Description:
Jo Jo Laine (born Joanne LaPatrie, Danvers, Massachusetts, July 13, 1952— London, October 29, 2006) led a fast-paced life which bore witness to the dangers of too much beauty combined with an almost total lack of self-restraint.
Petite, wide-eyed and with waist-length dark auburn hair, Jo Jo Laine became famous as a model but notorious as a groupie who numbered among her conquests some of the most glamorous icons of the Sixties and Seventies rock scene.
After losing her virginity to Jimi Hendrix, her lovers included Rod Stewart, Jim Morrison and the Wings (and former Moody Blues) guitarist Denny Laine, to whom she was br
Jo Jo Laine (born Joanne LaPatrie, Danvers, Massachusetts, July 13, 1952— London, October 29, 2006) led a fast-paced life which bore witness to the dangers of too much beauty combined with an almost total lack of self-restraint.
Petite, wide-eyed and with waist-length dark auburn hair, Jo Jo Laine became famous as a model but notorious as a groupie who numbered among her conquests some of the most glamorous icons of the Sixties and Seventies rock scene.
After losing her virginity to Jimi Hendrix, her lovers included Rod Stewart, Jim Morrison and the Wings (and former Moody Blues) guitarist Denny Laine, to whom she was briefly married. After a fling with Randy Rhoads, the Black Sabbath guitarist, she began a relationship with Peter O'Donohue, a builder who was jailed in 1988 for 11 years for his part in a £40 million armed raid on a safety deposit centre in Knightsbridge. Later she became one of the live-in "wifelets" of the Marquess of Bath, occupying a cottage on the Longleat estate. Cream's drummer Ginger Baker was quoted as saying: "No sane man would go near her."
During her rock chick years, Jo Jo Laine consumed heroic quantities of drugs and alcohol and remained seemingly unfazed by the premature deaths of at least two of her former lovers from drug and alcohol abuse. It was only when she herself was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2003 that she began to have regrets. "If only I could change my past," she told an interviewer. "Look what it's done to me."
She was born Joanne LaPatrie in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 13 1953, but gave herself the name Jo Jo in fan letters she wrote as a girl to Paul McCartney. Aged 17 she moved to Los Angeles to work as a professional fashion model, appearing in television commercials and on the covers of magazines, including Vogue.
By this time she had already become a fixture on the rock scene. She met Jimi Hendrix backstage at the Woodstock Festival in 1969. "Those were wild times," she recalled. "Everyone was tripping. I was introduced to him in his dressing room and then he shooed everyone out and locked the door and we started kissing. He started singing Foxy Lady and then we made love."
The perfunctory nature of their courtship established a pattern from which Jo Jo Laine rarely deviated. She spent a "crazy night" with Jim Morrison (of the Doors) who was, by her account, "already out of it and on a bottle of whisky a day". She dated Rod Stewart, "virtually my first love", on and off for two years, later recalling: "He may not have been the best lover, but he was the best kisser. He never seemed bothered that I wasn't blonde."
She met Denny Laine backstage at a gig in 1972, and within two days they were an item. "It was the ultimate groupie's dream," she recalled. They had a son and a daughter, and she accompanied Wings on tour, though she recalled that Linda McCartney was not happy with her presence on the tour bus, fearing she was trying to steal her husband. She and Laine married in 1978 and bought Yew Corner in Sussex, the innocent inspiration for AA Milne's House at Pooh Corner, which subsequently became notorious for Jo Jo Laine's wild parties.
In 1978 Jo Jo Laine's brother, a heavy drug-user and schizophrenic, shot their father at the home they shared in Florida after a row about his drug taking. Her father survived, but remained paralysed for more than a year before dying in 1980.
The tragedy put a strain on Jo Jo Laine's marriage: Denny began having an affair with her best friend, and Jo Jo took to drink and antidepressants, filed for divorce and embarked on an affair with Randy Rhoads which ended with his death in a plane crash six months later.
By now drinking heavily, she began an affair with Peter O'Donohue, with whom she had another child before the relationship broke down amid violent rows. In 1991 she met Alexander Thynn, the Marquess of Bath, at an art exhibition.
Within weeks she and her children had moved into a cottage on his estate. During her Longleat period (which ended in 1996, when she moved back to London), she was photographed in Playboy cavorting naked on a tiger skin — at a photosession attended, bizarrely, by the Tory MP Sir Antony Buck and his then wife, Bienvenida.
During her rock chick years, Jo Jo Laine performed as a backing singer with several bands and for a time even had her own band, called Jo Jo Laine & The Firm.
In the 1980s she teamed up with the Rolling Stones' producer Jimmy Miller to record a cover version of the Gerry Goffin and Carole King classic I'm Into Something Good. Later she performed with her children in the No Name band at a London nightclub, the Playroom.
Her worsening health failed to dampen Jo Jo Laine's enthusiasm for partying. In 2003 she stunned partygoers attending a book launch in the Cabinet War Rooms by embarking on a "sex romp" with the transsexual performer Sasha de Suinn. Jo Jo was unrepentant about the incident, though she confessed: "I can't believe he was a she."
Jo Jo Laine is survived by a daughter and two sons.
... (more)
(less)
Tags: Model (1), Actress (1), Singer (1), Groupie (1), The Firm (1), Jimmy Page (1), Rod Stewart (1), Born 1952 (1), Died 2006 (1), The Winds (1), Denny Laine (1), Ginger Baker (1)
My tags:
Add tags
Login
United States
4 comments
