March 1970
“Chris, baby! What the hell are you doing here?” Doris Troy’s deep, powerful voice resonated through the large office I shared with Neil on the second floor. Doris, known to her adoring fans as “Mama Soul,” was a force of nature. Discovered by James Brown when she was working as an usherette at the Apollo Theater in New York, Doris cowrote and recorded the 1963 Top 10 hit “Just One Look” and was signed by Apple in 1969. We became good friends and spent many memorable evenings together, drinking, listening to music, and telling stories about our lives. Mostly I listened because when Doris was anywhere within shouting distance, she commanded all the attention. A large, sturdy woman with a booming voice, she lavished laughter and love on everyone. I loved watching her with Billy Preston as they hooted and howled, using black street talk and humor that I often couldn’t understand, always ending a conversation with the conviction that God would make everything work out in the end or, as Billy wrote, “That’s the Way God Planned It.”
“Baby, baby, baby,” she said, when I told her about my failed romance with Leon and my return to Apple, “I just gotta see you, spend some time with you. Come on over after work. I wanna hear all about LA. I missed ya.”
Neil was surrounded by celluloid when I walked into the small windowless room that he used for screening the hundreds of reels of film scattered all around him. On a table in the middle of the room sat a projector facing a makeshift screen on the wall. For weeks he’d been going through those reels, watching every frame, looking for the pieces he deemed most valuable. He’d stay in that dark room for hours, while I sat in his office typing lists with dates, places, names, and other essential details for each reel of film.
“Neil, I’m leaving, see you tomorrow,” I said.
“Okay, kiddo,” he said, barely looking up from the screen. “You going to Doris’s place?”
“Yeah, I’m spending the evening with her,” I said, smiling to myself. I could never quite figure out what Neil thought about Doris. She could be hard to take because she craved control and wanted to be in the know about every decision involving her career, unlike Billy Preston, who trusted the Beatles and the Apple brass to do whatever was right and never worried about the details. Whenever she stopped by the office, she’d hound Neil, Peter Brown, or, if she was lucky, one of the Beatles, asking questions nonstop about why they had or hadn’t done this or that. Her intensity could wear people down after a while. George had a great way with Doris. “Relax, Doris, it’ll all be okay,” he’d communicate to her in his soft, soothing voice, and she’d heave a big sigh, trusting him for the moment to take care of everything.
“Okay, see you tomorrow,” Neil said as he reeled the film onto the projector. I shut the door softly behind me.
Doris lived in a cute little mews house in the West End. I loved hanging out with her because people were always stopping by to talk about music, smoke some hashish, have a few drinks, sing (Doris and Billy Preston once talked me into belting out a James Brown song and even had me believing I had some soul), laugh, tell stories. But on this night we were all alone.
“Oh, baby, I’m sorry you had to go through that shit with Leon and get your heart broken.”
“Well, now I’m back where I belong,” I said, blinking back tears and changing the subject. “I’m so grateful to Neil for coming to my rescue before Klein got rid of me.”
“That Allen Klein is trouble, baby, mark my words,” she said. “Things have really changed around Apple since he came in. It breaks my heart to see what’s happening there. I can’t get anyone to tell me what’s going on with my contract. I’m getting pretty upset.”
“Well, maybe I can find something out,” I said as I reached for my Scotch and Coke.
“Ooohh, baby, I’m glad you’re back,” Doris said, reaching across the table to pat my hand. “You belong here, just like I belong here. Did you know I’ve been singing with Marsha Hunt and Madeline Bell? There’s a lot going on here. I’m gonna stay even if the Apple deal falls apart.”
When the phone rang we were halfway out the door, on the way to dinner. “Now who could that be?” she said with a big smile. Doris loved phone calls, drop-in visitors, and spontaneous parties. She threw her purse on a chair and balanced her hand on her hip as she picked up the phone.
“Hey, baby, how ya doing?” Doris said, throwing me a huge smile. “You in the studio? Oh good. Uh huh. Sure, yeah, she’s here, hold on, baby.” She handed the phone to me with both eyebrows raised. “It’s for you, darlin’, it’s George.”
