Bebe Buell

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Leftsnet's podcast. My
guest today is the one and only bb Bule. He'd
be good to have you on the podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, I'm honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Okay, explain the derivation of your name, Bibi.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Well, I was born on Bastiel Day. My father was
in Korea and my mother didn't want to give me
a name until he got back. I didn't meet him
till I was three weeks old, and the nurses called
me Bebe because it meant baby in French, and because

(00:48):
I was born on Bastiele Day, they thought it was
all very French, so I sort of stuck. And then
my mother wanted to name me Courtney, and my father liked.
My mother didn't like the spelling, so she made it
just Beverly with an E. And my middle name is Lawrence,

(01:09):
which is after my grandmother, who is Florence. But my
mother didn't like the name Florence, so she dropped the F,
so I'm Lawrence is my middle name. And then Buell.
This is my father's name.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Okay, this is your stepfather, your birth father.

Speaker 2 (01:26):
My birth father, But you say it.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
You say in your book that you never really knew
your father.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, I didn't. And it's funny because I never felt
that I didn't know him. I just felt like he
didn't want to be part of my life. Is basically
the way I saw it as a child, and so
I think I was always looking for ways to want

(01:56):
to be part of his life, but it just didn't
work out that way.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Okay, So subsequent to your birth, did he and your
mother ever live together?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Yes? They did. They divorced when I was two years old.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
So how much contact did you actually have with him?

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Not much at all. And the last time I saw
him was on my fifth birthday, and it was a
really interesting thing because they my parents had an argument
of some kind and as my father was leaving, this
dish hit the wall. My mother had thrown something at him,
and I just remember running to the elevator and he

(02:38):
got on the elevator and he was dressed, very dashing,
and I tried to pull the elevator doors open with
my little five year old hands. I didn't want him
to leave, and I never saw him again until I
was about seven or eight months pregnant with live.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
And what were the circumstances there. Why did you suddenly
see him?

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Because Todd felt that Todd was pretty certain we were
going to have a boy, and I was pretty certain
that I was pregnant with a female energy. I sort
of knew that and I felt it. But he sort
of felt that I had a lot of unfinished stuff
with my dad, and he felt that it would be

(03:21):
very healthy for me to see my father again before
I had a child, even though I was all of
twenty three years old, and so Todd had a show
in Tallahassee, where my father was living, and I went
to that show, uber pregnant, saw my father again for
the first time since I was five, and it was interesting,

(03:46):
to say the least. I didn't feel unattached to him,
and I felt very much like his daughter. We both
had the steel blue eyes, and he's tall, and I
saw myself, but I didn't really bond with him. And
then I didn't see him again until two thousand and eight.

(04:08):
I think it was there's a lot of years. My
daughters met him once.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Okay, why did you meet him again in two thousand
and eight.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Because I believe it or not, he called me after
his wife, Mollie the woman that he married. After he
and my mom divorced, he called me and he said
that he wanted to see me, and that he said
that Mollie's wish was that we would see each other again.
And did you I certainly did. Absolutely. I went right

(04:42):
to him, and I'm really glad that I did. I
got to know him for the last five years of
his life. He was almost ninety five when he died,
and he was an incredibly great man. I there's a
lot about him that I don't identify with, but there's
a a lot about him that I do identify with.

(05:03):
And he was a heroic pilot. You can read about
my father. He wrote a book called Dauntless Hell Divers
about being a hell diver pilot in World War Two.
He did unbelievable things. And the only pictures I ever
saw of him, he was all dressed up in his regalia.
And people wonder why I'm drawn to people that are

(05:27):
sort of regal in their stance or spiffy in their dress,
you know.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
So when you connected with him, yeah, you know, like
people you read all about these people, they share genes,
but they never knew each other, but they get together
and they see similarities. Did you see similarities?

Speaker 2 (05:47):
Oh my god, it was incredible, It was incredible. We
have the same laugh and he even has a little
lisp like I do. But mine I tried to control
most my life. But his height, his he had very
long legs and he was lanky, and yeah, and I

(06:10):
just I felt like I was meeting somebody that I
should know better. But what do you do about that?
You really can't change what your destiny is. It was
my destiny to have this kind of dynamic. I was,
you know, obviously there's a lesson for me in this life,
and it has a lot to do with men and

(06:31):
father and the importance of acceptance and and wanting to
be loved.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
Okay, just before we get there, do you have any
step siblings?

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Well, I sort of have a step sibling when my
father remarried Mollie, who I adored by the way she
was like him. They were free thinkers, very artistic. My
father wrote, he wrote two books, and she was an
artist and she could draw, and they were very bohemian.

(07:07):
They had their martinis at six and you know the
whole bit.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
And until Molly came with a child, Yes.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
She came with two. She came with Cheryl and a
son who had of all names Happy. His name was
Happy and they called him Hap And I just remember thinking,
you know, names come in all sizes, like mine was
an unusual name. Growing up, people thought Bibie was a

(07:41):
weird name. I never went by Beverly, so yes, she
came so I happy. I never really got to know Cheryl,
only a little bit.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
But okay, let's talk about your relationship with men, because
on some level you're famous because of your relationships with
all this high sight. Tell me more about how you
feel relative to men, not particular individual, but one sex
via the other.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Well, I think as I've gotten older and I've experienced
healthy relationships, you know, I've been married to my husband.
We're getting ready to have our twenty first wedding anniversary
and we've been together for twenty four years. Once I
actually experienced commitment and healthy exchanges and where things didn't

(08:32):
all just revolve around the other person. I was very
much a product of the sixties and the seventies because
as much as women were burning their bras and people
were burning their draft cards, there was still a suppression.
There was still a stigma that went with burning that
bra or having more than one boyfriend, or having a

(08:55):
child out of wedlock that was still not one hundred
percent accepted as it is today. And the choices I
made when I was young, I think were based on
parental some kind of parental baggage I was carrying from

(09:18):
my childhood. I'm really not sure, because I didn't really
ponder it. I wasn't a self destructive person, and I
wasn't an angry person. I was just a person that
was sort of like swirling around like Alice in Wonderland,
jumping from mushroom to mushroom. It like sort of like

(09:40):
Forrest Gump, but with a higher IQ. I just sort
of fell into situations that I think I was obviously
meant to experience. And whatever notoriety or recognition I got
from relationships, I also got a lot on my own

(10:01):
and my input in those relationships, if that means much.
I wasn't Sharon Osborne, and I wasn't, you know, a
Mamager type person. But I was a very artistic young girl,
and I think I craved that around me. It was
sort of my fuel, as well as the men that

(10:24):
I enjoyed being around.

Speaker 1 (10:26):
What kind of kid were you like growing up. Were
you the life of the party, Were you the lone artist?
Were you a good student? Bad student? Friends not friends?

