as if it were charged with electricity. I had the feeling that if I reached out and touched her, I'd get shocked. Over the next few months as I got to know her better, I learned that she wasn't the fearful type, but that day I felt sorry for her. She looked so tiny and helpless. Maybe she needs a friend, I thought. 'You're doing great,' I said, leaning over and whispering to her. She turned her head slowly, a curious expression on her face, and gave me a vacant smile. Then she turned away from me to focus on John. (...) Ouch.
Ouch indeed. This one of only two Yoko stories; as I said, the wives Chris got close with were Pattie and Maureen. With Pattie, it verges on intense possessiveness, once Eric Clapton enters the scene for good and Chris has the impression she's fighting him for Pattie's affections. (Eric C. comes across even worse in her book than he does in Pattie's - she adds the chilling detail that he renamed Pattie "Nell" because "Pattie" belonged to George whereas "Nell" was his own posession, that word used, and besides the name made her sound like a barmaid so he wouldn't have her on a pedestal anymore - but Chris is honest enough to admit she had her own brief phase of being attracted to him. Clearly the man must have something other than his talent, but quite what is not apparant from anyone's memoirs.) With Maureen, it starts on a distant and intimidated foot, and becomes close only when Maureen's marriage to Ringo is already in full breakdown. Mo doesn't make her swear not to have sex with her husband like Pattie did and sure enough, there is a brief fling, but it's treated as a minor part of the big mess that was everyone's state of being in the mid 70s and ends very soon, while the relationship with Maureen (who takes this in her stride) continues. Which leads to another passage that made me go "but Chris, are you listening to yourself?" even while I sympathized. The facts, as the narrator of Pushing Daisies was prone to say, were these: Ringo and Maureen are divorced, Chris is a hopeless addict, Maureen is depressed and drinking too much, Chris has been staying at Mo's for quite a while now when lo and behold, it's Ringo on the phone.
'Chris.' He was angry. 'What are you doing there?'
I had never heard that tone in his voice before. When Ringo was drinking heavily, he could be verbally compative at times, evne slightly belligerent. But on the phone he was talking to me as if he despised me, as if I had done someting unforgivable.
'I'm visiting Maureen.' I was pissed off that he was taking this derisive tone with me. I hadn't done anything to deserve his contempt.
'Listen, Chris, Maureen doesn't have very much money,' he said, still using that scolding tone of voice. 'And you're eating the children's food.'
I heard the slur in his words then and knew he was drunk and probably high on cocaine, too. I'd heard from friends in LA that he was doing a lot of coke. But that didn't excuse his behaviour. (...)After everything Ringo and I had been through, how could he talk to me like that, as if I were a servant or, worse, a freeloader taking advantage of his family's hospitality?
Now given their brief affair I can understand her ire, but, you know, at Apple and later as Pattie's, well, lady-in-waiting, she was an employee. And at that point, she wasn't working. She didn't have a home of her own. She was keeping Maureen company and they were being depressed and drunk together. The line between being a friend and and being a freeloader is a tricky one. (BTW, she patches things up with Ringo, who becomes her son's godfather later when she marries the aristo, and stays tight with Maureen, which leads to a milder repeat of the Eric and Pattie situation, as Chris isn't too keen on Maureen's second husband Isaac. Like I said, she's jealous of her girlfriends in the way she's not of the various boys in the band(s). I also found it interesting that she observed, apropos why she never made friends with Anita Pallenberg when she toured with the Stones, that Anita P. was "a man's woman" as opposed to Pattie who was and is "a woman's woman". And when Chris finally gets pregnant, her first thought isn't about her husband, but "how will I tell Pattie?"
