Pattie Boyd

• 1. Introduction

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  Pattie Boyd is an English model and photographer whose life runs through two of the most famous love songs in rock. One is "Something," written by George Harrison. The other is "Layla," written by Eric Clapton. Harrison and Clapton were close friends, and each wrote about the same woman. Boyd married both men, one after the other. The songs show how two guitarists saw her, but they say little about how she saw them. What did it mean to be the muse behind such music? And what did she do with her own camera, her own career and her own account of events?

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• 2. Childhood Between Continents

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  Nakuru School, near Nairobi, took Boyd in as a boarder when she was eight years old. During a half-term break she went home and was shocked to learn that her parents had divorced. Her early years had already been restless. She was born on the 17th of March 1944 in Taunton, Somerset, the first child of Colin "Jock" Ian Langdon Boyd and Diana Frances Boyd, born Drysdale. The family moved to West Lothian in Scotland, where her brother Colin was born in 1946. A move to Guildford, Surrey, followed, and her sister Jenny arrived in 1947.

  After Jock left the Royal Air Force, the Boyds lived in Nairobi from 1948 to 1953. Her youngest sister, Paula, was born at a hospital in Nakuru, Kenya, in 1951. In December 1953, Boyd and her siblings moved to England with their mother and her new husband, Bobbie Gaymer-Jones. The remarriage brought two half-brothers, David, born in 1954, and Robert, known as "Boo," born in 1955. Many years later, Boyd learned that she also had two half-sisters through her father's second marriage.

  Hazeldean School in Putney was the first of three English schools, though she attended it only briefly. She then went to the St Agnes and St Michael Convent Boarding School in East Grinstead, and later to St Martha's Convent in Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire. In 1961 she earned three GCE O level passes and moved to London. Through her mother, she found work at 17 as a trainee beautician at Elizabeth Arden's Bond Street salon. A client there who worked for Honey magazine suggested that she join a modelling agency, and that remark ended her short career in beauty.

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• 3. The Look of London

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  In 1962, Boyd began her fashion career, modelling first in London and then in Paris. Her regular assignments included the British edition of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle in France and Honey. She also appeared in fashion spreads in The Daily Telegraph and The Times. David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy were among her photographers, and she appeared on the cover of British Vogue. Other popular models of the day, such as Twiggy, based their own appearance on hers. Designer Ossie Clark treated her as a muse and called some of his designs "Pattie."

  Early in 1964, Boyd appeared in a television advertising campaign for Smith's crisps, directed by Richard Lester. Lester then cast her as a schoolgirl in the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night. On that set she met and befriended the group's lead guitarist, George Harrison. Her career climbed quickly once she became involved with him. More work for Vogue and Vanity Fair followed, along with jobs for Tatler with photographer Jeanloup Sieff. She also made commercials for Smith's and for L'Oréal's Dop shampoo.

  Journalist Tom Hibbert described Boyd and Jean Shrimpton as "international celebrities," the embodiment of a British look built on the mini-skirt, long straight hair and wide eyes. The popularity of the Beatles and other British Invasion bands from 1964 onwards carried that look across the Western world. A 1966 article in the Daily Express said that in Swinging London, "actors, pop singers, hairdressers, and models" had become the new "privileged class." Writer Barry Miles later called Boyd "by far the most glamorous" of the Beatles' wives and girlfriends. That same year, designer Mary Quant observed that women now wanted "to look like Pattie Boyd rather than Marlene Dietrich."

  Gloria Stavers, at the American teen magazine 16, asked Boyd to write a column called "Patti's Letter from London." According to Hibbert, she reported on Carnaby Street trends and on what the Beatles and the Stones were wearing. She also advised readers how to turn dark, curly hair straight and blonde. But the Beatles' female fans began to turn hostile toward her, and Harrison insisted she give up her career to protect their privacy. In July 1968, Boyd and her sister Jenny opened a boutique in Chelsea Market and named it "Jennifer Juniper," after Donovan's song. Jenny managed the shop, which sold antiques and other objets d'art, while Boyd was the buyer.

  By the early 1970s, Boyd said she had "virtually given up" modelling. In May 1971 she returned to it, promoting Ossie Clark's designs, in defiance of Harrison's spiritual convictions. She and Twiggy shot a cover for Italian Vogue in Milan with photographer Justin de Villeneuve. Working again with Bailey, she appeared on several covers of British Vogue. For another Vogue shoot, Patrick Lichfield photographed Boyd together with her sisters.

