James Brown spent last days tortured by 'old age and fading libido'

James Brown's widow reveals how, crippled with arthritis, the entertainer spent his last days tortured by old age and a fading libido.

Video: Click here for a moving tribute to James Brown

To his millions of fans around the world he was the Godfather of Soul, the Sex Machine and the hardest working man in showbusiness.

So the outpouring of grief and the flood of tributes that followed the death of veteran rock 'n' roller James Brown on Christmas Day were genuine and fitting.

But away from the stage, Brown was a very different character from the flamboyant lover man the fans adored.

Far from being a sex machine, he was a sick old man struggling to come to terms with his fading libido.

He was tortured by bouts of paranoia and was deeply insecure. And he subjected those closest to him to violence and cruel threats of emotional blackmail.

The truth is revealed by the person who knew Brown best in his later years - his wife Tomi Rae Hynie, his partner for nine years.

She saw him at his best - but also experienced him at his worst. And today, in her first interview since his death, she shatters the myth of a soul legend.

CROCK 'N' ROLL

She said: 'There was this public image he'd spent years creating and there was the real James Brown I lived with for nine years. I was the only person to see the real him.

'By the end, he was suffering terribly from arthritis in his legs. I had to massage him.

'The last time he did the splits on stage he was so sore he couldn't get out of bed for 24 hours.

'He had diabetes but was scared of needles so I had to monitor him taking his drugs three times a day. He hated growing old.

'He wanted to always be the young virile man from his glory days but by the end he was using Viagra. There were times he could not even make love.'

Tomi Rae is mother to James Junior, Brown's sixth child, and the only one after four marriages that the superstar appears to have had any time for. At five years old, James looks the image of his father, who called him Little Man.

For the past week, mother and son have been living at a shabby hotel in Augusta, Georgia - she claims Brown's lawyers have made them destitute and locked them out of his 230-acre South Carolina estate at Beech Island.

She bursts into tears as she recounts her turbulent life with the superstar. They met in 1997 in Las Vegas. Brown was already a musical legend while she was a struggling back-up singer scratching a living as a Janis Joplin impersonator.

Recalling how she went to his hotel room to audition for his backing band, Tomi Rae said: 'This little man came out in a red satin robe with gold lapels. He had slippers on embroidered with 'JB' and was surrounded by huge bodyguards in suits.

'There were no romantic sparks for me but James later said it was my 'Hello' that got him. He said I had a sexy voice.'

Tomi Rae, then just 25, said the 64-year-old thrice-married star became her 'teacher, tutor and lover'. But she soon became aware of how strange the world of James Brown could be.

'He was a control freak. People around him were frightened of him.

'He insisted on being called Mr Brown. If someone did not call him Mr Brown he would never talk to them again.

'The house always had to be spotless and I had to be in by sundown every night because he was so jealous and possessive.

'Only his own music was played at home. James was the king of his world and everyone had to bow down to him, including me.

'He once fined me $50 for running on stage late for a curtain call. We had been married two years.'

COUCH POTATO

Despite his well-documented reputation for enjoying copious amounts of drugs, drink and women, at home Brown was a TV-loving couch potato.

'He loved watching Westerns. John Wayne was his idol but his favourite film was To Hell And Back, an old film starring Audie Murphy.'

And he was addicted to the Playboy channel, but not because it showed soft-porn. Tomi Rae said: 'He watched it to get ideas for stage costumes. He would call his clothes designer Curtis Gibson in the middle of the night and tell him to turn on the channel and then tell him what dresses he liked for me to wear on stage.'

Family life was routine and unremarkable. In private, Tomi Rae called him 'Sugar'. They had a bacon and egg breakfast together every day at 9am and lunch - on the dot - at 1pm. Brown's favourite lunch was catfish. Three times a week they'd dine on fried chicken takeaway.

However, soon after they married in December 2001, Tomi Rae became another victim of his explosive temper. She said: 'When we fought, we fought really hard. Everyone said 'Yes, Sir' to him but I said 'No' and that created turmoil.

'VIOLENCE WAS SOMETHING I GOT USED TO'

'He was often violent with me. Violence was part of that world. I put up with it because I loved him.'

Two years ago, after Brown threatened to kill her with a metal chair, Tomi Rae called police and filed domestic violence charges, but later dropped them.

She said: 'Violence was something I got used to. That was just James. One minute he was loving, passionate and romantic, the next he was a monster. I couldn't live without him. I loved that man.'

She also tolerated the other women in Brown's life. 'In the rock 'n' roll business you learn to put up with that side of things.

'I was with a legend. Women threw themselves at him. When we were on tour he'd sleep with the make-up girls or hairstylists but I knew I was his true love. Even when he got sick, he needed women.

'When I went into rehab I arranged for a woman to visit the house to please him. James was a very sexual man.'

