A Stray Cat Struts (7 page)

There was a party after the show at producer Jack Burns's house. I knew him from old TV as half of the comedy duo Burns and Schreiber. He was old-school showbiz, and maybe he didn't get exactly what we did, but he knew it had been special and was a complimentary good host. We all went back to the Marquis, though I probably stopped at the Rainbow first for a nightcap.

We had conquered America but weren't completely aware of it. Big success was still about a year and a hundred gigs away, but we knew it had been an important performance. For me, it was another part of the grand adventure we'd started in Massapequa. I was loving it and really proud of our band. I'm sure we had some drinks on the plane ride back to London, and I'm sure someone tried to pick up the stewardess, and I'm sure there was a scene at customs. Somehow, no one had lost his passport.

 

5

I Married a Bond Girl

It was June 1982, and I was living in a tiny room at the Portobello Hotel, Notting Hill, London, W10. A few weeks earlier, I had gone through a strange changing of the guard in my personal life. I had broken up with my childhood sweetheart, Laurie, who had moved to London to be with me, when I had gotten my first solo residence on Stratford Road, Kensington, London, W8.

That apartment was a cool two-bedroom pad in a good part of town; there were always people coming and going, staying over. It was on a quiet street and near both Earls Court and Kensington High Street. The hospital at the end of the street was the one where Hendrix died. I found something cool about that rock factoid and would point it out when anyone came over.

I had somehow wound up with a piranha as a pet. Some artist friend had made a backdrop of the Vatican that I stuck to the back of the aquarium, and the fish became known as the Pope. I had tried to put one of those little bubble-blowing mermaids and treasure chests into the tank with him, but he just tore them all up. He was 100 percent hunger, rage, and destruction, but he was low maintenance, as I could dump a dozen live goldfish in the water and he would eat them over the course of a week when I went away. I had a neighbor who liked to party and would take care of him if I was gone longer. Countless hours of enhanced heightened enjoyment were had by all, watching me feed the Pope live goldfish while we blasted rockabilly and blues records. I would feed him strips of bacon, the trick being knowing when to let go. Actually, that's a good message for the whole time period. I had the party act with the Pope down to where he would bite right up to the tips of my fingers and make a little splash as I dropped the last piece of bacon fat into the water.

True pal Joel Brun from Paris and his wife, Helen, would come and stay for a couple of weeks at a time. Joel was a cool guy, a founding member and secretary of the French chapter of the world's most famous motorcycle club. He was also an original French rocker; he saw Gene Vincent play in France and was the number-one biggest Stray Cats fan. We met Joel when we performed on a legendary live broadcast concert show and interview program hosted by the number-one French telejournalist and host Antoine de Caunes from the Palace in Paris. This program featured an interview segment cut during the afternoon and inserted in between the songs from the gig that night. This one show launched the Cats into superstar status in France. It was a huge break where a whole concert was shown live on national French TV. The band, as always, delivered the goods. We, of course, didn't quite realize the magnitude of the opportunity and just went out and nailed a gig and interview. We really looked like tattooed children on this one. Antoine was just starting his career, too, and he looked as young as we did. He was a true early fan and helped us a lot. He's a good guy and is now one of the biggest stars in France. Joel can be seen sitting behind us during the interview segment, just smoking and looking cool the whole time.

In the future, we would do whole tours of France; we went to every city and town and did a lot of French television. I have very positive memories of those times. If I had learned to speak French and life had turned out slightly different, I would have happily lived in Paris. The Cats were and still are a legendary, huge act in France.

Joel would travel on the road with us and learned how to speak English by listening to us talk in the backseat of the car. This was before the days of tour buses in Europe. Brian went with the tour manager and his minder in the nonsmoking car, while Lee and I traveled all over Europe, top to bottom, thousands of miles, in a big Mercedes with true pal and ex–British soldier and bodyguard/driver Derrick “Captain Apollo” Unwin at the wheel. Joel and I had hundreds of adventures together, including seeing how many days in a row we could stay up. I think we made it to nearly five, definitely three. Another involved Derrick and Joel stepping in and protecting me from an overzealous store detective in Montpelier, who pulled out a gun when he thought I was stealing a pair of socks. When the statute of limitations runs out, I will include more of those stories in volume 2.

