maureen starkey & her husband, ringo starr aboard the queen mary , 1969
Maureen and Ringo during their two week family holiday in the Bahamas after sailing to the USA aboard the Queen Elizabeth II ocean liner in May 1969. Photos from the collection of Ringo Starr
Actors James Bolam and Jane Asher acting during rehearsals for the theatrical production of “Treats”, Royal Court Theatre, London, February 3rd 1976. (Photo by Central Press/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)💓
Beautiful Jane Asher photographed during the filming of Alfie in 1965. Scans come from Italy magazine ABC, August 29th 1965 issue. From eBay auction listing. 👑✨
PATTIE BOYD: ‘I THOUGHT, WHY WOULD GEORGE HARRISON ASK ME OUT?’
Sixties It girl, Vogue cover star and rock-star wife (twice over) — Pattie Boyd has done it all. So, at 78, are her party days over? Absolutely not, she tells Vassi Chamberlain
Faux-fur coat, £5,890, Gucci
SIMON EMMETT
Vassi Chamberlain
Sunday September 11 2022, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times
There are worse ways to spend an afternoon than in the company of the endlessly entertaining Sixties model Pattie Boyd (former wife to two rock stars, Messrs George Harrison and Eric Clapton, no less) in her elegantly modern Kensington apartment, where her rascally charmer of a third husband, the property developer Rod Weston (they’ve been together for 30 years, married for seven), will pop in and out, dropping the occasional amusing bon mot, their beloved Irish terrier, Freddie, in tow.
Boyd and I install ourselves in the kitchen to talk about her forthcoming book, My Life in Pictures (her first, a memoir, Wonderful Today, debuted at the top of The New York Times bestsellers list in 2007). It’s a visual anthology of more than 300 images, which include her own, as well as those of the photography greats she has worked with, such as John French, Barry Lategan and David Bailey, accompanied by stories and reminiscences.
Boyd, 78, is still, there is no other way of saying it, cute as a button, like a ravishing Sixties pixie doll with her pouty mouth and heart-shaped face. To top it off, she’s wearing a form-fitting cheetah-print jumpsuit. “Rod hates it,” she says with girlish delight, her voice soft and breathy, and very old-school posh.
Fur-free fur coat, £3,200, Stella McCartney. All jewellery, Pattie’s own
SIMON EMMETT
What propelled her to publish a book now, I ask; didn’t she confess all in her memoir? “I was approached, and I thought why not, plus I liked the idea of less words, more pictures.”
She first became intrigued by photography when she caught sight of her stepfather’s camera and tripod, and has taken her own photos ever since, working from a large studio in the couple’s quixotic Sussex house. My Life in Pictures charts her early modelling days (where she did her own hair and make-up and criss-crossed London with an A to Z) to more august shoots for Vogue, followed by her renegade years at the heart of Swinging London with the Beatles and Rolling Stones, her loves and marriages documented with diary entries — “George Harrison asked me out!!!!” (dated March 6, 1964) — and wildly romantic Oberon-like love letters penned by Clapton. “Does your silence mean be gone?” ends an urgent telegram to her in 1970. The foreword is by her good friend Ronnie Wood.
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She has lived quite the extraordinary life. Boyd was born in Somerset in 1944. Her father, a retired RAF bomber pilot and Jockey Club member, would go on to breed horses in Kenya — the family moved there when she was four. She adored Africa: “I remember the visual distances over the plains, the huge skies and enormous fields of wheat and corn, the smell of pepper trees, just like metallic paint.” She became accustomed to wild animals wandering outside their house. “A giraffe would suddenly appear — there were no boundaries and I grew up thinking this was the world.”
She was sent to her first boarding school in Kenya, followed by three more in the UK. She remembers finding traffic lights and zebra crossings confusing on her return, and was taken aback by the lack of cultural diversity.
Modelling on the streets of London in 1966
KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES
She was naturally shy and says she learnt to look after herself from a young age. “I knew nothing about fashion or the arts,” Boyd says. “I used to tell my friends about wild animals. They thought I was completely mad and would talk about the latest fashionable shoes they were wearing that term.” She left school after O-levels and moved into a flat-share in South Kensington with four other girls. She briefly considered secretarial college but instead took a job at Elizabeth Arden’s hairdressing salon in Mayfair, where she spotted her first fashion magazines. “It was very educational,” she says. “Vogue was just heaven. It totally took me into another world, and I just thought this is it.” In particular, an image of Jean Shrimpton caught her attention. “Oh, how heroic she became in my mind,” she says with sweet reminiscence.
