Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (12 page)

The passionate songwriter who later embraced the Muslim religion and changed his name to Yusuf Islam was once a naughty boy. "For some reason, a lot of Englishmen have this thing about English schoolgirls," Patti smiles. "I was modeling, and one day I came back from a `go-see' wearing a miniskirt, well, a mini-belt, actually, it was so short. It was about three in the afternoon and I guess Stephen had just driven by a school that let out, and he said, `Come on, I'm going to take you somewhere and buy you something.' He took me to Marks & Spencer, a department store up on the West End, and we went into the section where they sold school uniforms. We started playacting, and Stephen told the saleslady, `I have to buy this little girl a school uniform, she's the daughter of one of my friends, can you fit her, please?' The woman was very officious and middle-aged, grandmotherly. Here was this twenty-one-year-old Greek kid with this however-the-hell-old-I-looked young girl. I was really flat-chested and stick-straight, like a boy. I was supposed to be going into seventh or eighth grade, but must have looked about eleven. Every time the woman went to get another piece of the uniform, he'd say, `I can't wait to pull that skirt up and bend you over the car, maybe even before-in the elevator.' He got me a white blouse and a blue and grey plaid skirt with a little blue sweater, and blue knee socks. Then we got those snub-nosed Mary Jane shoes, a little hat, and a school satchel."

I tell Patti that I'm tickled that he took the playful ploy so far. "Oh yeah, soup to nuts, baby: underwear, little girl's T-shirt, little white panties-all regulation. Then he told me to walk to the next corner. He said, `I'll get the car and you stand on the corner and wait for me. When you see me drive by, pretend you don't know me; just walk down the street and I'll follow you. Then you decide when to get in.' I wanted to hop in the car immediately, but I made him crazy. I must have walked three blocks, by all those little crooked alleys. Then he motioned me into an alley near Leicester Square, if memory serves. It was about six in the evening, twilight time, and I lifted up my schoolgirl skirt and pulled down my little white panties, and we had at it. We did it on the hood of his car ..." Patti pauses, reflecting. "Imagine that. Sometimes I let him take it all off. And because I couldn't wear the school uniforms to concerts or clubs, I'd wear just the understuff. He liked me to wear the white panties. And so did I."

After a year or so of risque bliss, Patti became restless. "Yeah, it just kind of petered out, if you will. I remember we had taken acid at my flat and were watching Juliet of the Spirits. Stephen was a wonderful artist, and he was drawing my feet. There was something about him being at my feet.. . it was too much adoration, and it freaked me out. I could tell he was really falling in love with me, and I was feeling like I couldn't give him what he wanted. I felt trapped-and I was on acid. Feeling trapped on acid is a lot more intense than just feeling trapped. The gate came slamming down with him there at my feet. It felt like I was in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Suddenly I was in a pod, and he felt me go cold. He said, `Come on, let's go home,' and I said, `I am home,' and he left."

With his romance in tatters, Stephen was inspired to write the tragi-tune "Lady D'Arbanville." "I cried the first time I heard it, because that's when I knew it was really over. But I saw him on and off for a while, then went back to New York in '72 to see my parents. I remember Stephen sent me a postcard from Paris that said, `Here I am in Gay Paree,' and in parentheses he wrote, `Gay being the operative word.'"

Patti later had another encounter with her sensitive flame in Los Angeles. "I'd been in Europe for three years, so it had to be 1975. I was standing at Dan Tana's restaurant with some friends, and there was this guy next to me-tall, thin, black curly hair, wearing sunglasses, and I had no clue. It was three years later and he was the last person I expected to be standing there looking at me."

Stephen was in the middle of a tour, and on his way to Hawaii. "He said, `Why don't you just come with me, and it will be like old times?' So we went to Hawaii and met up with people who were into Krishna. We went to the temple and they made us the most amazing food. Stephen talked for hours with these people, and they gave us little wooden beads that he wore for the whole rest of the tour."

I ask Patti if she was surprised when Stephen embraced the Muslim religion, and had to stop playing his beautiful songs. "Oh, yeah, I was flabbergasted, especially because I knew how much he loved music. But when I was with him, he was always searching for something-seeking forever. We were vegetarians together, he was a Buddhist, and wanted me to become one, too. He started out as a Greek Orthodox Catholic, for Christ's sake, hello."

