Fans Assaulted George Harrison’s First Wife, Pattie Boyd, When She Tried Leaving a Beatles Concert Early
Fans assaulted George Harrison‘s wife, Pattie Boyd, when she came out of a Beatles concert early. Being a Beatle’s girlfriend and then wife was often a rough ride. Boyd and the other Beatles wives constantly battled hoards of screaming girls who wanted their husbands.
No one prepared George Harrison’s first wife, Pattie Boyd, to be a Beatle’s girlfriend
In 1964, George met Boyd on the set of The Beatles’ first feature film, A Hard Day’s Night. After that first day, George asked Boyd to marry him. She laughed, unable to decipher whether he was joking. The Beatles had been flirting with all the other girls on set the whole day.
When she didn’t respond, George said, “Well, if you won’t marry me, will you have dinner with me tonight?” Boyd declined because she was dating someone.
However, Boyd later broke up with her boyfriend and told George the next day on set. He asked her out again, and she said yes.
They went to the Garrick Club in Covent Garden that night, chaperoned by The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein. However, no one prepared her for being a Beatle’s girlfriend.
In an interview for Harper’s Bazaar, Taylor Swift asked Boyd, “All of a sudden your life was changed forever because you fell in love with someone who the world was obsessed with. There was no band as big as the Beatles. Did anyone prepare you for the attention?”
“No,” Boyd replied. “Nobody took on that role. Nobody thought that role would be significant for a start. I remember a journalist coming to our house one day and saying to George, ‘In all seriousness, when do you think the bubble is going to burst? When are the Beatles going to be finished?’
“If they thought that, there’s no reason anyone would think, ‘Ah, I’ll look after Pattie and guide her through what is going to be a tremendously difficult situation for a young girl to cope with.’ The only thing Brian Epstein, their manager, told me and the other wives and girlfriends was, ‘Don’t talk to the press.'”
Fans harassed George’s wife, Pattie Boyd, after she left a Beatles concert early
Boyd constantly had to battle the hoards of screaming girls. Fans were especially nasty to her once after she left a Beatles concert early.
“Living in London with George, there were so many fans every day, it became impossible to leave the flat,” Boyd continued. “Brian Epstein thought there might be an idea that John, Ringo, and George move to the country, have little houses about an hour out of London.”
Swift asked, “You are one of the only people who can say they experienced what Beatlemania was like from the inside. How did that feel for you?”
“In my first experience, I found it absolutely terrifying,” Boyd replied. “I got to see the Beatles play at a theater in London, and George told me that I should leave with my friends before the last number.
“So before the last song, we got up from our seats and walked toward the nearest exit door, and there were these girls behind me. They followed us out, and they were kicking me and pulling my hair and pushing us all the way down this long passageway.”
Boyd said the fans yelled, “We hate you” to her as they kicked her.
Fans broke into the couple’s home and hid under their bed
Being George’s girlfriend wasn’t always hard. Greene wrote that when they started dating, Boyd was active in George’s life.
“In a typical month, they would attend recording sessions, gather with friends, meet with record industry executives, have meals with fellow entertainers, and occasionally vacation to places such as Hawaii or Tahiti,” Greene wrote.
“They attended Allen Ginsberg’s thirty-ninth birthday party and made a hasty retreat when the beat poet greeted them in the nude. They went clubbing with the Moody Blues, attended premieres of films such as Alfie with Michael Caine, and smiled when friends would refer to ‘George-and-Pattie’ instead of ‘George,’ as though they were a single entity.”
Although, fans still hounded the young couple even after marriage. Some fans even broke into their home once.
“A married man, he still had to put up with young girls constantly sneaking into his hotel room, where guards had to be posted at every elevator and exit,” Greene continued. “Even on his short retreats back home to Esher, the intrusions continued.
“George and Pattie returned home one night to find that two girls had broken in and were hiding under their bed and giggling.”
However, it wasn’t the fans who eventually broke up George and Boyd. It was their own doing.
