New book from Pattie

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“My Life Through A Lens” by Pattie Boyd. Final cover to be revealed.

Due out next year is a new book from former Beatle wife Pattie Boyd, this time concentrating on photography. The book’s title is “My Life Through A Lens“. 

Here’s the blur from the publisher:

“An extraordinary visual memoir from Pattie Boyd–model, photographer, and muse to rock ‘n roll royalty. The former wife of both George Harrison and Eric Clapton, Pattie Boyd is perhaps the most famous muse of all time, inspiring Harrison’s “Something” and Eric Clapton’s “Layla” and “Wonderful Tonight.” Swept up into the height of Beatlemania as a young model, Boyd captured endless photographs of her years with the band, and later with Clapton. In Pattie Boyd: My Life Through A Lens, Boyd offers candid and intimate photographs of rock royalty and the elite social circles of the 60s and 70s, and also shares the drawings, paintings, and mementos collected from a life shared with pop-culture icons. Alongside it all are Boyd’s own stirring reflections, giving a look into the golden age of rock ‘n roll that only a woman at the center of it all could provide.”



Of course, we only have Pattie’s own words about her being the inspiration for “Something”. George stole the opening line from James Taylor’s “Something In The Way She Moves” from his eponymous Apple album, and imagined the song vocalised by his idol, Ray Charles (who went on to cover it in 1971). In early 1969, George told his Hare Krishna friends that the song was for Krishna, and in 1996 he told music journalist Paul Cashmere that “everybody presumed I wrote it about Pattie”. Most likely, the music video for the song helped establish that myth, with Pattie in the opening shot.

In her 2007 autobiography, “Wonderful Today“, Boyd recalls: “He told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that he had written it for me. I thought it was beautiful …” Boyd discusses the song’s popularity among other recording artists and concludes: “My favourite [version] was the one by George Harrison, which he played to me in the kitchen at Kinfauns.”

“My Life Through A Lens” is due out April 7, 2020.

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7 Responses

  1. Geert says:
    August 5, 2019 at 1:27 pm

    No Pattie isn't the inspiration of the song. The song is about a new love, blowing the singer away + the singer wondering whether this initial feeling of infatuation/love is going to lead to something bigger. George and Patti's relation was absolutely not at that stage in 1969, and cannot have inspired these emotions/thoughts.

    Reply
  2. Andreas says:
    August 5, 2019 at 3:12 pm

    At a recent convention, Tony Bramwell claimed that Charlotte Martin (Eric Clapton's girlfriend from 1965-1968) was the inspiration for "Something". George Harrison appears to have had an affair with Martin in 1968.

    Reply
  3. piper909 says:
    August 5, 2019 at 5:49 pm

    In David Wigg's interview with George, as heard on the LP released as "The Beatles Tapes" I think it was called, from fall 1969, George explicitly says that "Something" was inspired by Patti and acts surprised that anyone would think otherwise.

    Reply
  4. Popper says:
    August 5, 2019 at 8:16 pm

    "Here's the blur from the publisher" sounds like one of Lennon's word-plays!

    Reply
  5. Freud says:
    August 7, 2019 at 4:05 pm

    What a bad choice of words saying George STOLE from the James Taylor song…

    Even from the most fast and lazy internet research possible, Wikipedia from the James Taylor song, you can see its a bad statement you did.

    Inspiration for "Something"
    George Harrison liked "Something in the Way She Moves" so much that he used the beginning as the first line of his 1969 song "Something" from the Beatles album Abbey Road, which was also released as a single and reached #1. Early in the development of "Something,"

    Taylor has stated that "I never thought for a second that George intended to do that. I don't think he intentionally ripped anything off, and all music is borrowed from other music. So completely I let it pass." Taylor also acknowledged that the ending of "Something in the Way She Moves" was taken from the Beatles' song "I Feel Fine" and so "what goes around comes around."

    Reply
  6. absinthe says:
    August 7, 2019 at 6:43 pm

    So with your reasoning, Freud, one might say George liked "He's So Fine" so much he used it for "My Sweet Lord," no?

    Reply
  7. Freud says:
    August 7, 2019 at 7:49 pm

    absinthe, that's really sad that you mock this without any knowledge of the situation at all.

    My Sweet Lord was inspired in Oh Happy Day a 18th-century hymn on public domain. Not only the resemblance is there but the intentions George had with the song, to start as a catholic song and later add the Hare Krishna chant to show that God is the same whatever religion you follow makes it obvious that Oh Happy Day was the template, not It's so fine.

    There are many BIG coincidences in songwriting and to state that this case was a intended plagiarism or stealing its really wrong. Read more about it.

    I'm not trying to paint the picture of George as a saint that never did nothing wrong in his life, he sure did, just stating facts that are well known if you do some research instead of going with the gossip and irony.

    Reply

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