60's Couples: George Harrison & Pattie Boyd

I had already posted this, but I thought I would do it differently, so here we go again..;)



Pattie Boyd and George Harrison met in 1964 during on the set of "A hard day's night", after she was casted as a schoolgirl fan for the film. At the time, she was "semi-engaged", to boyfriend Eric Swayne whom she'd dated for about a year, and out of loyalty declined George's first invitation for a date, but said that Harrison was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. One of the first things Harrison said to her was "Will you marry me?" Boyd laughed, so Harrison said, "Well, if you won't marry me, will you have dinner with me tonight?" Several days later when Pattie was recalled for another day's work on the film, George asked her out again and she accepted, having ended the relationship with Swayne. Their first date was spent at the Garrick Club (a private gentlemen's club) in Covent Garden, in the company of The Beatles' manager, Biran Epstein.

They were present, along with John and Cynthia Lennon, during their first encounter with LSD in early 1965. A dentist, John Riley, the son of a London Police officer, laced their coffee with the drugg. The effect differed among all of them, with Lennon and Harrison feeling ecstatic in the beginning, but Pattie and Cynthia feeling confused and scared. In an agitated state, Pattie threatened to break a store window until George dragged her away.

George and Pattie were driving through London, in December 1965, when he proposed marriage to Boyd, but said he would have to talk to Epstein first; this was to make sure no Beatles' tours had been planned.

They married on 21 January 1966, in a ceremony in Epsom, Surrey, with Paul McCartney (Best Man) and Epstein in attendance. John Lennon and Ringo Starr had gone on holiday abroad with their wives distracting journalists from finding out about the wedding. They started living together at Kinfauns in 1965. They later went on holiday with Epstein, staying at the Hotel Cap Estrelle near Eze, in the south of France.

While Lennon was in Spain filming "How I Won the War" in September 1966, George and Pattie flew to Bombay (now called Mumbai) as guests of sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, and returned to London on 23 October 1966. Through her interest in Eastern mysticism, and her membership in his Spiritual Regeneration Movement, she inspired The Beatles to meet the Indian mystic, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, in London on 24 August 1967, which resulted in a visit to Bangor, in Wales, to join him again in the following day.

They were both arredted on 12 March 1969, for possession of marijuana, after a police raid. One of the problems in their marriage was their inability to conceive a child, as the other Beatles married and started families. George told their friends that he was infertile, but years later, after the birth of his son Dhani (with second wife Olivia Harrison) in 1978, everyone knew better.
Being a friend of the couple, Eric Clapton confronted George at a 1973 party, telling him "I'm in love with your wife. What are you going to do about it?" Harrison did little but suggest Clapton "go ahead and take her" (they'd been drifting apart for some time), and the incident became Pattie's cue to leave him for Clapton.

info sources: Imdb, Wikipedia


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