I looked at her, my eyes wide, and mouthed, “George?” Why would George call me at Doris’s place? She handed me the phone, picked up her half-finished drink, and lit another cigarette.
“Chris, look, I was wondering how things were going with Neil,” George said. “Is the job working out?”
“Neil is great, we get along really well,” I said, smiling at Doris, who was watching my face, trying to pick up clues about the conversation. “And the job is great, too. Thanks for your help with everything, George.”
“Well, listen, I talked to Neil a few minutes ago and told him that I’d like to offer you a job working for me. Are you interested?”
“You want me to work for you?” Totally flabbergasted, I looked at Doris, who was shaking her hips at me in a little celebration dance.
“Pattie and I moved into this new house and it needs a lot of work. Terry Doran is staying with us at the moment, but I thought perhaps you could be of some help, too. You’d have to live there for a while.”
I was still camping out at Richard’s, so I needed a place to stay—and how much fun would it be to move in with Pattie and George and pal around with Terry, fixing up the house, moving furniture, shopping, partying? Spring in the country—I imagined it would be absolutely beautiful. Oh, but what about Neil? I owed him a huge debt. How could I just up and leave him after he’d been so good to me?
“What did Neil say?” I asked George.
“He said it’s up to you.”
Up to me? Was there a choice? George Harrison was asking me to work directly for him. Then I’d really be out of Klein’s reach. But just as enticing, George was giving me the opportunity to live with him and Pattie. Ever since I sat across from Pattie at the Aretusa restaurant, just four days after I arrived in London, I’d had fantasies about someday becoming her friend. Playing tennis with her and sitting next to her at the Isle of Wight concert fueled my fanciful flights of imagination. I had no doubt that I could live with her. I could live with anybody (except, I thought with a painful twinge, Leon), but would she be able to live with me? I found myself wondering if she was aware that George was inviting me to work for him and stay with them at the house. Was I being hired as her companion? George had Terry and now Pattie would have someone to keep her company and to help her around the house. But did she really want me there, a constant presence in her home?
And I worried about disappointing Neil. He had stuck his neck out for me. I didn’t want him to think I was ungrateful, nor did I want to let him down. Would he think that I was just selling out somehow, that I’d been bought out by a Beatle? But then again, weren’t we all, in one way or another, “bought out” by the Beatles? They were our employers. They paid our salaries. I’d be crazy not to take this chance to get to know George better and work with him directly. Neil would understand, wouldn’t he?
I had all these thoughts in two or three seconds, and then I made one of the most important decisions I have ever made.
“I’d love to come and work for you,” I said.
“Good,” he said, sounding really pleased about my decision. “Look, I’m at Trident Studios and I’ll be here for a few more hours tonight. If you can get some things together and meet me here before midnight, you can drive back to the house with me.”
“Okay, I’ll be there,” I said, hanging up the phone. Doris was staring at me, hand still on her hip, smile even wider, eagerly waiting for the details.
“George wants me to come to his new house and work for him. I’m supposed to pack some things and meet him at Trident tonight.” I was totally dumbfounded.
“Hey, baby, that’s great!” She threw her arms toward heaven and then bundled me up in a huge smothering hug.
“I’m wondering what Neil will say,” I said after we’d both calmed down a little. “I feel like I’m letting him down. But this will be a lot more fun, won’t it? I’ll have a place to stay and I won’t have to go into the office every day. As much as I love Apple, I always feel like I’m trying to avoid Klein and all his henchmen by hiding out in Neil or Peter Brown’s offices.”
“That’s right, baby,” Doris said, “it makes all the sense in the world to go with George. Now look, just call Neil, he’ll understand, and then hurry along. You’ve got to get yourself packed!”
Neil picked up on the second ring, almost as if he’d been expecting my call.
“Well, I figured you’d take it,” he said when I explained my decision. “It’s a lot more glamorous working for a Beatle, isn’t it?”