Speaker 2 (10:35):
Well, I was dyslexic and ad HD and all the
other things that come with a lot of creative energy.
But I had a really, really loving mother that sort
of understood that I was. Same with me. With my
daughter live, I knew she was. She was, you know,
a little special as well. And my mother allowed all

(10:59):
the art. She never told me to turn my music down.
When she saw that I was interested in drawing, she
bought me an easel, and she never tried to stifle
my love of any kind of craft. I was always
very infatuated with art period. I just would sit for

(11:21):
hours and look at art books. And that's how I
fell in love with Oscar Wilde and just through books,
you know, just through looking at lots of pictures and
deciding what I identified with.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
And okay, so were you into music before the Beatles?
Were the Beatles really a transcendent moment for you?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Well, the physicality of the Beatles absolutely. Seeing him on
the Ed Sullivan Show was a mind blowing experience. I
feel bad for anybody that didn't get to experience is that.
It was really incredible. It was probably one of the
greatest moments of my life. That and the Rolling Stones.
But before that, yes, my mother had She liked Patsy Kleine,

(12:12):
and she liked Frank Sinatra, and and she liked Hank Williams,
and she really loved Eddie Arnold, and so we had
There was music in the house a lot. And my
mother liked the radio. So when we were in the car,
when we had cars with radios, she would let me

(12:34):
listen to whatever station I wanted. And I enjoyed listening
to a little bit of everything. I sort of had
a Shmorgas board. I loved the Everly Brothers and that
you know that and that song by Roy Orbison crying
that just crat you know. I would just go around

(12:56):
the house like a maniac singing that song. And I
was very affected by Gypsy rose Lee. Let me entertain,
you know. I would get in the shower and sing
at the top of my lungs. And so what kind
of child was I? I was sort of an entertainer

(13:16):
from a very young age, but I didn't there was
something missing. I think that's because of the situation with
my dad. I never felt like I was enough. I
never felt as pretty as the other girls or but
of course it was not like that. It's just it's
how I felt. So And did I get good grades, No,

(13:40):
because I had attention deficit. But there was one subject
I was good in, and that was English literature. So
any story telling, anything I could read about the Renaissance period,
or anything that attracted me in that arena, Greek mythology, romany, astrology, metaphysics,

(14:06):
Madame Blovowski, you know, things like that. It really resonated
with me. So my mother kind of knew that I
didn't have that headspace for wanting to go and go
to college, that I was going to sort of learn.
I was going to get my education the old fashioned way,
kick them in the deep end and see if they swim.

(14:27):
And she sent my high school graduation picture to the
biggest agent in the world. My mother always fought big
and she still does, and I never thought I would
get a response, But within three days we were on
an airplane to New York City because Eileen Ford had
summoned me and that was it.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Okay, let's go do a little backfill here. So you
were ten when the Beatles came out that was a
big thing. Music was everything, and then you were entering
ju You're high. Were you a popular girl, did you
go on dates? Did you suddenly go wild or were
you more separate? What were you like?

Speaker 2 (15:09):
Well? I was in Catholic boarding school for sixth, seventh,
and eighth grade. I went to Villa Maria Academy, which
was a I came home for holidays in summer. And
then in ninth grade, my stepfather got stationed in Newport,
Rhode Island, so I went to Saint Catherine's Academy and

(15:32):
on Bellevue Avenue. And it was when I was in
ninth grade at a school dance that I met Paul
Calcil from the group the Colcils. But at the time
he was not in the band. He was the one
brother besides his other brother Richard, that weren't in the
band because the dad just decided they weren't in the band. So,

(15:55):
I mean, Paul was kind of a jock, you know.
He hung out with my friend Charlie and they liked basketball.
So that was my first big fourteen going on fifteen,
when I met Paul, and I remember my first slow
dance with him. It was the last dance of the
Night and Paul Castle comes to me and he asked
me if I wanted to dance, and of course I

(16:17):
said yes. He was so handsome. They were the most
beautiful children. They were just all gorgeous. And so he
was about seventeen at the time, and his family was
becoming huge. The band was getting big, big, big big.
But see I didn't know any of this at the
time because I was a rock I listened to rock music.

(16:39):
I wasn't really familiar with the Cowciles until hair and
then I really knew who they were. And of course
the rained to park and other things, so that sort
of started the dynamic of my first kiss. My first
crush was somebody that went off to the circus. Suddenly

(17:00):
Paul's dad decided he was going to be in the band,
so Paul was in the Castiles. He was the keyboard players.
So no more school dances. Oh. The slow song was
blue Velvet, my first Blue Velve. You know, it's incredible.
So yeah, so of course we had to sneak off

(17:21):
to kiss each other in the backseat of a car.
It was all very innocent. There was nothing advanced. There
was no third base or fourth base, back then, it
was first base and second base, at least in my world.
I'm sure other worlds were different, but in my world,
and Paul always had the fear of his father looming

(17:42):
over him. He had this incredibly strict father. He wasn't
allowed to date, he wasn't allowed to go in cars,
he wasn't allowed to do any of that stuff. He
might as well have been Mormon. I mean, it was crazy,
but anyway, they moved to California, and I finished my
soft more year in new Portwood Island, and then my
family got transferred to Campla June, North Carolina, and that's

(18:06):
where I did my junior and my senior year. So
finally I was going to normal, a normal public school.
I went to campblu June High School. I graduated from there,
and was I popular. I was always described I'm going
to go buy my yearbook as an individualist and artistic,

(18:28):
artistic girl was the so I guess, I guess it.
Just it followed me. Was I effervescent, the entertainer, and
me had not come out yet as far as being
able to stand in front of people and actually own it,
you know, that had not happened yet. I was still,

(18:48):
I'm not going to use the word shy. I just
didn't know yet how to present myself as a confident
human that hadn't really hadn't really eluded me yet. So
I always had a sense of wonderment. But was I popular?

(19:09):
I guess was some kids, the cool kids, kids that
liked rock and roll, kids that knew who Blue Cheer were,
you know, I I.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Oh, okay, So you talk about those bands, yeah, you
know in your book, and that, you know, was the
reason we're doing this podcast, Rebel Soul. You talk about
seeing the Rolling Stones on one of their first tours.
So to what degree were you owning records? To what
degree were you going to concerts when you were in
high school?

