Pattie Boyd’s Extraordinary Life Captured In New Photo Book

To music fans, the mention of Pattie Boyd‘s name immediately conjures up two rock legends to who she was formerly married: first George Harrison and then later Eric Clapton. But before she became romantically involved with the iconic guitarists, the British-b0rn Boyd had already carved out a very successful career as a model in the 1960s. Aside from fellow model Twiggy, Boyd was a symbolic face of the countercultural movement in Britain, especially during the era of Swinging London.

“You can see that cultural change through not just music but fashion as well,” Boyd today recalls. “We were totally inspired, whether we [the models] were inspired, whether the designers were inspired—people like Ossie Clark and Mary Quant. We all inspired each other. We had the look and they designed the clothes to match our look.”

In 2007, Boyd published her memoir Wonderful Tonight (also known as Wonderful Today in Britain). Fifteen years later, she returns with Pattie Boyd: My Life in Pictures (published by Reel Art Press), a new book featuring archival photos from her extraordinary modeling career as well as candid images that she took of Harrison and Clapton from the 1960s to the 1970s. Already out in the U.K. two months ago, My Life in Pictures has now just been published in the U.S.

“I always wanted to put out a book of photographs,” she explains, “because I think in a way they speak louder than words. At this time in our lives, there’s so much to read anyway. We’re bombarded with information that we need or we don’t need. And I just thought photographs [are] so much easier. It’s easier to flip through a photographic book than have to read every page.”

The idea behind My Life in Pictures came from both Boyd and Reel Art Press. “I said I would really love a book of photographs,” she recalls. “I’m thinking of photographs that I’ve taken. But no, they had another idea: they wanted photographs of me as well. I had quite a lot still in boxes and so they went through everything that I had. And then they went through other photographs that they found by photographers. Then they all beautifully put it together.”

A good portion of My Life in Pictures focuses on her modeling work that she did prior to and during her relationship with Harrison, whom she married in 1966. The photos of Boyd posing for advertisements and fashion magazines are time capsules of both the youth and post-modern art movements of the 1960s. She says: “Previously fashion had been really rather severe and sophisticated as far as magazines like Vogue and Harper’s, etc. They really only showed very sophisticated models, probably aristocratic models, and it was so completely different. And then the ‘60s girls, when we came in, we did completely different make-up, we liked black underneath our eyes as well as on top. Our hair was completely different. It was more ruffled, it wasn’t so neat. I feel that it was all part of a rebellious movement in a creative way. So you think about not just photography but fashion and music, and artists like David Hockney and all of these people came together at one time. It was like a big creative boom in London. This trickled out and spread out to Paris and New York. London was the center at one point in time of that creative boom.”

Looking back, she enjoyed her modeling career. “It was fun modeling because all the other girls that I worked with were always good fun. The photographers were normally fun as well. It was just a really nice environment—even if you do your makeup and your hair and all the clothes that you have to wear. Sometimes they were ghastly, other times they were very nice.”

The photos in My Life in Pictures also document Boyd’s relationships with Harrison and Clapton in candid settings—outside of the paparazzi and intense media glare—whether it’s at home or on the road. Additionally, Boyd herself had taken photographs with her camera during that period. One standout image features Harrison and Boyd posing in front of their home’s rose garden, with Harrison looking away (see above). “This was in the summer after we had spent two months meditating in the Himalayas,” Boyd recalls about that photo. “The weather was getting really beautiful in England, and my roses had bloomed. And I wanted to take a photograph of them and I thought, ‘Might as well have George and me in front of the roses.’ So I set up my tripod and put the camera on it, put a timer on. I said, ‘George, just stand here and look at the camera.’

