"Just because things didn't work out as we planned, it didn't diminish our love for each other," said Pattie Boyd about her relationship with Harrison.
Pattie Boyd was hesitant to take up a small role in the 1964 movie A Hard Day's Night but she did and it changed her life. She met her first husband, George Harrison on this movie set. Boyd was just 19 years old and was a rising star in the modeling industry. She had an opportunity to work in a feature film with The Beatles and had just one line - "Prisoners!?". "Initially I thought, 'I can't do this. I'm not an actress. There's no way I can do this,'" Boyd told PEOPLE. "But my agent said to me, 'Don't worry, you've only got one word to say. Easy peasy. It'll be fine.'" On March 1964, she met Harrison for the first time and within two years, they were married.
But her married life wasn't an easy one. Their marriage was unable to survive the tumult of the Beatles' years. "George and I were going in different directions," she explained. "He was starting to distance himself from me," she said. However, she inspired him to write some of the most beautiful songs including the romantic song, Something. Their marriage ended in 1974 and soon, Boyd was in a relationship with Harrison's close friend Eric Clapton.
Surprisingly, Harrison was happy for them. "He said, 'Well, I'm glad you're going off with Eric instead of some idiot," Boyd remembers. "So he appreciated my choice!" George called himself "the husband-in-law" while being with them. They even celebrated Christmas together that year. In 1979, when Harrison and Clapton got married, he did an impromptu jam alongside his old old bandmates Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
Boyd remained close to Harrison till the end of his life. Her latest book, Pattie Boyd: My Life in Pictures, has the last photo of them together taken in the early '90s in the garden of Friar Park, the property that they shared as a couple.
The last time Boyd met Harrison was a few months before his death in November 2001. "He came with some little gifts and we played music and had some tea," she recalled. "It was lovely to see him, but I knew he wasn't well. I sensed that he wanted to see me rather than leave it too late."
Harrison noticed a few lone flowers in the garden. "The flowers are shivering," he said - it was an observation that Boyd stayed with her. "Only George would think flower shiver. It was so sweet." It was the last time they saw each other. Boyd believes that one can have several soulmates. "You can meet someone and just recognize the essence of their being," she said. "And they're always a joy to be with. Even if a year goes by and you don't see them, when you will reunite, you're still on the same page."
That was the sort of relationship Boyd had with Harrison. "Just because things didn't work out as we planned, it didn't diminish our love for each other." Her latest book includes 300 images from her personal archive. It is due to be out on December 20, 2022, in the US.
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Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Fox Photos