Speaker 2 (19:40):
In high school, Oh, well, I didn't go to a
whole lot of concerts, that's for sure, And it wasn't
until I was a senior. But I did see the
Rolling Stones. But I was only twelve when that happened.
That was July fourth, nineteen sixty six, at the Virginia
Beach Dome B Shepherd Convention Center. My best friend since

(20:03):
fifth grade, Joni Gross, and I went and it changed
my life. You know. I was the kid that got
into the newspaper for walking up to the stage with
my instematic camera to take some pictures, and I got
pushed by the stage was lined with cops. And that

(20:26):
was my first taste at twelve going on thirteen. In
ten days I would turn thirteen. What a baptism of
Keith Richards actually coming to the edge of the stage
and telling the cop to leave me alone. He sort
of took his foot and nudged him. He didn't do
a full on Keith, but he did a little nudge,
not a kick, but a nudge, you know, to let

(20:49):
the police officer know that I could take my picture.
And boy did I never forget that, you know. So
I was the kid that after I started clicking, I
got a picture of Brian Jones playing Harmonica in his
print pinstripe suit. Once I did that, the rest of
the kids were able to push up a little bit
more and it became a lot more fun. But so

(21:15):
at that moment, I felt very connected to the spirit
of what I was indulging. I felt very confident when
I went up there to take my picture, and I
wasn't going to let anybody stop me. And so after that,
I think I went to a couple of those kind
of gigs where they would have multiple people on the gig,

(21:37):
you know, like Hermit's Hermit's and Sonny and Cher and
Gary and the Pacemakers or something like that, and everybody
would play like ten or fifteen minutes. And I know
that Jamie Hendricks opened for the Monkeys when I lived
in Newport and which was a strange tour for Hendrix

(21:57):
to be on, But I didn't go to that. But
in high school, I mean I would always go to
the school dances and you know, we would always go
to the canteen and we would always dance and all
the you know, local bands and stuff. So when I
was a senior in high school, that's when I met
my first became friends with a local band that was
big enough to open for Johnny Winter. So so my big,

(22:20):
my first big concert where I got to be backstage
and and s see a band like Johnny Winter, and
which was so amazing when Rick Darringer was in the band,
and I'm talking about the lineup after Zanga, after Rick's
brother Randy had left, when it was just the trio,

(22:43):
Oh my god, and you know, you know, I got
it just it was a chain reaction. It just sort
of started after that, but most of the concerts I
went to that all started. I think I saw the
James Gang when I was in and they were great.
It's funny that Ted Nugent the and boy Duke's played

(23:06):
with the James Gang, and I never liked Isn't it funny?
Never liked Ted NuGen There was just something about that
guy that creeped me out from the very beginning. I
don't know if it was my Catholic schoolgirl radar or
what it was, but he just creeped me out. I
remember telling Dale Peters from the James Gang, he was

(23:28):
the bass player, that that guy, that guy is so weird.
You know. I was young, so I didn't know what
other names to call him. I didn't know it was
going to be like, you know, all the things I
could say. But it's interesting I had even a little
bit of a radar even then. I was blessed with
some kind of protective thing. God only knows how I

(23:53):
made it out alive some of the situations I got
myself into in life, and I just feel, whatever it is,
you roll with it.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Okay, let's go back. Your mother writes a letter to
Eileen Ford, Did you want to be a model or
did your mother want you to be a model?

Speaker 2 (24:23):
I wanted to get to New York City. I wanted
to meet Andy Warhol. I wanted to look at I
wanted to meet the people I saw in Vogue magazine.
And I wanted to be around that was my tribe.
To me, that was my sole tribe. And I wanted
to be where they where that was. And I always

(24:45):
told my friends this too. I'm still my best friend
from high school, Tim Sullivan, he lives in the Chelsea Hotel.
He's one of the people that's been there for thirty years,
so they couldn't get him to leave even when they
rent oed. But he I wasn't surprised at all with
the way my life went because I told him that,
you know, I was going to get to New York.

(25:06):
I thought I was going to be a singer. I
thought I was going to be like Nico or something.
I thought I was going to or Marianne Faithful. I
sort of wanted to be a chantoose. But I was
a little too rocking. There was like that my body language,
my aura, everything about me was not as delicate, you know.

(25:29):
I just I guess the term rock chick. I guess
it's just in my pedigree and my DNA or whatever
it is. But I just wanted to get to New York.
And I'll be honest, I didn't even know what would
happen when my mom sent those pictures and when Eileen's responded,

(25:53):
my mother tried to explain to me, look, if you're
not going to go to college, you really have to
have a good job to work. And I thought, Okay,
I get it. Maybe this will be fun. And you know,
I loved fashion magazines and I loved all the great supermodels,
and I loved Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton and Patty Boyd

(26:16):
and Jane Asher and it was all on my radar.
So I wanted to be more like that, like Jane Barkin.
I wanted to be more so. Of course, Eileen she
signed me immediately. I was signed him for it in
ten minutes. It happened very fast, and they put me

(26:39):
in Saint Mary's Woman's Residence. I was very used to
being around nuns, but I wasn't able to keep my curfew.
You had to be in by midnight when you were
in Saint Mary's and I was starting to meet friends,
and we used to go dancing at this place called
hip hopon him. And then when I met Todd, I

(27:04):
met Todd, and then the whole.

Speaker 1 (27:07):
A little bit slower when you went to New York.
When you went to New York, you were going to
the mecca. Were you convinced you were going to meet
all these people? Were you driven? Did you say I'm
gonna make it? Or were you just blindly bumping into things?

Speaker 2 (27:25):
It was blind? I you know, I try to take
more credit for this fabulous life that I've been given,
but actually I can't because all I did was manifest
whatever my dreams were, and I would just do what

(27:47):
I was taught. Be kind to people, be respectful, have
good manners, and be honest and be direct. And so
I just sort of I allowed whatever that inner voice
is to sort of take me left or right.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Okay, But there were other models staying at Saint Mary's.
How did you meet people? And you go out dancing.
You're a single attractive model in New York. You know
a lot of people are going to be interested in
talking to you.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Right, I met, I mean I met I remember I
met the DJ Frankie Crucker, because he would go and dance,
and he loved to dance with all the pretty girls
and he would. But you know, that was back when
it was not so much about picking up. You would
go to these dance clubs to actually dance. It was
kind of interesting. It wasn't like I mean, I'm sure

(28:40):
some people picked each other up, but I never gave
off that. I was never hunting, you know, I was
never looking for boyfriends. As a matter of fact, I
didn't have any boyfriends until I met Todd. He was
my first boyfriend.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Okay, but were you sexually experienced when you met Todd?

Speaker 2 (28:56):
Not as much as some seventeen eight ten year old girls. Yeah,
I mean I kind of was.

Speaker 1 (29:03):
Yeah, okay, how'd you meet Todd?

