From love at first sight to infidelities: What happened between George Harrison and Pattie Boyd?
The Beatles were global stars who changed the face of music forever, influencing film and fashion along the way. They remain the most successful band in history and pushed the limits of how famous musicians could become. They may even be the most important musical act of all time. But what about their wives?
They say the key to any man is his wife, and when looking at the circle of Beatles wives and girlfriends, that idea feels especially true. Paul McCartney’s life shifted when he met Jane Asher and her musical family, and then again when he married his great muse, Linda. Everyone knows the enormous influence Yoko Ono had on John Lennon, but among the most important women in the Beatles’ story is also Pattie Boyd.
In the impact of George Harrison’s best lyrics, and in the enduring appeal of his style, you’ll find a mirror reflecting his wife, Pattie. Throughout almost the entirety of The Beatles’ existence, Boyd was right there, meeting the band early and sticking around until the very end.
She was there through the highlights and the lowlights, the important acid trips and the big blow-ups at the end, but it was the highs and lows of hers and Harrison’s relationship that has made the couple endure as a point of complete fascination and obsession. When one of the era’s most beautiful faces and one of its biggest rock stars get together, people are bound to take notice, but then, with an ending as dramatic as theirs, the shockwaves still seem to reverberate.
So, what happened between George Harrison and Pattie Boyd?
1964: A fateful meeting
As Beatlemania was beginning to well and truly kick off, the band decided to capture it on film. A Hard Day’s Night was the group’s first movie, and even still today it holds up as a silly yet captivating document of the lads on the rise, combining a fictionalised story with the very real insanity that surrounded them.
For the most part, the crowds of screaming girls were real fans, but for anyone who actually got up close, they called in models and extras. One of them was 19-year-old Pattie Boyd, who is actually Paul McCartney’s object of affection in the film, and yet, as she sits in shot as the band plays ‘I Should’ve Known Better’, you can catch a few glances between Boyd and Harrison as the two hit it off. In fact, they hit it off so well that Harrison jokily proposed to her that day on their lunch break.
A swift courtship
However, how does one of the world’s most famous men go about dating when a crowd of screaming girls follows him everywhere?
After meeting and instantly connection, the couple tried to steal every moment they could as the band’s manager, Brian Epstein, helped them out, sneaking Boyd into hotels and parties and chaperoning their dates. But with hectic schedules, they quickly decided to level up the image of both Harrison the Beatle and Boyd the face of the 1960s as Harrison bought his first big-boy home in Surrey in 1964 to escape the crowds and asked Boyd to move in almost immediately.
It would feel all too fast-paced, but by all reports, Harrison and Boyd were a case of love at first sight. “I had eyes only for George. He, clumsy, would occasionally smile at me or wink,” Boyd said of those early days, adding so tenderly, “Why do I love George? Because there are in him two personalities. The glamorous Beatle, all proud, driving his Aston-Martin, but also the young, carefree young man arriving with his toothbrush and a large paper bag with holes everywhere; a prince and a beatnik in one single person: I though that didn’t exist.”
1966: Boyd and Harrison marry
“In the beginning, we said ‘George Harrison’s girlfriend’. Then we started saying ‘George Harrison’s fiancée’. Not a problem between us. We decided to get married,” Boyd put it so nonchalantly. From the moment they met, it seemed only a matter of time until they would wed, and so on January 21st, 1966, they married at a small ceremony in Epsom with Paul McCartney as Harrison’s best man.
“We’re a match for each other,” Harrison gushed in a 1966 interview. Proudly showing off his home and talking about his marriage, he said, “People should know everything about each other before they get married; I’d like you to put that in my article. Not almost everything, but really everything. You must spill it out and get it off your chest like going to the psychiatrist. That’s the great thing about a wife, you see. She’s your best friend.”
From then on, Boyd was a key player in all the key moments. She was there when the band first took LSD, when they went off to India to learn about meditation, was amongst the choir singing ‘All You Need Is Love’ on the Our World broadcast, and so on. However, at the same time, Harrison was making a new friend.
1970: The Eric Clapton problem
George Harrison and Eric Clapton also met in 1964, but as the two had grown more famous, their friendship had tightened due to their understanding of one another. They were best friends by the time the 1960s were closing, as Clapton was called in to play on some of Harrison’s best Beatles compositions, and the two struck up a true sense of musical and personal kinship.
