Jasmine Bentami

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:26

PUBLISHED: 01:31 BST, 26 June 2022

EXCLUSIVE:

AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd and Jasmine Bentami fell in love, moved to Australia and had a baby boy
before the rock star's cocaine addiction destroyed everything...
39 years later, she has one heartbreaking message for him.

_Jasmine Bentami met Phil Rudd, the drummer of famed rock band AC/DC, at a party in Paris in June 1981
_The pair had a whirlwind romance as the band recorded in Europe, and returned home to Melbourne with him
_But the volatile musician was gripped by a cocaine addiction that soon spiralled out of control
_Ms Bentami fled back to France with their baby son Tommy when she was too scared of his drug dealers
_She struggled as a single mother and, penniless and in poor health, is asking Rudd for help

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:27

Gazing out the window of her cramped public housing flat with a sorrowful stare, Jasmine Bentami's eyes mourn what might have been.

Scrawled on a blackboard balanced under the microwave in her cluttered kitchen is 'life is too short to be miserable',
yet miserable she is.

Her apartment in Amsterdam's Eastern Docklands is a far cry from two years of glamour, parties,
and cocaine-induced strife as the girlfriend of AC/DC drummer Phil Rudd.

Life was thrilling and exciting - until it all went horribly wrong and the French woman fled Australia,
penniless with just a suitcase and their eight-month-old baby Tommy in her arms, fearing for their lives
as Rudd's drug addiction spiralled out of control.

The legendary rocker was sleeping with a gun under his pillow and talking to people who weren't really there,
while their home in Melbourne was 'under siege' by dangerous drug dealers who were linked to bikies.

Now 39 years later as Rudd, 68, cruises in one of his 11 sports cars to his mansion half a world away, Ms Bentami, 66, strains her arthritis-ridden joints as she pushes a rickety bicycle to her run-down building.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:29

Her 'suffocating' apartment has a bathroom 'so small you can barely get to the shower' while the living areas
are cluttered with drawings by her grandchildren and what relics of bygone eras she has left.

'I'm just trying to survive. I don't have much interest in myself anymore, I just want to see my grandchildren grow up
as much as I can,' Ms Bentami told Daily Mail Australia.

'But with the condition and poverty I'm in, I don't know if that will be very long.

'I don't want my grandchildren to think I am poor but I'm ashamed of how I live now,
I'm trying very hard to keep any kind of dignity.'

When Rudd made a triumphant return to AC/DC in late 2020 after six years of battling drug charges,
Ms Bentami wrote him a desperate email begging for help.

'A small place under our grandchildren's names, where I could live until I am gone,
would get me out of poverty while assuring the little ones a good future,'
the letter shared with Daily Mail Australia reads.

She is still waiting for a reply.

Rudd declined to comment and, after being contacted three times, explained to Daily Mail Australia
that he was writing a memoir that would 'go all the way back' and didn't want to spoil it.

'You can read it in the book!' he said.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:32

Spellbound, my world keeps tumbling down Jasmine Bentami 1f62f

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:33

Welcome to the AC/DC WAGs club

The ill-fated love story began on a warm summer night in June 1981 when Ms Bentami was dragged to a party
at Rudd's apartment in Paris by her cousin, who worked for famed music promoter Albert Koski.

She had resisted meeting the mysterious but 'very nice Australian musician' several times,
but she was convinced to come along with a group of friends - a decision that changed her life.

'To my greatest surprise he opened the door and welcomed me with open arms, a hug, and a lovely smile.
I was immediately touched by his genuineness and spontaneity,' she said of the 5ft,
6in rock star with 'piercing blue eyes and a mischievous smirk'.

'I found him touching and thoughtful and kind, and after an hour of conversation we forgot about everyone else
and I decided to stay when they all left. From that moment we were never apart.'

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:35

The young couple fell madly in love and even Ms Bentami's mother adored him.
They soon moved into a four-bedroom apartment in Paris while the band recorded its eighth album,
For Those About to Rock.

Rudd and Ms Bentami had the biggest home of the five musicians and often hosted the band
and its entourage after recording sessions where they would play cards, drink, and smoke.

Ms Bentami formed a kind of AC/DC WAGs group with the wives of fellow members -
guitarist brothers Angus and Malcolm Young, bassist Cliff Williams, and singer Brian Johnson -
who would 'look after the guys'.

'It was just like a big family. Wives, girlfriends, relatives, kids all together... we used to cook a lot,
go shopping together, have lunches - nothing fancy or glamorous,' she recalled.

'Never did it feel like I was living with famous people.'

She showed the band members and their families around Paris, and even went shopping
with Johnson's mother when she visited.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:38

Ms Bentami recalls these months in Paris on either side of the band's US tour as the best days
of their two years together.
Happy, carefree, hopeful for the future, and surrounded by love and camaraderie.

