Pattie Boyd Said ‘Harry Potter’ Actor John Hurt Instigated George Harrison and Eric Clapton’s Guitar Battle
Pattie Boyd said Harry Potter actor John Hurt instigated George Harrison and Eric Clapton’s famous guitar battle in the mid-1970s. The model and actor was there the night her soon-to-be ex-husband and soon-to-be husband battled for her love.
George Harrison and Eric Clapton’s famous guitar battle
Boyd met George on the set of The Beatles’ first film, A Hard Day’s Night. That first day they met, George asked Boyd to marry him. She had a boyfriend but broke up with him to start dating George.
They married in 1966. Later, George wrote one of his best love songs, “Something,” about her. However, their marriage started to crack in the early 1970s. Clapton confessed his love for Boyd by playing her a song he’d written for her, “Layla.”
“We met secretly at a flat in South Kensington,” Boyd said (per New York Post). “Eric had asked me to come because he wanted me to listen to a new number he had written. He switched on the tape machine, turned up the volume and played me the most powerful, moving song I had ever heard. It was ‘Layla.'”
“My first thought was, ‘Oh, God, everyone’s going to know this is about me,'” Boyd continued. That night, Boyd and Clapton met at a party at manager Robert Stigwood’s house. When George arrived, he “kept asking, ‘Where’s Pattie? But no one seemed to know. He was about to leave when he spotted me in the garden with Eric,” Boyd said.
“George came over and demanded, ‘What’s going on?’ To my horror, Eric said, ‘I have to tell you, man, that I’m in love with your wife.’ I wanted to die. George was furious. He turned to me and said: ‘Well, are you going with him or coming with me?'” She went home with George, but things weren’t great between them after that.
Shortly after, in 1973, George began an affair with his Beatle bandmate, Ringo Starr’s wife, Maureen. The affair only pushed Boyd to Clapton more.
Later, Clapton showed up at the Harrisons’ home one night drunk. Then, suddenly, George and Clapton’s guitar battle commenced.
“George handed him a guitar and an amp – as an 18th-century gentleman might have handed his rival a sword – and for two hours, without a word, they dueled,” Boyd said.
“At the end, nothing was said but the general feeling was that Eric had won. He hadn’t allowed himself to get riled or go in for instrumental gymnastics as George had. Even when he was drunk, his guitar-playing was unbeatable.”
Boyd claims ‘Harry Potter’ actor John Hurt instigated George and Clapton’s guitar battle
In a new interview with the Daily Mail, Boyd touched on George and Clapton’s guitar battle. She revealed that Harry Potter actor John Hurt instigated the whole thing, but whether it was true, only the guitarists would know.
“This is all because of John Hurt,” she laughed. “He happened to be hanging out with us when Eric turned up and George said: ‘I’ve got this other guitar, do you want to play?’
“So then the two of them played but John being an actor came up with this totally theatrical translation that they were playing for my love. Whether it’s true or not, only George and Eric would know — and I never asked them.”
Boyd said the guitarists had an ‘inability to communicate their feelings through normal conversation’
In an interview for Harper’s Bazaar, Taylor Swift asked Boyd about her marriages to the two rock stars. Boyd revealed that the pair could not communicate their feelings for her through normal conversation.
In Here Comes The Sun: The Spiritual And Musical Journey Of George Harrison, Joshua M. Greene wrote, “She asked George for his autograph, and at a loss for any other way to communicate his feelings, he marked little hearts under his name.”
Most of the time, George and Clapton showed Boyd their love for her through song and their guitar battle.
George wrote numerous songs for Boyd, including “If I Needed Someone” and “Something.” Clapton wrote “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight” for her.
Boyd told Swift, “I think in my case both George and Eric had an inability to communicate their feelings through normal conversation. I became a reflection for them.”
Boyd also thinks the songs her ex-husbands wrote for her are haunting. “They’re incomparable,” she said. They certainly are.