The problem is that all the while, Clapton was in love with Boyd, so much so that it was becoming a concern. He tried to ignore it, even dating Pattie’s sister to redirect the affection, but nothing worked. By 1970, he couldn’t hold back and started sending Boyd secret and adoring letters, writing, “What I wish to ask you is if you still love your husband?” In a series of love notes, he always addressed her as “Layla”.
Then the song came and changed everything. “He switched on the tape machine, turned up the volume and played me the most powerful, moving song I had ever heard,” Boyd recalled of the first moment she heard the song, adding, “The realisation that I had inspired such passion and creativity, the song got the better of me. I could resist no longer.” The affair began there.
1970 – 1974: The various infidelities
The thing is that by the time Boyd gave in to Clapton, she was already aware of several indiscretions and infidelities from Harrison. Her husband was increasingly collapsing into a dangerous mix of growing substance abuse and deepening spirituality. At the same time, he was drinking more and taking more drugs, while also becoming more controlling over Boyd. He didn’t want her modelling or acting, claiming it went against his beliefs, yet he was still away most of the time, even after the band had finished, leaving her bored and alone.
While he was away, it seemed as though the dog did play. Their relationship was cracking more and more, worsened by their inability to conceive a child, and then around that time, Boyd heard about Harrison and Krissy Wood, the wife of Ronnie Wood, so in revenge, she started an affair with him too.
Having put off Clapton’s affection throughout the late 1960s, hearing of Harrison’s lapses in their vows sent her into his arms, leading to the endlessly rumoured guitar duel between Harrison and Clapton when the affair was out in the open. But it wasn’t until one major act that she stayed there.
1974: George Harrison has an affair with Maureen Starkey
It’s one thing to have brief affairs with strangers or more distant associations, but when Harrison had an affair with Ringo Starr’s wife, a line was crossed.
To Boyd, this was ‘the final straw’; it wasn’t just the complete disgust that her husband would insult his life-long friend and collaborator like that, but it was also the devastation that Maureen would do that to her, given how much time the wives had all spent together throughout the years.
“She was the last person I would have expected to stab me in the back. But she did,” Boyd said, “I thought that there was no room for me, in this ludicrous situation we’d all found ourselves in. Everyone behaving badly. You know, truly it was a mess!”
And so that was it. With the situation seemingly broken beyond repair, Boyd and Harrison separated in 1974 and then eventually divorced in 1977, with Boyd stating, “George used coke excessively, and I think it changed him…it froze his emotions and hardened his heart”.
1979: ‘Husbands-In-Law’
Despite the drama, Harrison and Boyd remained friends. Their divorce lawyer noted that he’d never seen such a loving and well-mannered split, stating, “There was no overreacting, no greed or playing with each other’s emotions; I wish all divorces were so well handled”.
So when Boyd and Clapton married in 1979, they were able to all be friends, with Harrison and Clapton even jokingly referring to one another as ‘husbands-in-law’.
But it would all end in pain. In 1987, Boyd left Clapton on the grounds of intense abuse. Despite the adoring songs he wrote her, Boyd revealed the reality of their marriage was one of heavy alcoholism and violence on his part. When they eventually divorced in 1989, her only conclusion about the disappointment of their connection was simply that Clapton didn’t actually love her. Instead, she reasoned that it all just came back to the rivalry between two musicians, claiming, “Eric just wanted what George had”.
2001: The final goodbye
In spite of the ups and downs, Harrison and Boyd stayed connected their whole lives to some degree, routinely catching up or checking in on one another’s lives.
In 2001, just before Harrison’s death, Boyd recalled the final time they saw one another. “He came with some little gifts, and we played music and had some tea,” she remembered, “It was lovely to see him, but I knew he wasn’t well. I sensed that he wanted to see me rather than leave it too late”.
As they talked in her garden, Harrison noticed a few lone flowers poking through the dirt and shaking in the breeze. “The flowers are shivering,” he said. That stuck with her, reminding her that all these years later, he was still the same man, as she said, “Only George would think flower shiver. It was so sweet”.
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