My bitter STATUS BLOW
Cruelly dumped by her husband, Status Quo rocker Rick Parfitt, Lyndsay forgave all to care for him in his dying days. Now she’s found he left her NOTHING – and had been getting oh-so intimate with ANOTHER of his ex-wives
THE death of British rock star Rick Parfitt last month was mourned throughout the music industry and by fans around the world.
The legendary Status Quo guitarist enjoyed huge success with 21 gold discs and was one of the most outrageous characters of rock, at one point owning 10 Porsches, spending £1,000 a week on cocaine and once claiming it would ‘take more than death to kill me’.
But while his widow Lyndsay Parfitt endures her own personal grief, it is combined with an acute sense of bewilderment and betrayal.
For Lyndsay is learning far more about her reckless rock star husband in death than she ever did in life – and the startling revelations have left her reeling.
Astonishingly, just five days before he died suddenly on Christmas Eve in a Spanish hospital, aged 68, the ailing musician abruptly changed his will, leaving her with nothing. Despite amassing a fortune with the band over their remarkable 50-year career, his only remaining asset – the Parfitts’ heavily mortgaged family home in Marbella, where Lyndsay lives with the couple’s twin children Lily and Tommy and her elderly mother – is now set to be sold from under their feet.
And if this was not insult enough after Lyndsay nursed Rick through several recent bouts of serious ill health, a far worse betrayal was yet to come.
While Rick lay dying in intensive care, Lyndsay discovered a series of shockingly intimate emails from his second wife, Patty Beedon, on his computer – suggesting that they were planning liaisons together.
In a final bitter blow, she says she was even sidelined at Rick’s funeral just more than a week ago, where she was prevented from playing an active role.
Now, fearful for her future, she shakes her head in frustration. ‘I’ve been such an idiot. Looking back at the way he lived I think I was a fool to think I could tame the wild man of rock, as he was known.
‘I let him get away with a lot. He had this amazing childlike quality about him which was very endearing. He also had an off-the-wall sense of humour. It feels like such a betrayal.
‘He always said his children were his priority and that they would always be looked after, but now he’s left it so that the roof over their heads could be taken away.
‘I long to ask him why he has done this, but of course I can’t. And I don’t know how I will explain it to Lily and Tommy when they are older.’
To say that Lyndsay, 56, Parfitt’s third wife, is now rather confused is an understatement.
Although the couple had been living separately in Spain for two months after he suddenly ended their relationship and moved to a nearby flat, they ate breakfast together every morning and had planned to spend Christmas as a family.
‘We were not estranged at the time he died, but had talked about getting back together,’ she says adamantly.
‘We even planned to spend Christmas together as a family. We had shopped for the children’s presents together and for the turkey.
‘I’m not saying everything was fabulous, but I still loved him and believe that he loved me back.
‘We did have problems in our relationship but I never stopped loving him even though I didn’t like him at times.’
She has clearly not yet fully processed his untimely death which, she reveals, was caused by a devastating infection by the flesh-eating bug necrotising fasciitis.
It is a sad and sorry end to what should have been a blissful semiretirement for the ageing rocker.
Rick fell for Lyndsay who, by her own admission, is not a ‘rock chick’ and was not a Status Quo fan when they met at a gym in Twickenham.
The pair married and settled down for a new life in the sun in Spain.
Their perfect family life was complete with the arrival of their longed-for miracle IVF twins, now aged eight.
On the face of it, they had everything they wanted.
Now, she questions whether she ever truly knew the husband she cared for until the end.
But there were more revelations to come.
Rick’s body had not even been laid to rest before she was being hounded by the executors of his will to sell her home and hand over all of her husband’s personal possessions – including a guitar, photographs and his prized OBE medal.
Lyndsay’s emotions are still close to the surface when we meet in the gleaming marble surroundings of her five-bedroom home in a quiet suburb.
Her voice croaking from a heavy cold, she confesses that ‘so much rubbish’ has been written about their marriage and Rick’s death that she feels compelled to set the record straight.
There is, for example, the £10million inheritance he reportedly left his four children.
Lyndsay now wants to make abundantly clear, however, that there is no money.
‘He has left me nothing,’ she says, simply. ‘I’m going to have to take the children out of their private school and get a job.’
The family home, purchased a few years ago for £1.3 million, is halfowned by Lyndsay but it has a £600,000 mortgage and the estate agency they set up together is struggling because of Spain’s property crash.
‘I am shocked to find myself with no financial means to look after myself and my children,’ continues Lyndsay.
‘No one has given me a full account of where all the money went.
‘I cannot pay my children’s school fees and we’d have no food without my mother’s pension.’
As for his prized personal possessions, she says: ‘My children, it seems, are to be left with no mementoes of the father they have lost so early in life.’
So how could his life have ended this way? With more than 60 chart hits including the classic Rockin’ All Over the World, Status Quo is one of the most popular and enduring British bands in history.
Some of those hits, like the top 20 singles Whatever You Want and Living On An Island, were co-written by Parfitt, who amassed millions at the height of his fame.
But his excesses were legendary; everything from drugs and drinking to lavish spending on supercars and designer watches.
He even managed to get through Lyndsay’s money too.
