Eric Clapton and George Harrison were close friends, while Pattie Boyd was married to the Beatles icon. However, this didn’t stop Clapton from falling in love with Boyd. Although this might sound pretty inappropriate to many, Harrison struggled at the beginning but ultimately didn’t see any harm in his close friend being in love with his partner. In fact, he was even glad that the beautiful model had chosen Clapton over others!
Pattie Boyd has always been a beautiful woman, and she became the muse of both Harrison and Clapton. To express his love for Boyd, the Beatles icon wrote ‘I Need You,’ ‘If I Needed Someone,’ ‘For You Blue,’ and ‘Something,’ while Clapton came up with his biggest hit, ‘Layla.’ There was even a two-hour-long guitar duel between the two, aiming to prove who deserved her.
While she was married to George Harrison, Pattie Boyd wasn’t happy with her marriage. This was because the musician had focused on his work with the Beatles, abused substances, and had affairs with other women. When she saw that they had no future together, Boyd decided to get divorced. Soon after their relationship ended, she started dating Clapton.
Two years after they started dating, Eric and Pattie got married. However, it wasn’t easy for the musician to steal Boyd’s heart. While she was still married to Harrison, Clapton tried to express his feelings to her in an anonymous love letter signed as ‘E.’ He later revealed it was him, but Boyd didn’t want to be involved in a romantic relationship with Clapton since he was Harrison’s close friend and was engaged to another woman.
Reportedly, Eric even tried to use voodoo to steal Harrison’s wife. He met with the blues singer Dr. John, who gave him a small box of woven straw to put in his pocket with instructions to cast the spell. The musician followed those instructions, but Harrison interrupted his alone night with Pattie. So, this effort was also futile. That night, Clapton opened up to George about his feelings toward his wife.
Later on, the musician tried to do what he did best; he wrote a song. After Eric wrote ‘Layla’ for Pattie, he asked the beautiful model to listen to it. Impressed by the touching love song and frustrated by the issues between her and George Harrison, she couldn’t resist any longer. Following her divorce from the Beatle, Boyd ran to Clapton’s arms. Two years later, the two were happily wed.
While desperately in love with Pattie, Eric Clapton had developed a heroin addiction. As it turns out, there was another lesser-known detail about their story. After playing ‘Layla’ for Pattie, Eric went to see her at Friar Park, where she lived with George Harrison. He asked Pattie to run away with him and threatened to use the heroin he pulled out of his pocket. Boyd was terrified, but she refused Clapton’s offer. Besides, she wasn’t aware that the musician was already using heroin.
Ultimately, this trick didn’t work for her, but they eventually started dating after the divorce. Considering Clapton’s long-lasting pursuit of Boyd, one might assume they had a happy marriage. However, during their marriage, he had many affairs, including one with Lory Del Santo, and she got pregnant. Apart from that, Clapton was struggling with alcohol addiction, and he later admitted that he physically and sexually abused Boyd. This caused her to leave the musician in 1987 and divorce him in 1989.
“When I saw the headline ‘Eric Clapton’s drinking killed my marriage,’ it brought it all back to me; that fear, anger, and self-loathing,” wrote Eric Clapton in his autobiography ‘Eric Clapton: The Autobiography.’ So, it is clear that the musician later regretted what had happened between the two.
Considering what he had done to win Pattie’s heart, including his manipulation and threat, it was shocking for many to learn that Clapton cheated on his beloved and heavily abused her. However, Pattie Boyd later said that Eric’s pursuit of her had nothing to do with his love for her but was rooted in their competition with George Harrison.
