The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People

by David Wallechinsky

  Jimi handled success relatively well at first, but eventually business and legal difficulties, the pressures of the road, and the breakup of the band exhausted and depressed him. Popular opinion holds that Jimi was a heavy drug abuser. And he did try everything—LSD, uppers, booze, even snorting a little heroin. The manner of his shocking, sudden death at 27 added to the reputation. He took too many sleeping pills and died of suffocation, having inhaled his own vomit. Some called it suicide, but it was undoubtedly at least as much an accident as Janis Joplin’s tragic drug death three weeks later.

  The loss of Jimi Hendrix truly rocked the rock ‘n’ roll world. A genius was dead.

  SEX LIFE: The consummate superstud, Hendrix is something of a sexual legend today. His appetite was voracious, and he often indulged it with three or more girls at a sitting (or lying). He was exotically good-looking, very famous, and so sexy. Women flocked to him like bees to honey. And what a honey he was reputed to be! One girl said his member was “damn near big as his guitar.” He was one of the major black sex symbols for white women of the 1960s.

  Jimi started early. Never shy about finding women, although self-conscious about his skinny chest and long arms and legs, he had his first sex at age 12. At age 15 he was expelled from high school for holding hands with a white girl during class. When his teacher confronted him with this crime, he replied, “What’s the matter? Are you jealous?”

  Jimi’s immense popularity and his cooperation with groupies (he called them “Band-Aids”) led to an unusual experience. In Chicago two chubby teenaged groupies devised a scheme to make themselves something special on the competitive market. They called themselves the Plaster Casters, dedicated to making molds and then true-to-life reproductions of rock stars’ penises. Although one of the girls performed fellatio prior to the casting, it was often difficult for the stars to sustain their erections in the wet plaster. But not Jimi. One of the Plaster Casters wrote, “He has got just about the biggest rig I’ve ever seen! … He even kept his hard for the entire minute. He got stuck, however, for about 15 minutes (his hair did) but he was an excellent sport—didn’t panic … actually enjoyed it and balled the impression after it had set. In fact, I believe the reason we couldn’t get his rig out was that it wouldn’t GET SOFT!”

  SEX PARTNERS: Despite his rampant promiscuity, Jimi had a number of intimate relationships. Today some of these girls vie for the envied historical position of having been the greatest love in Jimi Hendrix’s life. Any girl who attained this status would still be second to Jimi’s guitar, which he called his “Electric Lady.” His greatest human love was probably Kathy Etchingham, an attractive redheaded English girl with whom he lived on and off in London for over three years. She said that Jimi “used girls like some people smoke cigarettes,” and that he had children in Sweden, the United States, and Germany. Kathy usually didn’t mind his groupie infidelities. There were occasions, though, when one or the other got jealous, and there were fights. During one of these, Jimi fractured Kathy’s nose with his foot. She took her revenge by hitting him over the head with a frying pan while he was asleep. Once she was attacked and viciously beaten by four jealous groupies. Later, when Kathy married, her husband agreed that she could still go out with Jimi.

  There were a number of other girls with whom Jimi had involved relationships; some he lived with, but never monogamously. “If I stay with one person too long,” he said, “I feel more obligated than I do pleased.”

  One long-lasting, unconventional relationship was with groupie Devon Wilson. Devon was black, tall, voluptuous, regal (she looked like Jimi), bright, and wily. She was totally into sex, and also totally into heroin (which Jimi did not approve of). She had been a teenage prostitute, had been rescued by composer Quincy Jones, and eventually turned Queen of the Groupies. She served for years as Jimi’s lover, pimp, secretary, drug procurer, and girl Friday. In return he gave her companionship, a salary, sex, love of a sort, and a distinguished position among her peers. He wrote a song about her, half-erotic, half-sardonic—called “Dolly Dagger”—(a word play on her on-off affair with Mick Jagger, of whom Jimi was a little jealous) which went: “… her love’s so heavy / Gonna make you stagger.”

  One unconsummated passion (these were rare) was with singer Marianne Faithfull, then Mick Jagger’s girl friend. One night after playing in a London club, Jimi seated himself between Mick and Marianne at their table. According to biographer David Henderson, Jimi turned his back to Mick and whispered in Marianne’s ear that he “wanted to fuck her and that she should leave Mick who was a cunt and come with him, right now.” A tempted Marianne refused.