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Well? That was that was what changed my life. I
was hanging out with this guy that Aileen Ford approved
of because she thought he was gay, but he wasn't.
And he started actually dating one of the biggest models
in New York and right under Eileen's nose, but she
let all the girls go out dancing with him. His

(29:27):
name was Richard, and he was really nice and he
he asked me what I wanted to do, and I said,
you know, Let's go see man. I had gone to
see Man of La Mancha with my mother when I
was a little girl in New York, and I wanted
to go relive that moment, so I said, let's go
see Man of La Mancha. So he took me to

(29:49):
see Man of La Mancha. But on the way, Richard
says to me, we have to make a stop on
East thirteenth Street. I have to drop these tapes off
to Todd Runggren. And he said, do you know who
that is? And I was like, no, who's that? And
he said, have you ever heard the song Hello? It's me?

(30:10):
And I was like, uh, yeah, yeah, And he goes
that guy he's going, he's gone solo. And he started
to tell me about this famous manager named Albert Grossman
was managing him and he's going to be a big star,
and that he had these tapes that he had done
over at this place called Secret Sound with Moogie Klingman

(30:32):
or something, and that he needed to drop them off
to Todd. So we pull up in front of two
oh six East thirteenth Street, the same block that that
scene in Taxi Driver where Jody leans up against the
building when she's out to get a hooker or two
or whatever. So he pulls the car up, but it

(30:55):
was really a scary neighborhood in those days. He told
me to stay in the car, and I was like,
I'm not staying in the car, you know. So he
had to throw a penny up to Todd's window because
Todd didn't have a doorbell, and so he threw a
coin up to Todd's window. And this guy looked out

(31:17):
the window, this guy, this multi colored hair. He looked like,
you know that toy, my little pony. He sort of
looked like my little pony. He was like a horse
with rainbow hair, but a beautiful, a good looking horse,

(31:37):
you know, a stallion. So but he so he came
running down the stairs to get the tapes, and the
exchange was made, and that's when I met him. Todd said, oh,
who's your friend, Richard? And you know, Richie said, oh,
that's my friend baby. She's moved here from Virginia. You know,
she's she's a model, she's with the four modeling agency,

(32:01):
blah blah blah. And it's just you know, like he goes,
oh great. You know, he was just wanting the tapes
and he was going to go up and do his thing.
So I met him, and I, you know, I of
course was immediately drawn to him. I think we were
drawn to each other. I think it was just some
kind of written in the heavens. I don't know how

(32:21):
healthy the whole thing was, but I think we had
to go through it, whatever it was.

Speaker 1 (32:26):
But yeah, okay, so what are you living on? Are
you going? You know, there's a lot of looks see
are you getting booked? Are you working a little bit?

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yes? I was doing a lot of testing. You know,
you have to get a portfolio really really together, locked in.
So Eileen was sending me off to meet photographers, but
they would like me. So I was doing bookings for
my Bride's magazine. That was my first big booking, and

(32:58):
I would do Butterick and McCalls patterns, you know, I
was doing some catalog. Eileen felt that I needed a
little a little experience in front of the camera. But
it was it was photographers that that saw that I
had an edge that really enjoyed working with me. So

(33:21):
I started to really make I started to get momentum.
But then when I met Todd, that moved very quickly
and I moved in with Todd and before I Oh.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Okay, okay, let's park that for a second. You had
the time before Todd. If we looked solely at your
modeling career, how much modeling did you actually do in
your life?

Speaker 2 (33:45):
In my life, yeah, or in those months before I
went in my life, I think if you were going
to put it into I think my best years where
I really worked the most, were between seventy four and
seventy eight, So as far as professional modeling, those were

(34:06):
the best years.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
Okay. And were you doing well full time? I know
we were with Todd at that point, but that was
the beginning of the era of the supermodel.

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Well, that started in the eighties, and I had already
stopped modeling, but I still was photographed heavily. Even when
I wasn't modeling for income people were I was photographed
quite a lot. I was the subject of mini photographers.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
Okay, there are end pictures, but modeling takes a lot
of effort and it's a lot of work. Did you
actually enjoy doing it?

Speaker 2 (34:44):
No, of course I didn't. Only time I did was
when I was in London. That was when I really
buckled under and I lived the life of a very
very busy, hard working model where I would go to
bed every night, not party. I mean there were times
when Mick Jagger would call and say let's go to
tramp and I would be like, not tonight, Mick, I've

(35:08):
got a big booking tomorrow and I have to get
some sleep. Oh darling, I'll have you back. And I
was like, no, no, you don't understand. This is really important.
I really want this client, you know. So I was
being very disciplined. And then the photographer, ironically, when you
hear his last name, it's kind of funny. The photographer

(35:29):
that really legitimized me and got me on the pages
of Vogue was named Clive Arrowsmith and this was in
seventy six. And it was in the fall of seventy
six that Stephen Tyler from Aerosmith became the father of
my child. Well, he didn't become. He impregnated me, as

(35:51):
I we impregnated each other. So it's funny. I look
at some of the synchronicities and some of the abstract occurrences,
and no, I from seventy two to like seventy I
did Playboy in seventy four, and you know, I made

(36:14):
some money for that, but I would do a gig
now and then, just to make some money so that
I could just be whatever. I didn't even know who
I was. I didn't know what I wanted to be.
All I knew was that music was my passion, and
I kept my little notebooks with all my lyrics, and

(36:35):
I just didn't know how to I didn't know how
to get there. I didn't know how to do it.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, when you were in Playboy. There have been some
famous people in the fifties. Once you hit the sixties
and seventies, they tended to be unknown. You were not
completely unknown. Of course, as time went on, a lot
of known people ended up doing it, But when you
were doing doing it, most people were relatively faceless in

(37:03):
terms of impact in the culture. How did you decide
to do it and what was the result of doing it?

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Oh, my goodness, it's it's just such a it's a
crazy story. Uh. Todd was friends with a photographer named
Lynn Goldsmith, and she wanted to photograph me, and I
said sure. So she came over to our townhouse and
Todd was in the studio, and we had a lot

(37:32):
of props because Todd had all these fantastic jackets and
hats and you know, all kinds of fun things top
hats that I love. And she is a little by little,
the picture started getting less and less clothed, and before
I knew it, Lynn Goldsmith was photographing me nude with
feathers around my neck. So I was eighteen years old,

(37:56):
nineteen years old, and no wait when this happened, I
was nineteen and going on twenty. And so she took
the first nude photos of me, and they were really
good and in classic Lynn style, she wanted you know,

(38:17):
them to be published somewhere. I mean, they were good enough.
She was really good photographer. So she showed them to Playboy.
She showed them to Penthouse, which I objected to. I
did not like that magazine at all. But Playboy was
something that, as my friend Patty Smith called it at

(38:41):
the time, very American pie, very American, very uh pepsi cola,
very you know, Mickey Mouse, part of the culture. And
there were some iconic people like Bridget Bardoux and even
Linda Evans, and you know a lot of very beautiful

