a hard day’s Night. The first big love started at a train station between London and Cornwall. The year was 1964, and four long-haired boys from Liverpool were revolutionizing pop music.
At the age of 19, Pattie Boyd worked as a model for magazines such as Vogue and Tatler and lived in London with her boyfriend, photographer Eric Swain. She is offered an audition for A Hard Day’s Night (1964), the first of the feature films made by the Beatles about being, yes, The Beatles, in which they spend much of the film escaping from fans.
Boyd was to play a schoolgirl on a train.
– We sat and waited before we were supposed to check in, when I see four figures at the station. It’s the Beatles! They came running on the train and introduced themselves, they were very polite.
And there was just something about George Harrison, the skinny 21-year-old with a slightly odd smile and brown eyes.
– I don’t know if it was me who looked at him for a long time, or he who looked at me for a long time. It got to a point where you really have to look down and look away – but it just didn’t happen.
On the first day, I declined a dinner invitation. But he wrote in the diary that Harrison asked her out on a date with five exclamation points after him. When she was called to take some extra photos for the movie — and dumped her boyfriend — he tried again.
At the first meeting, both were so nervous that Beatles manager Brian Epstein joined in. Take them to one of London’s private members’ clubs, The Garrick Club.
– We were both terribly shy. Brian told us what to order from the menu and selected wine for us, which made it all the more sophisticated. He wanted us to have an amazing first date.
– Do you remember what I talked about?
I was silent for a few seconds, trying to remember.
– I remember telling him about Kenya.
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