Here is the link to my old Maxwell website, Maxi's Next Page. Some of the links do not seem to function and you can see there has been no update in almost 3 years... (I'm so ashamed...) Nonetheless, please visit and enjoy! http://members.tripod.com/monica43216/index.htm
"Without Pain One Cannot Know Joy"
I joined this site to become a part of the experience. I was invited to view Maxwell's space and am trying to be added to his friends list.I am a Maxwell fan from way back. I have met a lot of interesting people who are just as enthusiastic about Maxwell and his muzsic as I am.As I am sure we all are, I am awaiting the new cd release with baited breath. And I can't wait to get my travel on following the tour circuit with my MaxFriends.I had a website dedicated to Maxwell at one time and I liked to reprint magazine articles about him on that site. This is one of my favorites because I was at the concert written about. It was his second in ATL during the UHS tour. And it was my very first Maxwell concert... Some interesting things happened at that concert. Maxwell gave me a shout-out and I was blown away!!!
THE SEX SYMBOL - Jeannine Amber (Essence November, 1997)How can one man satisfy so many women? To hear Maxwell tell it, he doesn't have a clue. But his secret may be that he ain't too proud to beg.It's a hotter-than-hot Sunday night at the fabulous Fox Theater in downtown Atlanta, and if you didn't know better you'd think it was prom night--the way they all have gotten their hair done special and wrapped themselves in sparkly dresses and clouds of sweet perfume. The way they're poised half out their seats, ready to flirt, to dance, to be swept away. Never mind that the women here outnumber the men five to one; even those who have brought a date are here for one man only.There he is now.Surrounded by pink light and a halo of hair, he looks out at everyone, smiles and winks. A woman runs to the stage with an armful of roses. "Awww," he says, beaming, licking his lips, shaking his head. "Sukki, sukki, sukki,' someone screams. "I'm just happy to back with you-all," he pauses. "You know we're back together, right?"One woman jumps up and waves her arms over her head. Maxwell smiles, touches his fist to his heart, his fingers to his lips. The woman hits her friend on the arm over and over. "Did you see, did you see?" she cries and collapses back into her seat. A whole theater full of women and his young man--this suit-wearing, crazy-haired, looking-like-he-walked-out-of-1974 young thing--has got hips swinging this way and that. Maxwell, Maxwell, our chocolate dream, you shake your thang and make us scream.People are calling 24-year-old Maxwell the new It man, saying he's the first one since Teddy Pendergrass to ship women into such a frenzy. He has rocked show after show after sold-out show on his recent American tour, sold more than a million copies of his album Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, been summoned for countless encores and been handed thousands of bouquets, and made the women swoon and sway. But as much as Maxwell's appeal onstage is about pure sexual energy, he makes it a point to buck society's expectations of what a Nubian sex god should be. Maxwell insists he isn't the over sexed outta-control brother who will bump and grind you into oblivion. He says he want more than your body, but the way he communicates it--seducing you from the stage with his sly smile and his elegant yet oh-so-suggestive moves--has the effect of rendering Maxwell the very thing he claims to reject.In person, he seems almost perplexed, then stunned, then embarrassed by the craziness he causes. He dances around the issue, explaining and making excuses, as if he wants you to know he isn't responsible. For all the work he's put into his career, being a sex symbol, he says, was never part of the plan.If you don't believe him, just bring up his star appeal and watch his face crumple. "Really," you say, "women love you. You know that, right?" "Now, I don't," he insists. He's laughing nervously. Blushing a little. He's got his hands under his mouth, and he's shaking his head no. He looks so uncomfortable, you almost want to apologize.Since way back before high school even, Maxwell has always been a little different: quiet, quirky, shy. Hardly the makings of a heartthrob, especially considering his "regal Joe" given name, which we aren't mentioning here in deference to his family's privacy. The Brooklyn-bred son of a Caribbean mother and Puerto Rican father, he says that as a child he often had trouble balancing his desire to be American with the Caribbean flavor at home. "It was like two different vibes, two different energies," he says. "I was trying to get a flattop, and they'd be looking at me like, 'No.' It was very difficult, coming up in my neighborhood and having a family that was just so out there to other people."When Maxwell was 3, his father was on a business trip en route to Culebra, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico, when his plane spiraled into the Caribbean Sea. Maxwell never saw him again. After that, with all the logic of a 5-year-old, Maxwell did his best to make the world predictable and secure. He would line up his entire wardrobe for the week. He would carry pockets full of cereal and sugar, just in case he got hungry. And until his mother asked him why he was always looking so ashy, he would rub soap all over his body, after his shower and before he got dressed, just so he'd be prepared in advance for his next bath. Other than that, he was very little trouble.By the time he was a teenager, Maxwell's only rebellious act was dressing a bit bohemian. There were no wild girls and no loud parties. In fact, Maxwell was such a good, good boy that even his mother was worried. He was always at church. He knew every line of Scripture. Maxwell says, "I wanted to find out where my father went. Everyone was like, 'He went to heaven,' and I wanted to know where that was."Maxwell's father's death left a gaping hole in the family. Without her husband, whom she adored, his mother had a difficult time. It was almost as if Maxwell had lost two parents. When talking about it now he bobs and weaves, as though he wants you to know something but he doesn't want to say it: "when I was growing up, people in school would think they had a clue about me, but they didn't. They had none." What he will say is, "My mother had me when she was young. There was a lot of shame. And for a moment, I was my grandmother's son. But it's all cool now." He says, "They're both my moms."Maxwell has never had it easy with women. He wants unconditional love, but he's almost immobilized by the fear that he won't get it. And that would be unbearable. Sitting in an empty dining room in the basement of a Washington, D.C. hotel, Maxwell remembers