Dear Layla’: Letters for Sale From a Rock Music Love Triangle

 

 Eric Clapton’s handwritten messages, being auctioned this week, shed light on how he wooed Pattie Boyd away from George Harrison and on the impassioned songs the affair inspired.

"After receiving Clapton’s phone call, Boyd said that she didn’t know whether to feel “joyous or guilty” for having caught his attention. Frustrated in her marriage — with Harrison increasingly preoccupied by the Beatles’ breakup — Boyd said she couldn’t choose between the two men. “My astrological sign is Pisces, which is fishes swimming in different directions,” Boyd said. “Making up my mind on these major decisions is always hell.”

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Boyd and Harrison in Esher, England, in 1968. The Christie’s auction includes several photographs from Boyd’s life.Credit...Christie's Images Ltd.

Clapton pursued Boyd further, in person, letter and song. Boyd recalled that he invited her to a London apartment where he played her a song he had written about a man obsessed with a woman who keeps refusing his advances. It was “Layla,” which became one of the great love songs of the 1970s.

“I just knew — knew, knew! — it was about me,” Boyd recalled of the moment she first heard “Layla.”

 

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