(39:03):
women of the times, Betty Paye, you know, a lot
of girls had done it. The Barde bread I remember
seeing there were these pictures of she and Jane Barkin.
But anyway, Todd had a girlfriend before me. Let's see,
I think Patty Smith. He was dating Patty Smith and

(39:24):
he had this another girlfriend, and but she broke his heart.
She was like the girl that broke his heart. But
he sort of always carried a torch for her, or
at least I thought he did. And there was talk
that she she was going to be a Playboy centerfold.
And when I heard that, I said to Lynn, what

(39:48):
did played? You know, Let's show those pictures the Playboy.
So Lynn showed the pictures the Playboy, and yeah, they
bit right away, and they me to Chicago. That's when
everything happened in Chicago. That's when Hefner lived in the
Chicago mansion. And I went and I did a test

(40:10):
test shoots for two days, and my test shots ended
up being the pictorial ended up being the whole thing,
except for the centerfold that was shot in New York
City on one of those cameras as I forget what
they're called, but they're prehistoric now. But it's the one
you have to slide the thing in and out of,

(40:31):
and the plate and the whole bit and you can't move,
You like, have to stay in the position you're in
until they say and you can't breathe. You can't do anything. People.
If anybody thinks it's sexy, it's it's not. It's it's
it's hard work. It's it's not glamorous shooting these pictorials.
I know people think it is, but it's not. And

(40:54):
it's just like doing a modeling job, except you're just
not promoting clothes. You're promoting something else. I'm not even
sure what, because I didn't really have much on my mind,
if you want to know the truth, except that I
wanted the pictures to be good. I wanted them to
be okay. That was, you know, basically the way I

(41:15):
was thinking. But I also wanted when I found out okay.
So then I found out this girlfriend was going to
be Miss April, so I thought Miss April. So I
actually went out and bought myself a shamrock necklace because
I thought if I wore a shamrock that I might

(41:35):
be Miss March, so that I would maybe beat her
to the punch. I mean, you used to make su
your brain do crazy things. But it turns out I
became Miss November. So she came out before I did.

Speaker 1 (41:49):
But you wanted to be a shame woman who had
dated Todd previously.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Yes, her name was Marlene, and he even wrote a
song about.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
Oh yeah Marlene Marlene, Yes, yea.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
And she she was that girl, beautiful and she and
I actually became really good friends. Where's she today, Well today,
I'm not really sure. I think she had some tragedies
in her life, and I think she even later in life,
became homeless and things, and I think she had some problems.

(42:22):
But at that time she was young and vivacious and
beautiful and a friend. You know, I actually liked her.
I took my first trip to London and actually stayed
with her. And this was can you believe it? But
I liked her. But she was madly in love with

(42:44):
Don Arden's son, one of the Arden boys. I think
I can't remember which one. But she wasn't interested in Todd.
And this was what was so sad about it, because
here I was thinking that his heart belonged to her,
but she didn't love him, you know, it was just

(43:05):
it was just she wanted a businessman. She wanted a
successful man with lots of money. Little did she know
Todd became very, very wealthy after that. But I don't know,
it's just so I never became Miss Marched. So here
I am this Miss November with a shamrock around my neck.

(43:25):
So everybody thought, for sure, I must be irish, But
it just it was just a moment. It was a
whim but it changed my life drastically in the sense
that there was no more fashion career for me. In America,
it was very taboo for a fashion model of my
status to become a Playboy centerfold, let alone pose in

(43:50):
the magazine. And as you know, in the eighties, John
Costablanca turned that around and every supermodel and their dog
wanted to be in Playboy, and so the mystique was
still very heavy when I did it. So I carried
the weight of that around and it was very hard
for me. I got booked with Cosmopolitan or Viva, you know,

(44:12):
the women's magazines that were kind of sexy. But it
wasn't until I went to Europe in seventy five seventy
six that I did all my most beautiful, legitimate work.
They just didn't care about nudity. In Europe. It was like, okay,
so what you've been in Playboy who Cares?

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Okay, so you're missed November. Yeah, the magazine at the
time was selling millions of copies. Young boys were infatuated
with the playmates. But you were living in a relatively
insular model rock and roll world. Were people recognizing you
on the street. Did you get fan mail any of that?

Speaker 2 (44:58):
Yeah, you do get fan mail, but it all goes
to Playboy and then they give you, like a couple
times a year, a big envelope with your fan mail.
But I actually had boxes of it. They they called
me and they said, we can't send you an envelope.

(45:18):
We've got six boxes for you. So when you know,
I had when Todd was touring, I had them pick
up the boxes for me, the crew on one of
the tours, so that I could read the fan mail.
And I still have some of it. I kept some
of it because it was They would make drawings, maybe

(45:41):
beautiful letters, and it was very sweet, you know. Yeah,
so yeah, you do get recognized a little bit. But
in the world that I was living in, it was
all about the rock star, you know. I you know,
maybe maybe I was looked upon as an embellishment, who knows,
but I do know that it changed the way people

(46:05):
reacted to me. I think men especially thought that I
must be this wild beast in bed, or that I
must be a sexual, you know, an inphomaniac or something.
I don't know. Posing nude conjures up a lot of stuff,
and and and people treat you differently, they really do.

(46:28):
They sort of take for granted that you're you're a
sexual being and that you're there for the sexual aspect.
So it's it's, yeah, you know you are. We're all
sexual beings. But at the time, I was so confused
about everything in my life that sex was really not

(46:49):
the most important thing on my mind, and I was
just trying to find my way.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Okay, let's one other thing about models. There's a lot
of publicity about how models have to stay ultra thin,
they can't eat anything, there's pressure on looks. To what
degree did you feel that then, and to what degree
do you still feel it?

Speaker 2 (47:15):
Well? I didn't even I didn't abide by it. I
was never a skinny, skinny girl. I've never my daughter's
never been a skinny, skinny girl. I never adhered to
that demand, and quite frankly, I'll be honest, it was
never demanded of me. Nobody ever said to me, oh,
you need to go lose one hundred pounds. I mean

(47:38):
one time I did one booking when I was three
months pregnant with my daughter, where they asked me, you know,
if I wanted to do some paternity dresses for their
you know, for the paternity catalog.

Speaker 1 (48:00):
And I remember it being maternity. I think you mean maternity.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
Did I say paternity? I like that.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
That's interesting.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
Well, you know what, that was the subject of my
entire life at that point. So yeah, that was the
paternity issue. But no, thank you for correcting that. It's
like prescription and subscription, you know, and it was just.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
Okay, let's go back to Todd now. So you have
this exchange of glances, then you go uptown with Richard.
When did you next see Todd?

