The friendship between George Harrison and Eric Clapton started back in the 60s when they first met each other when The Yardbirds opened for The Beatles. In the following years they played and recorded together, Clapton even played the solo in the famous Beatles track “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”.
But besides being great friends and fellow musicians, there is another interesting thing about the two, they were both married with the model and photographer Pattie Boyd. She was first married to George Harrison, from 1966 to 1977 when they divorced.
But Clapton never hid his intentions even when she was married to the Beatle and by the time she divorced they were already together. They ended up getting married in 1979 and divorced 10 years later, in 1989. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine back in 1991, Clapton talked about that relationship and how George reacted to that.
What Eric Clapton once said about marrying harrison’s ex-wife
“Unbelievable (what happened). And it’s still there (their friendship). It has something to do with the way we wind each other up. I mean, there’s always a little barbed comment somewhere in any conversation. I mean, that devastated all three of us. It was fun at the time. It really was like one of those movies where you see wife swapping – Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. And everyone was saying: “Oh, it doesn’t matter. We can write our own story on this.” Because those were the times.”
“But it took years, and it’ll never go away, the way it affected our lives. We’re still very much the same in the way we think about and feel about each other. Pattie is still there in the picture for all of us.”
He was then asked if there was a period where they didn’t talk to each other because of Pattie. But as Clapton revealed, he said that George would even go visit the couple in their house from time to time.
“No, not really. We always talked. Some of it was very LSD-type conversation and very esoteric, sort of cosmo-speak, especially from George. And he would show up from time to time, when Pattie and I were living together. He came around once, and it was all very trippy. It got quite hostile at times, but we always cared for one another.”
“I’ll probably get my knuckles rapped for talking about all this. I’ll go home, and I’ll see George, and he’ll go, “Oh, running off at the mouth again.” But I find it very hard not to talk about it, because it’s a part of my life,” Eric Clapton said.