Beatles guitarist George Harrison married his first wife, model Pattie Boyd, on this day (January 21) in 1966. The couple, who had dated a little less than two years, were wed in a ceremony at a register office in the London suburb of Epsom, U.K.
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Harrison was 22 and Boyd 21 when they were married.
The nuptials took place early in the morning, and Paul McCartney served as Harrison’s best man. Beatles manager Brian Epstein also attended, although John Lennon and Ringo Starr were not there because they both were on vacation.
[RELATED: Remember When Eric Clapton Married Pattie Boyd, George Harrison’s Ex, 45 Years Ago]
Other attendees included members of the bride’s and groom’s families. As Boyd recalled in her 2007 memoir, Wonderful Today (according to BeatlesBible.com), her parents, brothers, and sisters, as well as her mom’s Cousin Penny, and Harrison’s parents and brothers were all on hand. Pattie’s Uncle John, her mother’s twin brother, gave her away.
Boyd admitted that she had hoped to have a more elaborate church wedding, but Epstein wanted it to be low-key because he was concerned keeping the media away.
“[It was] not the most glamorous place, and the room was very hot and stuffy,” she recalled in her book. “It was not the wedding I had dreamt of—I would have loved to be married in church, but Brian didn’t want a big fuss. They all trusted him so implicitly that when he said it should be a quiet register office wedding George agreed. He also said it had to be secret—if the press found out, it would be chaotic.”
Despite Epstein’s efforts, dozens of press photographers were there to greet the couple when they exited the register office.
After the Wedding
Following the ceremony, Harrison and Boyd were driven away in a Rolls-Royce to Harrison’s bungalow, Kinfauns, in the London suburb of Esher. The couple and their guests continued the celebration that day with a reception at Kinfauns.
The next day, Harrison and Boyd took part in a London press conference arranged by Epstein.
Boyd recalled in her memoir that she was very uncomfortable at the event.
“It was so terrifying that I have almost blanked it from my memory,” she wrote. “Lots of reporters asked questions about when George had asked me to marry him and our plans for the future. George said he had proposed on the day we met, on the train filming A Hard Day’s Night, and I said I hadn’t thought he was serious. He then said he’d asked me out and I’d turned him down. And I blurted that we’d like three children but not immediately.”
On February 8, 1966, George and Pattie flew off together to honeymoon in Barbados.
More About Harrison and Boyd’s Romance
Harrison did meet Boyd in the set of A Hard Day’s Night in 1964. Pattie was cast as a schoolgirl in the film. The Beatles sing “I Should Have Known Better” to Boyd and some other young female students as they travel on a train.
In a 2012 interview on Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood’s radio show, Pattie recalled that George asked her out after shooting on the movie was done that day. She turned him down then, though, because she had a boyfriend at the time.
A week later, however, she was called back to do more filming, and during that time she broke up with her boyfriend.
“A fired the boyfriend,” she remembered. “So when I saw George, he said, ‘How’s your boyfriend?’ And I said, ‘Well he isn’t my boyfriend any longer. And so he said, ‘Oh, good. Let’s go out tonight,’ and that was it. So we were together for 10 years.”
While Harrison and Boyd were together, he wrote a number of famous Beatles songs for her, including “I Need You,” “For You Blue,” and the classic love ballad “Something.”
The couple split up in 1974, and were divorced in 1977.
Boyd and Harrison’s Other Marriages
After George and Pattie separated, she famously began a relationship with his close friend Eric Clapton. Clapton had tried to woo Boyd for a number of years while she still was married to Harrison. She was the inspiration for his classic Derek and the Dominos songs “Layla,” and “Bell Bottom Blues.” After they got together, Eric wrote the hit ballad “Wonderful Tonight” for her.
Boyd and Clapton were married from 1979 to 1989. In 2015, she married her third husband, property developer Rod Weston, who she’d been with since 1991.
Harrison married his second wife, Olivia Arias, in 1978. They were together until George’s death from lung cancer in November 2001.
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