Something in the way she moves
Talent to be a muse: Pattie Boyd's self portrait. Boyd was muse to George
Harrison and Eric Clapton
Photograph: The Irish TimesTalent to be a muse: Pattie Boyd's self portrait.
Boyd was muse to George Harrison and Eric Clapton
Photograph: The Irish Times
ROCK PHOTOS: She was the subject of some classic love songs, including 'Layla'
and 'Wonderful Tonight. Now rock muse Pattie Boyd is bringing her photo
exhibition to Dublin, writes Brian Boyd
THERE IS indeed something in the way she moves. Model, photographer and the
person at the centre of rock music's most notorious love triangle, Pattie Boyd,
says "follow me" as she leads you around the Shelbourne Hotel looking for a bar
that's open and somewhere quiet to talk.
As she gets stuck into her Guinness, the woman who was the direct inspiration
for a trilogy of famous songs (George Harrison's Something and Eric Clapton's
Layla and Wonderful Tonight ) has all the elegant grace and charm of a Joanna
Lumley and remains arrestingly beautiful.
Now 64, Boyd is in Dublin to talk about her upcoming photographic exhibition,
Through The Eye Of A Muse , at Gallery Number One. A modelling contemporary of
Mary Quant, Boyd first started taking pictures during the London Carnaby Street
Swinging Sixties scene and continued clicking away during her marriages to
George Harrison and later, Eric Clapton.
"It was because I was photographed so much as a model in the early 1960s that I
developed an interest in photography," she says.
"I would have been working with people such as David Bailey and Terence Donovan
and I would hear them talking about stuff like 'framing a shot' so I supposed I
learnt from them how to do it and never looked back."
Although people knew she had a large collection of photographs from that time,
she always resisted making them public.
"It was only a few years ago that a friend asked to see a particular photo and
I had to go and open what was like this Pandora's box for me. "Those
photographs were all taken during the time I was married to a Beatle and there
were a lot of emotions associated with them."
What's most striking about the photographs is how intimate and relaxed they
were.
Chroniciling the innocent days of early Beatlemania, the group's meeting with
the maharishi in India (Boyd was supposedly the first to switch The Beatles on
to Eastern mysticism), their messy decline and her 20-year relationship with
Clapton, the photographs are not just a social history of the time but also an
insight into the beginnings of celebrity culture.
Harrison always knew she had the photographs but, as she says, "George always
hated how he looked in pictures so that was the only thing he only ever said
about the photographs." Clapton, she says, has made no comment on the
photographs.
Boyd still works as a photographer for Harper's Bazaar magazine and has a
certain amount of empathy with today's music celebrities whose every wrong turn
is splashed across the tabloids. "It is a difficult existence being pursued by
a camera all the time. And the drink and drug problems, which we had in the
60s, are still very much there."
The main problem she faces now as a photographer is trying to capture women who
have expressionless faces. "Even in their mid-30s, some women are resorting to
surgery and all sorts of other tricks," she says. "When they can't display
emotion properly, how can you possibly try to capture their image in a
photograph?"
• Through The Eyes Of A Muse is at Gallery Number One, 1 Castle Street, Dublin
2, from August 21st to September 5th. www.gallerynumberone.com . Pattie Boyd
will be in Dublin for the official launch of the show on August 28th. People
who have bought her work before this date will be invited to this
invitation-only launch.
© 2008 The Irish Times