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• 4. Life With a Beatle

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  On the 2nd of March 1964, Boyd was 19 years old and two weeks away from her 20th birthday when she met George Harrison. She was seeing photographer Eric Swayne at the time, so she declined Harrison's first invitation to a date. Several days later she had ended that relationship, and she went with Harrison to the Garrick Club, a private gentlemen's club. Beatles manager Brian Epstein went along as chaperone. In July 1964, Harrison bought Kinfauns, a house in Esher, Surrey, to escape the constant attention of fans in central London. Boyd soon moved in.

  In early 1965, the couple's dentist, John Riley, secretly laced his guests' coffee with LSD at a dinner party in his home. As Boyd prepared to leave with Harrison and with John and Cynthia Lennon, Riley confessed and tried to make them stay. Outside, Boyd was agitated and threatened to break a shop window, and Harrison pulled her away. Later, in a lift on the way up to the Ad Lib Club, the group mistakenly believed the car was on fire.

  Christmas Day 1965 brought their engagement, and they married on the 21st of January 1966 at Epsom register office. In March 1966, Harrison's "How a Beatle Lives" profile in the Evening Standard stressed the equality of their relationship. He also credited Boyd with broadening his outlook. She inspired four more Harrison songs for the Beatles besides "Something": "I Need You," "If I Needed Someone," "Love You To" and "For You Blue." Author Ian Inglis, writing about Harrison's 1973 song "So Sad," called Boyd the musician's "closest companion," someone who shared his "triumphs and tragedies."

  In 1968, Boyd told Beatles biographer Hunter Davies that the four Beatles shared a bond neither she nor any other wife could penetrate. She also wished the band would use its fame to support a cause publicly, as Marlon Brando had done for homeless children. On the 12th of March 1969, the day Paul McCartney married Linda, police arrested Boyd and Harrison at their home for possession of cannabis. The source places the arrest within the less tolerant attitude British authorities showed toward the Beatles in the late 1960s. Both pleaded guilty and were fined £250 each.

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• 5. Stillness and Strain

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  Six weeks in India, in September and October 1966, followed the Beatles' final concert tour. Boyd and Harrison stayed as guests of the Indian classical musician Ravi Shankar. In Bombay, Harrison continued his sitar studies under Shankar, and Boyd began learning the dilruba, a bow-played string instrument. Fans and the press followed them, so they left the city with Shankar and stayed on houseboats on Dal Lake in Kashmir. Back in England, the couple kept up a lifestyle of yoga and vegetarianism. Boyd received more dilruba lessons from Shiv Dayal Batish.

  On the 25th of June 1967, Boyd was among the friends who joined the Beatles for their Our World broadcast of "All You Need Is Love." She shared her husband's interest in Eastern mysticism and had joined the Spiritual Regeneration Movement in February 1967. Keen to meet its leader, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, she suggested that she and Harrison attend his lecture on Transcendental Meditation at the London Hilton on the 24th of August. Impressed, they and the other Beatles and their partners travelled the next day to a seminar he hosted in Bangor, Wales. In February 1968, Boyd and her sister Jenny accompanied Harrison to the Maharishi's ashram in Rishikesh, India.

  Friar Park, a Victorian neo-Gothic mansion in Henley-on-Thames, became their home in March 1970, a month before the Beatles broke up. By then Harrison's devotion to Indian spirituality, particularly the Hare Krishna movement, had begun to divide the couple. They were also unable to start a family, and Harrison would not consider adoption. In 1973, Boyd had an affair with Ronnie Wood, a guitarist with the Faces, while Harrison romanced Wood's wife, Krissy.

  July 1974 was when Boyd left Harrison. She said the decision rested largely on his repeated infidelities, which ended with an affair with Ringo Starr's wife, Maureen. Boyd called that affair "the final straw." Their divorce was finalised on the 9th of June 1977. Boyd's solicitor, Paddy Grafton-Green of the London firm Theodore Goddard, praised the sensitivity each side showed the other. He said: "There was no overreacting, no greed or playing with each other's emotions - I wish all divorces were so well handled."

