Sexiest Couples of the 60's and 70's

These are my nominees for the sexiest couples of the free-wheeling 1965-75 era.  They were not necessarily the healthiest of relationships.  In fact, some of these couples were disastrous for each other.  But they were so sexy that if you had walked into a room and discovered any of these couples having sex, you might not have turned away immediately. 

Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd

Everyone knows their story.   Eric Clapton was madly in love with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend, George Harrison.   In Layla, Eric claims Pattie brought him to his knees, but it really wasn't like that.   He never weakened in his pursuit of her.   He tracked her as though she were a wild animal.   Eventually, he exhausted her and Pattie let him take her.



As is so often the case, the prey, once captured, became less appealing.  While he was pursuing her, he wrote the heroin-fueled and agonized Layla.  Once he had married her, the best he could come up with was Wonderful Tonight.   That was just a song about the ego rush associated with walking into a party with a hot chick.  Nothing special about that.

They were married for nine tumultuous years.   Eric tried to recover from his heroin addiction by drinking.  In doing so, became an alcoholic.  He also cheated on her a lot and made no effort to hide it.  When she protested, he insulted her.   

Agreed; not too sexy.   The pursuit, though, was very sexy.

Pattie Boyd somehow got two of the most talented musicians in the world to fall in love with her.  Both vowed to spend the rest of their lives with her. Both composed some of their best music for her. 

Somewhere in all of that, there had to have been some crazy sex.

June Carter & Johnny Cash

These two were better together than they were apart.  He was so conventionally masculine and she, so very womanly.  My parents took me to see them in concert in the late 60's.  June joined him onstage to perform Jackson.  Even as a child, way up in the balcony seats, I felt the heat between them.  I couldn't have defined it then, but I could tell that underneath that frilly, swirly dress, she was a white-hot firebrand, and that he was insanely turned on by her.

I Walk the Line was his promise to her that he would never leave her side.  She wrote the lyrics to Ring of Fire to describe how it felt to fall in love with him, which was, exciting and frightening at the same time.  He was not the kind of man she had expected to fall for.  She knew that once she gave herself to him, it would be for good.  There would be no going back.  It was that serious.

He put her through a lot during those early years and he knew it.  They survived as a couple because he acknowledged his failings and humbled himself to her.  He saw her as his savior and that's how he treated her until the day she died. 

They also survived because she never gave up on him even though she often felt a bit out of his league.  Staying with him meant that she was often traveling down a dark, unfamiliar path.  Yet once she was on that path with him, she never turned back.  Each time he stumbled, she steadied him.  She was his lover, his wife, a mother to his children, and his professional partner--but they survived as a couple because more than anything else, she was his friend.

It is no surprise to anyone that he died just a few months after her.  There would be no new life for him; no companion to replace her.  There was no one capable of replacing June Carter.  Once she was gone, the only thing Johnny Cash could do was follow her.

Brigitte Bardot and Gunther Sachs

German-born Gunther Sachs was straight out of a Jacqueline Suzanne novel.  He came from old European money, the kind of money that made it unnecessary for him to work a day in his life.  He spent his time skiing and bobsledding in the Alps; scuba diving in the French Riviera; playing the casinos in Monte Carlo.  He chose beautiful, high-profile women.  Two of his conquests were Aristotle Onassis's ex-wife Tina and the former Queen Soraya of Persia.  Eventually he met Brigitte Bardot, and of course, he had to have her.  She was the ultimate prize.

He embarked on an aggressive courtship.  He took her yachting.  He flew her around on his private plane to hotspots across Europe.  He sent her 100 red roses every day.  When he feared she would tire of that, he dropped hundreds of roses from a helicopter into her garden.  Then one day he jumped out of the helicopter and into the sea in front of her villa.  With him were two Louis Vuitton suitcases.  His message was clear.  He was not coming to visit; he was coming to stay. 

The lust (and maybe even the love) between them was real.  They couldn't keep their hands off each other.  At their wedding reception, they were so entangled with each other that guests worried the two might not make it up to their hotel room in time to consummate their marriage.