‘I’ve known for a while that his spending was out of control and tried to do something about it but he would just go behind my back. He bought a Bentley and kept it at someone’s house , just so he could drive it when visiting Britain.’
The daughter of a bank manager, Lyndsay knew the value of balancing a household budget. She was born in Southampton and grew up in middle-class comfort in Salisbury.
After a secretarial diploma at Loughborough College, she worked as a personal assistant for a banking executive, followed by several years at Thames Television. By the time she met Rick, however, she was a successful businesswoman. ‘I certainly had more money than him. I owned a threebedroom house in Teddington, Middlesex, a beauty salon
The roof over the children’s heads could be taken away
business in Richmond, Surrey, a Porsche, a brand-new Golf GTI and a boat.
‘I was worth probably about £1.5 million. He was living in an apartment with a big mortgage because both divorces had cost him £3million, which was a considerable sum back then.’
THERE’S no denying Rick’s relationship history had been particularly colourful. He married his first wife, Marietta Boeker, at the height of the band’s fame in 1973. They had two children – Richard, now 42, a London-based DJ, and a daughter Heidi, who tragically drowned in the family’s swimming pool aged two.
The guitarist later married Patty Beedon, his former childhood sweetheart, in 1988 and their son, Harry, now 28, was born the following year.
Ironically, they divorced when Parfitt had an affair with ex-wife Marietta, but was reunited with Patty again in 2000.
However, his attention was instantly drawn to Lyndsay after they met in 2006.
Rick had just survived a throat cancer scare and was on a fitness programme.
With extravagant romantic gestures he set out to woo her. He sent his chauffeur-driven Bentley to take Lyndsay and her mother to watch the band play in Birmingham, took on her on helicopter rides and spent nights at the Dorchester Hotel.
But such reckless spending depleted his modest fortune and Lyndsay eventually sold everything so they could start a new life together – i ncluding paying a £100,000 tax bill he had left unsettled.
‘His son Rick Junior once told me “I think Dad would have died a long time ago, if not for you”.’
Others tried to warn her that behind the charm lay a different man. ‘Francis Rossi, Rick’s lifelong bandmate, told me: “Get out now, girl, while you can.” I sometimes wish I had listened.
‘The truth is that I fell hard and fast for him despite the 13-year age gap. He had this amazing childlike quality about him which was very endearing.’
Lyndsay suffered numerous miscarriages during two previous marriages, but had never given up her dream of a family.
‘I yearned for children and Rick supported me because he wanted a second chance of being a father. He regretted that he was never around for his two older sons.’
At the time, a delighted Rick described the birth of his twins as the ‘crowning glory’ of his life.
But Parfitt’s hedonistic lifestyle eventually caught up with him.
Prior to the throat cancer scare, he had a quadruple heart bypass in 1997 and a heart attack in 2011.
However, it was Lyndsay’s health scare – a cancerous lump found in her right breast in 2013 – which first put their relationship under strain.
Rick needed further heart surgery in 2014, but it was his neardeath collapse when the group was touring Turkey last June which finally tested the marriage to the limits. He moved into a rented threebedroom apartment last October.
Lyndsay says he became addicted to sleeping tablets and was on a cocktail of medicines including tranquillisers and statins.
‘I think it changed him. The light had gone out in his eyes.
‘He was not the Rick I knew anymore. It was almost as if he knew that his career was effectively over and he was drinking himself to death.’
The week before his death, the rocker injured his shoulder after bingeing on wine and sleeping pills, and falling out of bed.
A few days later Lyndsay found him in bed with a raging fever.
She suspects the infection which killed him may have started by bacteria getting into a cut on his finger from his soiled sheets.
‘It was absolutely harrowing for me to see him in such a bad way because I still loved him very much. He was in so much agony.’ He was admitted to intensive care with a severe infection a few days later. It was not the only shock for Lyndsay.
‘The doctors wanted to cut away the poison, so the doctor asked me to look for a scan they had emailed Rick. That’s when I found emails from Patty sent earlier in the month, with intimate messages and photographs.’
For Lyndsay, her suspicions were confirmed that Rick and Patty had become close once more.
‘I think Patty never really got over him,’ she says.
At the funeral, the three former wives looked to have presented a united front but in reality there were frosty receptions for Lyndsay.
Then came the devastating news that she had been left destitute.
After he died she received a letter from Rick’s lawyer saying that there was no money and that Rick’s share of the house would need to be split between his four children, including his two older sons from his previous relationships. Yet in 2009 the couple had drawn up a will which left everything to each other.
Lyndsay is, understandably, suspicious. ‘There are some who might have sensed he was dying.
‘A lot of money went into his private health insurance and medical bills. It makes me angry now to think that in 2015 he wasted £135,000 on a Porsche.
‘I am stunned to find myself worrying about how I’m going to look after myself and my children.
‘I will have to take them away from the private school they love, so I really don’t want them to lose their home as well as everything else.
‘I’m hoping their brothers will understand and we can come to some understanding.
‘For, no matter what my stepsons’ feelings are towards me, I hope they will understand the children need a sense of stability after losing their father. Surely they are owed that much.’
AddictionA changed him. The light had gone out in his eyes I find myself wworrying about how I’m going to look after my children