Something you may have gathered from the excerpts that I noticed especially because I read this book after Klaus Voorman's memoirs - the narrative "voice" isn't that of today's Miss O'Dell, who is in her 60s, but that of a (slightly breathless) young woman. Same with Pattie's and to a lesser degree Cynthia's books, and with Keith Richards' memoirs you get the impression he sounds alike whether he's 20 or 60, which made the Voormann experience so differen. That was the first of the many rock memoirs I'd read where the narrative voice was explicitly that of an older person, looking back on his youth, sure, but an old man, not as a young one, and very aware of his aging and mortality. Wheres narrative Chris gives you the impression she's not much older than the young woman who was asked by George to stay with him and Pattie (zomg! use of exclamation marks aplenty!!!), or the slightly older woman who was self aware enough to reflect, when touring with Linda Ronstadt and thinking Linda ordering every dessert on a very small menu was decadent, that it said something about her life that this seemed decadent but snorting 500 dollars worth of cocaine per neight with Keith Richards did not.
Favourite story detail: either Chris kicking the girl who was making the moves on George right on front of Pattie or her four magical music moments (The Apple Rooftop concert, singing in the chorus of Hey Jude, dragging Paul to listen to Joe Cocker recording She came in through the bathroom window and attending a Hare Krishna recording session with George). At the end, one leaves her working as a drug counsellor in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona ("to get back where I belonged"), without some California grass, one presumes, and happy to have left the rock'n roll life behind, even though also says she wouldn't want to miss her memories for the world.
Patentöchter ("Goddaughters") by Julia Albrecht and Corinna Ponto is a dialogue in letters that deals with an incredible painful mixture of family and history. In the so-called "German Autumn" (well, we refer to it as der deutsche Herbst, no idea whether anyone outside of Germany does) of 1977, one of the most shocking acts by the RAF (that's not the Royal Airforce but the Rote Armee Fraktion, aka the Baader-Meinhoff-Gang for English speaking people) was the murder of banker Jürgen Ponto for the way in which it happened. The three terrorists that visited his house could do so because one of them, Susanne Albrecht, was the daughter of dear friends. She called him "Uncle". He was the godfather of her younger sister, Julia (one of the authors of the book), just as her father had been the godfather of his own daughter, Corinna (the other author of the book). Not that surprisingly, all contact between the families ended shortly after the murder, until recently when the two women started to correspond.
An ongoing issue for the families of the victims here in Germany is that generally the media (whether we're talking newspapers, biographies or fictional media, like films or tv shows) pay far more attention to the terrorists. (The director of one of the more recent films, Der Baader-Meinhoff-Complex, went as far as admit that to him the victims were "dull".) Yet in the case of this particular murder, the two stories, of the victim and (one of) the killer(s), are inextricably intertwined. It makes for very raw emotional reading, with both women coming across as trying to be as honest as they can of what it felt like to lose your father because of such a betrayal, to live with the fact that your adored older sister murdered your godfather. The searching for explanations, rationalizations: Julia's parents and Julia herself clung to the hope that Susanne had been blackmailed/was already repentant, only to discover that when she was arrested 13 years later that actually neither had been the case. Meanwhile, Corinna is downright obsessed with proving that the entire RAF and their 70s actions were part of a conspiracy of secret services, primarily the East German one, and increasingly bitter with every RAF terrorist released from prison or statements that "it's hard to be sorry for the fat cats" (by which victims like her father the banker were meant), a statement that came from our former secretary of foreign affairs, Joschka Fischer. And then there are the memories of the time before, when her father was still alive and Julia's sister - whom she can't bring herself to call by her name and only refers to as S. - was visiting for non-lethal reasons, or, from Julia's side of the childhood where she now wonders how real her memories are at all. There is the memory of hero-worshipping her older sister and Susanne being protective and close to her, and the reality of seeing Susanne, now talking with a Saxonian accent after years in the GDR, seeing her again as an adult and telling her indifferently "I had almost forgotten you existed". If you can read German, a highly recommend book.
