This is Nancy Harwood. She was a Playboy Centerfold in 1968, and my favorite of all the women I lived with. Note that I said: "lived with." I met her at Howard Gilliam's house in 1968, where I was living. She was beautiful, arrogant, and pushy, and I asked her to leave almost immediately. She refused. I asked her again and she said, "No!" I told her to get out, and again and she said, "No!"
She was used to getting her own way, and this became a test of wills, which she was determined to win. I stood up and walked over to where she was seated and said, "Goddamn it, get the fuck out of my house." "I don't want to," she said half smiling. I reached down and grabbed a handful of her hair and lifted her out of the chair.
She was like a cat being grabbed by the back of the neck. I drug her across the floor to the front door, opened it, and pulled her out onto the front porch and let her go, then turned and walked back inside slamming the door. In about 45 minutes the doorbell rang and I walked over and opened it, thinking it might be the police.
As I opened the door I saw Nancy standing there looking kind of sheepish and a lot less aggressive. She said, "I'm sorry I was so rude. Can I come back in?" I let her in and she didn't leave my side for the next year and a half. That's the way things happened in my life.
Nancy had been the girlfriend of Johnny Echols, from the band Love. I never knew how she ended up at Howard's house that day, but I never forgot it, and I'll never forget her. If there was ever a woman that I actually loved, it was her. She was a special creature, and I mean that in the very best of ways.
Nancy and I loved hard and fought hard, but no matter what happened she would not leave me. She was loyal to the bone where I was concerned, but I can not speak for Johnny Echol's experience with her, and assume it was his loss. Everywhere I went, people would stare at Nancy, then look at me, and wonder how I did it.
I used to get a kick out of watching guys try to get her attention and get her to leave me. It happened all the time and went on for as long as we were together. I got into a lot of fights because of it, but in a strange kind of a way I liked it, it meant I had something everybody else wanted and couldn't have.
Demo from 1967-68 period.