35 Years Ago: Beatles Stage Partial Reunion For Eric Clapton’s Wedding

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

She was the impetus for two of rock music’s most identifiable love songs in the Beatles‘ ‘Something‘ and Derek and the Dominoes‘ ‘Layla.’ Pattie Boyd was also the catalyst for the first Beatles concert reunion.

On May 19, 1979, Boyd — ex-wife of George Harrison — married the former Beatle’s best friend Eric Clapton at his English estate. Harrison brought along Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr for what turned into an epic, though apparently musically questionable, wedding reception jam. Also there on an outdoor stage at Clapton’s English estate (in the same garden, by the way, where Harrison wrote ‘Here Comes the Sun’) was the Rolling Stones‘ Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman, Elton John, David Bowie, members of Clapton’s band Cream and Denny Laine, from McCartney’s ’70s-era band Wings. Boyd, an ex-model who’d appeared on the cover of Vogue, was married to Harrison from 1966-77 — having met him at age 19 during the filming of the Beatles’ ‘Hard Days Night.’ Their marriage bridged Harrison’s stint with the Beatles and the beginning of his solo career. By the turn of the ’70s, however, Clapton had fallen hopelessly in love with Boyd, sparking a torrent of emotions through his signature song on ‘Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.’ “With the realization that I had inspired such passion and creativity,” Boyd said in 2007, “the song got the better of me. I could resist no longer.”