Monday, December 16, 2013

What's happened to Sheena Easton? Singer, 54, looks fragile as she is wheeled out of clinic

Pale and bundled up in a wheelchair, former chart-topping Scottish singer Sheena Easton was helped out of a medical center this week.
The 1980s pop music queen looked glum as she was spotted being wheeled out of a Las Vegas surgery specializing in oral surgery and dental implants.
MailOnline's photos show Sheena, 54, looking a far cry from the beautiful Glasgow starlet who took charts all over the world by storm in her early 20s with hits such as Morning Train and James Bond theme For You Eyes Only.
The singer - who was rumored to have had botox in 2010 - was later spotted with strangely puffed up cheeks after the procedure.

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However despite her dental woes, the four time divorcee could be having more luck in her love life.
Sheena was escorted to and from the clinic by a mystery silver-haired man who also appears to be currently living with her in a modest $200,000 new home in Henderson - a suburb of Las Vegas. 
In a 2009 interview with a local newspaper Easton - once famously romantically linked with Prince - joked about being unlucky in love, saying: 'I still suck at choosing partners.

And joking about being compared to Liz Taylor, who married eight times and famously wed Richard Burton twice, she said: 'At least I didn't marry the same asshole twice. You can't put me on that list.'
She added: 'I don't date a lot. When I get involved with somebody, I either get involved with them and it's over very fast, or I get involved with them then I get married very fast -  then I get to know them!'
An onlooker described the scene at the surgery: 'Sheena was driven to her appointment at the dental centre by a burly man in dark sunglasses who appeared to be ex-military as his car had veteran plates. He seemed very attentive and gentlemanly and carried her handbag inside too. 
'She was inside for about two hours. Who knows what treatment she had done in there but she looked frail and visibly shaken when she came out and had to be escorted to the car by a nurse in a wheelchair. Her man made sure she got out of the chair and into the car safely and then drove her home to rest, stopping at a drive through pharmacy on the way.'

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Dr Carlos Letelier runs the Vegas surgery Easton went to and specializes in dental implants.
Easton - once said to be worth $65 million - is currently living a more humble lifestyle and has downsized from a much more luxurious home this summer.
Online property records show the singer sold her five-bedroom mansion, which had a pool and spa, in July for $430,650 - at a loss of more than $80,000.
The four-bedroom place she is currently living in is in a far less exclusive complex, has no pool and is worth just $200,000.
When MailOnline knocked to ask for an interview the mystery man opened the door but politely declined to comment.
The star who has two teenage children, son Jake 19, and daughter Skylar, 17, has been living in Las Vegas since 2000.
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She once had a show at the Rio Hotel with Partridge Family star David Cassidy and after that had another show at the Hilton. She still plays occasional gigs and performed at a James Bond theme song pop gala in Hawaii in October.
According to her recently updated website she has eight gigs lined up from January to May in 2014, all in the US and Canada.
Meanwhile, one of Easton's ex-husbands has told of his heartbreak at being 'erased' from her life.
In an interview with MailOnline, John Minoli, the Scottish star's fourth husband, lifted the lid on their whirlwind 13-month marriage - exactly 10 years after they divorced and shed light on the star's dramatic disappearance from the limelight.
He also revealed how: 
  • Sheena requested a low key Las Vegas wedding where the only witnesses were a toothless security guard at the city hall and her children
  • He uprooted his life as a successful Beverly Hills plastic surgeon to be with her in Las Vegas and went bankrupt after they split
  • He loved her children like his own
  • After they parted she said she wanted no contact and called him 'Mr Minoli'
  • He describes her as a beautiful like a Scottish heather but 'with a lot of thistles'
  • She would hang out with music pals late after shows and not include him
  • How she described rumored love interest Prince as a 'musical genius' but never revealed if they were ever romantically involved
  • She struggled to cope with her huge fame and admired her pal Debra Winger for escaping it

