When people talk about the women of “The Beatles,” Patty Boyd is the most captivating one. She was super popular in the ‘60s. She was a model, and she was the girl everyone wanted to be. In a sense, she was one of the first it girls. But she is perhaps more famously known as rock’s greatest muse, as the love triangle between herself, George Harrison and Eric Clapton inspired some of rock’s most legendary songs.
Patricia Anne Boyd was born on March 17, 1944. She had a less-than-ideal childhood, marked by frequent moves to Scotland, England and then Kenya, where her mother took her and her siblings to live with their grandparents.
When Boyd was eight, her mother left her and her other siblings and moved back to London. When she was finally sent back to London, she walked into an unrecognizable house with a new stepfather who was less than ideal. In her autobiography, she wrote, “In my childhood, nothing was ever explained. Everything was a mystery.”
George harrison
Boyd began modeling when she was 17 or 18 years old and found great success. She worked for several major magazines, appeared in television hair commercials and even appeared on the cover of Birds of Britain.
In 1963, Boyd was filming an ad for Smith’s Crisp Apples. Through that job, she was quietly sent to an audition. Only later did she learn it was for a Beatles film, “A Hard Day’s Night.” It was on that very set where she met her future husband, George Harrison, a member of The Beatles.
After filming had wrapped for the day, Harrison asked her if she wanted to marry him. When she laughed, he asked her if she at least wanted to go out for dinner with him that night. Boyd said no because she was already seeing photographer Eric Swain. About a month later, she ended things with Swain and met Harrison again at a photo call. He asked if she was still with her boyfriend and when she told him she wasn’t, he asked her out again.
Boyd and Harrison married two years later on January 21, 1966. They tied the knot at the Epsom Registry office, and Boyd wore a Mary Quant dress made from pink redshot silk with creamy stockings and pointed red shoes. And because it was cold, she added a red fox fur coat, also by Mary Quant.
Boyd inspired many of the songs Harrison wrote for “The Beatles,” including “I Need You,” “Love You Too,” “For You Blue,” and, of course, 1969’s “Something.” This song is widely regarded as one of George Harrison’s greatest achievements. It received the Ivor Novello Award for the best song musically and lyrically and has been covered by over 150 artists like Frank Sinatra, Smokey Robinson, Ray Charles and even Elvis Presley. Frank Sinatra himself dubbed it the “greatest love song of the past 50 or 100 years.”
As their marriage progressed, Harrison began burying himself in meditation, long hours of isolation and affairs. On July 1, 1974, after nearly a decade together, Boyd left him, and their divorce was finalized in 1977.
eric clapton
Eric Clapton met George Harrison in 1964, when his band, “The Yardbirds,” opened for “The Beatles.” They formed a strong friendship, bonding over their shared profession and love of guitars. They’d frequently spend time at each other’s houses, making music and having dinner. It was then that Clapton became increasingly fond of Boyd.
Clapton grew so infatuated with Boyd that he wrote the infamous song “Layla” as an attempt to get her to leave Harrison. He drew inspiration from the story of “Layla and Majnun,” a seventh-century Arabian story about a man who falls in love with a married woman and is eventually driven to madness because he cannot be with her. She rejected his early advances because of her love and adoration for Harrison, and as a result, Clapton descended deeper into his heroin addiction, and the two did not see each other for years.
After her divorce from George, Eric re-entered Pattie’s life. He had managed to quit heroin but had replaced it with heavy drinking and cocaine. The two married in 1979, and Boyd joined Clapton on his U.S. tour soon after.
The backstage life was far less romantic than Boyd expected. She felt out of place, lonely and increasingly pulled into the same addictions that were slowly but surely consuming Clapton. Still, there were moments of genuine affection. One night, while Boyd was upstairs getting dressed for a party, Clapton waited downstairs with a guitar. When she finally came down and asked, “Do I look all right?” he played what he had written in that moment of affection. It would later become the song “Wonderful Tonight.”
Clapton’s drinking escalated. Their marriage worsened as he lashed out publicly, yelling at her in hotel lobbies. Then came the final breaking point. Clapton told Boyd he was having a baby with another woman. They divorced in 1989, with Clapton’s song “Old Love” documenting the end of their marriage.
Pattie Boyd
After she divorced Clapton, Pattie Boyd began to find herself again and get back into her passions. Creatively, she found her way back through photography. She posed for photoshoots again, this time as a woman reclaiming her own image. Her exhibitions drew real respect. She published “Wonderful Tonight,” which became a bestseller, and later “My Life in Pictures,” a visual map of her life and art.
She found love again, with Rod Weston, a property developer. After years of being introduced as someone’s muse, someone’s wife, someone’s inspiration, she finally became someone’s partner and equal in one. They got married in 2015, and they’re still together.
The story of Pattie Boyd and the men surrounding her is fascinating, but it’s even more incredible to look at the music because it really allows us to understand how they were feeling. “Something,” “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight” don’t just orbit around Pattie Boyd. They exist because she walked into the lives of two men who turned their feelings into music that outlived them all.
“I have had the most extraordinary life,” Boyd says now. “And I wouldn’t change a day of it.”