A story of the 70s (and last two years of the 60s) in a very different vein is Chris O'Dell's Miss O'Dell (with the lengthy subtitle "Hard days and long nights with The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton and the women they loved"). The subtitle is a bit sensational, which wouldn't have been necessary because it really is a compelling story, unusual and most interesting among similar books because the boys in the band(s) are really only part of the subject; our narrator's intense friendships with two of their wives, Pattie Boyd and Maureen Starkey, are given as much narrative space and importance as George, Ringo, Mick 'n Keith (and far more than Bob who shows up, is being enigmatic, has a random one night stand and leaves) et al. Chris O'Dell started to work for the Beatles' Apple Company when it was new, during the brief idealistic period before things went to hell in a hand basket, toured with the Stones (she's also the woman on the Exile on Main Street cover), had a front row seat to the collapse of the Harrison and Starkey marriages (and is the subject of George Harrison's song, Miss O'Dell), the later of which she was involved with, managed tours for Linda Ronstadt and had a rueful friendly rivalry with Joni Mitchell - she's basically a female Forrest Gump of the late 60s and throughout the 70s. As opposed to Forrest, this was not conductive to her health. She already did drugs before she ever met her first rock star, but by the mid 70s she snorted enough daily cocaine to impress Keith Richards (but as opposed to Richards couldn't afford the doctors to clean up her blood). Being slapped around by a drug dealer is a wake-up call but it doesn't last long, and as opposed to how a Hollywood movie would go, marriage with an English aristocrat is anything but a happy ending (he turns out to be an addict as well, which I say didn't exactly surprise me; blame my Jacobin father), though after leaving him she does get her life back together again.
Chris O'Dell and her co-author have the gift of bringing the various characters to life, which especially with the women is much appreciated. For example, this book is the first that gives you a sense of what Maureen (Ringo's first wife) was like, as male biographers basically tend to decribe the first wives of the Beatles (minus Jane Asher, who of course wasn't married to Paul) as shy doormats, and don't bother to reconcile this with the woman who as an insensed Pattie Boyd reports responded to her "how can you do this to me, how can you do this to your marriage?" about the affair with George simply replies with an unrepentant "tough!" Says Chris, in one memorable description of Maureen: "I loved Maureen's fabulous collection of Liverpudlian colloquialisms. 'Bloody hell!' or 'sodden hellfire!' she'd say when she was frustrated or angry. 'It's breaking me brain,' she'd say when she felt overwhelmed. 'They've got more front than Selfridges,' she'd say when someone was brazen or belligerent. But my favorite Mo expression, which I heard her say just once or twice, and only after she'd had a good amount of drink, was a simple reflection on her life. 'I haven't done badly, but never mind,' she'd say with a little shrug. 'I'll do better.' There wasn't an ounce of bullshit in Maureen. She was authentically, wholly herself."
Given I had read Pattie Boyd's memoirs earlier, it was interesting to find some of the same events reported. Sometimes identically, as with the way she and Chris became friends (and remain so to this day). ('I'm sorry, I've never said this to anyone before,' she said, 'but you will only be my friend as long as you don't let George have you.' I didn't have to think for one moment about my response. 'Okay, that's a deal,' I said. 'I'd rather be your friend.') Sometimes differently (for example, Pattie says Ringo's response to the George/Mo news was being devastated and muttering "nothing is real, nothing is real", whereas Chris has him jaw clenched, tightly controlled and muttering "Better you than someone we don't know" to George). Given what I wrote in my review of Pattie's book, it was interesting to me as well as amusing that Chris uses the same phrase I did - that there were three Georges around, though in her case she describes them not as Pattie did as young witty and adoring husband, cold jerk of a husband, and warm, helpful prince of an ex-husband, but as funny and witty friend, sarcastic and biting brooder, and spiritual man who may be deep but is not as much fun as the No.1 version. Chris' default George tends to be the first version, with sometimes the third turning up; she extremely rarely talks about No.2 (and I had the impression she wants to avoid thinking about how her generous friend - who at a later point in her life helps her out with 5000 dollars when she's in distress - could be the same guy who locks himself in a room with a friend of the family right in front of his wife. Sometimes, I also thought she was letting projection of her own emotions on the various people she describes take over, which of course is what we all do when narrating our memories, but here's an example, the description of how she went from working at Apple to basically becoming what she once calls a lady-in-waiting to Pattie and George.
