The final years of George Harrison’s marriage to Pattie Boyd were a slow road leading to an inevitable end. The finalisation of their divorce in 1977 was a long time coming, and Harrison wrote a song years earlier about the gradual drifting of their relationship.
Boyd was only 21 when she lived out every girl’s fantasy, a moment in which George Harrison got down on one knee and proposed. In the beginning, it seemed destiny had pulled them together; however, they’d eventually drift in different directions as time passed. Ultimately, the couple became unrecognisable to the ones who fell madly in love with one another.
Boyd was a jobbing model and would take any movie and television role offered to her in a bid to kickstart her career, including an appearance in a Smiths Crips TV commercial directed by Richard Lester, which was her first acting experience. Boyd merely considered it another gig, but Lester made a mental note to himself to keep her in mind for future projects, which inadvertently led to her meeting Harrison. When Lester was tasked with directing A Hard Day’s Night, he knew she needed to play a role. However, the director needed to be tight-lipped regarding the project when he approached her, and Boyd was none-the-wiser about what she had signed up for until she arrived on set. In fact, Boyd needed to be talked out of quitting the film by her agent, Cherry Marshall, because she was frightened of acting.
There was instant chemistry between Boyd and Harrison, and, not wasting any time, the Beatle quickly asked her out on a date. Boyd declined his invitation because of her loyalty to her then-boyfriend — but instantly regretted her decision. It was an unhappy relationship, and she swiftly dumped him after Harrison’s invitation. Fortunately, when they next met ten days later for a photoshoot, the Beatle was still keen to take her out. That evening, they dined at the Garrick Club in Covent Garden, which was the beginning of a beautiful relationship, and for many years it was idyllic.
“It was really fabulous in the beginning. We were both so young, we were able to go out, hang out, play, I introduced him to my friends,” Boyd once explained. “We had a wonderful time. He’d go off on tour and I’d hang out with my friends, while we all waited for George to come back. He was really the sweetest guy, and my family loved him, my mother particularly adored him.”
While considerable speculation surrounds how much of Harrison’s material was written directly about Boyd, the Beatle was often coy about her influence. It’s assumed that ‘Something’ was written with her in mind, but Harrison later insisted that “the words are nothing, really. There are lots of songs like that in my head. I must get them down.”
Those comments were made in 1969 and indicated that the relationship was falling apart. A few years later, Harrison would begin an affair with Ringo Starr’s wife, Maureen, which would bring both marriages to an end. However, Ringo would later admit that his own infidelities also played a part in his divorce.
It was 1972 when it first dawned on Harrison – who was staying in New York – that perhaps he and Pattie weren’t meant to be. His affair with Maureen was yet to begin, but the writing was already on the wall for their relationship. Sitting alone in his hotel room with nothing but his thoughts to occupy him, Harrison wrote the heartbreaking song ‘So Sad’ about the collapse of his marriage.
On the track, he wallows: “And he feels so alone, With no love of his own, So sad, so bad, so sad, so bad, Take the dawn of the day, And give it away, To someone who can fill the part, Of the dream we once held, Now it’s got to be shelved. It’s too late to make a new start.”
While Harrison knew that their time together was over, he couldn’t bring himself to end the relationship with Boyd and instead endeavoured to make it work. Alas, two years later, he wrote ‘So Sad’, and his affair emerged. Boyd would later leave him for Eric Clapton, who had pursued Boyd for years. Curiously, despite everything they put one another through over their marriage, they remained amicable, and Harrison even performed at her wedding to Clapton.
