George Harrison Was ‘Furious’ With His Wife for Donating to Charity

George Harrison organized The Concert for Bangladesh, the first benefit concert of that scale, but he was not happy with his wife, Pattie Boyd, for her philanthropic work. Harrison wanted to avoid the public eye, something that was difficult as a member of The Beatles. When someone reached out to Boyd about donating old glasses, she was happy to help. Her involvement made the news, and Harrison was angry with her.

George Harrison and his wife Pattie Boyd tried to avoid publicity

Harrison and Boyd married in 1966, at the height of Beatlemania. Because of this, it was nearly impossible for them to go anywhere without drawing the attention of crowds.

“I keep thinking, this time it will be okay,” she said in The Beatles: The Authorized Biography by Hunter Davies. “No one will know, and even if they do, they won’t care. That trip to Los Angeles last year, I thought that would be okay. To my horror, there were TV cameras and hundreds of girls screaming.”

Boyd explained that the only advice she received for how to deal with this was to avoid speaking with the press.

“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,'” she said in an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. “The only thing Brian Epstein, their manager, told me and the other wives and girlfriends was, ‘Don’t talk to the press.'”

George Harrison was not happy with his wife for donating to a charitable cause

It was impossible to avoid media attention entirely, and Boyd sometimes inadvertently attracted it. Once, she received a letter from a man asking people to donate old glasses frames to give to people in need. Boyd felt compelled to help and spent her day buying as many old glasses as she could find. She removed the lenses and sent them to the man.

“The next thing there was a story in the Daily Mirror about what I’d done,” Boyd said. “The old man even wrote and thanked me. He said the publicity had done his work a lot of good. George was furious.”

The Beatle preferred to be generous anonymously 

Despite his reaction, Harrison did try to be philanthropic. He wanted his donations to be anonymous, however.

“I do, I mean I do a lot of things, but I do them without shouting about it nowadays,” he said in a 1987 interview with BBC Breakfast. “I have a foundation, which we continue to give money out to people for various things. For instance, there was a thing in Liverpool where there was a school; they didn’t even have money for pencils for the kids. I mean, I can’t believe that, but that situation exists. So, we do things like that, buy them pencils or help buy wheelchairs, all kinds of things. But I just don’t shout about it.”