At this point, Allen Klein, boo-hiss figure of many a memoir (except May Pang's, who worked for him before she worked for John and Yoko and describes him as gruff but nice; Keith Richards also despite admitting he robbed the Stones of their song rights describes with a certain admiration as an impressive rascal), has taken over Apple and is busy firing people left, right and center, which is when George comes to our heroine's rescue.
"What do you mean there isn't a job for you here?" George glanced sideways at Peter Brown, a look that conveyed his dislike and his distrust of Klein.
Stop. Pause. Rewind. Repeat. His what? Let's not forget, that would be the same George who at the very moment Chris is describing is busy fighting tooth and nail for Allen Klein as Beatles manager at John's side with Paul who kept refusing to sign Klein's contract. The same George who would keep Allen Klein as his personal manager for some years into the 70s, until Klein screwed him over with the Bangladesh concert earnings and then again re: the My Sweet Lord plagiarism suit. Now I'm perfectly willing to believe he distrusted Allen K. by then, but definitely not in the late 60s when John, George and Ringo all behaved as if Klein was the manager to end all managers. So when I read that description, I had the impulse to comment, Chris, dear, who do you think hired Allen Klein? Who gives him the power to fire people? Of all the people who get to play good cop and bad cop with Allen Klein as the bad cop, George isn't one of them.
And speaking of Allen the Blue Meanie, I can hardly believe I'm saying this, but let's be fair. Chris may have experienced the helping-other-artists anarchic Apple as a 60s paradise, but it was losing money at an incredible rate, and no matter who had become manager at that point, Allen Klein, Lee Eastman or Brian Epstein resurrected from the dead, they would have had to fire people and severely limit expenses. Chris herself describes a scene illustrating this rather obviously, though I'm not sure whether our narrator gets it.
'First of all, you're doing a great job and we appreciate it,' Paul said in his most diplomatic fashion. 'But we're also losing a lot of money on things we don't need.' I listened half-heartedly was Paul talked about the need to cut unnessary costs, such as taking minicabs home after work and charging the bill to Apple. And from now on, Paul continued, no more in-house Cordon Bleu lunches for anyone but the executives. (...) 'We're going through cases of Scotch every week,' Paul said. 'We're the pub of choice and it has to stop.' Fat chance! I thought. Everyone went to the pres office after work and we all kept Scotch in our offices to entertain guests (and each other).
You can see the problem. Anyway, Chris and her co-author, Katheirne Ketcham, are great with the descriptions, whether of events like the Apple Rooftop Concert (where Chris was one of the attendants) or people, and they have a penchant for black comedy, as when Chris is witnessing John's and Yoko's first press conference together:
John fielded the questions, while Yoko appeared to cling to him even as she sat straight backed in her chair, still as stone, never saying a word. Her long black hair was parted in the middle and looked as if it were charged with electricity. I had the feeling that if I reached out and touched her, I'd get shocked. Over the next few months as I got to know her better, I learned that she wasn't the fearful type, but that day I felt sorry for her. She looked so tiny and helpless. Maybe she needs a friend, I thought. 'You're doing great,' I said, leaning over and whispering to her. She turned her head slowly, a curious expression on her face, and gave me a vacant smile. Then she turned away from me to focus on John. (...) Ouch.
Ouch indeed. This one of only two Yoko stories; as I said, the wives Chris got close with were Pattie and Maureen. With Pattie, it verges on intense possessiveness, once Eric Clapton enters the scene for good and Chris has the impression she's fighting him for Pattie's affections. (Eric C. comes across even worse in her book than he does in Pattie's - she adds the chilling detail that he renamed Pattie "Nell" because "Pattie" belonged to George whereas "Nell" was his own posession, that word used, and besides the name made her sound like a barmaid so he wouldn't have her on a pedestal anymore - but Chris is honest enough to admit she had her own brief phase of being attracted to him. Clearly the man must have something other than his talent, but quite what is not apparant from anyone's memoirs.) With Maureen, it starts on a distant and intimidated foot, and becomes close only when Maureen's marriage to Ringo is already in full breakdown. Mo doesn't make her swear not to have sex with her husband like Pattie did and sure enough, there is a brief fling, but it's treated as a minor part of the big mess that was everyone's state of being in the mid 70s and ends very soon, while the relationship with Maureen (who takes this in her stride) continues. Which leads to another passage that made me go "but Chris, are you listening to yourself?" even while I sympathized. The facts, as the narrator of Pushing Daisies was prone to say, were these: Ringo and Maureen are divorced, Chris is a hopeless addict, Maureen is depressed and drinking too much, Chris has been staying at Mo's for quite a while now when lo and behold, it's Ringo on the phone.