the first tug on his heart. It came from a cute little chocolate-chocolate girl he spied between the seats of the school bus. He didn't say a word; he just loved her."So did she crush you, Maxwell?" He shrugs and smiles. "She"--he slaps his hands together--"like they all do." He was 4. Then there was a girl in high school who "stepped, crushed--the heart was on the floor, destroyed. I don't know what happened, but she really, really hurt me, hurt me, hurt me." And then there was the woman he wrote the album about. He met her at a club, had a weekend-long fling and never saw her again. Even after the album, 11 songs, a musical ode to her, she still hasn't stepped back into his life. Not even a hello. "To this day," Maxwell says, "when, in my mind, I'm begging, in my heart and soul I'm begging, Please be down with me, I never walk over [to her]. There's no way she could like me. She's too fly, she's too bad to like me." Not exactly what you'd expect from a sex symbol. But again, becoming a sex symbol wasn't on the agenda.After high school, Maxwell worked for a few years as a waiter at The Coffee Shop, a trendy Manhattan joint. That, he says, was when he finally began to feel comfortable around people. Meanwhile, he wrote music. It was his passion. When he finally got signed and his album was about to come out, Maxwell went head-to-head with the executives at Sony to make sure his picture wouldn't be on the CD cover. He wanted the music to speak for itself. And when they released his first video, there he was, Maxwell--sans beauty light but with that crazy hair--prostrate at the feet of a woman. He says he wanted to show a man weak and vulnerable. We all raised our eyebrows. After years of hearing young men sing about knocking boots and booty calls and licky licky licky, who was this sideburned brother singing about love? It took us a little while to catch on.He did not blow up. Instead, Maxwell's ascension to stardom has been slow and steady. His now-platinum Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite, released in May 1996, eventually earned a place on Billboard's "Top 10 R & B Albums" and "Hot R & B Airplay" charts. It gained momentum largely by word of mouth. His listeners, the same ones who, he says, used to make fun of him, now write him letters and accost him on the street, telling him about their love lives, how his music made a difference, how they named the baby after him because they listened to the album while they, well, you know. He tells these stories and gushes. "It's just so beautiful. It's incredible. It's such a compliment. People don't play just anything during that."But despite all the love Maxwell gets from fans, he says what he really wants is to get married and have kids: "All those beautiful things are what life is about. It's not about the game and running around." Maxwell is not the guy who pushes up on you. He doesn't flex and preen. He won't take off his shirt and hump the stage. He's not going to compare you to his Jeep. Maxwell is not like other boys. His sexiness is not about sex; it's about desire. Maxwell just loves women. Revers, worships, adores us. He says it's high time women figured it out. "[Women] are really, really dope. You are really amazing. You can have kids, you can create. You do remarkable shit. You reflect and exemplify the universe in a way that men don't. And it's all right to be cool with that. You don't have to hear it from another woman, you can hear it from a man."Right now," he admits, "I just romanticize things. I'm just that kind of person when it comes to love and women. I know you-all can be crazy, but I'm cool with that. I'm not like, 'Be this perfect person or I'm out the door.' "Then he pauses. "Was that a good answer? Because I was just reading out of a book--Idealizing Women: How to Do It." He laughs, "I'm just playing."Maxwell is nothing like what we've come to expect from young Black men trying to be sexy. Not even in person. Let's say Maxwell has a crush on you. The first thing he's going to want to do is talk. For hours, and probably over the phone. If you get hungry, he might order you both pizza. That way you can chill and talk and eat the exact same thing. If you kind of squint your eyes, you can almost picture Maxwell as your boyfriend. Until you see him onstage. That's when everything he says about being shy, lonely and unsure flies out the window. Onstage he's a star. A very, very sexy star.He prefers to be considered a "catalyst." The way he sees it, he is simply unleashing the pent-up sexual energy women have bubbling inside. "I think women get so few times to celebrate that emotion outwardly," he explains. "Women always gotta front. If a woman is feeling a guy, this is the way she acknowledges the feeling." He very slowly shifts his eyes from right to left. "For women, [coming to a show] is like giving themselves permission to act it out and to not have anybody be upset with them." Perhaps. But more likely women go nuts because Maxwell seduces his audience into a dizzying fevah by offering us something we crave: a man who really wants to please us, and not just in bed.There he is now, onstage at the fabulous Fox. He says he wants to break something down: "Some of you-all ladies, what's going on?" he says to the crowd. "We be trying to please you. Right, brothers, we be trying?" Some guy barks. "But I can't read your mind. I gotta tell you something. I'm the kind of brother..." He pauses, raises his hand to his chest, "Teach me!" People are out of their seats, screaming. "Teach me about love, baby. See, I'll rub your back, baby" Screams. "I'll feed you your Cap'n Crunch, baby." Screams. "I'll paint each and every single toe, baby" Screams. "I'm sure 'nuff gonna." Screams. "I'll go to the grocery store..." A gasp. "...and buy you a box of tampons." Screams and screams and more screams. "Teach me!"This is the frenzy that Maxwell seems most reluctant to take responsibility for. But his reluctance may be about more than shyness or modesty or even the fact that this wasn't planned. Maybe the desire to please that Maxwell radiates onstage is grounded in more than he cares to discuss. After all, what is eagerness to please, really, except a wish to be loved? Night after night, Maxwell opens his palms and beams adoration. We beam love right back. He shines, we scream and you have to wonder just who is enjoying this lovefest more.By the end of the night, hundreds of women have rushed the stage, forming a sea of strappy black dresses. They want Maxwell for an encore. Then there he is, back onstage, grinning from ear to ear, happy and radiant as a sunflower. His open hand on his chest, and he's looking at the crowd like, "Me, you really want me?" Everybody screams and swoons. Of course, Maxwell, they want you.
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