Speaker 2 (48:38):
What? What? What did you say?

Speaker 1 (48:40):
You say that you met Todd when your friend Richard
was tapes, But really you and Richard were going up town.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Yeah wait, no, I think where we were going was
wherever Man of La Mancha was playing.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
Okay, well on Broadway. So in any event, uptown from
where Todd was. When did you next make contact with Todd?

Speaker 2 (49:01):
It was about two days later, he invited He's He
told Richard that he was having some friends over to
his to his place. They were, you know, just smoke
some weed and you know, just to hang out. And

(49:22):
he was living with his friend Paul Fishkin. And I
mean there was another incident before that, but Todd hates
it when I tell it. So I'm just gonna blet.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Just because I'm injured. You don't have to tell. Why
does Todd hate it?

Speaker 2 (49:38):
Yeah, he hates it because he doesn't like to admit
that he ever did something so romantic. But he did.

Speaker 1 (49:45):
Okay, we won't make it tell it, so, okay, there's
that other incident.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
But anyway, there was there was the incident where I
ran into him and his dog because he was very
near my modeling agency. I'll word it like that. He
just happened to be sitting on the steps of where
Ford Models is on fifty ninth Street, and he lives
on thirteenth Street, so God only knows why he was there.

(50:16):
He had facetiously Okay, No, I mean he said he
was bringing his dog, Puppet, who was pregnant, to the vet.
Now that's very possible because Puppet was pregnant and she
did give birth to Furberger, who became my dog. But yes,
but anyway, I just thought that was all very sweet

(50:36):
and interesting. And then Richard calls me at the woman's
residence and says, oh, I got a call from Todd
and he's invited us over, invited me over, and he
told me I could bring that friend of mine again
if I wanted. So I remember that Richard at the

(50:58):
last minute didn't want to go. He goes, I'm not
gonna go. You go ahead and go, though they're you know,
they're expecting you. So I got there and I did
the thing where you throw the penny, and Todd didn't
look out the window. Paul Fishkin did and I had
not met Paul yet, so he looked out the window
and he goes, oh, babe, I'll come right down, and

(51:20):
you know, lets me in. And I walk in and
it's just Paul and two girls that seemed very very nice,
you know. They were one of them looked like she
might work at a record company. That was. They were
just hanging out rolling joints, doing the stuff we did
back then, and Todd had just gotten a new Sony

(51:40):
trena Tron colored TV, so everybody was having fun with
the rabbit ears and the whole bit, and then about
five minutes after that, Todd comes in and that was that.
I don't we didn't spend a day apart after that.
That was that? Was it? Hot?

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Long after that? Did you move in with him?

Speaker 2 (52:03):
Did I move in? I would say it happened about
three weeks. I think he was going on the road
as well, and Puppet was pregnant, and there was a
girl that he had staying there, but he didn't want

(52:24):
her to stay there anymore because he didn't want her
to think they had a relationship. And so he said, look,
you know, the nuns were giving me a hard time
about curfew, and my mother was calling all the time,
and Eileen Ford was losing her mind and very angry
at me because I was sleeping instead of going on

(52:45):
go sees, and I was being naughty. Let's face it,
I was being a rebel, and so he said, why
don't you just come stay here? And that's how it
sort of happened. I got to the apartment and it
obviously needed to be cleaned, it obviously needed to be organized,

(53:07):
and Paul was never there. His room and his cat
was in the back and Todd's whole world was in
the front, and then there was a kitchen and a bathroom.
It was a typical dog bone a New York City apartment,
but with beautiful high ceilings and gilded gold. It was
really beautiful, a pre war building, but it was, you know,

(53:29):
it was small, and it was old, and the rent
was something like three hundred dollars a month. And so
Todd went on the road. I stayed Ferberger was born.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
Do you happen to remember what year?

Speaker 2 (53:43):
This is nineteen seventy two.

Speaker 1 (53:46):
Okay, so something anything has been released and he's on
tour supporting That.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
First night, the first night I stayed with Todd. I
it's a funny story because this pot was so strong,
and he had bush Mill's Irish whiskey, and I drank
a little of that before I knew it. It was

(54:11):
the next morning. I literally put my head on his
lap and did not wake up until eight o'clock the
next morning. And it was really funny because we just
sort of fell as he fell asleep sitting up and
I fell asleep on his lap. But I woke up
and he went to play me. He said he wanted

(54:33):
to play me a song off his new album, and
it was Black Mariah. He wanted to play me Black Mariah,
and his stereo blew up some kind it was really weird.
Some kind of weird technical thing happened. But of course
he got back there and he tinkered and he fiddled
and he did all of his genius stuff that he
always did. I don't know if it was real, if

(54:55):
he was just trying to impress me, because I was
very impressed. I thought, boy, my friend is Albert Einstein.
You know, he he knew exactly what to do and
what tubes and what things to press. And before I
knew it, the music is coming out of the speakers,
and you know, he plays me the album. And I

(55:16):
remember when I heard the song Marlene. I wanted to
know all about it, I said, And I said, who's Marlene?
He said, Oh, she's a girl that I, you know,
really loved and and but we're not together and blah
blah blah. And and his best friend at the time
was Patti Smith, and it was important to him that

(55:39):
I met her. He wanted her opinion of me, and
then I became Then I became fast friends with Patty.
I just hit it off with her, like a house
on fire because she got it that I wrote in
my poetry books, and she got my stupid poems. She
liked them. I wrote this poem, this poem one time

(56:00):
that it goes you needle, you pen, you prick, And
she loved that. She said, that's three lines. That's real poetry, Beatie,
that's real. Keep going, keep going. And she was very encouraging,
you know, to that side of me, whereas Todd would
listen and he would say, oh, that's good, Yeah, that's

(56:20):
really good or something like that, but he would never
say like, oh, keep it up, or you know, he
was never like, I don't know. I don't know how
to explain what it's like to live with somebody of
that magnitude of genius, because basically all they think about
all day is the next genius move. They're like chess players,

(56:43):
which way are we going to move the rourk? You know,
which way are we going to move the king? It's
like their brains are always looking at the next challenge.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Well, did you end up feeling outside? I mean, you
had boyfriends before. Do you feel like I'm with him
but really he's in his own world.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Well, I think anybody that knew Todd felt that way
because Todd was constantly, constantly in front of a screen.
He had a computer before anybody on earth had a computer.
He had a computer before Bill Gates had a computer.
He had computers, he had animation, He had all of
these very complicated technical stuff, you know, way before anybody.