I had hooked up with Sarah-Jane Owen from the all-girl band the Belle Stars. It was my first taste of minor indie celebrity, as her band was known and played around England and Europe. People recognized us when we went out in London; a few of the rock papers had noticed and made small mentions. We had our picture taken a few times at gigs. She used to dress up in vintage western movie, dancehall girl–style clothes and looked good. At the time, like anyone else, I thought each of these relationships was important. Each one has a hand in shaping you, in some way, for the future.

The Cats were getting ready to come back and do our first tour of the USA. We had finally gotten a release date for the record on EMI, and our records would be available for the first time in the USA. They had previously been available only as imports, even though we were Americans. Our first record contract was what was called an “excluding USA deal”—it should've been called just “plain stupid.” Even though we had just had multiple hits in every other market, there was still doubt among the brass at the USA parent company about whether this band was for real or not. It proves that even legendary record company geniuses don't really know anything.

We had just parted ways with the original manager whom we had come to London with two years earlier. I had let the lease on my apartment go, put my few things in storage, and was going to stay with Sarah-Jane until the situation was more settled. The party friend, my neighbor, had taken possession of the Pope. I don't think he cared—being a piranha, as long as he got fed, he seemed happy. Where to go and what to do were two things very much up in the air, though not much time was spent worrying about it. It was definitely the last period in my life that I could totally live for the band and be in the moment. It's also a luxury of youth to behave that way. I miss it. The most important thing was that the Cats were going to America. A band cannot truly say they've made it without cracking America. Everybody knows this, and we knew it, too. It was time to go back to the States and do it all over again from scratch.

Through circumstances that were probably my fault, although I can't remember all the details, I wound up by myself with nowhere to live—from two girls and two places to stay to no girls and nowhere to stay in one move. I thought I was upset about it, but I was twenty-two years old and had been on the road, around the world, with a successful, highly visible band for the last three years, and I wasn't really paying attention to much else. Things were constantly in flux, and I just went with the flow.

I had a few weeks to kill in London, so I moved into the Portobello Hotel. I had stayed there before during times between rental flats in the past. It was a very rock-and-roll boutique hotel in a trendy part of town. Everyone stayed there, and you'd always see someone you knew. It had the only twenty-four-hour liquor license in town, with a little pub and restaurant in the basement. In the late hours, they didn't mind you serving yourself drinks, and I'd always remember to write it down on my tab. I have a good memory from that basement of staying up all night with Lemmy, along with tragic true pal and founding member of the Pretenders, Pete Farndon, and a few others, playing poker. The place opened for breakfast to the regular guests at 7:00
A.M.
, who found us still there with a tableful of empty pilsner bottles and an overflowing ashtray. Marc Almond from Soft Cell, in full bondage gear, came clunking down the steep wooden stairs at 7:05 and politely refused to sit in for a couple of hands.

From the outside, it was an old Georgian-style house, while inside it had been converted into a hotel. No two rooms were exactly the same, and each one had unique antique furnishings. The small lobby led to a sitting room with full-length floor-to-ceiling french doors that opened up to a back garden. It had decent showers with strongish water pressure, which for England in the 1980s was a rare, welcome amenity. It was the first hipster bed-and-breakfast but had an old-world charm and seemed to be completely staffed by nice British women. I came and went during rock-and-roll hours and would just take the key from a cubbyhole behind the front desk when it was late and the night manager was taking a nap on the couch in the lounge.

I had stayed there for a few weeks at a time, three or four different times, over the past two years, but I never had a credit card and cannot recall ever paying the bill or signing anything. It must've been sent to the little office we had on Wardour Street and must've been paid because they kept taking me back. Ignorance of the way money really worked was another sentimental part about that time of my life. Besides having enough cash in my pocket to buy some drinks, a little blow, and taxi fare, I never knew of or thought about finances. When I needed an airline ticket, I called the office. We were pretty much always on the road, and it wasn't private jets, but I lived without ever seeing or thinking about a bill. This way of life comes back to bite you, but like the rest of it, it was great, youthful fun while it lasted. Until just a few years ago, I would get a Christmas card from the Portobello Hotel every year, sent to my parents' address in Massapequa. In 1982, I still used it as my permanent address because it was the only one I could remember.

