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A tribute to Brian Connolly by the five special women in his life |
Hello Magazine March 22, 1997
The women in the life of Sweet singer Brian Connolly tell why the late rock star was so special to them.
Shortly before Brian Connolly died on February 9, the most important ladies in his life visited him in hospital. The much-loved lead singer of Sweet, the glam rock group that sold over 50 million records in the 1970's, had his last girlfriend, his two ex-wives and his two daughters by his bedside.
Marilyn, Brian's first wife and the mother of Nicola, 22, and Michelle, 19, remembers: "Although I was in tears, I was also laughing, thinking, 'Here he is on his deathbed and he's got his harem around him!' "
"We all wanted to be there," says his second wife, Denise. "We didn't think of anyone but Brian at the time." Ex-girlfriend Jean, who visited with Brian's only son, 22-month-old BJ (Brian James), adds: "It was like having three stages and three generations of Brian's life there. It was great that we could all support each other." They reunited for his funeral on February 17 and again recently at Brian's home in Denham, Bucks, to be interviewed and photographed together exclusively for HELLO! |
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"Brian would have wanted this," Jean said. "I know he's looking down very happy we're all friends together."
All were keen to put right various inaccuracies about Brian reported in the press and to tell the true version of the life of their Brian.
Marilyn first met Brian when she was 16 and he was a carpet salesman. "It was good I met him before he became successful as a pop star. If I'd met him while he was famous I'd have run a mile! Instead, I grew up with Brian."
Brian was with Marilyn for five years before they got married in 1972.
"Early in our relationship he told me he was going to be a star. He always knew he was going to have success," she says, convinced the biggest incentive for, and influence upon, Brian was his mixed-up childhood.
"He was brought up by a family called McManus--cousins of Taggart actor Mark McManus--whom he believed was his real family. But when he was 18 he discovered he'd been abandoned as an infant in a hospital in Glasgow and the McManus family had fostered him. That hit him hard and he was bitter for quite a long time. Because he then felt he was nobody, he was determined to become somebody very special. So, on a professional level, it pushed him." says Marilyn
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Sweet's success, with hits like Blockbuster, Ballroom Blitz, Action and Fox on the Run, certainly had its rewards for Brian and Marilyn. "In 1975, we bought a nice five-bedroom house in Gerrards Cross. Brian had a black Rolls Royce, Mercedes sportscar and Volvo. He even bought a 100,000 pound yacht. He loved anything electronic. I think wanting to possess things was a reflection on his childhood, too. Brian never threw or gave anything away. Keeping everything was his security. Every item of clothing he ever bought is still in this house--even his stage gear!" |
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"Once they were flying off to the Seychelles after appearing on Top of the Pops and when I met Brian at the airport he was dressed in silver trousers with lip gloss, glitter on his face and his chest was painted with a big star. I remember thinking 'God, that's my husband!' I often thought, 'Why can't he wear a nice blazer and a pair of smart trousers!' "
Marilyn wasn't a big fan of Sweet's music, either. "Brian used to bring demos of the latest singles home and say 'What do you think of this, Mal?' I'd say, 'It's rubbish!' And he'd go, 'That means it'll be a hit then!' I preferred their later stuff but I was proud of everything Brian achieved."
The fact that Marilyn rarely attended Sweet concerts was, she says, nothing to do with her dislike of their music."Sweet took their work very seriously and all these wives and girlfriends running around were a nuisance. It wasn't good for their image to be married or settled. Even our wedding was low key. I was a bit hurt by that.
"He used to say, 'If I was a truck driver you wouldn't be able to come to work with me'--which is ironic because I'm married to one now," says Marilyn. |
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Encouraged by Brian's young-free-and-single image, female fans pursued him everywhere--even to his marital home.
"I'd open the front door to get the milk and there would be a dozen girls literally camped out on the doorstep.
"Some fans he succumbed to but I think I probably conditioned myself: 'What I don't see doesn't hurt me' "
On a personal as well as professional level, Marilyn reckons Brian's confusing upbringing had made life difficult for him. "Especially in relationships," she says. "Even with his children, when they were young. I think he had a barrier that nobody was going to hurt him again.
