“No, I worked. I actually had a job. I got paid,” she said. “I’ve got the tax records to prove it. And the scars.”
It wasn’t always just business for her, though.
Future Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Leon Russell wrote two songs about O’Dell — “Hummingbird” and “Pisces Apple Lady,” both from his self-titled debut record — while the two dated for about five months starting in October 1969.
Later, in the 1970s, she fell into brief affairs with Sam Shepard and Ringo Starr.
According to her memoir, she is the “woman down the hall” and Shepard is the “Coyote” in the song Joni Mitchell wrote after the still-married actor and playwright ditched O’Dell for Mitchell.
As for her tryst with Starr, O’Dell writes that she was too ashamed to lie when Maureen confronted her about it. Somehow, though, she managed to stay friends with both Maureen and Ringo, who would later become godfather to O’Dell’s only child, Will.
Getting better
Even O’Dell’s version of settling down was wild and glamorous.
In 1985, after a hazy decade of working and partying on the road, she married Anthony Russell, the son of a British aristocrat, in a star-studded ceremony at Leeds Castle, where her new husband had spent part of his childhood.