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| © Patti Boyd |
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Most classic-rock fans know at least a couple of things about Pattie Boyd: She's "Layla" and she's "Something."
Those are but two of the hit songs that Boyd inspired, written by her former husbands, Eric Clapton and George Harrison, respectively. Boyd acquired instant fame when she started dating Harrison at the height of Beatlemania: They met when she had a bit part in the 1964 film A Hard Day's Night and married in 1966. Then the 1970s love triangle between Boyd, Harrison, and George's fellow guitarist and best friend Clapton became the stuff of rock-and-roll legend. Boyd and Clapton wed in 1979 and divorced ten years later.
This member of British rock royalty spent many years in front of the camera, both as a celebrity and as a fashion model, and also behind it as a serious photographer. "I've had the experience of photographs being snatched from me by the paparazzi, and I've also deliberately stood and had my picture taken," Boyd says. "I'd much rather be taking pictures. I'm actually quite shy."
American Photo caught up with Boyd during her visit to New York City's Morrison Hotel Gallery, where an exhibition of her images recently went up. The work has also been shown at Morrison Hotel Galleries in Los Angeles and La Jolla, California (visit morrisonhotelgallery.com or pattieboyd.co.uk). Now 64, still vivacious and beautiful, Boyd candidly recalls her colorful past -- much of which came to light in her revelatory 2007 book, Wonderful Tonight (Harmony Books, $26), named after another hit song written about Boyd by Clapton. "I liked the book title fine," she says, "but the publisher chose it. I wanted it to be called I Went to the Cinema with Elvis."
She's alluding to an anecdote from the book, and also to the happenstance manner in which she met Harrison on the set of A Hard Day's Night. Boyd had been given her film part (she played a schoolgirl) by director Richard Lester, whom she'd met while shooting television commercials. "I never had a desire to be an actress, so that was my first and last film part," she says with a laugh. "I mean, how do you top that?"
Boyd was surprised when Harrison asked her out; she told him about her boyfriend, a photographer who had been helping her start a modeling career. But soon after, she dumped the photographer and started dating the Beatle -- giving her a ticket to ride in the hippest circles of swinging London in the mid-1960s.
"I absolutely loved it," she recalls of the scene. "It was so buzzy, with interesting people -- mad and fun and eccentric. All the creative people seemed to congregate: designers, painters, filmmakers, and of course musicians."
Boyd's modeling career also took off, with appearances on Vogue covers. She says she didn't regard being a celebrity as a burden, though she notes that Harrison did. "George was never very comfortable with that level of fame," she says. "The Beatles had experiences where they realized, on tour, that they were trapped in their hotel room. They couldn't go anywhere. That's when George realized what fame had done to them, and he didn't like it. He didn't understand why he was famous. Why him and not somebody else?"
For her part, Boyd recalls fans interrupting her and George as they dined out, intrusive autograph-seekers, and the ever-present paparazzi. "They were invasive and irritating," she says of the latter. "Our lives would be spent trying to hide from them. How ludicrous is that?"
Boyd remembers one nightmarish crowd scene when she and Harrison visited San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury area in 1967, during the Summer of Love. "That put us off forever, really," she says. "When all these drugged-out people in the Haight saw George, I think they thought he'd appeared like a messiah, and they wanted to make him responsible for whatever state they were in. There were a lot of dropouts and bums and scraggly people. The crowd got out of control, and it was an eye-opener."
Seeking a lifestyle change, Boyd became curious about transcendental meditation courses taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; she was joined in this pursuit by Harrison and the other Beatles. The band and wives and friends famously studied with the Maharishi in India in 1968, which Boyd calls "the most enlightening time of my life."
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