For a moment there I feared that Neil would consider me a traitor, but he wasn’t angry with me. I could almost hear him shrugging his shoulders as if to say, “Oh well, it is what it is.” I even wondered if he might have been relieved that I had safely escaped Savile Row and still had a job—with Apple paying my salary but having no control over my destiny, Klein couldn’t touch me. That wouldn’t turn out to be completely true, but at that point I couldn’t imagine a safer place to be than in George Harrison’s home.
I took a taxi to Richard’s flat and spent an hour or so trying to figure out what to pack. Should I take all three of my bags, or just one? It was early March, almost spring. Would it be cold in the country? Should I pack my winter clothes or leave them behind? I finally decided to take just one bag and wait until I was settled to pick up the rest of my things. I could only imagine what George and Pattie might think if I showed up at Friar Park with three suitcases, moving in with all my possessions, as if I were going to stay forever.
I arrived at the studio before midnight, but George was head to head with the engineer, working out some problem with the vocals. I made myself a Scotch and Coke and sat down in my usual place on the sofa in front of the control board. A few minutes later Eric Clapton walked into the control room.
“Hello,” he said, sitting down next to me. I turned to look at him, he looked at me, and in his eyes at that moment I saw a depth of emotion that I was not expecting. I saw pain, vulnerability, fear. And longing. I didn’t interpret that longing as a sexual hunger so much as a spiritual craving for connection with another human being. He seemed unbearably lonely. And then, in an instant, as if realizing his vulnerability, he seemed to pull back.
“Hi,” I said. God, he was handsome. I don’t think I’d ever noticed that before.
He stared at me for a moment, his eyes narrowing. “Have we met before?”
“We met in Los Angeles. I was with Leon Russell,” I said, deciding not to mention the “Pisces Apple Lady” session when he seemed so out of it and huddled in the corner with Alice.
“Oh.” He obviously didn’t remember that meeting either. “Are you still with him?”
“Not really,” I replied. I wondered later why I didn’t just say, “No.” I was definitely attracted to Eric, and that spiritual longing I thought I’d detected now seemed much more sexually oriented.
George walked around the control board toward us, looking relaxed now that the problem with the vocals was resolved. “Eric, have you met Chris O’Dell?” he said, sitting on the sofa next to me. “She’s a friend.”
“We’re just meeting,” Eric said, smiling at me.
I found myself hoping we’d meet again.
It was after 2:00 a.m. when George and I drove through the village of Henley-on-Thames, which seemed quaint and charming even in the dead of night. At the edge of town George took a right turn through an ornately decorated wrought-iron gate and there to my left, surrounded by stately trees and sculptured bushes, was a fairy-tale gingerbread house with dark-and-light-patterned brickwork, multiple chimneys, stained-glass windows, and a gabled roof. The house was all lit up, and I was excited because it looked like Pattie had waited up for us.
“It’s beautiful,” I said in a hushed tone, awed by the old-world charm of the place.
George looked at me with an odd expression and then burst out laughing. “That’s just the front lodge,” he said. “The main house is a little farther along.”
We continued down the long, narrow, curving drive, passing the middle lodge, and when we came around a bend, the full moon beamed down on a huge Victorian Gothic mansion. I gasped. I had never seen such a magnificent sight. The house posed regally in the dark, cold English night. Soft, dim lights reflected through stained-glass windows and the mansion’s high turrets threw long shadows on the sweeping lawn. I felt as though I’d been transported into another time, the era of Jane Eyre and the ghosts of Ferndean Manor and of Heathcliff and Catherine wandering the moors at Wuthering Heights. This castlelike mansion was Friar Park—my new home.
Terry Doran was waiting for us when we arrived. A former car salesman in Liverpool—he once sold Brian Epstein a Maserati—Terry eventually joined the publishing division of Apple. The story goes that John hired him as his personal assistant, promising to keep him on as long as he made him laugh—Terry was a genius at making people laugh—but after John married Yoko, Terry went to work for George and moved into Friar Park to help with gardening and all the myriad tasks that needed to be done every day.
