Pattie Boyd on how the Beatles’ disintegration affected George Harrison: “He brought it all home… and it was kind of difficult to live with”
The former model reflects upon her marriage to the guitarist and describes how his time in the band altered his personality.
Image: Hulton Archive/Getty
Pattie Boyd has spoken about her marriage to George Harrison, claiming that the musician’s personality changed for the worse throughout his time with The Beatles.
While promoting her new book, My Life In Pictures, yesterday, photographer and former model Pattie Boyd opened up about her seven decades of experience in the fashion and music industry, and looked back on her marriage to George Harrison.
“It took time and experiences to work out who I was,” she tells The Telegraph, reflecting upon the early days of the couple’s relationship. “People wanted to meet George, and they’d want to meet me… I’d feel very insecure and so I had to force myself to bring out what was hidden inside me.”
She explained how Harrison’s personality changed throughout his difficult time in the band, and how it had soured the atmosphere at home.
“He brought it all home,” she says, “and it was kind of difficult to live with.”
“I felt that I had to leave George because things were getting really out of hand. George was just being a different George… I think he wanted to spread his wings and take advantage of being the handsome, famous, rich guy that he was, and see how the girls feel about him. A hot-blooded boy – why not, I suppose.”
Boyd, who went on to marry and separate from Eric Clapton, also admits that despite first meeting the Beatle after a casting session for the band’s 1964 movie, A Hard Day’s Night, Harrison encouraged her to leave her modelling career and embrace a more traditional path.
“I’m probably an old-fashioned girl at heart, the man is the king of the house [and] I didn’t expect to be on the same par as George, obviously, but everything was really for him,” she says. “I loved cooking for George and being creative. We were vegetarians, and so I had to work even harder.”