It didn't last.

After the tour was complete in February 1982, Rudd asked her to move back to his hometown of Melbourne
with him because he 'couldn't imagine leaving her behind'.

So the young lovestruck woman quit her job as a modelling agency booker,
abandoned her law and French literature degree,
left behind her family and friends, and hopped on a plane to Australia.

She had no idea of the joy, heartache, dread, and terror that awaited her - all at once.

Rudd was well-versed in holding a baby six years before Tommy was born, in this backstage photo from 1976

Rock 'n' roll damnation

Rudd wasn't quite prepared for the fame and fortune that came with being part of the biggest band in the world,
or the profound impact it would have on him.

Born to German and Irish parents named Hugh and Ivy, he had a modest upbringing in suburban Melbourne.

He bought his first drum kit, a Boston, for $250 with his first pay cheque and worked as an apprentice painter,
electrician, and air conditioning installer to fund his musical obsession, until he joined AC/DC in 1974 aged just 20.

The prolific performers soon found success and became one of the biggest bands in Australia,
but true global superstardom, and the cash to match, didn't come until Highway To Hell charted
at #17 in the US in 1979.

'He was just a simple young Australian guy, money didn't change him too much at first.
But eventually this new big wealth was quite disorienting for him,' Ms Bentami recalled.

'Phil suddenly became very wealthy but he had no idea what to do with the money.
He got mixed up with all the wrong people all the time.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:40

'He spent his money on flashy things.
When he wanted a new watch he always wanted the most expensive one even if it wasn't the nicest one.
He developed a passion for flashy cars as well.

'I never cared about all the glamour of a rock and roll life, quite on the contrary.
I just wanted a normal family life.'

Rudd bought a house in Beaumaris in Melbourne's southeast that Ms Bentami decorated
while she dealt with the huge culture shock of suddenly being in a strange country
where she knew almost no one.

'But we were so in love, we had a great relationship even though we were so different,' she said.

However, with money and fame came an army of hangers-on, many harmless but others offering
a variety of chemical assistance to Rudd's musical brilliance.

'The moment I turned my back, someone who was supposed to be a "good friend"
was trying to sell him cocaine,' Ms Bentami recounted with some bitterness.

Rudd had more than dabbled in drug use before, and in 1978 the band's first lead singer Bon Scott
wrote to his sister Valerie that the drummer almost had to be replaced after suffering a nervous breakdown.

'Phil had a bit of a nervous breakdown and had to spend a lot of time with a shrink,'
the famous letter that later sold for $14,000 at auction read.

'It was really bad but luckily he got over it quickly enough not to upset the band.
We had to treat him with kid gloves for a bit but he's OK now.'

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:43

Ms Bentami said the drugs gripped him harder this time, his use becoming heavier
and more frequent with bouts of intense paranoia.

'The first time I saw him after doing cocaine, it terrified me.
I thought his heart was going to fail. He was in a panic, imagining cops hiding in the house.
It lasted all night long and was exhausting for us both,' she said.

But amid Rudd's escalating drug use there was hope, as over the 1981-82 holidays Ms Bentami
became pregnant and the overjoyed couple began to plan a family together.

Highway to hell

Bon Scott's sudden and tragic death from alcohol poisoning on January 20, 1980,
hit the whole band incredibly hard, but Rudd arguably never fully recovered.

After an all-night drinking bender in Camden, London, Scott's friend Alistair Kinnear couldn't get him
out of the car when they arrived home and left him there to sleep it off.

The next morning he was rushed to hospital, but it was hours too late.

The band's remaining members resolved to carry on in his honour, hiring Brian Johnson
as the new lead singer and producing the enormously successful album Back In Black months later.

But Angus Young believes Rudd never got over it and 'felt the tight family unit of AC/DC
died with him (Scott) and he became more focused on living the high life - whatever the consequences'.

'If he hadn't stopped, he'd have gone overboard and done something drastic,
either to himself or to someone else,' he told author Mark Putterford in 1992 book A Shock To The System.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:45

AC/DC moved to London in June 1982 as the base for their worldwide tour,
with Rudd and Ms Bentami moving into a townhouse in Belgravia previously inhabited
by American actress Faye Dunaway and photographer Terry O'Neill.

'It should have been more than perfect, were building a family.
But as soon as we got there he met up with old acquaintances, who were dealing him drugs,'
Ms Bentami said.

'But I still wanted to fight for our little family, and I thought when the baby was born,
things would change.'

After just five shows in Japan, the tour was suspended and European dates in July to September
cancelled due to Rudd's drug problems, only resuming in Birmingham on September 29.

Ms Bentami said during this time Rudd's addiction only grew worse and his behaviour more erratic,
including disappearing for days at a time on cocaine benders.