“Well, it was taking so long that George looks away and I’d like to think he was thinking of music,” she continues. “If you look at me, I’m looking really worried if is this going to work or not because it took a very long time for the shutter to click. What’s so funny is that it was taken in ’69, I think. If I had known 40 years later, lots of people would see it, I would have done my hair properly.” (laughs)

Following her breakup with Harrison, Boyd dated Clapton. She traveled with him on his tours and brought her camera along as well (they married in 1979). “It was lovely for me to go on tour with Eric,” she now says, “because I could stand on the side of the stage to photograph not only the audience but Eric and the rest of the band.” One particular image she took and is in the book was that of a smiling Clapton performing live with the American blues guitarist Freddie King. “He was so thrilled that Freddie came on stage,” she remembers about that moment.

In addition to the photos, My Life in Pictures features facsimiles of Boyd’s personal memorabilia such as newspaper clippings as well as an entry from her calendar book from March 6, 1964, in which she adorably wrote that Harrison asked her out on a date (The two had first met on the set of the Beatles film A Hard’s Day’s Night). “I was really excited,” she says. “I thought this is the most exciting thing to happen to me, and this would be great for my grandchildren. I didn’t think that I’d see George again, but he asked me out and that was like, ‘Wow, that was good.’ That was good enough at the moment.” Also reprinted for the book are the romantic love notes that Clapton sent to Boyd while she was still married to Harrison (The guitarist’s fixation on Boyd inspired “Layla,” his signature song). “His writing is so beautiful too,” she says of Clapton’s messages.

Boyd was a pivotal figure in the creative lives of Harrison and Clapton and inspired some of their most popular songs (among them Harrison’s “Something,” “If I Needed Someone” and “For You Blue,” and Clapton’s “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight”). “I’m extremely flattered, obviously,” she modestly says of being immortalized in music. “It is too much to comprehend. When I hear the songs, I love it. I absolutely love it and I hear them, and then they’re gone and I get on with my life. It’s not something that I can hang on to because it’s too heavy a load to have in my mind all the time.”

More than 50 years later, Boyd, who is now married to Rod Weston, has switched places from being photographed to getting behind the camera herself. Today she is a professional photographer; among some of the famous people she has captured on film include Queen’s Roger Taylor, Salman Rushdie, Jeff Beck, Kate Moss, and the Rolling Stones’ Ron Wood, who also penned the book’s foreword. One particular striking photo taken by Boyd is of a nude woman sitting on some rocks in a beach as a wave arrives. “I went down to Cornwall [in the U.K.] to visit a photographer friend. And he said, ‘Oh, Pattie you just arrived and I am going out to photograph these models in front of big waves for a catalog.’ I said, ‘You know what? I’ll come.’ And his girlfriend came along.

“We were just sitting there watching them photograph the waves, and then the girlfriend said to me, ‘Would you like to photograph me?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ So I’m putting film in my Hasselblad, and I look up and she’s taken all of her clothes off. People on the beach can’t believe what they’re seeing. So I said to her, ‘Just sit on this rock and swish your hair back.’ And so she did that. The last frame from my roll of film was when a wave came in just beside her and it hit the rocks, and it looks as if she was spouting the wave.”

In addition to her involvement in My Life in Pictures, Boyd has stayed busy in the last two years through podcasting, most recently with her show Cocktails With Pattie. The series features herself and a famous guest making cocktails and discussing a variety of topics. “I became very creative during lockdown.” she says. “I did one podcast called Lockdown Lunches, so I give people recipes for things to cook. Then, the next year I felt, ‘I’m not gonna eat anymore. How about Cocktails with Pattie? That’ll do.’ So I asked all these musicians, including Roger Taylor and Mike Rutherford. It’s going really well. It’s mainly people in the music business and photographers—creative people who have a good story. It’s just the idea of getting together and having good gossip, stories and jokes.”

With My Life in Pictures, which could be considered a visual companion to her Wonderful Tonight memoir, now out, Boyd says: “I hope people will enjoy the photographs and also enjoy the cultural fact of the change in fashion. It’s like a historical photographic book. Obviously, I wanted more of my photographs in it, (laughs) but it didn’t work that way. I think it’s very beautifully put together. What the editors put together is a work of art.”