Dr John Minoli was a successful plastic surgeon to the stars in Beverly Hills. After training under the famed celebrity plastic surgeon Dr Frank Kamer - the go-to doctor of Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson - he was set to follow in his footsteps to greatness in his field.
But that all changed in 1999 when he was introduced to the Scottish pop phenomenon and fell in love with her instantly.
For John, who was already in his early 40s and been a workaholic who 'hadn't had time' for love – it was a shock, and one he is still not over 10 years after their divorce.
He said: 'There's a Robert Frost poem about how love like a good poem can strike like an immortal wound. 
'To me this is the way I felt about Sheena when I met her and I had had that happen to that extent maybe once before in life. There was a real spark in the beginning.'
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At the time Sheena – who had already been married three times, with none of them lasting longer than 18 months – was coming to the end of her pop career and moving into the Vegas cabaret scene where she was about to star alongside Partridge family star David Cassidy in a show at the Rio Hotel.
John would make the four-hour drive to Nevada from his Beverly Hills practice to see her. 
He said: 'We were together for about four years. We spent three of our four years making sure we would want to get married because she had three divorces prior.
'I would spend my weekends with her and the children and at first I was the boyfriend but then it became obvious that I was a father figure. We did all sorts of young couple activities… Disneyland and SeaWorld.'
Things got serious quickly and Sheena soon asked John to uproot his Beverly Hills practice and move it to Vegas.
He said: 'I remember she called me one night and said "if we're going to be together you've got to move your practice here" and without even thinking, I said OK let me see what it's going to take me to do. It took me a year to get all the gears going from one state legislation to another... and I moved my practice up here from Beverly Hills specifically to marry Sheena and be stepfather to her children
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Recalling how he proposed, John laughed: 'I proposed on her birthday, I actually took her to see Vagina Monologues and then we went to drive by a church that had some meaning to me but it was too cold, so we went back to her place and I proposed to her and she said yes.'
After enduring three failed marriages Sheena persuaded John to have an inconspicuous wedding at the drab City Hall in downtown Las Vegas. 
The only guests were Sheena's two children who attended along with one witness – the building security guard, a toothless man called Ed, who also got the honor of taking the photos.
Showing off the touching photos of their big day for the first time since the secretive ceremony, John said:  'We got married downtown by the Justice of the Peace, Sheena didn't want to make a big thing of it, it was November 9, 2002. Ed the security guard, a toothless man was my witness and he took the pictures.'
The low-key ceremony horrified John's Italian Catholic family who had hoped for a traditional wedding but despite the lack of fanfare, he recalls it as one of the happiest days of his life.
He said: 'Look how pretty she was, beautiful. I was as happy as a lark, they say a man can always be as happy as he can be and as foolish as he can be on the day he's married and the day he has a child and I never had the second experience unfortunately. It was just a highlight for me, even despite what happened.'
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After the ceremony they took the children to the Shark Reef aquarium at the Mandalay Bay hotel.
John said: 'The kids were there, so we went and petted the little sting rays. Then we went to a little Italian restaurant in the Mandalay Bay and then we went home. 'But then two weeks later we took a "Staycation" here and went to the Bellagio and had a great time.'
For the first few months they were blissfully happy holidaying in New York with the children while visiting John's family, visiting Charleston, South Carolina and taking a RV road trip to San Diego.
Recalling their family life, John said: 'I used to spent pretty much all Saturdays going with them to soccer practice, we'd all go. Sheena liked to be part of a family element I think. It was an extremely happy time for me.'
Then out of the blue Sheena decided to end the marriage and asked for a divorce.
John said: 'It came somewhat abruptly and suddenly. We were up here (in Vegas) for about a year then she wanted to be single again. She did not want any contact after that either. I don't even know why... she may have said irreconcilable differences, but that's just the legal term in our society.'
After she left, John desperately tried calling her too patch things up – but she only replied once via a cold formal letter.
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He said: 'I did try. At first I called her on the phone and then I would try to leave some messages, but I realized it was not going to happen and after a certain point I realized the ship had sailed. 
'She just wouldn't get back to me, actually she wrote me once and told me she didn't want any contact and referred to me as Mr Minoli.'
John describes this coldness by comparing the star to national Scottish symbol – the thistle.
He said: 'What's the flower of England, the rose, what's the flower of Scotland, it's the heather, with a lot of thistles, and it's a beautiful flower but it's got thistles around it too.'
John admits feeling left out by Sheena and her music pals.
He said: 'Just because you're a performing artist and you hang out with performers and recording artists does not make me lesser that I can't fraternize with you because I'm not a performing artist.'
Their hectic schedules led to fiery arguments. John said: 'I'm Italian by ancestry and we're not a cool bunch, I've got some Sicilian blood. I'll say it this way, she's opinionated and I'm opinionated too, she's a recording artist, I'm a healing artist, I had my own point of view and I would rather be authentic but I thought ultimately that would be a pathway forward.'
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In fact he was stunned when she decided to cut him out of her and her children's life completely. 
He said: 'I think that's a general pattern, it's almost like a mental erasure if you will. 
'I don't know if it's a forced amnesia, but it's a coping mechanism.
'Patterns repeat themselves, she was married three times before, for a year at a time, maybe that was a safe zone, maybe she was like "I want peace, I want quiet and I want as few variables going on as possible?"
'I wish I knew but I would have to be a psychoanalyst to figure out what the reasons are. People sometimes want to put their past behind them.'
However he finds her decision to abandon him cruel, he added: 'I don't care if you're well known or not, you're a person who has to dress and do your normal human activities that are required of all of us... I'm sure she had emotions and of course there's some reversion to immature behaviour.
'If I had one thing to say to her, I'd say 'remember the humanistic side because it's all about a pathway toward compassion, isn't that what the great people we look up to show us ultimately?'
John was devastated by the split in December 2003, he said: 'Any human being is going to go through natural stages, anger and denial... then we go through a period of acceptance. So I went through all of that.