Sometimes he would forget about her when they were shopping, suddenly abandoning her while
she was trying on shoes because he needed to find more cocaine, and sometimes even forgot to pick
her up from pregnancy appointments.

But Ms Bentami hoped the joy and responsibility of fatherhood would level him out and drag him away
from drugs so he could spend time with his baby son.

'Phil was on top of the world expecting little Tommy and promised to stop using drugs when he was a father,'
she said.

'He was always a big family man who loved his sisters and he was wonderful with kids.
He said having children was going to save his life. Everyone was happy for us.'

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:47

A family under siege

Tommy, named after Rudd's Lithuanian immigrant stepfather, was born on October 1, 1982,
at the Welbeck Hospital in London, where Ms Bentami claimed he was delivered by David Glyn Evans,
who treated The Queen.

AC/DC had just resumed its European tour, which lasted until mid-December,
but during and afterwards Rudd's drug addiction continued to spiral out of control.

'He was disappearing... off somewhere doing cocaine with these horrible people I tried to keep him away
from but I couldn't, I was too busy with the baby,' Ms Bentami said.

'Once I got him sleeping tablets because he couldn't sleep and he swallowed the whole box
and we had to take him to hospital in Chelsea in the middle of the night.

'He was screaming in the ambulance "do you know who I am? I am the drummer of AC/DC".

'Another time when we were having dinner at home with Phil Carson
(an executive at Atlantic Records, AC/DC's distributor), he locked himself in the bathroom
and came back half an hour later out of his mind.'

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:49

Ms Bentami claimed their housekeeper once found a bag of coke hidden in the bathroom
and another one near the baby formula.

Other than the risk Rudd would overdose or hurt himself was fear the rest of AC/DC would find out
the extent of his addiction and sack him from the band.

Ms Bentami found herself frequently covering for him to other band members, their wives,
and the crew and felt increasingly isolated.

'I had to hide everything, pretend it was all fine, and cover for him.
I wish I could have told Malcolm and the others that I didn't know what to do and how bad it was getting,'
she said.

'Phil was incredibly happy to have become a dad, he adored his baby and still loved me.

'He had just gone too far and would refuse rehab, insisting he didn't need any and was too busy playing anyway.'

The couple returned to Melbourne after the tour ended in mid-December, but flush with cash and little to do
until recording for the next album started, Rudd's drug use intensified.

'He was sleeping with a gun and walking around the house with knives because the drugs made him
so paranoid,' Ms Bentami said.

Though Rudd's drug-induced paranoia was all in his mind, with his constant need for cocaine came
the very real threats from the criminals who supplied them, some linked to bikie gangs.

Ms Bentami claimed she lived in fear of her family being harmed by dealers linked to organised crime
who came to the house so often to peddle narcotics she felt like she was 'under siege'.

'I sometimes had to put furniture in front of the door and lock myself in because the people who were dealing
to him were extremely dangerous – we could have been killed,' she recalled,
her voice reliving the terror she feels to this day.

'But I loved him so much, I thought I could put up with it and I desperately wanted us to be a family
and have more children.
I just got terribly frightened for him and for Tommy.'

However, after months of living in fear Ms Bentami became too afraid for her baby son.
She decided she couldn't take it anymore when Tommy turned eight months old.

'We were sitting in the living room with a gun and I realised it would never get any better,' she said.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:52

In several emails and repeatedly during a two-hour interview, Ms Bentami insisted she still deeply loved
the troubled drummer and only left him out of fear for their son's safety.

'I don't want people to believe I left Phil and took our son away from him. Phil had lost control of his addiction,
I didn't dare go out any more because there were dangerous dealers around and we were sleeping with a gun,'
she said.

'I just had to protect the baby.
If Tommy had not been there, I would have stayed by Phil's side and supported him.'

She also went to great pains to ensure Tommy wouldn't think badly of his father or think he 'abandoned' him
as a child, and so told him Rudd loved him very much but they couldn't see him.

'Phil was absolutely never violent, never ever. He was very caring with Tommy and me when he was lucid,
but most of the time he was in another world,' she said.

'He would cuddle him and change him, he was a wonderful dad – things should have been going fine.'

Rock and bust

His lover and baby son suddenly gone, Rudd's life continued to unravel - which carried over into
the band's recording of Flick Of The Switch in the Bahamas weeks after the breakup.

'It got to the point where he began imagining that there were people in his room and things like that,'
tour manager Ian Jeffrey recalled in A Shock to the System.

Rudd and Malcolm Young also had an escalating animosity dating back to the fallout from Scott's death
that finally came to a head during the new album's recording.

