She was born as Catherine Martin on September 20, 1948 in Paris, France, and had an extremely structured, confined childhood. In that world there was no room for space, color, freedom or excitement.
She initially escaped through physically changing her environment by moving to London; through modeling in Paris, Milan and London she changed her name from Catherine to Charlotte, creating a new identity for herself and she embarked on a lifestyle of no boundaries... out of control, in the hedonistic world of living with the cream of 1960s London’s music and fashion world. Her name has been linked to Eric Clapton, The Beatles, Jimmy Page and Martin Sharp, Australia’s most famous pop artist.
From 1965 until 1968 Charlotte Martin was Eric Clapton’s girlfriend. Clapton later recalled in his autobiography Clapton: The Autobiography: “At the Speakeasy Club, I had first met one of the great loves of my life, a very beautiful French model, Charlotte Martin. I was smitten with her from the very first moment I set eyes on her. She was very beautiful in an austere way, classically French, with long legs and an incredible figure, but it was her eyes that got on me. They were slightly Asian with a downward slant, and a little bit sad. We started dating right away and soon moved in together into a flat in Regents Park. Charlotte was an incredible girl, more interested in films, art and literature than in modeling, and we had a great time together.”
After her split with Clapton, Martin stayed briefly with friends Pattie Boyd and George Harrison at their Kinfauns bungalow in January 1969, before returning to Paris to continue modeling work. Charlotte had an affair with George, which devastated Pattie because she considered Charlotte a friend (Pattie also had no idea at the time that she was the reason for Charlotte and Eric’s break-up).
Pattie Boyd, also wrote about her in her biography Wonderful Tonight: “I was friendly with a French girl who was going out with Eric Clapton. She was always flirtatious with George, but so were a lot of girls and he, of course, loved it. Then she and Eric broke up – Eric told her to leave – and she came to stay with us at Kinfauns.”
“It was 1st January 1969, and George and I had seen in the new year at Cilla Black’s house. […] We arrived home in good spirits but then everything went swiftly downhill. The French girl didn’t seem remotely upset with Eric and was uncomfortably close to George. Something was going on between them, and I questioned George. He told me my imagination was running away with me, I was paranoid. Soon I couldn’t stand it so I went to London. […] Six days later George phoned me to say the girl had gone and I went home.”
Eventually Pattie Boyd fell in love with Eric Clapton and left George Harrison for him (in 1975).
Both George and Eric had said about it in interviews, but they never said the French girl’s name. Eric is quoted saying: “The reason why I deprived him of the wife is that he had put out his hand to my girl first. I thought that I revenged it on him.” And George is quoted saying: “The reason why he deprived me of the wife is that I deprived him of the girl first. He revenged it on me.”
Jimmy Page was introduced to Charlotte Martin on his 26th birthday on January 9, 1970 by Roger Daltrey and his girlfriend Heather Taylor after the Royal Albert Hall gig. Heather was convinced that Jimmy and Charlotte would hit it off: she was a young French model, slim, elegant blonde with perfect features, and she was Jimmy’s type. Charlotte was used to the attention of musicians, but Jimmy was different. Compared to most rock musicians she’d met he seemed quite sophisticated. Quietly spoken, undemonstrative, but confident and quite sure of himself.
That night was the beginning of a long and stormy relationship of Jimmy and Charlotte. After the show got over Jimmy and Charlotte spoke for a long time and when she invited him back to her London flat, he agreed to go without a second thought, getting Richard Cole to drive them.
Groupie Miss Pamela Des Barres writes in her book I’m With the Band that Jimmy fell in intense and dramatic love with Charlotte on his birthday.
When Led Zeppelin gathered at Grant’s office four days later to begin the drive down to their next show in Portsmouth, Charlotte was still on Jimmy’s arm. With Pat Bonham. Maureen Plant and Mo Jones also joining the band on the road for the UK tour, suddenly Charlotte became the new ‘Mrs. Page’, the slot previously occupied by Miss Pamela. However, Jimmy’s affair with Charlotte would remain in place a lot longer than his dalliance with the prettiest GTO. It was, in fact, the start of the first really significant love affair of the guitarist’s life, and one he would remain true to even after the band had returned to the road in America. An almost unheard of sacrifice, even for the married men in the band, for Jimmy it was a sign of something much deeper. UK tour ended in Leeds later that month, they settled in Jimmy’s Pangbourne Boathouse on the Thames, enjoying an Edward life-style along the river amid Jimmy’s growing collections of antiques and pre-Raphaelite furniture.
Pamela Des Barres also writes “Miss Chirstine sent me a letter about Lady Charlotte, and my mind was stiffened like a stone”. Miss Chirstine, who was another member of GTO’s, was living in London with musician Todd Rundgren at that time.
Richard Cole writes in his book Stairway to Heaven that “Charlotte was the type of girl who you couldn’t look at just once. Tall. Thin. Blonde. Perfect features. You had to glance a second time”. But he also writes “At least in her relationship with me, she was aloof, unfriendly, and indifferent”.
Jimmy and Charlotte had a stormy marriage, but they had one daughter Scarlet Page, born in March 24th 1971, who is now a photographer. When onstage for Page and Plant’s ‘Unledded’ reunion in 1994, Robert Plant announced to the audience that Page’s daughter, Scarlet was conceived “about half an hour” after “That’s the Way” was written in Bron-Yr-Aur cottage, Wales. Then Jimmy took Charlotte and Robert took Maureen and their daughter Carmen with them.
Jimmy and Charlotte didn’t have a good relationship the first half of the 1970s, but from the late 1970s ‘till the beginning of the 1980s their relationship got better, and Jimmy was calling her ‘my lady’. Jimmy threw elaborate parties for her at Plumpton Place and Old Mill House.
Especially, on her birthday, in 1982, Jimmy had a great party for her at their ‘Old Mill House’. Some famous rock stars attended at the party, including Alan White (ex Yes) with his wife GiGi, and also attended Eric Clapton.
In around 1983, it was said that Charlotte had moved into another house in Windsor.
Nowadays Jimmy Page is on good terms with Charlotte. He said in an interview at “The Independent” in 2004: “Every Christmas we are all together, all the mums and all the children (…). We are a close-knit family.”
Charlotte has been married to Ernest D. Riall since August 6 2005, and has two grand-children from her only daughter Scarlet.
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