![\"George](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/George-Harrison-Eric-Clapton-Split-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Eric Clapton)<\/p>\n
Sat 27 September 2025 16:40, UK <\/p>\n
Guitar virtuoso Eric Clapton<\/a> really didn\u2019t deserve George Harrison\u2019s friendship.<\/p>\n The pair\u2019s friendship went back to the peak of Beatlemania. Supporting the Fab Four at London\u2019s Hammersmith Odeon in 1964 as support with The Yardbirds, a rock comradeship would develop across the years, leading to Clapton\u2019s invitation to lay down \u2018While My Guitar Gently Weeps\u2019 scorching solo, and Harrison co-writing Cream\u2019s final single \u2018Badge\u2019 the following year.<\/p>\n Fractures began to emerge, however. As The Beatles were all but dissolved in 1970, Clapton was privately struck with cupid\u2019s arrow toward Harrison\u2019s wife of four years, Pattie Boyd, the subject behind Abbey Road\u2019s immortal \u2018Something\u2019 love song. Burning with unrequited passion, Clapton slyly asked Boyd to meet him in secret at a South Kensington flat to hear a recent cut from his latest Derek and the Dominoes project. \u201cHe switched on the tape machine, turned up the volume and played me the most powerful, moving song I had ever heard,\u201d Boyd recalled in 2007\u2019s Wonderful Today memoir. \u201cIt was \u2018Layla.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Clapton\u2019s passionate howl of a song obviously planted a seed. That night, during a gathering at manager Robert Stigwood\u2019s house, Harrison sought out Boyd, only to find her seemingly in deep conversation with the former Cream guitarist.<\/p>\n \u201cGeorge came over and demanded, \u2018What\u2019s going on?\u2019, Boyd recalled. To my horror, Eric said, \u2018I have to tell you, man, that I\u2019m in love with your wife.\u2019 I wanted to die. George was furious. He turned to me and said: \u2018Well, are you going with him or coming with me?\u2019\u201d Boyd decided to go home with Harrison right then and there.<\/p>\n As the years passed, Boyd and Harrison\u2019s marriage would hit ever-rockier waters. Harrison\u2019s devotion to Indian spirituality began to alienate Boyd, and difficulties in starting a family, as well as mutual affairs with future Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood<\/a>\u2014as alleged in his Ronnie: The Autobiography\u2014and Ringo Starr\u2019s wife, Maureen, began to take their toll. Clapton\u2019s unrequited feelings spelled a period of depression, locking himself away in his Hurtwood Edge mansion in Surrey and snorting heroin most days.<\/p>\n In 1974, Clapton turned up drunk at the couple\u2019s Friar Park estate, lost in his infatuation. Harrison\u2019s response was to engage in a rock battle. \u201cGeorge handed him a guitar and an amp\u2014as an 18th-century gentleman might have handed his rival a sword\u2014and for two hours, without a word, they duelled,\u201d Boyd recalled. \u201cAt the end, nothing was said but the general feeling was that Eric had won. He hadn\u2019t allowed himself to get riled or go in for instrumental gymnastics as George had. Even when he was drunk, his guitar-playing was unbeatable\u201d.<\/p>\n