"In Nicola's early years he was away from home a lot, and when Michelle was born he was drinking--not heavily, but it was affecting his life."
In January 1978, Sweet's Love is Like Oxygen reached number nine in the charts. It was their first hit for two years and their last original hit in the UK--though chart success continued abroad for a few more years.
"There was a lot of animosity going on in the band," says Marilyn, "and that affected Brian badly. He used to drink when he was at home but then I learned he was drinking when he was working. He became convinced the other band members were ganging up against him."
In May 1979, Brian left Sweet to embark on a solo career. But Marilyn says: "There's no doubt they split due to Brian's drinking. He was taken into hospital four times to be dried out and went back on the booze again."
In 1981, Brian's health deteriorated so badly he had 12 heart attacks in six weeks. "The doctors said, 'You drink again and you're a dead man.' He never touched another drink."
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Sadly, though, Brian's marriage to Marilyn was also finished. "It wasn't easy living with a guy who was drunk 90 percent of the time, with two young children," she explains.
Although divorced in 1986, they established a strong friendship."Our relationship got better after we split," she says. "The obvious link was the children but there was something about Brian you couldn't dismiss. He could be the biggest so-and-so in the world but he also had charisma you couldn't resist.
"Brian came to look upon me as if I was his mother or friend. He used to ring me if he'd had a row with a girlfriend. And his girlfriends used to ring me because they felt I was the only one who really knew him."
In 1990, Brian married Denise, who he'd known since the 1970's. "He was doing very well during the time we were together," she remembers."He was happy, positive and even had his hair cut for our wedding! We knew he had health problems but he was full of life and wasn't drinking.
"He had a hard outer shell he'd show to most of the world but he wasn't really like that at all. He was kind and vulnerable. He was good with children and took on my son as his stepson and was brilliant with him.
"I adored his daughters immediately. They were part of him. Brian wanted to see himself as a family man and be a family man. In fact, he was the most insistent on us getting married," says Denise. "We lived in seperate homes to start with, then we moved to this house in Denham. But our hours were very different. Brian liked to sit up till 4am and I needed to be up at 6am."
Denise and Brian parted long before their divorce came through in 1994, but stayed close friends to the end, and she still lives close by.
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"Brian was a lovely guy. It couldn't work for us to be married but it could work for us to be friends. In times of crisis, Brian was always there for me, as I was for him," Denise adds. For four years until March 1996, Brian shared his life and home with Jean, a traffic warden. Unlike Marilyn and Denise, Jean had been a big Sweet fan.
"When I was little, I had a picture of Brian on my wall which I used to kiss before I went to bed," she says.
"Marilyn told me Brian had mellowed out and I was fortunate to get the mellow side."
Jean describes May 26, 1995, the day BJ was born, as "the happiest day in the four years we were together. Brian was so delighted, he was leaping around the hospital room! He was a very doting Dad to BJ.
"But, although we had some brilliant times and a lot of laughs, we had our bad times, too. After BJ was born, I couldn't cope. A lot of Brian's moods were down to his illness--he really wasn't well at that time. The rowing got so bad we decided to split up."
But not only did Jean continue to live locally, in a flat Brian provided, she remained close to him emotionally and, with Nicola, he often babysat when Jean was working.
"I can't believe Brian's gone. My biggest regret is that I didn't stay with him," says Jean. "I didn't realise he was so ill."
In the final stage of his life, Brian was largely looked after by his devoted daughters. Michelle lived with him for a year. Then Nicola put her music career on hold for the last year and commuted from her north London home to Brian's in Denham.
Brian's liver never fully recovered from his drinking years, and his liver damage put a strain on his other organs. He also had shaking hands and a limping left leg following a nervous disorder he suffered in the Eighties.
