Pattie Boyd

Biography

Patricia Anne Boyd (born 17 March 1944) is a retired English model and photographer. Boyd married George Harrison in 1966, experiencing the height of the Beatles' popularity and sharing their embrace of Indian spirituality. She divorced Harrison in 1977 and married mutual friend Eric Clapton in 1979; they divorced in 1989. Boyd inspired Harrison's songs "I Need You", "If I Needed Someone", "Something", and "For You Blue", and Clapton's songs "Layla", "Bell Bottom Blues", and "Wonderful Tonight". In August 2007, Boyd published her autobiography Wonderful Today (titled Wonderful Tonight in the United States). Her photographs of Harrison and Clapton, titled Through the Eye of a Muse, have been exhibited.

== Early life == Boyd was born on 17 March 1944 in Taunton, Somerset, the first child of Colin ("Jock") Ian Langdon Boyd and Diana Frances Boyd (née Drysdale). The Boyds moved to West Lothian in Scotland, where her brother, Colin, was born in 1946. They then moved to Guildford, Surrey, where her sister Jenny was born in 1947. After Jock's discharge from the Royal Air Force, the Boyds lived in Nairobi from 1948 to 1953. Boyd's youngest sister, Paula, was born at a hospital in Nakuru, Kenya, in 1951. From the age of eight, Boyd boarded at Nakuru School near Nairobi. During a half-term break, she returned home and was shocked to learn that her parents had divorced. In December 1953, she and her siblings moved to England with Diana and her new husband, Bobbie Gaymer-Jones. With her mother's second marriage, Boyd gained two half-brothers, David (b. 1954) and Robert ("Boo"; b. 1955). Many years later, she learned that she had two half-sisters through Jock's second marriage. Boyd briefly attended Hazeldean School in Putney, and then the St Agnes and St Michael Convent Boarding School in East Grinstead, and St Martha's Convent in Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire. She achieved three GCE O level passes in 1961. She moved to London the same year and through her mother found work as a trainee beautician, age 17, at Elizabeth Arden's Bond Street salon. A client who worked for Honey magazine then inspired her to join an agency and begin work as a fashion model.

== Career ==

=== Modelling === Boyd began her fashion career in 1962, modelling at first in London and Paris. Among her regular assignments at that time were jobs for the UK edition of Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle in France, and Honey, as well as fashion spreads in newspapers such as The Daily Telegraph and The Times. She was photographed by David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy, among others, and appeared on the cover of British Vogue. Other popular models of the day, such as Twiggy, based their modeling appearance on Boyd. In the description of journalist Tom Hibbert, Boyd and Jean Shrimpton became "international celebrities" as the embodiment of the "British female 'look' – mini-skirt, long, straight hair and wide-eyed loveliness". This look defined Western fashion for women as a result of the international popularity of the Beatles and other British Invasion musical acts from 1964 onwards. In her autobiography, Boyd recalls being known as the muse to designer Ossie Clark, who used to call some of his designs "Pattie".

In early 1964, Boyd appeared in a television advertising campaign for Smith's crisps, directed by Richard Lester. Lester then cast her as a schoolgirl in the Beatles' 1964 film A Hard Day's Night, where she met and befriended the group's lead guitarist, George Harrison. Boyd's modelling career skyrocketed as a result of her subsequent romantic involvement with Harrison. She recalls that further assignments for Vogue and Vanity Fair were the result, along with jobs for Tatler (with photographer Jeanloup Sieff), more TV commercials, for Smith's and for L'Oréal's Dop shampoo brand, and advertisements in newspaper fashion pages. Boyd and Harrison were among the leading couples in the Swinging London era, when, according to a 1966 article in the Daily Express, "actors, pop singers, hairdressers, and models" were London's new "privileged class". UK underground writer Barry Miles later described her as "by far the most glamorous" of all the Beatles' wives and girlfriends, while author Shawn Levy writes that, even more than Jane Asher, the London-born stage actress who was Paul McCartney's girlfriend for much of the 1960s, Boyd epitomised what "sixties stardom was meant to confer upon its chosen". Writing in 1966, British fashion designer Mary Quant commented that it had become a requisite for contemporary women to strive "to look like Pattie Boyd rather than Marlene Dietrich", adding: "Their aim is to look childishly young, naïvely unsophisticated, and it takes more sophistication to work out that look than those early would-be sophisticates ever dreamed of." At the request of Gloria Stavers, Boyd began writing a column, titled "Patti's Letter from London", for the American teen magazine 16. According to Hibbert: "She reported on the latest trends in Carnaby Street, informed readers as to what the Beatles and Stones were wearing at the moment, and gave advice on how to turn dark and curly hair straight and blonde." But as Boyd became the target of hostility from the Beatles' female fans, Harrison insisted she abandon her career, to ensure their privacy. In July 1968, she and her sister Jenny, who was also a model, opened a boutique in London's fashionable Chelsea Market. They named it "Jennifer Juniper" after Donovan's song of the same name. Jenny managed the shop, which sold antiques and other objets d'art, while Boyd was the buyer. Boyd says she had "virtually given up" modelling by the early 1970s. She resumed her career at that time, promoting designs by Ossie Clark. She and Twiggy then did a cover assignment in Milan for Italian Vogue with photographer Justin de Villeneuve, and, working again with Bailey, Boyd appeared on several covers for British Vogue. In another shoot for the latter magazine, Boyd and her sisters were photographed by Patrick Lichfield.

=== Photography === Boyd began taking photographs of musicians and other friends during the 1960s and was a member of the Royal Photographic Society. In a 2008 interview, she said that it was not until 2004 that she felt "emotionally ready" to revisit the images. She also said that her lack of professional status probably made for a more intimate and authentic mood in her work, since her subjects were relaxed in her company. Boyd first exhibited her photos of Harrison and Clapton at the San Francisco Art Exchange on Valentine's Day 2005, in a show titled Through the Eye of a Muse. The exhibition appeared in San Francisco and London during 2006, and in La Jolla, California in 2008. Through the Eye of a Muse was also shown in Dublin; in November 2008 at Toronto's The Great Hall Gallery; at the Blender Gallery in Sydney; and in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2009–2010. Her exhibition Yesterday and Today: The Beatles and Eric Clapton was shown on Santa Catalina Island in California, and at the National Geographic Headquarters in Washington, DC, in 2011.

=== Charity work === Boyd became involved in charity work following her separation from Clapton in the late 1980s. In 1991, she co-founded SHARP (Self Help Addiction Recovery Program) with Barbara Bach, the second wife of former Beatle Ringo Starr.

== Personal life ==