ROCK 'N' ROLL SCARS
At 64, Pattie Boyd doesn't have a hint of cellulite, yet she says she's been damaged by the years of excess and her failed marriages to George Harrison and Eric Clapton. She tells Julia Molony how she's rebuilt her life. Portraits by Sarah Doyle
By Julia Molony
Sunday August 10 2008
Pattie Boyd was just 19 when she stumbled almost inadvertently into the realm of rock and roll legend. The former wife of George Harrison and later, Eric Clapton, was a model at the time, and had the kind of beauty that, like Shrimpton or Bardot, seemed to capture something essential about the mood of the time.
The West London apartment in which we meet belongs to a friend of hers. It's a museum of nostalgia from swinging London. It's a boho artist's studio, with high ceilings, enormous windows and a series of framed Monroe Warhol prints adorning the walls. Amid the black-and-white photographs, I half expect to find Pattie Boyd as a sort of human exhibit in the rock 'n' roll hall of fame; like some kind of groovy Mrs Havisham, a relic of former glory who has retreated completely into nostalgia. But she is nothing like that at all.
Today, at 64, she looks pretty amazing. She has the settled tan of someone who spends a lot of time in better climates, and she is wearing a kicky pair of culottes with wedge heels. There is a girlishness about her physicality; when posing for photos, there's a certain carefree manner in the way she arranges those long legs. She has a great figure still, and (I can't help but notice when those shorts ride up to the top of her thigh, between poses), not a pick of cellulite. The iconic face has aged well, too. In her modelling days, her kooky, gap-toothed look prompted one snide photographer to compare her to a rabbit, and it is true to say there is something animal-like in her expression, which in repose can seem fixed and hard to read. She has admitted that after her divorce from Clapton she had one surgical procedure; getting the "tear bags" under her eyes removed. But I can't quite tell if it's that, or if, in the years Pattie spent weathering unbelievable levels of romantic and personal turmoil, her inscrutable expression simply became a survival tool.
Last year she published her autobiography, Wonderful Today, in which she gave a chastening account of the realities of being a celebrated beauty and rock-star wife. Eye-popping tales of drugs binges and sexual betrayal are narrated in her cosy, posh, matter-of-fact tone. Unlike Marianne, Anita and the other women at the centre of that era of pop history, she has an unusual vantage point. Her involvement always seems to be one of guileless spectatorship. With a naive romanticism, she recounts her experiences in the tone of a wide-eyed Dorothy who, in search of Kansas, finds herself venturing deeper and deeper into Oz.
She first met George Harrison when she accepted a bit part in the music video for Hard Day's Night. Beatlemania was only just starting, and their relationship began with an earnestness and sweetness that couldn't have provided any warning of what was to come. George, she says, was "the best-looking man I had ever seen". But when she eventually accepted his invitation to go on a date, the fledgling couple were chaperoned by the band's manager. Not long after, the pair were married, and she dutifully stepped into the role of rock-star wife. It was she who introduced her husband to Indian mysticism. He wrote Something, an aching paean to feminine appeal, about his new love.
As time went on, however, and the Beatles became increasingly famous, George's attentiveness began to wane. He became withdrawn, and equally careless and unapologetic about his many infidelities. He told her outright that, inspired by Krishna, he wanted to be "a spiritual being with lots of concubines". One of his conquests was Maureen Starr, wife of fellow Beatle, Ringo.
To complicate the issue of her failing marriage, Pattie was being hotly pursued by one of her husband's best friends. Having intimated his feelings for months, Eric Clapton's grand gesture, when it came, was in the form of one of the greatest love songs of all time. Seizing an opportunity when the two of them were alone together, Eric sang Layla, the tribute of love and longing that he had penned for her. It had the desired effect, and Pattie finally "succumbed to his advances".
Clapton, it seems, would stop at nothing to win his prize. He'd already tried to get closer to Pattie by embarking on an affair with her sister Paula. When, after their tryst, Pattie insisted on returning to her husband, Clapton threatened to take heroin. She refused to be swayed by the threat, and he promptly became addicted.
By the time she finally gave up and got together with Eric, he had given up heroin but had instead become a fully fledged alcoholic hurtling towards self-destruction. It was not the most promising state of affairs on which to build a relationship.
What followed was 10 years of grinding self-abnegation, in which Pattie committed herself to holding Clapton and her marriage together, martyring her career, dignity and whatever was left of her self-esteem to the cause. She continued to do so even when it was revealed that his proposal to her was part of a bet; even when she walked into a room where he was sitting with one of her friends and Eric, drunk as usual, shouted at her: "Can't you see we're having a really intense and intimate conversation here? I'm in love with this girl. Go away and leave us alone. Just fuck off."
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