'Chris.' He was angry. 'What are you doing there?'
I had never heard that tone in his voice before. When Ringo was drinking heavily, he could be verbally compative at times, evne slightly belligerent. But on the phone he was talking to me as if he despised me, as if I had done someting unforgivable.
'I'm visiting Maureen.' I was pissed off that he was taking this derisive tone with me. I hadn't done anything to deserve his contempt.
'Listen, Chris, Maureen doesn't have very much money,' he said, still using that scolding tone of voice. 'And you're eating the children's food.'
I heard the slur in his words then and knew he was drunk and probably high on cocaine, too. I'd heard from friends in LA that he was doing a lot of coke. But that didn't excuse his behaviour. (...)After everything Ringo and I had been through, how could he talk to me like that, as if I were a servant or, worse, a freeloader taking advantage of his family's hospitality?
Now given their brief affair I can understand her ire, but, you know, at Apple and later as Pattie's, well, lady-in-waiting, she was an employee. And at that point, she wasn't working. She didn't have a home of her own. She was keeping Maureen company and they were being depressed and drunk together. The line between being a friend and and being a freeloader is a tricky one. (BTW, she patches things up with Ringo, who becomes her son's godfather later when she marries the aristo, and stays tight with Maureen, which leads to a milder repeat of the Eric and Pattie situation, as Chris isn't too keen on Maureen's second husband Isaac. Like I said, she's jealous of her girlfriends in the way she's not of the various boys in the band(s). I also found it interesting that she observed, apropos why she never made friends with Anita Pallenberg when she toured with the Stones, that Anita P. was "a man's woman" as opposed to Pattie who was and is "a woman's woman". And when Chris finally gets pregnant, her first thought isn't about her husband, but "how will I tell Pattie?"
Something you may have gathered from the excerpts that I noticed especially because I read this book after Klaus Voorman's memoirs - the narrative "voice" isn't that of today's Miss O'Dell, who is in her 60s, but that of a (slightly breathless) young woman. Same with Pattie's and to a lesser degree Cynthia's books, and with Keith Richards' memoirs you get the impression he sounds alike whether he's 20 or 60, which made the Voormann experience so differen. That was the first of the many rock memoirs I'd read where the narrative voice was explicitly that of an older person, looking back on his youth, sure, but an old man, not as a young one, and very aware of his aging and mortality. Wheres narrative Chris gives you the impression she's not much older than the young woman who was asked by George to stay with him and Pattie (zomg! use of exclamation marks aplenty!!!), or the slightly older woman who was self aware enough to reflect, when touring with Linda Ronstadt and thinking Linda ordering every dessert on a very small menu was decadent, that it said something about her life that this seemed decadent but snorting 500 dollars worth of cocaine per neight with Keith Richards did not.
Favourite story detail: either Chris kicking the girl who was making the moves on George right on front of Pattie or her four magical music moments (The Apple Rooftop concert, singing in the chorus of Hey Jude, dragging Paul to listen to Joe Cocker recording She came in through the bathroom window and attending a Hare Krishna recording session with George). At the end, one leaves her working as a drug counsellor in her hometown of Tucson, Arizona ("to get back where I belonged"), without some California grass, one presumes, and happy to have left the rock'n roll life behind, even though also says she wouldn't want to miss her memories for the world.
