John and Maxine
An American girl who worked as a waitress at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in LA, an infamous celebrity hang out.
They met in Los Angeles during 1978 when she was a 22-year-old waitress and he was still living in England and married to Alison Wise. John became fond of her and she ended up spending quite a lot of time with the band, learning a few things that astonished her
Maxine Entwistle:: - Both John and Keith died their hair black. That was one of the things I stopped when we got together. I made John go to his real grey. It was more dignified... John had the reputation of being the quiet one of The Who but I brought him out of himself. We were soulmates. When we first met I wasn't a fan but John kept pestering me for a date but I refused a couple of times because I knew he was married and had a wife and kid back in England. But he was persistent and in the end I went out with him. We had an affair for a year while he was flying back and forth between his wife in England and me in L.A. But their marriage was over. In 1980 he asked me to move to England with him.
The couple lived in a flat belonging to Pete Townshend, where Maxine really began to learn what the rock'n'roll lifestyle was all about.
Maxine Entwistle:: - First of all we lived in Pete Townshend's flat on London's King's Road before moving to the country to a mansion called Quarwood. It was a daze of drink and drugs and parties. We lived sex, drugs and rock and roll. We would hang out with Jagger all the time. Bill Wyman was a very good friend. So were John Hurt and Michael Caine. We partied every night. We would go to clubs like Stringfellows and Tramp and it was champagne and pot the whole way. But I was anorexic and my body was messed up. I longed for a child with John but the doctors told me I would never be a mother.
Married John in 1991.
Maxine Entwistle:: - We got married on a whim on September 11th, 1991, but I knew as I was walking down the aisle of this tacky wedding chapel in Las Vegas that the marriage wouldn't last. An Elvis impersonator was our witness.
Marriage and being a part of the Entwistle family didn't turn out to be quite what Maxine expected. While staying together at the Regent Beverly Wilshire in Beverley Hills, Maxine had taken a trip out shopping round Rodeo Drive and returned to their hotel room to find that John was not alone. She was so shocked to find John with another woman that she walked back out of the door without a word and called her mother-in-law, Queenie, expecting sympathy and advice but was told instead, 'John's a star. He's allowed to have a wife and mistress. They all do. All the wives accept it.'
The marriage started to deteriorate only a year after it had begun, when Maxine found that she couldn't deal with the pressures of being left alone while John went away on tour.
Maxine Entwistle:: - I had started getting unhappy in the relationship. John was going away more without me... I hit rock bottom just a year [after the marriage] on June 24, 1992. John was away with the band and I was in the wine cellar drinking everything but I wasn't getting drunk. Then I smoked some pot, but didn't get stoned. I was frightened. I thought I was losing my mind. The drugs and the drinking had become too much. I knew I had to sober up to survive. I went into rehab.
Her husband was proud of her for getting over her alcoholism but didn't take the step to overcoming his own. As it turned out, the marriage may have lasted a little while longer if he had been with her at the meetings.
Maxine Entwistle:: - John was an alcoholic. When I last saw him two years ago backstage after a Who concert in Los Angeles, he gave me a big hug and told me how proud he was of me for getting sober. He told me: "I wish I had the strength to do what you did, but I don't." It was a cry for help. He should have gone to rehab. But he was in denial and those around him were too... I wanted us to he like Barbara and Ringo and detox together but John didn't want to give up booze. He loved drinking too much.
While attending Alcoholics Anonymous, Maxine met Thierry Curial de Brevannes at one of the meetings. He was a French Count with whom she had a brief fling, resulting in a son, Oliver, in 1994.
Maxine Entwistle:: - I think I humiliated [John] by getting pregnant by another man. But by the time the divorce was finally sorted out in 1997 we were friends again. We spoke on the phone every few months and I was due to see John on July 3 when The Who played San Francisco. Then John died. In the end, I went anyway and met Pete and Roger backstage. I think John and I would still be married if he'd sobered up. And I also believe that if we were still married he would be alive today. I loved him and would have taken care of him to the end.
John filed for divorce which became final in 1997, but the couple managed to remain friends and Maxine continues to wear an enormous black pearl ring that John gave her. When the marriage ended though, she didn't recieve the big settlement from John that everyone expected.
Maxine Entwistle:: - He and the rest of the band were always going on about being jealous of Mick Jagger because of his money. The Who never made the multi-millions that Mick did. Mick had a great business brain and was notoriously tight with his money. When he was dating Jerry Hall she told me he made her pay for her own plane tickets and hotel rooms. John had money tied up in homes, but he was always broke. When I divorced John, everyone thought I'd get a huge pay-off. But he didn't have that sort of money.
She remarried to a marketing manager called Richard Bolen who was eight years her senior, and they both live in a modest wooden chalet home by Lake Tahoe in Nevada.
John's first wife Alison and his last girlfriend Lisa are said to have banned her from attending his funeral in June 2002. First wife Alison told a friend, "I don't want that woman here - not today. She stole my darling," and Lisa commented "There was no way I was going to let her be here." One of the mourners remarked that "Maxine's absence was a major talking point at the funeral, which was a shame because it cast a shadow over it all." Maxine told everyone that she didn't attend the fineral because she had to take care of her son in America.
After John's death, Maxine gave a rather derogatory interview about her late ex-husband to Australian newspaper the Melbourne Herald Sun with the headline "Who's bitter, who's best...". In it she called him a womanizer and an emotional and financial mess, commented that he was not friendly with his Who bandmates - only seeing them when neccesary - and that all three of them had "uncontrollable envy of Mick Jagger--for the money he made, which they never could; for his business acumen, which they never had; and for his continued success, which they couldn't emulate,"
Maxine Entwistle:: - I am absolutely certain there will have been a woman, but John never had to pay for sex. John couldn't stand to be alone. He needed sex and loved being the big rock star. I haven't asked any of the band members whether there was a woman because, to be frank, I would be shocked if there wasn't. One day in LA he sent me and a friend out with some money to go shopping. I got back and the suite had two bimbos in it. I walked on to the balcony and there was John getting oral sex from another girl. I was just expected to tolerate it because he was a rock star... People say it was a sad way to end up - alone with a girl in his room. But it wasn't the girl that was sad. It was the fact that he didn't want to be there at all. He had to do one last tour because he was broke. He knew he had high blood pressure and was at risk of a heart attack, but he ignored all the signs because he needed the cash. The tragedy is no one around him did anything. For all his fame and adulation, there was no one in his life who cared enough about him to get him the help he needed. The Who never saw each other unless they were working. Their egos were too big to be in the same room together.
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