All The Gorgeous Women That Captured George Harrison's Heart Over The Years

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George Harrison might have been known as "the quiet Beatle" throughout his time with the legendary Fab Four. But there was certainly nothing quiet about his love life. Indeed, although he only walked down the aisle on two occasions, the "Got My Mind Set On You" singer weaved a tangled web of girlfriends, extra-marital affairs, and one-night stands during his early years, the height of Beatlemania, and his successful solo career.

So who was the teenage girl who first captured Harrison's heart? Which fellow Merseysider proved to be an early love rival? Which member of an iconic '60s girl group did he manage to woo? And what messy relationship also sparked a wave of infidelities that included everyone from Eric Clapton and Ronnie Wood to not just one but two of his former bandmates? Here's a look at the women who played a part in the Liverpudlian's eventful romantic history.

Iris Caldwell appears to have been the first member of the opposite sex to capture George Harrison's heart. The pair started dating after meeting at an ice rink when the future Beatle was aged only 14. And he became so smitten that he headed to his girlfriend's house after school finished every evening.

Unfortunately, this puppy love soon soured when Harrison, who was two years Caldwell's senior, said the wrong thing at a teenage party. "We were playing a game where all the girls were named after fruit," the latter recalled in an interview with Mirror. "The boys would come in and mum would ask if they wanted pears or apples, and whoever was that girl got a kiss. George didn't find his choice that attractive. When my mum asked, 'Do you want lemons or pears?' George just said, 'I'm not hungry.'"

Caldwell, who went on to work as a drama and dance tutor, admitted she was so upset Harrison had insulted his pal that she vowed never to talk to him again. But the guitarist didn't give up, even when she started going out with his bandmate Paul McCartney. Indeed, whenever the new lovebirds had an argument, he'd try and seize the opportunity to rekindle their romance. "I don't think there was any rivalry over me," Caldwell claimed. "It was all good-hearted. Things were so different then." Here's a closer look at Harrison and McCartney's friendship.

George Harrison may have experienced a bout of deja vu when he also lost his second girlfriend to a fellow Liverpool musician. Indeed, the guitarist had been dating secretary Pauline Behan in the late 1950s when he and the rest of the Fab Four headed to Germany for a lengthy run of shows. On his return, he discovered that Gerry Marsden, whose band Gerry and the Pacemakers were also signed by manager Brian Epstein, had been making a move.

Indeed, Marsden fell instantly head over heels for Behan after meeting at a ballroom as he explained to Express. "When I was pestering her for a date she replied that her boyfriend was George. But he was in Hamburg at the time so I decided that while the cat was away..." The persistent singer later ran into the object of his affections outside Liverpool's legendary Cavern Club where Harrison was due to perform. And this time he wasn't taking no for an answer.

"I said to George, 'I've got some good news and some bad news,'" Marsden recalled the conversation he had with Harrison at the historic venue. "'The good news is that I'm in love. The bad news is that it's your girl.'" The bold tactic worked and Behan soon left the Beatle for Marsden. Interestingly, Harrison remained on good terms with her, although he didn't attend her 1965 wedding to the "Ferry Cross the Mersey" singer.

Bernadette Byrne quickly learned the downsides of dating a musician at the cusp of worldwide fame. Due to the controlling nature of the Fab Four's manager Brian Epstein, she had to keep her relationship entirely on the down-low. The hair salon employee often had to run for cover whenever the guitarist was being chased down the street by zealous fans. And she used to receive hate mail for some for having the audacity to step out with their idol.

Byrne had been a fan herself before getting together with the chart-topper having first spotted him playing on stage at Hambleton Hall in Liverpool in 1961. While hanging out with another Scouse musician, Rory Storm, at his home, she struck up a connection with the Beatle. "... A few weeks later I had a note slipped through the door asking if I could ring him. I rang straight away and he arranged for us to go to the Abbey Cinema," she recalled to Mirror.

Harrison would often use Byrne's house as a refuge from all the madness. "It was a place for him to escape all the chaos. He would come over after gigs. He was known as the quiet Beatle, but he was very chatty when he was on his own." But when the guitarist and his bandmates relocated to London to further their careers in 1963, they decided to call it a day.

"We used to chat about records, films, and cars," George Harrison's former girlfriend Bernadette Byrne told Mirror about their short time together in the early 1960s. "He loved girl groups like The Shirelles and The Ronettes." According to reports, the guitarist liked one particular member of the latter more than the others.

Indeed, Harrison first met Estelle Bennett when she toured the UK for the first time with cousin Nedra Talley and sister Ronnie Spector. While John Lennon tried but ultimately failed to woo the latter, his bandmate was much more successful. "We kept running into each other at parties and gatherings and always found our eyes meeting no matter how many other people were in the room," Bennett later said, (via The Weekly View). "George and I talked whenever we'd see each other."

"We found we liked the same things, long walks while wearing comfortable clothes, and being with sincere people who liked us for ourselves and not because we were in show business," added Bennett, who died of colon cancer in 2009 aged 67. "I think I was the happiest when I was talking with George."

"I was so happy I thought I might burst," Pattie Boyd admitted in her memoir "Wonderful Tonight," (via CBS) about the joy she experienced after walking down the aisle with George Harrison in 1966. Luckily, she didn't, but their romantic bubble eventually did, and in hugely dramatic style, too.

