What songs did George Harrison write for Pattie Boyd?
Well… whenever there’s a song written about someone, someone else seems to pop up and say, ‘no it wasn’t…’ but here’s a list of all the songs where I can find anyone ever saying they were written by George for or about Pattie.
Most famously Something, which George did say he’d written about Pattie and then later retracted it and said it was about God instead.
“While the Beatles were recording the White Album, George wrote a song called ‘Something’, which he released as his first single. He told me, in a matter-of-fact way, that he had written it for me. I thought it was beautiful - and it turned out to be the most successful song he ever wrote, with more than a hundred and fifty cover versions. His favourite was the one by James Brown. Frank Sinatra said he thought it was the best love song ever written. My favourite was the one by George Harrison, which he played for me in the kitchen at Kinfauns.”
[Pattie, Wonderful Today]
Pattie was at Beatleweek this year and she was asked about George retracting saying the song was about her. Pattie replied that when George was ‘cross’ with her he would say things like that, but that she still knew the song was written for her.
This song is attributed as being about Pattie in The Words and Music of George Harrison by Ian Inglis, saying that George “unashamedly states his love for [Pattie]” and that George tells her, “I loved you from the moment I saw you”, and by the last verse, “Pattie’s] ‘sweet and lovely’ personality makes her irresistible … he now loves her 'more than ever.’”
Typically for George, he doesn’t comment on the lyrics in I, Me, Mine, saying the song is just “a simple twelve-bar song following all the normal principles except it’s happy-go-lucky!” Interestingly though, the original title for the song was ‘George’s Blues’, which could lend itself to the theory it’s about Pattie.
I’ve seen both these next two songs attributed as written about Pattie, particularly I Need You, but it’s my opinion that neither of these songs are about Pattie.
I Need You is a lament for a lost love, and to my/common knowledge, Pattie and George did not break up during the time George wrote and composed the song. Some have also said before George wrote it while missing Pattie when he was away filming Help in the Bahamas. However, as the first recording session for I Need You was on 15th February 1965, a week before the Beatles went to the Bahamas, this cannot be true.
I think what is telling about I Need You is that it’s the only song missing from I, Me, Mine (as far as I know). Why would he miss it out? Maybe because it was an early song and he thought it was rubbish - but other early songs are included - or maybe because he’d lost the lyrics to it? Or maybe because he didn’t want to discuss it, even years later, and then you have to wonder why.
If I Needed Someone isn’t a million miles away from I Need You - it seems to be another break up song, but instead of missing and lamenting his lost love, here George is more casual about it and saying leave me your number and maybe I’ll call you (but don’t hold your breath, because I have someone else now). In this way, it is about Pattie - my theory is possibly George is saying goodbye to a previous love because he’s met someone new (Pattie).
“Songwriting for me, at the time of Rubber Soul, was a bit frightening because John and Paul had been writing since they were three years old. It was hard to come in suddenly and write songs. They’d had a lot of practice. They’d written most of their bad songs before we’d even got into the recording studio. I had to come from nowhere and start writing, and have something with at least enough quality to put on the record alongside all the wondrous hits. It was very hard.”
Other sources say that George is telling his never-ending line of willing Beatles groupies that he doesn’t need them anymore, and/or that this song is the first example of a ‘jaded’ pop song - the pop star fed up of the pop star life (which may be true).
I think both If If Needed Someone and I Need You were about the same woman who George had a kind of relationship with around the time he’d met and was dating Pattie. It’s not in any books, there is pretty much zero evidence for it, but I still think it could be true. That woman was an actress and singer called Joey Heatherton. This is purely my own speculation, so don’t quote me… But, still…
I think this is a flimsy one to attribute to being about Pattie. It’s because of the line “With your long blonde hair and your eyes of blue,” which is actually a quote/line lifted from the Merseybeats’ song Sorrow. I don’t think it is about Pattie. It’s a song more about the Summer of Love, psychedelia, 1960s hippie ethic and all that. I think its inspired more by LSD than Pattie.
People tend to forget George’s solo songs when they make lists about George’s songs for Pattie. There’s actually probably more songs overtly about Pattie in George’s solo work than in his Beatles oeuvre. So Sad was recorded in 1974, not very long after George and Pattie called it a day on their marriage, but George wrote it in 1972. It is undoubtedly about the problems in their marriage and their growing apart. It’s an unusual song for George as it is so explicitly about something that was happening to him at the time and the loss he was feeling, going through it.
“I started So Sad in New York City in 1972. I like this song a lot as a melody and lyrically, except the only problem with it is it’s depressing. It is so sad. It was at the time I was splitting up with Pattie.”
I think there are quite a few songs from this time period you could interpret as indirectly about or influenced by Pattie. This is one of those, plus also other things that were happening in George’s life - ie. the death of his mother that I think he was still grieving over. It would be just a sad little song, except the use of ‘grey cloudy lies’ changes the meaning. Lies Pattie was telling him? Lies he was telling her? And lies he was telling to himself. George wrote it in 1973.
“Now I only want to livewith no tear-drops in my eyesBut at times it feels like no chanceNo clear blue skiesGrey cloudy lies.”
7 is a good number to end this list on. Thank you for your ask!
