Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (6 page)

Cherry has lived in the same classic deco two-story building on Hollywood Boulevard for twenty years, and before we start reminiscing, I wander around her classy apartment checking out her eclectic art collection, gaping at photos of her carousing with the famous and infamous.

We settle into a cozy corner on a vintage settee, and when I ask Cherry how she first got into music, I discover that both of us had a memorable early encounter with a certain Italian crooner.

"My mother was a telephone operator at the Hotel 14 in Manhattan, which housed the Copacabana. If I was a good little girl, my dad would take me down the elevators, right into the kitchen, which was the way the stars came into the Copa. I saw Jimmy Durante, Eartha Kitt, and Tony Bennett, and remember mink stoles over backs of chairs, the whiff of perfume in the room, the sparkle of jewelry, the clinking of glasses. And the Copa chorus girls with pastel colored hair! They might have pale blue costumes for Tony Bennett's show, with their hair dyed to match. For Jimmy Durante, they'd have pale orange costumes and orange hair. You can imagine how that stuck in my mind." I certainly can, as every time I've seen Cherry, her hair has been a new shocking hue. In Fairmount, it was bright pink; today it's pale turquoise. "Those are little glimpses I remember," she sighs. "I have a story that's the basis of how I became a fan and a groupie. In fact, my desire to be connected to show business happened right there and then. It was '51 or '52, because I was eight or nine, and Martin and Lewis were still together. I'd seen them on TV and loved their act. In those days, all the same people worked at the hotel year after year. So when the stars came back, they became friends, like a little family. I knew all the bellhops because of my mother, and they decided to play a joke on Dean Martin. He came in at six o'clock every night to change for the supper show, so one of the bellhops brought me up to his room and sat me on the edge of his bed. I was there all by myself, waiting for Dean Martin! I was already in love with him; he was so handsome. The adrenaline! So I was sitting there fixing my little dress, and in he walked, the most handsome thing I'd ever seen in my life-bigger, darker, shinier, taller, softer, sweeter-everything I had imagined. I remember everything he was wearing: brown wool slacks, brown and white wool tweed jacket, bright white shirt, brown tie, and his black shiny hair. He said, `Oh, hello! Who are you?' and I said, `I'm Mary's daughter, Kathleen.' He said, `Well, nice to meet you.' I don't remember what we talked about, but we talked, Dean Martin and me! Then he said, `I have to go do my show now, so I'll call your mommy and tell her to come get you.'"

I can relate, because when I was thirteen, I put on my frothiest junior high pre-prom dress and was invited to sit in the audience for the taping of Dean Martin's TV show. I was lucky because my exotic uncle Hamil choreographed the successful series, teaching Dino's extremely coiffed, Day-Glo-clad Gold Diggers their provocative steps. I was the perfect age to sigh and swoon over Dean's dreamy devil-may-careness, and gazed at my autographed eight-by-ten 'til his ballpoint signature faded.

Long before she became Cherry Vanilla, Kathleen was the youngest of four Dorritie children, brought up in Woodside, New York. By the time she was a teenager, two of her siblings had already moved out. "There was a huge generation gap. I was a stranger in a strange land. I was from one planet, my parents were from another, and they were never going to understand the planet I was on. That's why when I went to the Copa; I knew I belonged with those people, not the telephone operator. My parents and I weren't close and didn't talk about anything. They were good parents, but I felt totally disconnected."

It seems that most music lovers remember the very first record on their turntables. Mine was Elvis's "Don't Be Cruel," backed with "Treat Me Nice." "I was a super Elvis fan too," Cherry agrees, "I had Elvis kerchiefs, Elvis pillowcase, Elvis everything. Please! `Love Me Tender'? Sitting on my living room floor the first time I saw him on TV? Oh my God! Unbelievable. But the first record I bought at Sam's Candy Store was Bill Haley's `Rock Around the Clock.' My sister Margaret, who was eleven years older than me, used to tune in to Alan Freed's show, `Rhythm and Blues.' Everybody in the family would giggle, `There's black people on the radio!' That's still my favorite music, doo-wop and rhythm and blues. My ears just perked up at that dangerous new sound."

Being raised in a strict Irish-Catholic family hampered Cherry's early explorations. She got a bit of freedom when one of her sisters got an apartment in Queens. "I'd stay with her on weekends so I could go to dances, and that's when I started staying out late. I saw live bands and a lot of the dances were record hops, but I was a little Catholic girl; a virgin until I was eighteen."

