George Harrison and Pattie Boyd Once Came Home to Find Two Fans Hiding Under Their Bed
George Harrison and his first wife, Pattie Boyd, once came home to find two fans hiding under their bed. That wasn’t Boyd’s only boundary-crossing encounter with her soon-to-be husband’s fans.
After George Harrison and Pattie Boyd started dating, Boyd was thrown into the deep end
George and Boyd met on the set of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night. The Beatle proposed to her on the spot but quickly amended his proposal to a simple date. Boyd denied him because she was dating someone. However, she broke up with her boyfriend to be with George.
The Beatles’ manager, Brian Epstein, chaperoned their first date. However, Boyd realized that wouldn’t be the strangest thing to happen in her relationship with George. She soon learned that being a Beatle girlfriend was a rough job.
During an interview for Harper’s Bazaar, Boyd told Taylor Swift that she initially had difficulty adjusting to being a Beatle girlfriend. No one prepared her for what was to come.
“Nobody took on that role,” Boyd said. “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.'”
George and Boyd found two fans under their bed
The couple married in 1966, but that only angered some Beatlemaniacs further. Boyd found out how terrifying it sometimes was being married to a Beatle.
According to Joshua M. Greene’s Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, George and Boyd came home one night to find that two fans had broken into their Esher home, Kinfauns, and were hiding under their bed.
Greene wrote, “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. 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.”
It was clear that some Beatlemaniacs were willing to do anything to get a piece of The Beatles. Some of them were even violent toward Boyd.
Fans assaulted Boyd after a Beatles concert
On more than one occasion, Boyd had to combat violent fans trying to get at her husband. However, one terrifying moment came when 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 told Swift. “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 Boyd about her Beatlemania experiences. “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.”
On the other hand, Boyd saw past George’s fame. “I remember the first time George and I were seeing each other, and The Beatles were on TV, and I went: ‘Oh look at George with his day job.’ He was with The Beatles, but he was still my George as well,” she told the Daily Mail.
She also told El Pais that when she thinks back on her life, it feels like someone else’s. “I also don’t remember most of it: I remember fun parts and I still have the best memories, but the rest is very far away,” she joked.
Boyd probably pushed back some of the scarier moments of Beatlemania to the back of her mind.