(57:29):
And he was very obsessed with it. You know, he
would spend literally hours doing his stuff. But yeah, he
would go to Maxis, he would go to concerts, he
would hang out, he would get dressed up. I was
this social director. I called it. It was funny because
I would say, Todd, You've got to get up for
a minute. You've got to go out. You've got to

(57:51):
say hi to people. Alice keeps asking about you and
wondering when we're gonna all hang out again. You know.
It was stuff like that. You know, we would go
see really great shows. We would go see Alice Cooper
at Madison Square Garden or Peter Gabriel Gabriel at the
Felt Forum, or my favorite show still to this day,

(58:12):
this is the best lineup ever. Was First, we start
with lou Reed and this is during the period where
he had the white bleached terre and he simulated simulated
shooting up on stage. Then Hall and Oates came on
after that. You can imagine that, Dinas right, and then
Al Green closed out the night. That was like one

(58:36):
of the best triples I ever. You know, got got
to and and Todd. Todd was at that and we
went backstage, and I remember Mick was there too, and
it was quite a night. But yeah, you meet everybody
through that whole social circle. So everybody I met was
somebody that I met socially at a party, at a gathering,

(59:00):
but most of us gathered and met at Max's. That
was sort of our living room, Max's, Kansas City. But Todd,
I'll be honest, he loved women, and women loved him,
and he was a bit of a womanizer when he
was on the road. But that was not his image.
That was not what people thought of him at all.

(59:21):
People thought of the Todd that was always buried with
his face in a computer or in some kind of
musical environment.

Speaker 1 (59:31):
He was he faithful? Was he faithful when he was home?

Speaker 2 (59:35):
I'm not positive, you know, I'll be honest. We were
all so young and everybody was running around like like
kind of KOOKI I remember Leonard Cohen would call, and
Todd would always know it was going to be Leonard,
and he would go, if you want to answer it,

(59:57):
it's crazy Leonard, because Leonard would want to come over
and he would get extremely drunk. But see, I hadn't
put together who Leonard Cohen was yet. I was too young,
but Todd got it, and I just remember Leonard came
over one night and he was super drunk, but he
was super charming. And Todd went off to go fiddle

(01:00:18):
with some electronic device because he and I was left
sitting there with Leonard Cohen, and I remember he picked
up one of Todd's guitars and he said, I'm not
a very good guitar player, he goes, but I'm a
great writer. And so I said okay, and he started

(01:00:38):
singing and I almost fainted. It was like it was
bordered on a religious experience. It was very profound. But
he was such a handful, oh, such a handful, and
I sort of felt sorry for him. I didn't realize,
you know, the degree of his Leonard cohenness, if that

(01:01:01):
makes any sense. He was just crazy Leonard to me,
because that's what Todd called him. But I, you know,
I liked him. I thought he was a little kookie.
So I would let He would call and he'd say,
where are you going tonight? And I was, I'm going
to go to the plaza, or I'm going to go
to I'm going to go to the tiki bar at
the plaza, or I'm going to go here or there.
Can I come, you know? And I would say sure,

(01:01:22):
and he would come along, and usually he would get
so drunk that, you know, somebody would have to end
up taking him home in a cab or something. You know,
we never we never dated, you know, we were just buds.
I know that sounds weird. And I remember one of
the it left such an impact on me. One of
the sweetest things anybody that's ever said to me was

(01:01:46):
was Leonard Cohen. And you know, I just said to him,
I said, I don't know what you're expecting from our friendship,
you know, I I don't know if you I know
you have plenty of girlfriends, because he did. He was
always talking about the women in his life and about Greece,
and you know, he was always talking about all kinds
of dilemmas and drama and and and he said, you know,

(01:02:12):
I just really really really enjoy being around you. He goes,
I just enjoy your company. I enjoy our discussions. And
he said, my favorite are the alien discussions. And so
we would talk about aliens. And so that was my
Leonard Cohen. But you know, one day I never never
heard from Leonard again, none of us did. He obviously

(01:02:33):
left New York, but he didn't tell anybody where he
was going or say goodbye to anybody. Just one day,
Leonard wasn't there anymore.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
To what degree did you know Albert and Sally Grossman?

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
Oh? I knew them very well, Albert, especially Albert, and
I I got along with Albert. You know, I've watched
some of the greatest managers in the world up close
and personally, and you know, watching people like Albert Grossman,
Peter Grant, watching these people in action, it's it's unbelievable.

(01:03:09):
It's like Albert was apples and oranges to a Peter Grant.
But Albert, when Todd got the house up in a
Lake Hill or Bearsville, Woodstock area, we were always over
at Albert's house. I remember little intimate dinners. I remember
one night it was me, Todd, Albert, and Paul Butterfield

(01:03:34):
and you know, the boys were talking and I sort
of felt like, well, why am I here? Because but
it was always my go to whenever I wanted to
get anybody's attention and get the topic off whatever deal
they were talking about. We'd start talking about aliens and
that brought Butterfield right in. Oh my god, yeah, Butterfield

(01:03:57):
wanted Oh he was all on it. He was like,
oh yeah, let's talk about it. You know, it was
it was my go to, so whenever I wanted to
really jab a conversation, I even used that trick when
I was at tea with Savador Dolli. You know, they
were all talking about a lot of stuff. I remember

(01:04:19):
being in the room with an Ocelot, his wife Gala,
Truman Capoti, and a Mendelier And this was just from
him inviting me to tea because I met him at
the Saint Regis newsstand. We would go to the foreign

(01:04:39):
news stand there at the Saint Regis to see our
modeling pictures from Europe because it was one of the
foreign news stands and he was living there. So that's
how I met Savador Dolli. So when I say it
about the Forrest Gump stuff, I mean it in the
sense that, for some weird reason written in the Evans,

(01:05:00):
for some I was meant to cross the paths of
certain people whose paths that I crossed.

Speaker 1 (01:05:12):
Okay, you mentioned Peter Grant along with Albert Roseman. He said,
you learned about management? What did you learn seeing them
up close?

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
Well, Peter Grant was ruthless. He was a very, very
very large man, as you know. But you know that
that organization used a lot of violence in their dealings
with people that annoyed them, which was the opposite with Albert.
Albert liked to get together and celebrate through food and gathering.

(01:05:41):
He even had tps on his property, you know, tpiece
that you could go sit in and meditate and smoke cash.
And it's different worlds. When you were around Peter Grant
or around that zeppelin, it was like hanging out with
a bunch of gangsters. You know the van were you

(01:06:03):
know De Niro and Pacino and you know they were
the it it's hard to put into words. When you
hung around with Albert, it was like being at the
king's castle. You would go hang out at his world
and his compound, at his beautiful house, and beautiful food
would be served.

Speaker 1 (01:06:21):
And how about did you see any of his negotiation
business techniques?

