George Harrison’s first wife, Pattie Boyd, said the final blow to their marriage came when she discovered Harrison was having an affair with Ringo Starr’s wife, Maureen Starkey. She explained that the pair conducted their affair at the home she shared with Harrison. The betrayal stung, and even though she knew something was going on, Harrison continued to deny it. Once, when Harrison and Starkey were locked in a room together, Harrison laughed at Boyd’s anger.

George Harrison’s wife thought that cocaine changed his personality

Boyd noticed a widening distance between herself and Harrison, and she felt his cocaine use exacerbated it. 

“From time to time there might be some cocaine, which had crept into our repertoire,” she wrote in her book Wonderful Tonight. “George developed an interesting and extreme relationship with it. He was either using it every day or not at all for months at a stretch.” 

She felt that the drug impacted his personality.

“Smoking marijuana changed us too, but it wasn’t destructive,” she wrote. “Dope in the sixties — a very different drug from the skunk kids smoke today — was about peace, love, and increasing awareness. It was the basis of flower power; it was innocent. Cocaine was different and I think it froze George’s emotions and hardened his heart.”

She said he laughed when she accused him of cheating on her

In this period of increased drug use, which Boyd described as “insane,” Harrison began an affair with Starkey. 

“The final straw was his affair with Maureen Starr, Ringo’s wife,” Boyd wrote. “She was the last person I would have expected to stab me in the back, but she did.”

According to Boyd, Starkey would come over to their home late at night, saying that she wanted to listen to Harrison in the studio. Eventually, Boyd began to realize something was going on when Starkey was still there in the morning. Once, she came home and discovered that Harrison and Starkey had locked themselves in a room.

“I stood outside banging on the door and saying to George, ‘What are you doing? Maureen’s in there, isn’t she? I know she is,’ but he laughed,” she explained. “He was supposed to be in the studio and everyone was waiting for him. Eventually he opened the door and said, ‘Oh, she’s just a bit tired so she’s lying down.'”

Eventually, Harrison admitted to Boyd and Starr that he was in love with Starkey.

George Harrison’s wife wondered if she made a mistake in leaving him

After her relationship with Harrison fell apart, Boyd became involved with Eric Clapton. He’d been pursuing her for a long time. While she loved him, she began to wonder if she should have stayed with Harrison.

“I began to wonder whether I had made a mistake in leaving George, whether I should have tried a bit harder when things had gone wrong, fought for our marriage, and not walked away,” she wrote. “After all, I had never stopped loving him. I’d thought he had stopped loving me, but he was so upset when I left that perhaps I’d been wrong.”

In the end, though, Boyd did not return to Harrison. She married Clapton and remained with him until 1989. In 2015, she married her longtime partner, Rod Weston.

How to get help: In the U.S., contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration helpline at 1-800-662-4357.

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