"I’d rather she be with him than some dope," he told Rolling Stone at the time. The former Beatle bore no ill-will towards his friend, jokingly referring to him as his "husband-in-law." Harrison even attended the pair's 1979 wedding. He frequently simply wasn’t there for me, and there were other women.” Clapton immortalized her in song yet again, penning the gentle "Wonderful Tonight" for her. "George and I had many problems in our relationship that had a great deal to do with the enormity of his fame and his increasing passion for meditation and the spiritual life.
"Eric was very attractive and persuasive," she later said. Several years later, Boyd left Harrison for good, and she and Clapton began living together in 1974.
The album's title track directly addresses the unrequited love in its lyrics: "I tried to give you consolation / When your old man had let you down / Like a fool, I fell in love with you / Turned my whole world upside down." Amid the haze of his growing addiction to heroin and alcohol, he penned the tracks that would become his opus, 1970's Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. She initially refused his advances, sending him spiraling into a drug-fueled depression. Though reasonably happy throughout the '60s-Harrison wrote the classic track "Something" in her honor-their marriage began to deteriorate by the end of the decade, around the same time he became close friends with fellow guitar god Eric Clapton.Ĭlapton also fell in love with Boyd, ultimately confessing his feelings to the couple. He was instantly smitten, and the pair were married less than two years later. George Harrison first met 19-year-old model Pattie Boyd in 1964 on the set of the Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night.