News The Songs written by The Beatles About Patti Boyd
Let’s be honest; everyone dreams of having a song written about them. Love letters come and go, gifts will be lost to time when things go sour, and jewellery will tarnish, but music is forever. More so than any other art form, there is immortality in song, and in that way, Pattie Boyd will live forever.
Anyone can be a muse. Girlfriends, boyfriends, friends and lovers everywhere are captured daily, but not everyone can be a muse to multiple musical legends. And as her influence, beauty, and inspiration struck them, Boyd sat above them as a goddess-like figure. In the 1960s and beyond, the model and photographer had a hoard of musicians worshipping at her alter, penning odes and hymns to her love.
The songs written about Pattie Boyd:
‘I Need You’ – The Beatles
Pattie Boyd and George Harrison met on the set of A Hard Day’s Night in 1964. After her walk-on role, Harrison was besotted. 18 months later, the pair were married. On The Beatles‘ 1965 album, Help!, the guitarist’s second-ever song he wrote for the band was the first he wrote for his wife.
“You don’t realise how much I need you / Love you all the time, never leave you,” it goes, penned as an ode to dedication, desire and the promise to be there. As far as love songs go, it’s everything you could want. And as the biggest band played it on earth, it heralded a period that Boyd considered her happiest. She was young, in love and in the “lovely heady atmosphere of being with The Beatles,” declaring, “Everything was fabulous.”
‘It’s All Too Much’ – The Beatles
“With your long blond hair and your eyes of blue…” Amidst an early acid trip, Harrison looks to his wife for grounding. Watching the world swirl around them in full technicolour, swelling the feelings of joy and adoration to a maximum, the pair’s love was heightened, too.
While this is predominantly a track about LSD, Boyd was right there in it, too, as the band began experimenting. She was there when Harrison and John Lennon first tried the drug, tripping alongside them. Throughout all the band’s wooziest numbers, anytime the guitarist got the pen, his wife was there. Whether explicitly or simply found in the imagery, her love is a vital piece of the psychedelic pattern.
‘Something’ – The Beatles
Perhaps one of the best-known and most beloved songs ever written, ‘Something’ is the love song that ends all love songs. To Frank Sinatra, it was one of the greatest ever written, and to the hundreds of artists that have covered the track, its timelessness proved the endurance and relatability of the sentiment.
But it was penned for one woman. In many ways, this track is not only Harrison’s opus on his muse but is his ultimate opus for The Beatles. More so than any other songs he wrote for the group, ‘Something’ lives in the leagues as one of their finest. With plain speaking language but holding grand sentiments, it’s an utterly adoring track that captures the purest feeling of love and hoping it lasts. That feeling is captured in the music video, too, as the Beatles and their wives are captured in love.
“He told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that he had written it for me. I thought it was beautiful,” Boyd remembers of the song. When asked about the thousands of cover versions and the hoards of artists that have taken their shot at redoing the track penned for her, her best-loved version is simple; “My favourite was the one by George Harrison, which he played to me in the kitchen at [their home] Kinfauns.”
‘For You Blue’ – The Beatles
Out of this entire list, I think if I were to pick a song I’d like to be written about me, it would be this one. Subverting the blues genre into a self-professed “happy-go-lucky” track, ‘For You Blue’ is fun, cool, seductive, and so joyful it bursts from your headphones.
“Because you’re sweet and lovely, girl, I love you,” Harrison sings, “I love you more than ever, girl, I do.” Influenced by his time spent with Bob Dylan in Woodstock and the start of his stretching out beyond the typical Beatles sound into the musical space that would colour his solo work, Boyd was still right there as his muse. In a heartwarming, wholesome and adoring lyrical ode, it’s a sweet one.
