grace: Something About Pattie Boyd: Part 1

Pattie Boyd:"With her gap-toothed smile and baby face, Pattie Boyd was one of the most succesful models of the 1960s, and she was at the forefront of the Youthquake movement that would eventually transform the face of Britain forever. Photographed by the era's most iconic photographers, including David Bailey and Norman Parkinson, she was a household name by the time she graced the covers of Vogue and Queen in her early twenties. But this was nothing compared to her next role: as muse and inspiration for love songs -- George Harrison's "Something," as well as Eric Clapton's "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight." Her marriages to these talented and famous musicians also introduced her to London's notorious dope-hazed party culture, where models mixed with rock stars and watched the sun rise decked head-to-toe in Ossie Clark. More doe-eyed flower child than knowing rock chick, Boyd, with her lauded lifestyle and long blonde hair, was as much an icon of the swinging Sixties as love, peace, and rock 'n' roll were its mantras.
Meeting The Beatles : When I was 19, my agent sent me to a casting for (I thought) a commercial. When he told me I'd got a part as a schoolgirl fan in the Beatles''A Hard Day's Night,' I panicked; I never wanted to be an actress. The Beatles were getting famous and I thought George was terribly handsome. I was more excited than nervous when I met them. "I don't know whether it was by accident or design, but at lunchtime I sat next to George. He asked me to go out to dinner, but I declined as I was going out with a boyfriend, a photographer. I told a friend of mine, the model Pat Booth that George had asked me out and that I said no, and she asked if I was mad. As luck would have it, we were called back for a photo-shoot for the film and George sarcastically asked how my boyfriend was. I said he wasn't around anymore. We went out to dinner that evening. That's how the romance started." Living With George :George and I married when I was 21, and I wore a Mary Quant coat. I modeled for about three years after we married, but George didn't want me to work. I found our house, Friar Park, in 1970, but I think moving there was the start of the spiraling problems in our marriage. "George needed somewhere big enough to house his recording studio, and Friar Park was this absolutely vast, dark Victorian building that had previously been a school. It didn't have a good atmosphere, and George and I became isolated from each other, as much as anything because the house was so large. We always had people staying with us, including three families from the Hare Krishna group, and eventually we were simply torn away from each other. "I think people were jealous we were happy, and tried to split us up. "I felt completely bereft when he died," she admits. "He was the eternal love." Even after she left him for Clapton, he told her she could always come to him and he would look after her. "That was such a selfless, loving, generous thing to say. We shared so much and grew up spiritually together. And there are so many things that no-one else knows about what we did together; and there were so many things I still needed to ask him," she says. Yes, she will miss him for the rest of her life. After he died, she had recurring dreams in which he was still alive. "You never know how long grief will last," she says