Meeting Pattie Harrison

I found this story about a fan meeting Pattie Boyd in the Pattie Boyd yahoo group. It was written by Barb Fenrick, who I consider to be one of the leaders of Beatle fans. She was the person who ran the fanzine which I took this blog idea from, The Write Thing, and if you remember from a previous story, she is the person who was invited into Paul's home at Cavendish and got her photo taken with him on the back stairs! This is a great little story about meeting Pattie Boyd (which I must gloat and say that I have met her as well....)

“Meeting Pattie Harrison”

1969 Fan Encounter by Barb Fenick

“The one time I met Pattie personally was in the summer of 1969. During the weekdays
the Beatles were recording at EMI studios, and several times we had seen Pattie drive up
in her own car and spend a few hours inside. Yoko was of course always accompanying
John, Linda came almost every evening and went home with Paul, but Maureen and Pattie
came only once in awhile - of course they had a long distance to travel up from Surrey
too, and Linda only lived around the corner.

One night on the radio we heard George giving an interview and he happened to mention
that the next day, July 27th, was an Indian holy day and there would be a peace march
starting from Hyde Park, and he thought he might go to it.

Of course my friends and I all went down there. We didn’t see George anywhere, but we
did get right into the spirit of the thing, and marched along with everyone else, clapping
and singing Hare Krshna. It wasn’t until we’d already gone several blocks that I
recognized that the girl in front of us was Pattie Harrison. We had been marching right
along unsuspectingly, singing and clapping right smack behind her. She was with Terry
Doran, who is mentioned several times in Hunter Davies’ book. Terry lived at George’s &
Pattie’s Esher bungalow, and was a close friend of both of theirs, acted as chauffeur,
gopher, bodyguard, escort for Pattie, and all around confidant. Pattie’s sister Jenny, who
married Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac, was also along.

Well, once we’d recognized them, we had to say something. So I asked her if she wanted
one of my ‘Beatles Rule’ buttons. She thought I was trying to sell it to her, and said, ‘No,
I don’t have money with me.’ When she realized she could just have it, she smiled and
pinned it on her dress. Aside from a few jokes with her about how hot it was (in the 80’s),
we left her alone, to enjoy the exertion of it all in peace.

The march ended up at Trafalgar Square where there was a rally, and speeches, and more
singing. We stayed till the end, and as the crowd thinned out we saw Pattie and Jenny
standing alone. Jenny was looking flush and sick probably from heat exhaustion, and we
offered her some aspirin, kleenex, and other medicinal aids that Americans are so prone to
carry about. And just before they were about to leave we asked Pattie if we could take one
posed poloroid picture of her, which she very sweetly allowed and then we bid them all a
peaceful trip back to Esher.

From this encounter, and judging from her cheerfulness at EMI, I always thought of
Pattie as a pretty straight, unaffected young woman, who just happens to be very beautiful
and married to George Harrison."

Not all Beatles encounters were as pleasant. After finding John in a bad mood when they
rang his doorbell in July 1969 Barb and her friends waited at Kinfauns...
“George found us in his driveway one day and was also quite surly. Pattie had been in
Paris modeling and he’d just come back with her from the airport. He was in a terrible
mood, and she got out of the car and slammed the door and then slammed the house door
as well, so it appeared they were having a fight and we picked a rotten time to show up.”

(Barb Fenick spent three weeks in London during July and early August of 1969 and had
several wonderful Beatles encounters. Later the very knowledgeable Barb Fenick was
editor of the Beatles fanzine The Write Thing during the 70’s and 80’s in which she told her
Beatles stories.)