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'I had not gotten married because of all my training until I was in my early 40s and here was this family, in a way, ready made and I love those kids.'
Not seeing his stepchildren - who spent four of their formative years with him as their dad - hit him particularly hard, he said: 'The loss of my family, because I was at a paternal age, was hard.
'I didn't have any legal relationship to them, I had thought about it and likely would have had (if they had stayed together). But it was not permissible according to the conditions she wanted.'
John saw his stepson by accident at the cinema about four years ago. 
Describing it with clear emotion in his voice, he said: 'He recognized me. It was really interesting. 
'We had some nice, good times. I scolded him when he was growing up but we also had some very nice times. We had an immediate positive, it was all good. I wished him well, I asked him about his sister and I just wished them well and I told them I'm in town here and my doors are open if they ever thought it appropriate and that was about the last I heard.'
Despite his heartbreak, John still speaks enthusiastically about Sheena's singing – and thinks she is up there with the great modern day women artists.
However after becoming a mother by adopting Jake in 1994 and Skylar two years later, she withdrew from the limelight becoming a relative recluse.
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John said: 'In the day she was as big as Madonna for a stretch and that must get inside a person's head. Before we had what we have today with Miley Cyrus, she was it.
'I almost got the sense that she always craved this place where she has privacy and maybe just wanted to step off the treadmill a little bit. 
'At the early stages when she was at such a height... She went through her own stages of learning how to cope with it.
'Now she keeps quiet. She became a notable person at such a young age, that must really invade a persons sense of privacy but I found her somewhat down to earth surprisingly.'
Now in her 50s, Sheena does a sporadic amount of gigs a year, still managing to keep the iconic looks that propelled her to fame. 
According to John she has always been a passionate supporter of his trade – plastic surgery.
John also revealed Sheena admired Officer and a Gentleman star Debra Winger's disappearance from the limelight.
Comparing them, he said: 'She used to look at Debra Winger's story and take some interest in that. 
Debra Winger was no longer in the limelight but she gave an interview about the life that she had after.

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Sheena admired that and recognized some of what Debra had to go through, being at such a pinnacle and then going through a transition to find a life that is meaningful, that has purpose. 
John also shed some light on the burning question on the lips of every Sheena Easton fan, did she ever hook up with Prince?
The rumor of a brief romance has persisted since they collaborated on hits such as Sugar Walls and 101 in the 1980s and Sheena has always been coy when asked about it.
John said: 'She used to almost kid about, "oh you know what the papers have said about this, that and the other thing." Now she was a young attractive lady... I'm sure she had her opportunities. She was young, she was an expressive person. But she never said.
'She thought he was a great artist, she'd tell nice stories about how they would work late into the night on some musical things and they'd go out in the middle of the night and grab a burger somewhere.
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Maybe was the truth somewhere in between. She was very skilled at dancing around that without saying something.'
Despite being "edited out of the biography of her life" as he puts it, John still holds a torch for Sheena and he's still single.
He said: 'I dated some, I still do but it's hard. It's probably a combination of things, to find someone that's truly compatible, aside from the fact it was someone notable. I thought I saw what she was like aside from that (her celebrity) as if she was a girl back in Scotland and I liked that part. I will always have a soft spot in my heart for her.
'She was a great vocalist, she was so heartfelt in her songs, I used to love to listen to her sing. She had a charming personality in lots of ways.
'Despite some pain, it was a privileged experience I had. I hope she's at a good place. Life is short and I'd rather focus on the good stuff then not.'
Sheena Easton did not respond to MailOnline's request for comment

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