George Harrison’s life was never simple. Many people envied him because of his fame as a prominent rock star and his extravagant lifestyle with the Beatles. Just cause they have that doesn’t necessarily mean happy lives. The strains of celebrity and being under the spotlight all the time can be debilitating and cause mental health problems. A rockstar’s typical lifestyle, which includes heavy drinking and drug use, can be detrimental to one’s health.
George Harrison started to become dissatisfied with his position in The Beatles in the late 1960s. He battled to have his songs on the albums of John Lennon and Paul McCartney because he felt overshadowed by them. He also started to have problems with his wife, Pattie Boyd, who had attracted the attention of other people, particularly Eric Clapton.
As Harrison believed things couldn’t get worse, another crucial aspect of his life started to break apart shortly after the band disbanded in the early 1970s.
It’s not hard to imagine how difficult all of these had been for George since it’s clear that he wasn’t exactly lucky in the friendship department as his marriage to Pattie Boyd had slowly deteriorated over the years and when the former Beatle learned that his friend, Eric Clapton, was in love with his wife.
The boy’s lover at the time, Clapton, battled his feelings for Boyd vainly but unsuccessfully. Eric found it difficult to open up to Pattie, so when he had nothing better to do, he chose to write the song that would become “Layla,” which went on to become a smash and an iconic ballad. Boyd was touched by the song, but she was also concerned about George, who at the moment was restless because of his professional difficulties. Eric received a heart attack as a result of her refusal to accept his offer to flee with her and her husband.
But by the 1970s, it was obvious that Harrison and his wife were having an affair. Pattie made the decision to split from George permanently in order to start a new, presumably happier marriage with Eric after Clapton’s recent discharge from rehab. Yet it was not that easy. The first few years of the couple’s marriage were free of major issues, but as Clapton relapsed on alcohol and engaged in multiple extramarital affairs while on tour, Pattie recognized that her hopes for a better future had become a distant dream. As a result, she made the decision to try her luck with getting pregnant because she had always wanted to be a mother. Fortunately, Eric was supportive.
Years later, it became clear that she was having trouble getting pregnant, so once more with her husband’s assistance, Pattie began visiting several physicians and receiving IVF treatments in an effort to start a family with Clapton… only to learn that he already had kids.
In an interview with StarSat in 2018, she described how the guitarist approached her to confess his fatherhood for a daughter. When Boyd joked about if there were any other children, Clapton gently admitted that there was one more.
She revealed, “It was horrible. It was a stab in the heart, horrible. I just said to him, ‘No, you’re kidding; how many more do you have?’ He just said, ‘Well, just the two.'”
Boyd, who was attempting to have children of her own, was therefore devastated when Clapton revealed that he had two children with various women. Soon after that, she got rid of Eric and went her own separate way. which shows that no one had it very easy in the Harrison, Boyd, and Eric Clapton love triangle.
