60s and 70s fashion & rock-wife icon brings truth to Auckland – Win a double pass!

‘This is my truth, which may not necessarily be as others remember it. But if my story is to have any validity, I have to tell the truth as I see it.’

This statement is what iconic model, rock-wife and muse Pattie Boyd greets readers with as they open her 2007 New York Times best-selling book. It’s typed below a reflective, yet glamorous self-portrait. It also underpins what the still-stunning blonde, 74, will be revealing to Aucklanders about her marriages to late Beatle George Harrison and blues god Eric Clapton when she visits in May.

In that photo, Boyd, now a celebrated photographer, was sitting on a bed facing a full-length mirror. She appears to be in the final phase of dressing for a party – hairdryer, brush and heels strewn on the carpet, perhaps indicating what inspired Clapton to write one of the most successful love songs of the 20th century. Boyd explains that he penned Wonderful Tonight waiting in the lounge, while she was upstairs trying one dress on after another, more and more concerned about how long she was taking.

“When I finally got downstairs and asked the inevitable question, ‘Do I look all right?’ he played me what he’d written…It was such a simple song but so beautiful and for years it tore at me.”

There has been considerable discussion about who was Boyd’s greater love – the man she met on the set of A Hard Day’s Night who later wrote Something, or the friend who tried for years to steal her from him – Layla was one of his tactics. After her book was published, Boyd divulged what really happened to select audiences, captivating them with tales as glittering as they are sad: a lonely Kenyan childhood, modelling alongside Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy for Vogue, true love amidst the madness of Beatlemania, years of emotional intensity with Clapton, and a tearful journey toward self-discovery and empowerment.

On May 19 she will entertain an intimate audience at Auckland Museum. Boyd’s cocktail hour and talk will be MC’d by long-time friend from London’s rock-ocracy days, Richard O’Brien, TV personality and creator of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. The conversation will be punctuated by the illuminating imagery and footage that Boyd has collected through the decades.

Coming to New Zealand will be particularly poignant for her; on an 80s tour with Clapton, Sydney air hostesses headed her off at the gate, saying New Zealand wouldn’t allow her entry. A 1965 drug conviction as Mrs Harrison had followed her here, and even though the infamous Sergeant Pilcher who charged her was later found guilty of fraud, timing was not on Boyd’s side.

This time, the woman who was an integral part of one of the most memorable periods in musical and social history, will actually be able to step off the plane in New Zealand.

To buy tickets and book tables, visit www.pattieboydtour.com

GrownUps has one double pass to give away to the event in Auckland.

To go in the draw, please fill in the form below.