This time, I was staying at the hotel because I had nowhere else to go. On a number of nights during this stay, true pal and character Michael Corby would crash out in the extra bed in the room after a night out in the clubs. There were always more or less harmless rock-and-roll hijinks going on around me. Corby founded the glam rock band the Babys and was a real rock star whom I had numerous adventures with. The hotel had given me the small room behind the front desk that really just consisted of two single beds and a bathroom. One funny side story involves Corby waking up in the middle of the night after thinking he heard something outside our door. He went out to check, and the door closed and locked behind him, stranding him the hallway. I was passed out and didn't answer the door despite his urgent whispering. He decided to sneak out to the front desk and look for a spare key. He, of course, slept naked and picked up a large potted plant to hold in front of his privates while he roamed the hall. After a minute or so of looking through the drawer and cubbyhole slots behind the desk, he looked up to see the two girls who acted as night managers quietly sitting on the couch in the little lounge, right next to the desk, watching him and giggling. One of them walked him to the room and let him in with the pass key. Corby, once the game was up, probably walked back to the room with his head held high like Charles I on his way to the chopping block.

It's funny how random people can play such huge roles in a life. A friend from LA was in town and got in touch with me. It was Roger Klein, the manager of the Roxy. He was a good guy, and I had hung out with him a lot when the Cats had been in LA in 1981. On that first West Coast visit, I had pretty much made my camp at the Rainbow, and Roger had shown me around some cool, historic, under-the-radar spots around Hollywood. He was one of those Anglophile types, friends with a lot of the English bands, but he had never traveled to London before. This was his first trip there, and he called me when he arrived. I asked him to meet me at the hotel for a couple of drinks and we'd go out from there. He asked if he could bring another friend of his who lived in London, and I said, “Sure. The more the merrier.”

The friend he was talking about was Britt Ekland, who would turn out to be one of the most important people in my life.

Being the manager of the Roxy meant Roger also worked directly for the club's owner, Lou Adler. I had met him when the Cats played the Roxy the year before. Lou is a music mogul and cool guy who had dozens of hit records as both manager and producer starting with Jan and Dean and the Mamas and the Papas through Carole King and Cheech and Chong. He put on the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and was also a partner in the Whisky and the Rainbow. He's famously the guy with the beard and hat who sits next to Jack Nicholson at the Lakers games. In the years to follow, Lou and I would become part of what I call “an LA extended family” and hang out on many, many occasions. I got to sit in those Lakers seats a few times—there's nothing like it; if you're any kind of sports fan, it's the best thing. Thanks, Lou. I like the guy, still see him, and am happy to have known him. I had also met Jack, briefly, after he danced throughout that whole LA show and came to the dressing room after the gig to say hello. It was another one of those “I was in Massapequa High School a year ago” pinch-yourself moments.

Britt and Lou had been together in the 1970s and had a son, Nicholai, who was nine years old when we met. So Britt knew Roger, and he knew me, and we would all become very close.

I don't know if I believe in love at first sight, but I definitely believe there is connection at first sight. When Britt came down the stairs and we were introduced, I knew something was different about her. We had an immediate, deep connection. She was older than I was, but I was only twenty-two, so most everybody was older than I was, it seemed. I didn't notice this immediately. She looked like what she was—a glamorous European movie star. I have always said and still say now that our age difference was never a factor until much later. She was stunning, gorgeous—I remember she was dressed in elegant, trendy, but still rock-and-roll clothes that suggested the classier end of the Kings Road. She spoke perfect English with a Swedish accent and got things slightly wrong in translation. I had no idea who she was, just that she was a movie actress, and she had no idea who I was, just that I was a guy in a band. It was supposed to be a regular night out. It turned out to last a lot longer.