Rock 'n' roll hearts: Boyd and Clapton

They had one of the most tangled love affairs in rock 'n' roll history. If their love was a song . . . well, it was a song. Several, in fact. And really famous ones that everyone knows, including "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight."

Although the basic facts of the coupling of guitar god Eric Clapton and former model Pattie Boyd are well-known - Boyd was married to Clapton's good friend George Harrison, but Clapton pursued and eventually got her, only to have it fall apart - the details are teased out in the pair's new autobiographies.

In "Clapton: An Autobiography," the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer lays bare his shamelessness, and in "Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me," Boyd reports that marrying two of the biggest rock stars in the world wasn't all about love songs and rolling around on beds of cash. Considering the amount of drugs and alcohol consumed by all involved, their memories are surprisingly similar. Here are a few interesting "he said, she said" differences.

On 'Layla':
In "Wonderful Tonight" Boyd says Clapton called her up to hear his blistering Derek and the Dominos tale of unrequited love in London in 1970. "He switched on the tape machine, turned up the volume, and played me the most powerful, moving song I had ever heard." It was then that she finally gave up her resistance. (Who wouldn't?)

In "Clapton" the guitarist says the consummation of their attraction and the playback were unrelated, that he coincidentally ran into Boyd one day and "we just kind of collided, to the point where there was no turning back." Interestingly, he places the playing of the song at a different rendezvous.

On confessing to Harrison:
While the former spouses agree that Clapton admitted his love for her to Harrison in the wee hours of an all-night party, Boyd recalls it happening hours after hearing "Layla," while Clapton writes, vaguely, "a little while later." She says Harrison was "furious" and they left immediately. Meanwhile, Clapton writes, "The ensuing conversation bordered on the absurd. Although I think he was deeply hurt - I could see it in his eyes - he preferred to make light of it, almost turning it all into a Monty Python situation."

On 'Wonderful Tonight':
Most rock fans know that this sweet-sounding ode to a partner's beauty was born of anger while Clapton waited for Boyd to go out. "I remember telling her, 'Look, you look wonderful, okay? Please don't change again. We must go or we'll be late.' " He then immediately sat down and wrote the song. "I wasn't that enamored with it as a song. It was just a ditty, as far as I was concerned, that I could just as easily have thrown away." Rolling Stone Ron Wood convinced him otherwise.

If he was angry, Boyd doesn't mention it. "Poor Eric had been ready for hours and had been waiting patiently."

On inspiration:
"Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight" weren't the only songs for which Boyd served as muse. Harrison wrote the Beatles classic "Something" about her and Clapton used her for inspiration for "Bell-Bottom Blues," "I Looked Away," the not-so-nice "The Shape You're In," "Behind the Mask," and "Old Love."

On the sex that went with the drugs and rock 'n' roll:
Clapton may have disrupted the Harrison marriage, but according to Boyd, the quiet Beatle was no saint. She claims that prior to their breakup, he had affairs with the wives of both Wood and Beatle drummer Ringo Starr, among many others. According to Clapton himself, he also had many, many dalliances while married to Boyd and was stripped of an Italian model girlfriend by Mick Jagger. He even admits that he tried to get it on with one of Boyd's friends on the night of their wedding party. (He also dated Boyd's 17-year-old sister prior to his marriage to Boyd.)