Indeed, the couple ended up becoming embroiled in one of the '70s most infamous love triangles when Eric Clapton, who was a close pal of Harrison at the time, started to pursue Boyd. He even penned his signature hit, "Layla," in tribute to her. When that didn't work, he simply started dating her sister Paula instead. And when they broke up, he reportedly engaged in a guitar duel with his love rival in an attempt to win over her heart.

Clapton's persistence eventually paid off when Boyd walked away from Harrison in 1974, arguing that their final year together had been plagued by his substance abuse issues. "George used coke excessively, and I think it changed him... it froze his emotions and hardened his heart," she wrote, (via Express). Her ex-husband, meanwhile, tried to act entirely nonchalant, remarking, per The Times, "I was happy that she went off, because we'd finished together, and it made things easier for me." Boyd would later walk down the aisle with Clapton but filed for divorce after eight years, with the latter later admitting to spousal abuse.Here's a closer look at Boyd, Harrison, and Clapton's love triangle drama.

Alongside George Harrison's alleged drug abuse and Eric Clapton's persistent wooing, Pattie Boyd also revealed in her memoir there was another reason that her marriage to the Beatle broke down. He had an affair. And not just an ordinary affair, either. He slept with the wife of his former bandmate.

Yes, Harrison got intimate with Maureen Starr, the other half of the Fab Four drummer Ringo Starr. "She was the last person I would have expected to stab me in the back," Boyd wrote, (via CBS), in "Wonderful Tonight." "But she did." The former model also detailed how she discovered the infidelity, catching them in the bedroom she shared with the guitarist, "I stood outside banging on the door and saying to George, 'What are you doing? Maureen's in there, isn't she? I know she is,' but he laughed...  Eventually he opened the door and said, 'Oh, she's just a bit tired so she's lying down.'"

Boyd told CBS she'd initially decided against calling out the 'other woman' in print. But after getting permission from Ringo, she chose to name and shame. She also discussed the matter in "George Harrison: The Reluctant Beatle," revealing, per US Weekly, that Maureen didn't exactly show any remorse for the betrayal: "Her attitude was very much that she had the right to spend the night with George if she felt like it." A year after Boyd and Harrison divorced, so did the Starrs.

George Harrison's love life in the 1970s could have powered an entire soap opera. Before his dalliance with Ringo Starr's wife, the still-married man also became romantically involved with Krissay Findlay, who was wed to The Rolling Stones' guitarist Ronnie Wood at the time. The latter didn't have much of a problem with this arrangement, however, as he and the Beatle's other half Pattie Boyd were also engaging in an extra-marital affair.

"I had a lovely thing going with Pattie [in the mid-1970s]," Wood admitted, (via The Guardian), in his self-titled autobiography. "We loved to go to Paradise Island on many occasions." Harrison and Findlay also enjoyed at least one vacation together, too, with their jaunt to Portugal said to be the moment their relationship went from merely lovers to in love.

Of course, neither affair lasted the distance. And things got even further complicated later on when Findlay headed to Los Angeles and regularly got into bed with another member of the Fab Four! However, John Lennon — who eerily predicted his own death — soon got into her bad books by repeatedly mistaking her for Boyd and she eventually returned home to (briefly) reunite with Wood. Here's a look at some other messy celebrity affairs of the 1970s.

George Harrison's messy love life looked to have settled down when he walked down the aisle for a second time with Olivia Arias. However, in 1991, 13 years into their marriage, the guitarist allegedly added another notch to his bedpost. And the woman in question only deepened his mythology.

Lory del Santo was grieving the death of her four-year-old son Conor, who fell out the window of a Manhattan tower block, when she found comfort in Harrison. "It was so private... so special," she later told Daily Mail of the tryst which apparently took place over three days while the guitarist was on tour with Japan. "He asked a lot of questions about Eric."

Del Santo was referring to Eric Clapton, aka Conor's father and the man she'd had an affair with while he was still married to Harrison's ex-wife Pattie Boyd. "He needed to," she added. "And I needed to talk... He was so sweet. He was very caring. It was not all about sex." The model, who once represented her Italian homeland in Miss Universe, described their time together as "sweet revenge" for both parties. For Harrison, it seemed an opportunity to get his own back after Clapton's wife-stealing, while Del Santo felt she'd been left to fend for herself in the wake of her tragic loss. Here's a look at the most scandalous affairs in music history.

Just a year after divorcing Pattie Boyd, George Harrison walked down the aisle again, this time with record label marketing executive Olivia Arias. And although the couple, who welcomed son Dhani into the world shortly after, stayed together until the Beatle's death in 2001, they had to weather various storms along the way.

Alongside allegations of an affair between Harrison and Eric Clapton's former lover Lory Del Santo and an ongoing battle with cancer, the couple also had to overcome the terrifying home invasion which left the guitarist fighting for his life. Indeed, the latter was stabbed during the incident which took place in late December 1999. "I wouldn't say it was a defining moment, but it was such a profound experience that I still can't believe," Arias revealed to AP News. "George nearly died and you think, no, he's not going to die like that. He was a very defiant person in that sense — I'm not going to die like that."

Sadly, just two years later, Harrison died from the lung cancer he'd been diagnosed with shortly before the attack. "I always say I wasn't a 'Beatle wife,'" Arias later told Y! Entertainment. "You might say an ex-Beatle wife. The thing is, when I met George, we sort of changed lanes. We went off and had a more normal, quiet life. It wasn't too quiet — we had fun! — but we were pretty private, and family really made him happy."