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• 6. Layla and After

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  In the late 1960s, Eric Clapton and George Harrison became close friends who wrote and recorded music together. Clapton fell in love with Boyd during this time. In an effort to ease his infatuation, he briefly dated her sister Paula. His 1970 album with Derek and the Dominos, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, was written to declare his love for Boyd. Clapton took inspiration from The Story of Layla and Majnun by the Persian writer Nizami. That tale draws on the seventh-century Bedouin poet Qays ibn Al-Mulawwah and his lover Layla bint Mahdi, and it follows a man driven to madness by love he cannot have.

  Boyd's rejection of Clapton, and his unrequited love, eventually led him into heroin addiction and self-imposed exile between 1971 and 1974. In 1974 he pursued her again. Actor John Hurt later recalled that Harrison and Clapton staged a guitar "duel" over Boyd at Friar Park. Hurt called it "extraordinary... The air was electric. Nobody dare say a word." Boyd supports this account, but Clapton has dismissed its significance. Boyd left Harrison on the 4th of July that year.

  Boyd and Clapton married on the 27th of March 1979 in Tucson, Arizona. Harrison remained close to both and took to calling Clapton his "husband-in-law." Boyd soon struggled in the marriage and began drinking heavily, though her public image with Clapton hid those difficulties. Clapton later admitted that he abused her during the marriage and that he was a "full-blown" alcoholic. The couple tried in vitro fertilisation in 1984 and 1987, but both attempts ended in miscarriages.

  In April 1987, Boyd left Clapton, and she divorced him in 1989. She cited his years of alcoholism and his many affairs, including one with the Italian actress Lory Del Santo. The divorce was granted on grounds of "infidelity and unreasonable behaviour." Boyd later suspected that his pursuit of her during her marriage to Harrison "had more to do" with the rivalry between the two musicians. In her words, "Eric just wanted what George had."

  Rolling Stone called Boyd a "legendary rock muse" in 2007. Alan Light of The New York Times described the Boyd, Clapton and Harrison love triangle as "one of the most mythical romantic entanglements in rock'n'roll history." Beyond "Layla," she inspired Clapton's "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Wonderful Tonight." He wrote "Golden Ring" after she grew sad on learning of Harrison's 1978 marriage to Olivia Arias. His 1983 track "The Shape You're In" addressed her drinking.

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• 7. Behind the Lens

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  Valentine's Day 2005 was the date of Boyd's first public exhibition of her own photographs, at the San Francisco Art Exchange. She had begun taking pictures of musicians and friends in the 1960s, and she became a member of the Royal Photographic Society. In a 2008 interview she said she did not feel "emotionally ready" to revisit the images until 2004. She also said that her lack of professional status probably gave the work a more intimate and authentic mood, because her subjects felt relaxed around her.

  The 2005 show, titled Through the Eye of a Muse, featured her photographs of Harrison and Clapton. It appeared in San Francisco and London during 2006 and in La Jolla, California, in 2008. It also travelled to Dublin, to The Great Hall Gallery in Toronto in November 2008, and to the Blender Gallery in Sydney. In 2009-2010 it was shown in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

  In 2011, her exhibition Yesterday and Today: The Beatles and Eric Clapton was shown on Santa Catalina Island in California. It was also shown at the National Geographic Headquarters in Washington, DC. Boyd's charity work began after her separation from Clapton in the late 1980s. In 1991, she co-founded SHARP, the Self Help Addiction Recovery Program, with Barbara Bach, the second wife of former Beatle Ringo Starr.

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• 8. Her Own Version

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  In August 2007, Headline Review published Boyd's autobiography, Wonderful Today, co-written with the journalist and broadcaster Penny Junor. For the American market it was retitled Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me. The book includes many of her photographs. Clapton's own autobiography came out at the same time, and Boyd was said to relish the idea of the two books competing. Clapton disagreed with some details in her account but said: "We each have our different versions of our years together."

  Lynn Barber, reviewing the book for The Daily Telegraph, called it "absolutely gripping." She wrote that it "gives more insight into the weirdness of rock-star life than anything I have ever read." In the United States, the book debuted at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list.

  Rod Weston, a property developer, met Boyd in 1991. They married on the 29th of April 2015 at the Register Office in Chelsea Old Town Hall, London. Weston explained the timing by saying: "It's almost our silver anniversary so we thought we had better get on with it."

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