We gathered a few things—Terry said he’d bring in my suitcase and the rest of George’s belongings—and walked through the massive carved wooden doors. A marble entrance hall led to another set of doors which opened on to the double-height main hall. The entire room was oak paneled in both light and dark wood, and a gorgeous wood staircase rose elegantly to a minstrel’s gallery. A chest-high fireplace was set right into the paneling and a fire was blazing. Above the fireplace a stained-glass window reached all the way to the ceiling. Aside from a wrought-iron bench with a padded leather seat in front of the fireplace, the main hall was completely bare of furniture.
I was standing there, head tilted upward, gaping at the magnificence of it all, when Pattie suddenly emerged from what looked like a panel in the wall. Geez, I thought, there are even secret doors here.
“Hello,” she said, softly, even a little shyly. She wore deep red velvet trousers, a big bulky sweater, and furry boots that reached up to her knees. Her hair was pulled back in a casual, somewhat messy look, with blond tendrils framing her face. Although she was gracious and friendly that night, I’d later learn that she was a little “miffed” with George for asking me to come stay and work at the house. She later told me she saw me as a threat, because almost every girl she knew made a pass at George—and far too often he responded to their advances or initiated the romantic liaisons on his own. She thought George had brought me into her home because he intended to sleep with me.
“Your house is amazing,” I said, almost as much in awe of her as I was of her new home.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it.” Pattie smiled at me. “Would you like a drink?”
“I’d love a drink,” I said.
“Tea for me,” George said.
Terry came in with my suitcase, and I could see right away that Pattie adored him.
“Teddy, just leave the bags here, we’ll get them later,” she said. Teddy was his childhood nickname and Pattie’s favorite pet name for him. They laughed and talked, obviously very close friends, and I have to admit that right from the beginning I was a little jealous of Terry’s intimate friendship with both George and Pattie. I became good friends with Terry, too, but I often felt that I was competing with him for Pattie’s and George’s attention.
George and Terry wandered off down the hallway, disappearing into one of the rooms, while Pattie and I sat down on the bench with our glasses of wine. We leaned up close to the fire, our shoulders pulled up to our ears, and I found myself shivering. I still had my coat on; in fact, I don’t think I took my coat off for the first two weeks I lived at Friar Park. It was just unbelievably bone-chillingly cold in that magnificent, massive, drafty house.
She shivered. “It’s cold in here, isn’t it? We don’t have central heating. George wants to put it in, but it will take time. All the rooms have little gas heaters, though, so you should be all right at night.” She took a sip of her wine. “Oh, and just wait until tomorrow, Chris. You’ll be able to see everything then. We’ll take a tour of the house.”
George and Terry returned, and George told Pattie how I had mistaken the front lodge for the main house. We all had a good laugh about that, and then George suggested we all go to bed.
“Where shall I sleep?” I asked.
“Anywhere you like,” George said. “There’s plenty of space.”
“We change rooms quite frequently,” Pattie explained. “It gives us a feeling for the house.”
“Do all the rooms have beds?” I asked.
“Beds?” George laughed. “There aren’t any beds. Pattie and I sleep on a mattress on the floor. Terry will give you a sleeping bag.”
I smiled to myself. So this is how the other half lives!
I chose a small room just off the main hall, explaining that I wanted to stay close to the fireplace, the main source of heat in the house. What I was really trying to do was hide the fact that I was a little frightened of sleeping alone in some far-off room in this gargantuan Gothic mansion.
“By the way,” Terry said as we stood up and said good night, “the first person to get up in the morning has to bring the tea around.”
What if I woke up first? The thought of wandering down the upstairs hallways trying to find out where they had camped out for the night scared me. Would I just knock on all the doors until someone answered?
“But how do you know where people are sleeping?” I asked.
“That’s the fun of it,” he replied.
George was standing on the stairs, hand on the banister, looking down at me and smiling. “Welcome to Friar Park, Chris.”