Chris O’Dell, super-groupie with the movie stars: My life of gender, pills and stone’n’roll
Chris O’Dell slept with Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr, she will make a Beatles wife burst with uncertainty at 100 yards, and she got plenty medicines that equal Keith Richards was actually amazed. While looking to describe the lady share with the 1960s and 1970s, the word « groupie » aˆ“ probably « super-groupie » aˆ“ might spring to mind. Yet, groupies you shouldn’t generally have a track discussing them by George Harrison or play the support vocals on Hi Jude. Most demonstrably, groupies don’t often bring the gods of rock’n’roll cups of teas, stitch on the keys and carry out the odd little filing. She achieved it all.
Chris O’Dell counted Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and Ringo Starr among their lovers
Resting throughout the patio of the woman modest cottage home in Tucson, Arizona, O’Dell recoils slightly in the groupie tag. « men never know how exactly to establish women who happened to be from the scene at that moment, » she states. « I happened to be a big fan from the Beatles while the Stones and that I cherished the songs, but groupies were fans that made resting utilizing the artists part of the way they have their satisfaction. »
Becoming fair, she was also significantly more than that: mostly of the outsiders aˆ“ and certainly one of not too many people aˆ“ admitted to the internal circle of rock royalty when it comes to those golden ages.
Why don’t we expect so, because the her older muckers scarcely stumble on as « beautiful anyone » into the memorably called, Miss O’Dell: My intense weeks and longer Nights with all the Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, in addition to ladies They Loved
In 1968, after a chance interviewing the Beatles’ PR man in la, she remaining small-town existence in Arizona and found a workplace work at the band’s Apple head office in London. Obviously friendly and relatively onward for a wide-eyed youthful United states in swinging London, she had shortly made the changeover from basic factotum to trusted confidante.
Like a cocaine-snorting, brandy Alexander-swigging, stone’n’roll Forrest Gump, O’Dell ended up being truth be told there to look at minutes of high drama and pop record. She was a student in the kitchen of George Harrison’s room when he informed Ringo Starr he was having an affair together with partner (« Better your than individuals we do not understand » had been Ringo’s response); she got hanging out at Abbey path Studios whenever Paul demanded anyone to play some support vocals, and resting in a tiny airplane with John and Yoko if it very nearly damaged in addition they 
chanted Hare Krishnas for precious life. Even more highs, and some lows, accompanied with all the moving Stones, Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton.
Today 62 and looking truly the previous stone girl having weathered some big material, O’Dell keeps ultimately place what she will be able to remember regarding the Sixties and 70s into a novel. « anybody who wrote a manuscript at the time might have been ostracised from the group, » she states. Today she thinks everyone is too old to worry.
Clapton is particularly difficult to like, around whom everybody else had to go « on eggshells » when he got (rarely) sober and just who, she claims, « always appeared very depressed and incredibly empty ». Sir Mick, at the same time, may well not value her observance that for everyone exactly who worked for the Stones, a portion of the contract will need to have look over « must rest with Mick whenever he requires ». Then again, he might. The Beatles furthermore got a distressing part, even Harrison, whom she understood well.
« In my opinion there is [a awful area] to all four of them. Some of it actually was that Liverpool means, that sarcasm, and element of it had been which they found that they may state anything they damn well need as well as might get out with-it. And people did not know how to answer. »