When an Elizabeth Arden client asked her one day if she had ever thought of modelling, she immediately said no. “That seemed like a dream someone would have, not a reality,” she says. The client told her to come and see her in Holborn, where all the teen magazines were based. She was immediately signed up and sent to visit commercial photographers all over town, eventually giving up her job.
Boyd couldn’t believe she was actually being hired for her looks. “I got away with it, I fooled them,” she says of her early insecurity. Did she ever come across any inappropriate behaviour? “Yes, the bum-pinchers,” she retorts, deadpan. “You just told them to f*** off and then warned other models.” She pauses, then says: “But not everyone is able to say buzz off or leave me alone, are they?”
Boyd’s weddings to Harrison in 1966 and Clapton in 1979
Boyd’s weddings to Harrison in 1966 and Clapton in 1979
GETTY IMAGES
As time went by she became more conscious about fashion and also started meeting more interesting people. “As opposed to the men my girlfriends were going out with,” she says. “They were very proper, lawyers or bankers, men my parents would have liked me to have as boyfriends. They were too boring, staid and predictable, miniature versions of their fathers.” As her friends got married she turned to a more bohemian crowd. “I knew there was more of a life to be led first,” she says.
Then came the casting in 1964 that changed everything. She had no idea beforehand what it was for. She remembers her first sight of the Beatles as the train in which the shoot was taking place stopped outside a station not far from London: “There were four figures on the platform and they all jumped on the train and came into our carriage to introduce themselves. They sweetly shook our hands. I was blown away by all of them.”
It was for the film A Hard Day’s Night and at lunch Harrison sat next to her. “He was so good-looking and sweet, chatting away.” Does she remember what he was wearing? “They were all wearing little dark suits and little black ties.” At the end of the shoot he asked her out to dinner. “I said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m going to see my boyfriend.’ And his face dropped and I felt really bad and I thought, he obviously doesn’t know anyone in London. So I said, ‘Wait, would you like to join us for supper?’ ” Harrison declined. Her girlfriends thought she had gone completely mad, that she had missed her chance. Her boyfriend, the photographer Eric Swayne, who shot the book’s cover image, told her: “I bet you’re going to fall in love with Paul McCartney.”
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She never expected to see Harrison again. Then a week later the director got in touch. “It’s odd, if he hadn’t called us back, I would have never seen them [the Beatles] again.”
She pauses. “So I had to explain to my boyfriend that perhaps we weren’t getting on so well.” Did she finish with him before the press shoot or after? “Before,” she says. So she had an inkling? “I thought to myself, ‘Why would George Harrison ask me out? Oh, this is terribly exciting. Maybe I should be more adventurous with my life.’ This boyfriend was in the way … oh, poor Eric. He was very sad we were splitting up.”
On the day of the shoot the models had to stand behind each Beatle and pretend to be doing their hair. “So I made a beeline for George,” she says with a giggle. He asked her how her boyfriend was. She told him she no longer had one. “And that was it. He smiled and said, ‘Let’s go out tonight.’ ” The photo of their first date (they were chaperoned by the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein) at the Pickwick Club, taken by the venue’s in-house photographer, is a sweet and innocent portrayal of first love. Did George drive you home? “Oh Vassi, I can’t remember that!” What, you can’t remember your first date with George Harrison? “I remember the date … ” she says. Did they kiss? “No.”
They would meet up at her flat on Oakley Street, just off the Kings Road, where she would play Harrison her favourite records, such as Millie Small’s My Boy Lollipop. “He was horrified, horrified!” It wasn’t always easy for them to see each other because the Beatles were always either on tour or in the studio. “He [Harrison] was so overwhelmed with wanting to see me, sending me flowers, planning our next date.”
With Harrison, c 1966, and Clapton in 1978
MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES/ALAMY
Boyd and Harrison had been going out for two years when he turned to her one night and said: “Brian [Epstein] says we aren’t doing anything in January, shall we get married?” Epstein told them it had to be kept secret. “It was a bit upsetting for me — if you’re getting married you want to tell everyone.” She wore a red Mary Quant fur coat, Harrison a black Mongolian lamb one. McCartney was best man and her diary entry for that day, of which there is a snapshot in the book, reads: “Getting Married” surrounded by childish pen-drawn hearts, followed by “Yippee”.