  When Jimi met Monika Danneman, a tall German ice-skating instructor, he played a whole concert to her in the midst of a crowd of thousands. Naturally, it thrilled her, but she played it cool for a while. Monika did fall madly in love with Jimi, and he was her first lover. She claimed they were going to be married, which friends doubted. True love or not, it was Monika who was with him the night he died.

  HIS THOUGHTS: “It was fun. I didn’t know it was anger until they told me that it was—all that destruction. Maybe everybody should have a room where they can get rid of all their inhibitions. So my room was a stage.”

  —A. W.

  Take My Breath Away

  MICHAEL HUTCHENCE (Jan. 22, 1960-Nov. 22, 1997)

  HIS FAME: The lead singer of Australian chart-toppers INXS, Michael Hutchence was one of the most prominent, charismatic and successful rock musicians of the 1980s. He rode high throughout the ‘80s, dating supermodels and actresses and launching his own acting career before crashing in the ‘90s and, eventually, committing suicide in 1997 in an act of autoerotic asphyxiation.

  HIS PERSON: Born in Sydney and raised in Hong Kong, Hutchence was the son of a model-turned-makeup artist and a businessman. Returning to Sydney in his teens, he befriended Andrew Farriss—along with Farriss’ brothers and friends, the duo would form the band The Farriss Brothers, which would soon change its name to INXS with the release of their first album in 1980. It was under this name that Hutchence proceeded to co-write and perform, with Farriss, some of the most crowd-pleasing rock songs of the 1980s, such as “New Sensation,” “Devil Inside” and “Need You Tonight.” Producing several Billboard smash albums, their popularity peaked with 1987’s album Kick. In many ways INXS had found themselves in the right place at the right time: instead of remaining another Stones knock-off Australian pub-rock band, INXS was perfectly suited to capitalize on the new medium of the music video. Both Hutchence’s mother and sister were actresses and he had spent much of his youth on film sets. Combined with the looks and fashion sense he had inherited from his model mother, Hutchence was the nascent MTV network’s dream come true. By the 1990s, however, the band’s slick and accessible style was on the way out: attempts to experiment with the band’s sound met with complete critical and financial disaster in the United States, despite success in the UK and Europe. A 1997 comeback effort, Elegantly Wasted, completely tanked in the U.S. yet again; it was tragically followed by Hutchence’s probably accidental death in November of the year—he was found hung by a belt in his Sydney hotel room, ruled the result of autoerotic asphyxiation.

  SEX PARTNERS: If Hutchence’s final moments were lonely ones, such was not the case throughout the preceding years. One of the most recognizable sex symbols of the decade, Hutchence’s every move was trailed by the Australian tabloids as he dated a string of actresses, supermodels and singers—most famously the nascent Aussie diva Kylie Minogue in 1989, whom he helped to transform from an innocent soap actress into the internationally-worshiped sex-bomb performer she quickly became. Hutchence penned the song “Suicide Blonde” about her. Of the pair’s relationship, Minogue later stated, “Everything I know about sex, I learned from Michael.” Their life together fell apart after Kylie caught Michael cheating on her with the supermodel Helena Christensen. Other romances included the transsexual model April Ashley, 25 years his senior, and British television presen
ter Paula Yates, whom he began dating after his relationship with Kylie Minogue fell by the wayside. Yates left her husband, Boomtown Rats frontman and humanitarian bard Bob Geldof, for Hutchence in 1995, after almost a decade together. Divorce was finalized within months—Hutchence and Yates’ daughter, Heavenly Hiraani Tiger Lily Hutchence, was born shortly thereafter. Their couplehood was short-lived—Yates spiraled into depression after Hutchence’s death, refusing to accept the suicide verdict, and subsequently found herself locked in a custody battle with Hutchence’s mother and sister for the custody of her daughter. Kylie Minogue has claimed at times to the press that she believes that Hutchence’s ghost still watches over her. “People might think I’m mad,” she stated in the years following his death, “but I feel his presence. It’s very personal. He checks in with me and it’s typical of him that I feel his presence just when I need him most. It’s not spooky, it’s reassuring, although the force of his presence can be scary.”

  HIS THOUGHTS: “Fame makes me feel wanted and loved. Everybody wants that.”

  —J.L.

  Victim Of The Kozmic Blues

  JANIS JOPLIN (Jan. 19, 1943-Oct. 4, 1970)

  HER FAME: Janis’ whiskey-drenched, gutbucket brand of blues singing earned her comparison with the likes of her idols, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. She is remembered for her version of “Ball and Chain” and her four albums: Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills, I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama, and Pearl.