Summers were often spent at the family retreat in Lake Carmel, and Cherry was treated to performances by the Chiffons, Shirelles, and the Marvelettes. "I was experiencing all kinds of music. After my high school prom, we went to see Connie Francis at the Copa. And Peggy Lee at Basin Street East. I was absorbing pop, jazz, and soul."

Cherry started working at an advertising agency in 1961, and went to school at night, studying film production and acting. "It was the early '60s when the Peppermint Lounge happened and discos started," Cherry says excitedly. "The first discotheque I went to was Le Club, on East 55th Street. The music started soft during dinner, then got louder and more dance-y as the night went on. It was a revelation, because I was eighteen and ripe for it. After Le Club, there was Le Introde. I worked at ad agencies during the day and was DJ at Aux Puces on weekends. I had a lot of musical influences, but loved rock and roll the best. It was amazing-suddenly, you had the Peppermint Lounge, with Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill shaking and doing the Twist, but you also had 42nd Street hookers. It was the first time you saw this clash of culture, which is what made discos like Aux Puces and Arthur amazingly exciting. People of all income lev els, all social strata, and all professions found themselves dancing close together in the same place. That was the biggest miracle of all. I thought, `Wow, the world is accepting this now. Rock and roll is here to stay.' Then came Flower Power, which we thought was going to be even more spectacular."

Cherry was entering the free and brave new world, but still held tightly to her virginity. "I'd let my high school boyfriend barely get his penis in me, then say, `No, no!' and have to stop because of the Catholic Church, my parents, and the fear of getting pregnant was really big. I had girlfriends whose lives were ruined."

When friends from work invited Cherry to Fire Island for the Fourth of July weekend, her old modes of thinking were quickly hurled out the window. "They had this big white dome house, later nicknamed the Whipped Cream House, for reasons you could only imagine. I got addicted to Fire Island, and I went out there that whole summer. And the next summer I was going on nineteen. I met this older guy out there, and thought to myself, `I'm going all the way with this one.' I knew it right away. He was a musician, of course-an ex-trumpet player for the army. The next weekend I thought he was going to want to have sex with me again, but I got my heart broken. The first time was good-I got an appetite for it. I loved sex, man. I wanted more! Give me more! From then on I became a 'whore.' I wanted drugs and sex. I wanted it all. I met two model guys, and I was fucking them both within the first ten minutes of knowing them. I was a wild child and they were gorgeous male models. And once I tasted psychedelics, I was like, this is for me! This Mal Williams, who was once married to Ruth Brown, came over and laid out rows of sugar cubes on a piece of foil. He had bottles and bottles of clear liquid, and took out a dropper, and put so much on 'em, those cubes were just breaking down. The sugar was melting! He said, `This is a fabulous new thing, like peyote. It's called LSD.' From that day on, I was an acid queen! Because we had the pure stuff, they were incredible trips. The first fifty, I only took on Fire Island. It was very spiritual at the beginning, and I wanted to be in nature. It was a long time before I had sex on acid, though I'd have orgasms. You know how you could just spontaneously orgasm on acid?"

Up until this time, Cherry was still Kathleen Dorritie, but had already begun using witty aliases such as Indian Summer and Party Favor. "During the Vietnam War, I met Richard Skidmore, who worked for left-wing activist Abbie Hoffman. They made tapes that were being smuggled into Radio Hanoi and basically were propaganda from black radicals. I knew I wanted the war to end, but I wasn't politically savvy. They asked me to make a tape as a DJ, play my favorite records and tell sexy stories to entertain the troops. I thought I was doing a fabulous thing by telling them how I fucked this one and that one. I could see a soldier in the field being able to jerk off to it. Years later I wondered, oh my God, what were they really using me for? So we were in this makeshift studio, and Richard said, `You shouldn't use your own name because the government doesn't like these tapes.' I might have seen the name on an ice cream container, but for the life of me I can't remember. So I said, 'OK, how about Cherry Vanilla?' I really didn't intend for it to continue, but eventually I started writing for Circus and Creem. The first couple of things were published under my name, then they said, `Why don't you use Cherry Vanilla?'