After they married, Boyd started getting more prestigious bookings and, alongside Shrimpton, became one of the world’s most in-demand models: “I got really nice jobs and lovely clothes to wear. That time, I mean, it changed history. I was aware of something zeitgeist happening. There were so many creative people around, we hung out with David Hockney. There were these amazing designers. And to wear such short skirts, I felt so naughty!” How short did she go? “As short as I could.” Why did she and Harrison split up? “All the girls kept reminding him how fabulous he was,” she says, adding that he wanted another sort of life. They remained friends till his death.
We move on to the Clapton years. He pursued her relentlessly, sending her love letters while she was still with Harrison. Does she remember the first time she met him? “Yes, he was very gorgeous and sexy, very stylish,” she says. “Brian Epstein had a theatre and Eric was playing there. We all went back to Brian’s flat and he became friends with George.” And then he became friends with Pattie, I venture. She looks at me a little askance and then giggles.
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The book includes a photo of her and Clapton on their wedding day in 1979 in Tucson — Boyd in a lacy dress and satin coat. “So terribly convenient for him,” she says when I ask her why they picked Tucson. It was where Clapton’s tour was kicking off. They celebrated later with a big party at home in the UK. Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall, as well Harrison, were among the guests.
After 13 years, though, they parted. Did she then say to herself, “OK, that’s it with rock stars”? “No, I didn’t need to say it to myself,” she says. “I already knew it.” She laughs. But she’s not quite done with them, is she? “Well, I’m close to Mike Rutherford, he lives five minutes away, and Roger Taylor, I adore him, and Jeff Beck, I’m very fond of him too.”
A catalogue shoot in the early days
MICHAEL BOYS
A catalogue shoot in the early days
She met Weston, whose image sweetly closes the book, while holidaying with a girlfriend in Sri Lanka. They were staying in the same hotel and ended up spending New Year’s Eve together. They are clearly devoted to each other. So how would she define the Rod years? “Like living in a cocktail party,” she hoots. Actually, what’s the best party she has ever been to? “Vassi, that’s an impossible question.” Surely she must remember one night? “I think I’ve had too many.”
She tells me she and Weston drive between their homes in London and Sussex every week, listening to the radio on the way. What happens when Layla (Clapton’s anthem song about unrequited love that she knew was about her the minute she heard it) comes on? She roars with laughter. “I love, I love it. I hear different things.”
Does she get royalties? “I asked for that in my divorce and he said, ‘Are you kidding?’ That’s why I have to write books.” More hoots of laughter.
As I get up to go I notice she is holding a pile of unopened letters. They’re from fans, she tells me. Inside one is an old photo of her and Harrison, with an accompanying note that says: “Will you sign it please?” She turns to me. “Now, Vassi, what would you do, they haven’t even included a return stamp or envelope?” I tell the world’s most ridiculously youthful and fun 78-year-old to swallow it and pay the postage.
Pattie Boyd: My Life in Pictures is available to preorder from Reel Art Press at £39.95
Styling: Karen Clarkson at the Wall Group. Hair: Hiroshi Matsushita using Hair Rituel by Sisley. Make-up: Amy Wright at Caren using Charlotte Tilbury
Copied from the Sunday Times today. September 11, 2022
1950s photo of Pattie Boyd (third from left) published in the book “What are we going to do about Julie?” written by her school friend and actress Julie Samuel.
Julie recalls: 'I had some very nice friends who weren’t quite as naughty as I was but who appreciated my audacity and bravado. Christine Aldiss, Pattie Boyd (yes, the Pattie Boyd) and Angela Bailes were all good friends. Pattie and Christine were older than me and in a higher class, but we still hung out together. I got to know Pattie when we were in the sick bay together, both of us sick with scarlet fever. I was eleven years old then and had discovered pop music. Together, we sent off for signed pictures of movie stars and pop stars. Surprisingly, Pattie taught me all there was to know about sex. God only knows where she learnt it!’
THE TERRY DORAN COLLECTION… Photos taken by Terry Doran in the early 1970’s at Friar Park of George, Pattie and Maureen Starkey. Photos listed for sale at FabFourMemorabilia.co.uk.
Reminiscing through the Beatles and their Girls' history with vintage photos, stories and articles. Dedicated to accuracy - sorting through press and book authors' careless research - and updating bloopers!