  HER PERSON: Born into a middle-class family in the conservative backwater of Port Arthur, Tex., Janis was made to suffer for her nonconformity at an early age. She had an artistic bent and liked to read and paint, but neither activity was accorded much respect by her high school peers. Her “beatnik” lifestyle, coupled with the fact that she was overweight and had severe acne, earned her the cruel nickname of “Pig Face.” In college she was nominated for “Ugliest Man on Campus.” In turn, she adopted a self-defensive pose which stayed with her for the rest of her life—that of a hard-drinking, shoot-up-anything, good-time mama. Ever trying to become one of the boys, she often crossed into nearby Louisiana for the honky-tonk life. It was there that she discovered the blues. She began imitating the style of Bessie Smith and performed for free, or for the price of a drink, in cafés and roadhouses near Port Arthur.

  She left home to join Big Brother and the Holding Company, a San Francisco based rock band, as their lead singer. Janis’ virtuoso performance at the first Monterey Pop Festival (captured in the film Monterey Pop), coupled with the success of Big Brother’s second album, Cheap Thrills, pushed Janis into the nations spotlight and made a cult figure of her. She used drugs and alcohol daily and made no secret of it. Janis pressured the manufacturers of Southern Comfort into giving her a fur coat for all the free publicity she’d given them. Her hell-bent image was adored by her fans and feared by her promoters. Yet at the height of her fame she often wistfully confided to friends that what she really wanted was a home life: “Just give me an old man that comes home, like when he splits at nine, I know he’s gonna come back at six for me and only me, and I’ll take that shit with the two garages and two TVs.” When friends pleaded with her to stop using hard drugs, she told them, “Let’s face it, I’ll never see 30.” While recording her third album in 1970, she returned to her room at the Landmark Hotel in Hollywood and mainlined a large shot of unusually pure heroin. A member of her entourage found her the next morning, dead from an overdose at age 27.

  SEX LIFE: When Janis was 18, she made an ill-fated first trip to San Francisco in search of the bohemian life she had dreamed of as a high school student. She moved in with a man who soon tired of her and walked out. Throwing her arms around his knees as he walked up a San Francisco hill, she begged him not to leave her. He kept walking, dragging Janis behind him. It was a cathartic moment for her. She picked herself up, said, “O.K., Daddy, what the fuck,” and resolved never again to beg for love. Strung out on Methedrine, broke and alone, she tried to sell her body for five dollars a trick and was devastated when prospective johns either laughed at her or ignored her completely. She eventually returned to Port Arthur to lick her wounds. She said of herself in this period: “I’d’ve fucked anything, taken anything … I did. I’d take it, suck it, lick it, smoke it, shoot it, drop it, fall in love with it….”

  In 1966 she made her second trip to San Francisco with an emissary from Big Brother, who made love to her in order to secure her services as a singer. Later, she delighted in telling people how she had been “fucked into being in Big Brother.” Her constant and graphic remarks about her love life became a Joplin trademark.

  Although her primary interest was heterosexual, Janis often enjoyed sex with women, and sometimes liked to indulge in threesomes with her girl friends and men she picked up at random. She had a come-on style all her own and frequently panicked potential sex partners with the directness of her approach: “I thought we’d go back to the dressing room and get it on.” For these casual encounters she favored “pretty young boys” of 16 or 17.

  The schoolyard taunts she had suffered stayed with her to the extent that she was unable to handle her sexy, onstage image, although her performances had the same effect on men that Jimi Hendrix’s and Mick Jagger’s did on women. She frequently commented that she was too ugly to attract men, and was heard to lament, “I’m a big star and I can’t even get laid.” Actually, she got laid quite a lot, but seldom more than a few times by the same person. Once, after a long train trip, she complained that there were over 365 men on board and she’d had sex with only 65 of them. Terrified of rejection, she histrionically faked orgasm at times, feeling that if she didn’t have one it was her fault. On other occasions she wore partners down with demands for nonstop sex. She never let pickups become too close, because she feared being financially exploited.

  Janis made a distinction between sex for the hell of it and serious relationships, and even considered marriage with one of her lovers. Her most serious relationship with a “star” involved Kris Kristofferson, with whom she fell in love. Unfortunately, a romantic triangle occurred when one of Janis’ female lovers fell for him too. She also had a four-month affair with singer Country Joe McDonald, who described her as “pretty” and “a very feminine woman.” According to Peggy Caserta in her book, Going Down with Janis, she also slept with a number of other well-known personalities.