Tomi Rae refused to talk about his drug use but Brown was once famously arrested after leading police on a chase while under the influence of PCP, or 'angel dust'. He also used cocaine and marijuana.

Eventually, Brown found himself being forced to slow down and Tomi Rae revealed how old age began to take its toll.

'His legs would swell and I'd rub them for hours. His body was arthritic and he was finding it hard to move. For the last year or so he needed a wheelchair.

'He made me order a wheelchair too and be pushed alongside him because he was so embarrassed.

'I would spend hours doing his hair because he wouldn't leave the house until he had his 'James Brown hair', just so.'

Brown successfully beat prostate cancer in 2004 but was forced to use Viagra after radiation treatment left him impotent.

'He used Viagra, he had to. Sometimes he couldn't do it, which was difficult for him. But even if he couldn't do he would still try to do it.

'Everyone talks about his energy but he was really tired for the last couple of years. He kept working because he loved his band and they were too old to get any other stage work without him.

'But after every concert he'd sit on the end of the bed and go, 'Baby, I can't do this any more'.

'His legs would swell and he'd complain about the pain from his arthritis. His body hurt, everything hurt.'

REHAB

At the time of his death, Tomi Rae was in a rehab clinic in California being treated for addiction to painkillers.

She said: 'James paid for the treatment. He wanted me to get clean. He apologised to me. He felt responsible for me being messed up. Just before I went away he told me, 'Let's make this Christmas a good one. I think this will be my last Christmas.'

On the Friday before Christmas, Brown went to his dentist for surgery to replace false teeth he had had implanted in his lower jaw.

Tomi Rae says: 'He called me and said, 'Baby, I'm in the dentist's chair and I sure feel tired.'

Brown told her he was having trouble breathing and his legs had swollen up again. 'I told him he had to see a doctor. He told me I was getting too emotional. That was the last time I spoke to him.'

Later that night, Brown was admitted to an Atlanta hospital. His longtime personal manager Charles Bobbitt was with him.

Tomi Rae said: 'I had a call from Mr Bobbitt saying, Mrs Brown, your husband's in the hospital. I begged to speak to him and that's when he said, 'You can't, he's unconscious.'

'I told him to whisper to James that I loved him, that I was beside him and I would be there in a minute and to just hold on.

'I was due to fly home on Christmas Day. I asked if I should come home straightaway and was told, 'No, he doesn't want you to see him this way.'

At 6.45am on Christmas morning James Brown died.

His final words to Bobbitt were: 'I'm going away tonight.'

OUT IN THE COLD

Tomi Rae flew back to Georgia and discovered eight padlocks on the gate of their £1.5million mansion.

She also learned her husband, who had had numerous run-ins with the American taxman, had placed the property in the name of his lawyer to prevent it being seized.

Tomi Rae believes Brown, who earned millions during his career, may have died virtually broke.

'James was working until the end but when the cheques came in they were never as much as he thought they'd be. He was ripped off by people all his life. I wouldn't be surprised if he died leaving nothing.

'He knew the vultures would circle. He warned me, 'When I die you will have to fight them' - and he was right. He knew it and he told me. He knew they were going to eat me alive.'

She says his four children - Terry, 52, and Larry, 50, from his first marriage to Velma Warren and Deanna, 37, and Yamma, 35, from second wife Deirdre Jenkins - were estranged from Brown when she met him.

'James wasn't a good father to any of his other kids. When I met him they couldn't come to his house without making an appointment.

'I begged him to make peace. I would invite them for Christmas and Thanksgiving. They were nice to me then but since he died, they have treated me like dirt.

'They refused to even let me see his body. The first time I saw him was at the public viewing in New York.

'Even at the private memorial on Friday I was treated like dirt. I sat down with little James in the front row and I was told to move. I had the humiliation of having to stand up and move to a pew further back. James would be rolling in his grave.'

Now Tomi Rae faces a battle with her husband's legal team for the right to a share of whatever Brown has left.

The lawyers are saying that a brief marriage to a Pakistani man six months before she met Brown was never properly annulled, meaning she was a bigamist when she wed the star.

They say that this means she is not legally his widow or entitled to a share of his estate. In fact, Brown's longtime lawyer Buddy Dallas has dismissed Tomi Rae as a mere 'occasional guest', and claimed their marriage was never valid.

Tomi Rae says the man she married was a 'conman' and part of an immigration scam. She says she filed for annulment as soon as she found out.

She said: 'I can prove I am Mrs Brown and I will see them in court.

'I loved James with all my heart but I felt sick when I heard all the eulogies from his so-called family and friends.

'I was his wife and we have a beautiful son together and yet they are trying to erase us both from the official James Brown story.

'The man I knew was nothing like this myth of a person they have been talking about. I loved him but he was just a human, not a god.'