Pattie Boyd Said She Felt ‘Exploited’ After George Harrison’s Death
Pattie Boyd and George Harrison’s marriage ended in heartache, but they ameliorated their relationship in the years after their divorce. Boyd was able to think of Harrison as a friend. She was devastated to hear that he had died. The shattering news was made worse by the presence of a reporter. Boyd explained that she felt exploited.
Pattie Boyd and George Harrison saw each other before his death
Boyd said that after she learned about Harrison’s cancer diagnosis, she held out hope that he would recover. She didn’t realize how sick he was.
“At the end I hadn’t grasped how ill he was as I hadn’t seen him for a few months,” she wrote in the book Wonderful Tonight. “The last time had been at my cottage: he had phoned to say he was coming to Sussex to visit Ringo and Barbara and wanted to see me — I think he was curious to know where I was living. I was so glad we’d had that last meeting.”
She said she felt exploited
Boyd explained that the news of Harrison’s death devastated her. She found out early in the morning and, just a few hours later, a journalist came to see her. Boyd explained that this was a journalist she had “known slightly, on and off, for some years,” but they were not necessarily friends. They scheduled the meeting before Boyd got the news of Harrison’s death, and she didn’t feel like speaking to someone.
“She wanted a photograph I had of someone she was writing about,” Boyd wrote. “I was walking about like a zombie when, suddenly, she was there and wanting to interview me.”
Boyd had no interest in sitting down for an interview and declined to speak to the journalist. Later, though, she felt blindsided by the piece that the newspaper ran.
“I didn’t say anything to her but when her piece appeared it was all about how we had modeled together and been chums, and she had been with me soon after I received the news George had died,” she explained. “I felt exploited.”
Pattie Boyd said she still has dreams about George Harrison
Boyd feels that she will miss Harrison for the rest of her life.
“You never know with grief how long it will last, but I think I’ll miss him for the rest of my life,” she wrote. “We shared so much and grew up spiritually together and there are so many things that no one else knows about that we did together; and for many years there were so many questions I wanted to ask him and so many things I needed to speak to him about.”
She explained that she still dreams about Harrison.
“I would dream he was alive and I would say to him, ‘Oh George, it’s so wonderful that you’re alive after all, this is so fabulous; I knew they had all made a mistake,'” she wrote. “Some dreams can be incredibly vivid and so very real and then I would wake up and within the first couple of seconds I would think he was alive, and then that wave of reality would wash over me as I became more conscious.”