  HER THOUGHTS: “My music isn’t supposed to make you wanna riot! My music is supposed to make you wanna fuck!”

  “Onstage I make love to 25,000 people, then I go home alone.”

  —M.J.T.

  Ride The Snake

  JIM MORRISON (Dec. 8, 1943-July 3, 1971)

  HIS FAME: The lead singer of The Doors, Jim Morrison remains an enduring symbol of priapic adolescent lust (rock critic Lester Bangs called him a “Bozo Dionysus”), his burning gaze staring forth from the wall of suburban teenage bedrooms, his throne in the Valhalla of Dead Rock Stars secured for eternity.

  HIS PERSON: The son of an admiral, Morrison was raised throughout the United States, never settling in one place for long. However, it was the landscapes and mythology of the Southwest that left the most lasting mark on the young man, and would later come to haunt his lyrics. After studying film at UCLA, Morrison lived itinerantly on Venice Beach, writing poetry. After showing some of it to fellow student Ray Manzarek, the two formed a pact to start a band, taking the name The Doors from a line in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” After the quick addition of musicians Robby Krieger and John Densmore, the band was complete; their initial gigs at the Whisky-A-Go-Go in Los Angeles put them well on the road to stardom; they were signed to Elektra Records in 1967. Their first album, The Doors, was a massive black sheep in an era of flower power, charting Morrison’s excursions into his id with murder ballads like “The End,” a long Oedipal freak-out in which he fantasizes about murdering h
is father and fucking his mother “all night long.” In a career-making appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, Morrison scandalized the nation by clearly singing the word “higher” in “Light My Fire.” They were soon one of the most popular bands in the country, soundtracking the country’s dark passage through war and assassination. His Dionysian good looks didn’t last for long, however; fame and alcoholism took their toll and Morrison was smashed on the rocks, a corpulent Rasputin, by 1969. At a concert in Miami he finally “gave the audience what they wanted” and exposed himself on stage, for which he was arrested. The band split up the following year, and Morrison moved to Paris with his common-law wife Pamela Courson to pursue his writing career. He was dead by June 1971, at the age of 27 (there are persistent rumors that he faked it), found by Courson bloated and KO’d from a heroin overdose in his bathtub. His gravesite in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris remains one of the most frequented, and vandalized, plots in the world, haunted by generation after generation of devoted fans.

  SEX LIFE: What can be said about the man who made leather pants fashionable, and who had over 20 paternity suits pending against him at the time of his death? The Doors shot to prominence largely because the Whisky nightclub in Los Angeles continually booked them due to female frenzy—Elmer Valentine of the Whiskey recalls “The chicks, the chicks, the chicks all asking ‘Is that horny motherfucker in black pants there tonight?’” Some of these calls were arranged by the band themselves; in a brilliant PR moment, Morrison dubbed the band “erotic politicians.” Despite his revelry, Morrison remained in a relationship with L.A. groupie Pamela Courson from before the time of his success to the time of his death (she overdosed and died a few years after him). They maintained an open, and frequently tense, arrangement. Though he slept with numerous groupies and celebrities—including Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, 16 Magazine editor-in-chief Gloria Stavers, Janis Joplin and Nico, who was utterly obsessed with him—the real “other woman” in his relationship was rock critic, science fiction writer and witch Patricia Kennealy. Kennealy played High Priestess to Morrison’s High Priest, bewitching him with tales the old Goddess Religion, of her status in her coven, and of her hereditary connection to old witch and shamanic lineages, something she shared in common with Morrison. Jim was so impressed and so sought a deeper connection with Kennealy that he regularly removed her diaphragm before sex—this would eventually result in the conception of a child that Kennealy aborted. In her memoir of the relationship, Strange Days, Kennealy spoke of wanting “molecular fusion” with Morrison. The two were wedded in a Celtic Pagan handfasting ceremony, and their relationship soon ratcheted Morrison’s darkside trip up even further. His increasing involvement in the occult wound up in blood-drinking rituals—coked out of his mind, Jim spent an evening quaffing blood out of the wrists of a Scandinavian groupie named Ingrid Thompson. Kennealy, however, blamed Courson’s heroin death trip for Morrison’s end; the triangle between Morrison, Kennealy and Courson was vicious to say the least (Kennealy called Courson “The Redheaded Remora”).