Why I’ve turned my back on rock ’n’ roll relationships
She dated Pink Floyd’s frontman, inspired Donovan’s greatest love song turned down Clapton and married Mick Fleetwood (twice!). Now, in a rollercoaster memoir, 60s model Jenny Boyd reveals
WheN former Sixties model and muse, Jenny Boyd first met her husband of 23 years, architect David Levitt OBe, on a walking holiday in Nepal, he had no idea who she was. ‘he’d just about heard of the Beatles and that was it,’ she laughs delightedly. ‘It was lovely him not knowing about rock music.’
You sense it was a refreshing change for Boyd, then 49, who had been at the heart of the music scene in the 1960s and 1970s. The singer Donovan wrote the 1968 hit song Jennifer Juniper for her.
She was married (twice) to rock star Mick Fleetwood, the drummer who co‑founded Fleetwood Mac, with whom she has two children. her elder sister Pattie Boyd, also a model, was married to George harrison, and later eric Clapton.
As Mick’s wife, Jenny was in the studio when Fleetwood Mac recorded their seminal 1977 album Rumours, and witnessed her husband go overnight from a highly regarded musician to a global rock star.
But David, an award‑winning architect in his own right, knew none of this as they trekked eight hours a day, slept in tents and ate around the campfire.
‘When you’re on a trek, you just talk to the person who is walking at the same pace,’ Jenny, now 72, recalls. ‘So we would talk a lot. But it wasn’t as if there was any kind of physical attraction.
‘ I’d only recently moved from Los Angeles. I was thinking I’d made a mistake. But while I was on that trek I just knew my place was in england. As you walk, day after day, you get more in touch with yourself.’
And the connection between the couple slowly grew as they walked for miles, sharing life stories. She
could tell that not everything in David’s life had been plain sailing, either. he was divorced with three children. ‘But it was obvious he’d managed throughout it all to be a good father,’ says Jenny. ‘ And that resonated with me. There was something about him that was solid.’
It was only right towards the end of the trip that she had a ‘little tiny inkling of something, but I let it go because I didn’t want to have a boyfriend. I was done with that. But then we started to see each other in London. I remember saying at one point: “No, no, I’m not ready for a boyfriend.” And he said: “We’re going to be friends.” Great line, so you relax,’ she giggles. ‘But it was so natural, and now we’ve been together over 24 years.’
They married in 1997. Finally her attraction to brilliant but emotionally damaged rock stars was over. ‘The extraordinary thing is David is so opposite to me,’ she says today. ‘Not only is he Taurus and I’m Scorpio, he’s classical music and I’m rock ’n’ roll.’
Looking at this elegant grandmother of two, you’d never guess she lived through years of hedonism. She’s now teetotal, has never had Botox and keeps fit by walking her dog, Bindi.
She and David, 83, live between London and LA, with a huge blended family between them. Their London home is a flat at 1960s modernist icon the Brunswick Centre (David was one of the architects), a light and airy space filled with books and paintings. Only a few photos on the wall give away her modelling past.
Miraculously, she’s close friends with her former husband Mick Fleetwood and his wife and daughters. She even talks warmly about
Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, once her love rival (Fleetwood had an affair with Nicks when they were recording Rumours). ‘I saw them in Paris a few years ago and gave her a hug. There’s a bond,’ she smiles. ‘We all went through that together.’ It has taken Jenny more than 50 years to find her own voice. ‘I was under the shadow of my sister, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac,’ she says. ‘But really, I was under my own shadow. And that was where I had to emerge from.’
For years, as a largely silent muse, wife and mother, others projected their dreams onto her fragile beauty. She and her sister Pattie may have embodied the classic 1960s girl — long‑limbed beauties, with cascading hair and huge eyes — but they were largely defined by the men they married. ‘It was like being a leaf in the wind. You went along with things,’ she recalls. But now Jenny, who retrained as a research psychologist specialising in addiction, is telling her own story in her memoir, Jennifer Juniper: A Journey Beyond The Muse.
It is a wise and honest account of what it’s really like to be married to a rock star. And daddy damage is at the heart of her story.
Jenny was born in Guildford in 1947, the third of four siblings. The following year the family moved to Nairobi, Kenya, where they were part of the wealthy ex‑pat community. her parents’ marriage got off to an inauspicious start. Just before the wedding, her father,