The marriage was troubled right from the beginning.  At the minimum, there were stylistic differences.  As an old-school aristocrat, Gunther hated Brigitte's 1960's Bohemian lifestyle.  He hated her cluttered, eclectic apartment and the small, hippie-style gatherings that constituted her social life.  Brigitte hated Gunther's rich and reckless friends.  She hated his massive, mausoleum-style apartment and his grand ballroom style of entertaining.  On one occasion, in protest of yet another of his formal dinner parties, she arrived barefoot.  Her intent was to irritate him and she did.

Gunther in his middle age
at play on the French Riviera.

It soon became apparent to Gunther that by seducing Brigitte, he had bitten off more than he could chew.  He was old school, and thus, expected to continue his philandering with Brigitte's tacit approval.  He was wrong.  Once she became aware he was cheating on her, she started distancing herself from him.  She maintained a separate residence from him.  She socialized with her own friends, and rarely with his.  When Gunther decided he wanted to manage her career, she blocked him.  By then she knew she couldn't trust him as a husband.  She certainly wasn't going to trust him with her career.

After a couple of years, she began to cheat, too.  She crossed paths with French singer and composer Serge Gainsbourg and began a public, in-your-face affair with him.  It was that affair that eventually catapulted Brigitte out of her marriage.  After three draining years, the marriage was over.

For the rest of his life, Gunther kept his homes filled with sculptures, paintings and photos of Brigitte.  In 1974, five years after their divorce, he commissioned Andy Warhol to do a painting of Brigitte.  He hung it prominently in his home in Switzerland.  Several years after that, he sent Brigitte a diamond estimated to be worth one million dollars.  It was intended as a thank-you to her for not demanding any of the family money during their divorce.  For Brigitte, it had never been about the money anyway.  She accepted the ring, but soon auctioned it off in a benefit for her animal foundation.

In 2011 at the age of 78, Gunther committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.  He left behind a note that explained he had been dealing with "a loss of mental control over my life" as the result of "hopeless illness A."  It is believed he was referring to Alzheimers. 

He had been divorced from Brigitte for over forty years, but he never lost his fascination for her.  Small wonder.  She may have been the only woman he was unable to control.

Keith Richards & Anita Pallenberg
Mick Jagger & Marianne Faithfull

Keith & Anita

These four functioned as one unit.  There was so much crossover between the two couples that it's easy to lose track of who belonged to whom. 

Through the 60's, Mick and Keith worked together and socialized almost exclusively together.  This was due in part to the fact that their girlfriends, Marianne and Anita, were best friends.  All four were cocaine and heroin addicts.   All four were freaky, particularly Anita. She was bisexual, experimental, and at that time, deeply into black magic.  Keith was just raw masculine energy.  Mick was a showboater with bisexual tendencies.  Marianne just liked to have a lot of sex and then talk about it to whoever wanted to listen, which was pretty much everyone.

Mick & Marianne

In the ensuing years, Keith, Anita and Marianne have spoken openly about their sexual misadventures.  Not surprisingly, their stories often conflict.  It's doubtful any one of them is lying.  During all this sex, they were taking boat loads of drugs.   One can't blame them for being a little foggy on the details.


The short version, the one on which they all seem to agree, is this.  Keith and Anita were a couple.  Mick and Marianne were a couple.  Marianne and Anita frequently had sex with each other.  At one time or another, they had sex with each others' boyfriends.  They both had sex with Stones guitarist Brian Jones.  Oh, and according to Marianne, Mick confided that his fantasy was to perform oral sex on Keith.  The two couples were a mobile mosh pit.


There is something disturbing and yet alluring about these four.  With the exception of teenage boys and men in mid-life crisis, no one would not want the kind of sex they had.  It was the dark and dangerous kind.  They were like four neurons firing wildly out of control.  As soon as one touched another, things got a little scary.

Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg

Theirs was a complex relationship involving one of the most complex men of the era.  It is impossible to be brief when describing everything that Serge Gainsbourg was.  Every decade of his life would merit its own book or movie.  Suffice it to say he was a French composer and singer who is as legendary in France as Elvis is in the U.S.

While Serge was not classically handsome, he was an overtly sexual man.  Even in an era known for its sexual abandon, he was almost too sexual for the French to tolerate.  His sexuality (many would say his perversions) couldn't be contained.  It showed itself most obviously in his music.  He infused his lyrics with sexual innuendo and word play.  His voice was deep and slow.  It was the kind of voice that hit a woman's libido first, and then her ears.  "Sex," says Jane Birkin, "was his obsession."

In 1968, Serge was recovering from his breakup with Brigitte Bardot, who had left him in one last attempt to save her marriage to Gunther Sachs.  It was at that juncture that Serge met 21 year-old British actress Jane Birkin.  By then, Serge was a devoted alcoholic, but no matter.  Jane was a free spirit.  She considered Serge's drinking to be part of his charm. 

For the next thirteen years, Serge and Jane were not only inseparable as lovers; they were professional collaborators as well.  Their most famous recording was Je T'aime, Moi Non Plus, a song that featured Jane pantomiming an orgasm.  The song was banned from radio play throughout most of Europe.  France forbade radio stations from playing it before 11:00 pm.  The Vatican not only denounced Je T'aime, but excommunicated the producer responsible for introducing the song to Italy.  Gainsbourg couldn't have been happier.  He called the Pope "our greatest PR man."

Jane and Serge recorded separately and together throughout the 1970's.  However, toward the end of the decade, Serge's alcoholism had become too heavy a burden for the relationship to bear.  He would frequently stumble home when the sun was coming up, too drunk even to get the key in the door.  Jane might have found a way to live with this if not for the fact that in 1971, she had given birth to their only child together.  She could no longer keep up with the type of lifestyle Serge was continuing to lead. 

What happened during the ten years after they split is more revealing of their relationship than anything that happened during their thirteen years together.  Without Jane, Serge slowly fell apart.  He became a fixture on French talk shows but he was always more drunk than sober.  He looked horrific.  He was offensive to other guests, most infamously to Whitney Houston in 1986.  He struggled with crippling depression.  He lived for ten more years after their break-up, but as a friend noted, "He spent [those last ten years] committing suicide."

Even so, the two remained close friends after the split.  He asked to be the godfather to the child she had with Jacques Doillon (remarkable, given that the child was conceived while Jane was still living with Serge).  He continued to write songs for her.  Jane relates an incident that happened after they had broken up in which she was in the studio recording a series of love song Serge had recently written for her.  All of the songs concerned separation and regret.  As she sang, she watched Serge behind the glass crying.   She didn't know how to console him.  When she was finished recording, she asked him, "Can I say that I'm your feminine side, your B side?" referring to the vinyl albums back then.   Yes, he said, that suited him just fine.  It was an insightful comment for her to make because Jane was his feminine side, the yin to his yang, whether they were together as a couple or not.  She was the tempering influence to his extremes.  

In 1991, Jane mentioned to Serge that she had somehow misplaced a diamond ring he had given her in the early 70's.  A couple of days later he called her to tell her he had bought another to replace it.  She laughed him off.  "Oh, Serge, shut up and stop drinking," she said.  That night, Serge died in his sleep of heart failure.  When Jane arrived at his apartment in Paris the next day, Serge's manservent presented her with the ring in its Tiffany box.

Today, Jane still has a robust singing career.  She is active in a number of global humanitarian foundations.   She is involved in the daily lives and careers of her daughters.  She is financially secure, not only because of her own pursuits, but because Serge took considerable care of her in his will. 

Jane is not married or even involved with a man.  Her last relationship was with Jacques Doillon, the man for whom she left Serge.  Doillon ended his and Jane's relationship shortly after Serge's death, saying he could not compete with Jane's grief for Serge.  There has been no one since.