To make matter's worse, Rudd rebounded from his breakup with Ms Bentami by getting 'involved'
with a female relative of Malcolm's.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 10:55

'The situation had become complex and embarrassing, causing a lot of friction between the people involved,
and the outcome was as abrupt as it was dramatic,' Putterford wrote in A Shock to the System.

Jeffrey recounted in the same book: 'In the end, there was a bitter confrontation between Phil and
another member of the band (widely presumed to be Malcolm) - physical blows were exchanged.

'I put Phil on a plane home two hours later. He was out. Gone.'

Rudd retired to New Zealand soon after being ousted from the band in June or July 1983,
where he started a helicopter company.

Just a few months later met and married local woman Lisa O'Brien, with whom he had five more children
before they separated in 2006.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 11:12

How the other half lives

In May 1983, Ms Bentami arrived in Paris to start over with nothing but a suitcase and a baby in her arms.

Her parents had divorced and her mother, all the family she had left besides Tommy, died young.

'I worked like a lunatic - nights, weekends, long hours, three jobs at a time -
I thought why should he not have what every other boy has? But it was never enough
as I had to look after Tommy on my own,' she said.

Rudd did not see his son again until Tommy was 10 and he was on tour in London,
having rejoined AC/DC in 1993, and mutual friends arranged for them to spend three days together.

Tommy later met his five half-siblings, the older few of whom have also met Ms Bentami,
but there has been minimal contact between the two ex-lovers.

'Phil never wanted me to come to AC/DC concerts when he was in Europe because Lisa
would get jealous,' she said.

Ms Bentami had several 'disastrous' relationships that didn't work out but mainly spent her time
raising Tommy until she reached mandatory retirement age.

She now finds herself alone in her tiny, run down flat in Amsterdam with no savings, declining health,
and a pension of just €900 ($1,371) a month.

Her hands and joints ache with arthritis, and is she barely able to use them during the Netherlands'
harsh winters.
She has a heart condition that needs surgery she can't afford.

Ms Bentami said she also suffered from PTSD as a result of an accident in 2015,
which also left her with claustrophobia which is heightened by her crammed living space.

Heating was only installed in the old building in 2019 and is not very effective.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 11:15

Surrounded by books, knick knacks, fraying rugs, and a few ageing pieces of furniture,
Ms Bentami also battles crippling loneliness far from the only family she has left

Surrounded by books, knick knacks, fraying rugs, and a few ageing pieces of furniture,
Ms Bentami also battles crippling loneliness far from the only family she has left.

'I don't have really any friends anymore as all the people I talked to I knew through work
and we lost touch after I had to retire. So I am very lonely.
I'm very depressed and vulnerable these days,' she said.

'I eat the cheapest food and barely buy any new clothes.'

Her son and grandchildren Jade and Ryan are all that bring her joy,
but are too far away in France for her to visit often.

'I can rarely visit the children in France, it's too expensive for me and even just buying proper food
is not easy at the end of the month,' she said.

'In the Covid lockdown I was here in my tiny apartment and I got extremely down,
I couldn't visit Tommy and my grandchildren.'

'The Hugh Hefner of Tauranga'

Rudd's return to AC/DC a decade after his breakup with Ms Bentami lasted
until he run into legal trouble in 2014, again over drugs and also allegations
he tried to hire a hitman to kill a former employee.

But before that, the band was having a hard time getting him to rehearsals and recordings
and he missed several photo shoots and promotional videos.

'It's a hard thing to say about the guy. He's a great drummer, and he's done a lot of stuff for us.
But he seems to have let himself go. He's not the Phil we've known from the past,'
Angus Young said in 2014.

Rudd's charge of procuring a murder was dropped after just a day, but two charges of threatening
to kill stayed, along with marijuana and meth possession.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 11:20

Brian Johnson described the moment he saw video of Rudd's arrest:
'There was this guy getting led out of a car with no shoes on looking like he was f**king drugged
and his head was on backwards.'

His son, Tommy, said at the time: 'All I will say is that my dad is a good guy.
He's not perfect but wouldn't harm anyone.'

The next year Rudd pleaded guilty to all but one of the threatening to kill charges and was ordered
to pay NZ$120,000 ($109,000) in reparations and spend eight months under house arrest.

Rudd's lawyer blamed the phone call where he made the threats on 'meth-induced psychosis'
and paranoia and he had 'significant addiction problems and abusing substances'.

Just as true in 2014 as it was more than 30 years earlier.

by **T.N.T.** Mon 27 Jun - 11:24

LINK:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10205649/Phill-Rudd-AC-DC.html?fbclid=IwAR2h_OLIn1WK6aULjna8tQ382yr3GzQSCd6zUkF4y3WY52Pryz0PZSgx1X0#l4vkvh28scp5pq3ntrc

by Sponsored content

Jasmine Bentami

Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami

Re: Jasmine Bentami