"Remember `Hang On, Sloopy?" Cherry asks. "I met the McCoys at a little club on the East Side. I got to meet the whole band and really felt excited to be around them. Then I met the Guess Who. During the mid-to-late '60s, the scene around Bethesda Fountain in Central Park was amazing. On Sunday, you'd take your acid and go to this huge music jam, all kinds of people playing drums and guitars. I went to the park every chance I got. One day, I heard music coming from the Schaeffer Music Festival. I went to the side door and asked this guy, `Who's playing?' and he said, `Oh, that's the Guess Who.' It just happened to be sound check. I was wearing a dress from Mexico that I hemmed so my panties stuck out. I had on platform sandals, and was stoned on something. He was kind of flirty and said, `Come on in!' I went backstage, introduced myself to everybody, and started talking to this guy with curly black hair, `So, you're in the band?' and he said, `Yeah.' Then I find out, he's Burton Cummings, the singer. I'm thinking, `This is the guy with the beautiful voice. Fabulous!' So I'm falling in love already, right? Then he says, `Do you want to come back for our show? I'll get you in."' An overjoyed Cherry went home, called all her friends, and gushed about her impending backstage pass. "It's kind of funny, because I had been an advertising executive for years, one of the few female TV producers on Madison Avenue. I always had two or three jobs, no matter how many drugs I took. But there I was, running through Central Park, freaking out that I was gonna fuck some rock star. I had a seat in the first row, and when he sang, he looked at me. He's looking at me! `These eyes ... are crying ... crying every night for you ...' So I went with him to Howard Johnson's on the Upper West Side. I had sex with him and had such a fabulous time. For the next three or four tours, he'd call and I'd get to go see Burton Cummings! I was his New York girl. One night I was with him, and the tour bus was leaving for Asbury Park, and the band was saying, `Come on the bus with us!' and I said, `I can't, I have to go to work."'

Cherry did go to the office the next day, but couldn't concentrate, left early, and hitchhiked to Jersey just in time for the curtain to rise on the Guess Who. But guess what happened? "I was so excited I was going to have another night with Burton. But backstage, he was a little distant. The band kept saying, `Come with us to Virginia Beach!' So I got on the bus. Not even an overnight bag, mind you, but Burton wanted nothing to do with me. The guys said, `Oh, you know how Burton is,' because obviously, I was finished. He had cooled on me." But Cherry stuck it out, crashing platonically with band members, wearing the same dress for three days. "They dropped me off in the Bronx, and I had to take the subway in this dirty dress. I felt like everyone was looking at me, I was shameful, and Burton didn't love me anymore. But I wrote a poem called, `A Groupie Lament.' I didn't think of myself as a groupie, even though I liked musicians, until I saw the film Groupies, with Cynthia Plaster Caster. You were in it too. When I saw that, I thought, `Yeah! It's cool to call yourself a groupie. I'm a groupie! Call me a groupie!' And fuck it, at least I got a poem out of it."

Some musicians had more of an effect than others. "When I met Kris Kristofferson, he was just a little folkie playing coffee houses in the Village. He was fabulous, one of the most romantic ones, a very loving guy, and great in bed. This is a funny story: I had seen pictures of him and had heard him sing, and thought, `I have to have sex with this man.' So I waited on line for the first show at the Gaslight Cafe. It was a little coffee house with benches that held sixty or seventy people, and I had to sit in the back. When they cleared everybody out, I went to the ladies' room, stayed until the second show, and got a seat right in front of the stage. I was by myself, looking at him the whole time, practically touching him. I wrote a four-line poem and gave it to him as he left the stage. As people were getting up to leave, he peeked his head out of the dressing room and said, 'OK, you got me.' Isn't that cute? `You got me.' So I went backstage and hung out with him."

Kristofferson invited Cherry to the Kettle of Fish bar next door, along with a passel of musician pals. "Patti Smith was there. She'd been doing poetry readings, mostly in the UK. I didn't know if she was romantically involved with Kris, but she seemed mushy with him. Everyone was drinking and carrying on. It was getting late, and I just wanted to go home and have sex with this man." But Kris invited everyone back to his room at the Chelsea Hotel, much to Cherry's annoyance. "I was thinking, `When am I gonna get to fuck this guy?' It was four o'clock in the morning when everybody left. There was just me, Patti Smith, and Kris, and I was thinking, `I'm not leaving! This is a stand off!' Patti had a morning flight to London to do a poetry reading, and Kristofferson finally said, `Patti, you've got a plane to catch. Come on, I'm gonna get you a taxi.' And I thought, `Thank the fucking Lord, I got him!' And we had fabulous sex. The next morning, we had lots more sex. Then he wanted me to come sit on the toilet and talk to him while he shaved, which I thought was so cute. He was a loving, beautiful guy. I ran into him again, eight or nine years ago, and he was so sweet. I said, `I don't know if you remember me. .: He said, `How could I forget you? You took me to see El Topo on acid and I had pneumonia.' One of the nights we went out, he had what he thought was a cold, so I said, `Take some acid, that cures everything.' We took acid and it turned out he had pneumonia! I did get a crush on him, but we became friends because he started going out with my friend Nancy."