Much more recently, Patti ran into Yusuf Islam once again. "I was asked to be on a talk show in Germany. They fabricated an excuse for me to promote something. They were going to surprise Stephen with me on TV, but we got wind of it. I said, `I can't do that, but I would like to see him,' and he said, `I can't do that, but I would like to see her.' He came with a whole bunch of men to the studio and I was with my husband, Terry. Stephen, uh, Yusuf said, `I can't talk to you without your husband in the room.' He was married and had all these kids, and it was not proper. So we sat and had a little chat with Terry. He said some blah blah blah about the Koran, then he said, `Call me Saf' I think he found what he was looking for in the Koran, and knowing him, I think he embraced it on its deepest level. It resonated in his soul somehow and he was transformed yet again."

As the back door opens and chatty teenage voices fill the room, I ask Patti how she got so wrapped up in rock and roll so young. "The music is what moved me, and everyone I found interesting was tied to music somehow. I was just naturally drawn to them. It all stemmed from Beatlemania; we used to go to hotels and scream for the Beatles. Then I heard `Satisfaction,' and that became my main objective-I wanted to get near Mick Jagger. I wanted that satisfaction." I laugh out loud, "Yeah, we all did!" And eventually we all got our satisfaction, but that's a story for another time.

Patti stands to welcome her brood. Emmelyn and Alexandra are both two years older than she was when she started going out, and Liam is twelve. "They're all pretty sheltered in a way that I never was. I know where they are all the time and they actually report to me. Imagine that!" She smiles knowingly, "If you can dream it, you can be it, and if you can be it ... well, then you know how to be two steps ahead of your very clever kids."

ere is how Patti D'Arbanville recalls the moment she met Catherine James.

It was one of those sexy-hot days that we seemed to have all the time in the summer of '64 in NYC. I was kittening down MacDougal Street in my mini, certain I looked like the goddess of the world: shiny blonde hair that reached my shoulders just right, perfect, tight fanny, long, long legs (for my height, 5'3". quite remarkable), champagneglass titties ready and at attention. My mother had always told me that I was the most beautiful girl in the world. Naturally I believed her and never had any reason not to think she was telling the absolute truth. On my way to Washington Square, I ran into Lizzie Derringer who was talking to a tall, lanky blonde girl with her back to me, and when Liz saw me she said my name. I still see this in slow motion: the girl spun around, her long, long (just better) honey blonde hair swirling around her. She had storm-tossed, sea-green eyes, an aquiline nose, and a smile that could break your heart and fill you with joy all at the same time. She, too, was skinny, perfect, and her breasts were really there, quite a handful too. I was devastated. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes on, she had a great story, knew amazing people, and worst of all, I learned that day that my mama did lie.

Yes, Catherine James was the most alluring of the classic rock and roll temptresses. She appeared on the Hollywood scene after I had taken the Strip by storm, and to borrow a line from Dylan, I immediately wanted this tall, elegant eyeful to go back to from where she came. Jimmy Page had been romancing her for quite some time when he first began to pursue me. We briefly wrangled for the exquisite rock prince, but Jimmy shattered her heart in favor of mine that time around.

The nineteen-year-old elusive Miss James turned up uninvited at my twenty-first birthday party during my long-distance British phone call from the wicked Mr. Page. I was tripped out on acid, and she stood there glaring at me, draped around her glamorous prop for the evening, Pink Floyd's delicious David Gilmour. For a few months Catherine and I circled around each other in the clubs, hissing like spiteful cats, and I got my wish when she suddenly vanished from the scene.

Surprise, surprise! A year later, when I moved to London to stay with my new boyfriend, Marty, owner of the supertrendy Granny Takes a Trip, guess who came to tea? Marty's partner and roommate, Gene, also had a new live-in lady-love, Miss Catherine James. Not only were we forced to be civil to each other, there was just one bedroom, where all four of us had to sleep in two big beds jammed together. Catherine's ringleted baby boy, Damian, slumbered along with us in his little cot in the corner.