"From the first time he was in hospital, he could have lived a healthy life and perhaps been eligible for a liver transplant," Nicola says. "But he didn't want to have that kind of lifestyle--though he never drank again, he still wanted to go gigging and eat junk food. He had a heart attack after Christmas and I'd cook him healthy things like fish and pasta--but after I'd gone to bed he'd get his sweets out! He had the attitude: 'I'd rather live a short life to the full rather than have a long boring life."
Brian had been further set back by a 1.3 million pound tax bill. But his daughters deny press claims that Brian spent his last decade living off the council and claiming dole.
"Dad did live in a council house briefly in the Eighties," says Nicola. "After the tax bill, he'd been left with nothing. But he started again from scratch. And by the time he died, he'd rebuilt his little empire, including the house in Denham and the flat for Jean and BJ."
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Despite being partially disabled, Brian continued to perform until last Christmas. "He'd hobble on to the stage, so there was speculation he was taking drugs and still drinking but it wasn't true," says Michelle. "In fact, on stage he looked 20 years younger--he was Brian Connolly of Sweet.
"Dad had recently started composing film music. He co-wrote the score for a documentary called The Honey Trap which was shown on BBC1 on January 21. And he was about to start on a second about the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. If his performing days were going to come to an end, he could at least do that forever. He had a great career with tons of projects on all the time."
Ironically, it was a documentary about Brian, shown on Channel 4 in November 1996, which Nicola believes "contributed to our dad giving up. It was unflattering and unfair and he was horrified when he saw it. He'd always been a fighter, yet this film showed him as down-and-out, tragic and pathetic. He was none of these things. People should seperate the tragic events and circumstances from the person enduring them. Dad was a proud man who coped with his illness and disabilities with dignity and humour."
Whatever the cause, Michelle says: "When Dad started deteriorating this last time, he decided he'd had enough. He had to take so many medicines and he was tired of trying to keep his health up all the time. Besides, he'd done almost everything he wanted to do, including having a son. And he'd even found out who his real mother was, although she was dead. So it's like he chose the time to go, really."
Nicola agrees: "He told us he had died in 1981 and he'd even seen himself at his own funeral but when he saw us all crying he came back. I think he waited until we were old enough to handle it. Dad knew he was going to have to leave me in charge looking after Michelle and BJ and his business interests. I'm sure he's watching over me now, making me strong--I don't know where that strength came from. So it's almost like he staged the whole thing."
Michelle describes the hospital scene with all Brian's ladies gathering to pay their last respects as being "like a film with a sad but happy ending. It was typical of Dad. It was lovely everyone was there. All the women he'd been with accepted Nicola and me. He always made that a big issue. We've been friends with every one of them.
Dad made peace with everyone before he died, including Andy Scott---Sweet's guitarist he'd fallen out with since the group split up--and they were even discussing fronting a new touring band."
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"Even our own relationship with him had improved in recent years," adds Nicola. "Dad had never been very demonstrative and affectionate. He'd tell everyone he thought the world of us but he never said it to our faces, probably because he thought it would make us big-headed. But the days up until he died he kept telling us he loved us and became very affectionate with me. The last time we spoke was two days before he died. He was trying to eat but couldn't manage it and I got a bit upset. It upset him to see me this way and he started crying. I'd always found it hard to say, 'I love you' to him yet I said it then, and he just put his arms around me and sobbed saying, 'I love you, too, I love you all.' And I knew then that was it."
Brian loved the ocean so a short time ago Nicola, Michelle and BJ took their father's ashes out to sea and scattered them there. "To be reminded of him now, we only have to put on a CD or tape or look at some old pictures," says Michelle.
Brian's daughters wear pieces of jewellry he was wearing when he died--Nicola a ring, and Michelle a necklace with a miniature microphone attached. They gave Denise his wedding ring which, she says, "has still got the smell of his aftershave on it."
Marilyn and Jean are constantly reminded of Brian by their children---Nicola and BJ bear an especially close resemblance to him. But above all, the ladies in the life of Brian Connolly still have each other---and hopefully, says Denise, always will. "There's a great bond between us and we won't break that now, because Brian was special to us all."
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