Time That Was So Hard To Find

Via Something About the Beatles’ Girls FB🌸🌺🌻🪷

Tahiti 1964. John, Cynthia, Pattie, and George. Thanks @thebeatleswomen on Instagram

I heard about his death from Alan Rogan, who rang me early in the morning at Rod’s flat. I burst into tears, I felt completely bereft. I couldn’t bear the thought of a world without George.

When I left him for Eric, he had said that if things didn’t work out, ever, I could always come to him and he would look after me. It was such a selfless, loving, generous thing to say and it had always been tucked away at the back of my mind. Now that sense of security had gone. I was devastated. I’d known that his death was inevitable, but I’d kept hoping that, with all his money, they would find a cure for him. At the end I hadn’t grasped how ill he was as I hadn’t seen him for a few months. 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.

Danae Brook, a Daily Mail journalist whom I had known slightly, on and off, for some years, was due to come to the flat at ten o’clock on the morning George died. She wanted a photograph I had of somebody she was writing about. I was walking about like a zombie when, suddenly, she was there and wanting to interview me. 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 that George had died. I felt exploited.

His funeral was in Los Angeles. I didn’t go, but I was invited to the memorial concert, which took place a year later in the Royal Albert Hall, organized by Eric. I couldn’t go: I had booked a spiritual holiday in Peru. Instead, I watched it on video. On the day, I took myself away from the rest of the group and spent the day high in the mountains, thinking of George, the tears trickling down my face. I was happy to mourn him alone and in my own way.

You never know with grief how long it will last, but I think I’ll miss him for the rest of my life. 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. And then there were the dreams. I would dream he was alive and I would say to him, “Oh George, it’s so wonderful that you are alive after all, this is so fabulous; I knew they had all made a mistake.” 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. - Pattie Boyd, "Wonderful Today".

The Sunday Mail (Glasgow) September 19, 1965

Barbados, 1966 🌴

— - George Harrison on splitting up with Pattie Boyd and her relationship with Eric Clapton, “I Was There: Pattie Boyd,” BBC Radio 2 [original date of quote unknown] (26 Sep. 2019)

george & pattie in tahiti, 1964

Pattie Boyd: My Life In Pictures — 1/?

Pattie Boyd’s diary entry after filming A Hard Day’s Night, 1964

“[Clapton] was a cop-out, an easy way forward for me. George was the greatest love of my life, really.” - Pattie Boyd, 2015

“For a long time I could not talk about Pattie after she left. But I now admit that I loved her very much.” - George Harrison, 1978

Monte Carlo 1966 💫

George Harrison and Paul McCartney in the studio, 1967; photo from The Beatles Anthology (2000).