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Well, I mean I would see the way he treated
his artists, and I remember, did I ever see him
actually negotiate deals or anything? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
You know, you see these people in action, they talk business.
Did you learn any lessons from Albert?

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
What I learned from Albert is is he had a
baritone kind of voice, and he spoke very softly. But
when Albert wanted to make a point, and when Albert
wanted to really get his Albert and this out there,
suddenly the voice would become like that and it would

(01:07:04):
get very strong and powerful. I mean, just to show
you the kind of manager he was. I was pregnant
with live and I was in one of our vehicles,
I think the jeep. It had snowed, and I Todd
was on the road as usual, and I was driving

(01:07:24):
down mean Collo Road with my friend Jean, and suddenly
another car came from the other direction, driving way too
fast and to be in the snow. Thank god, I
was more in my lane, even though it was a
narrow road. But of course we hit and they had

(01:07:46):
their kid in the back of the car with no
seat belt. Nothing but that was before anybody wore seat
belts anyway, And I just remember getting out of the
car and I was pretty shook up. Everybody was, you know,
Jean was especially worried about me because I was pregnant,
but I was okay. Everybody was okay, but the cars
were really fucked up, and I just remember having my

(01:08:09):
wits about me, and I just went to the first house,
which was right there, and I called Albert. Because we
didn't have cell phones and stuff, then I had to
like get on somebody's landline and call him. And I
told him, Albert, I've just had an accident on mean Collo.
He was there so quickly like that, and he had

(01:08:34):
me hustled off and I said, Albert, he goes, just
go home. I'll handle everything. And he had a big
pile of money and he had somebody take me and
my girlfriend off in another car. And that's the last
I ever saw of that accident. Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
So in any event, let's you know, you're Todd at
the time is working a lot. He's putting out a
lot of albums, and he's also producing a lot of
albums successfully. To what degree was he telling you about them,
and did you have input or did he keep that
totally separate from you?

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Oh? No, No, We always talked about his music because see,
I loved it. When he played me the stuff he
was coming up with for Wizard or True Star, everybody
hated it, and they were giving him a lot of shit,
and they were telling him that it was too much
and that it was going over everybody's head and that

(01:09:36):
it was not the right kind of follow up to
something anything. But when he would play me the stuff,
I thought it was incredible. I loved it. So he
wasn't getting any shit from me. I loved utopia. And
when he took me to see that Sphinx and that

(01:09:56):
hangar in Kingston, New York, it was so big it
had to be an an airplane hangar. And he used
to fly off that thing every night, upside down with
a with no harness, just raw. And so I supported it.
Even though it people thought I enabled it. Instead of

(01:10:21):
that I supported it, they thought I enabled it. See
that you people that are making money off of you
always want to have somebody to blame if the money
isn't going to go the way they they they hope
it goes because of a change in direction. And with Todd.
This was an extreme change in direction from what he

(01:10:44):
had been doing previously, you know, as as the Todd
Rungren solo records, and and then suddenly to come back
with a Wizard or True Star and then to form Utopia.
It was it was a lot of pressure, a lot
of pressure for him. He went through a lot, but

(01:11:05):
he was producing big records, so he was making money.
You know, he was producing Grand Funk Railroad, he was
producing Hall and Oates, he was producing records. He produced Fanny.
I remember that was fun. I remember when he produced Fanny.
But you know, he was really in demand as a producer,
so he had the money and the freedom, you know,

(01:11:29):
to have a nice townhouse on Horatio Street, which we had,
and a home up in the Woodstock area.

Speaker 1 (01:11:38):
Did you ever go to the studio Did he discuss
any of the projects when he was recording other people?

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
Yes, I always did, always, and I would sometimes even
fall asleep under the council and you know, I'd had
pillows and blankets. Yeah. Todd had a studio house where
the drums were downstairs, but the control room was upstairs.

(01:12:06):
So when he recorded by himself, he would have to
go down and play the drums and run back upstairs
because he didn't have an engineer there. So at one
point he taught me how to stop and start the
tape machine so that he didn't have to keep running
up there. So there were times when he would, you know,

(01:12:27):
have me do that, that would be my duty. Like
he would do a track and I would have the
headphones on and he would tell me hit the button,
hit the button. So yeah, I mean I was definitely
around for I saw a lot. Absolutely, I saw a lot.
I was around for a lot of conceptual stuff. I

(01:12:50):
was definitely around for a lot of the makeup and
the costumes and some of the crazy stuff Nicky Nichols
came up with. Yeah, I was. I was a part
of a part of it all.

Speaker 1 (01:13:03):
So how did it end?

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
Not? Well, well, I don't even I don't want to
be so general, just from a lack of complete clarity.
I mean, we just didn't really communicate with each other properly.
We were so young, and we were both very unfaithful,
and I think my reasons for being unfaithful were very

(01:13:31):
different from his. But he met somebody that he fell
in love with, and then I and I met somebody
that I fell in love with and it we drifted apart.
And but yet the person that I fell in love
with was just crazy off the rails. It was to
the point where I couldn't handle it. It was too

(01:13:54):
much of the white pro moving and marching powder. It
was just too many drugs, too much, too much, too
much that lifestyle, that Aerosmith lifestyle at that point in history.
I've never seen anything like it. And people say, well,
what about the Rolling Stones, And I'll say, you know,

(01:14:16):
it was very different because I always knew. Notice that
the boys and the Stones they sort of had their
They knew when to stop. Maybe not Keith, but Mick
certainly did. Mick was always very smart about when to
make an exit, about when not to do that next line,
about when not to do that shot. You know, Mick

(01:14:37):
was very always practical. There was no practicality within the
Aerosmith camp at that point. So I was very scared.
And at this point, Todd had really become the father,
the father figure. That's why I called him the Todd Father.
And he took me back. I know he wants to
blame me for that, but.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
But wait, wait, literally, how did he take you back?
You were living in a different place.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Well not really. I hadn't moved out. My stuff was
all still in our houses. I wasn't we weren't separated
yet or anything like that. He basically, you know I
I had lived, went back to Woodstock with him. He

(01:15:28):
we got rid of the house on Horatio Street, and
he pretty much told me. He told me about about Karen,
about Karen Darvin, the girl that was the girl he
had fallen in love with. It was Bruce Springsteen's former girlfriend,
and he had met her in Dallas, and he told

(01:15:49):
me about her, and it just it just became extremely
difficult because it felt to me like, well, if you
had fallen in love with this woman while I was pregnant,
why didn't we pursue any doubts about paternity? There's that

(01:16:14):
word again, before all these grand decisions were made. I
gave him the opportunity when I was seven months pregnant.
I said, I'm very concerned that this is going to
be a decision that you're gonna that's going to become
a problem. I was concerned, and he seemed to want

(01:16:41):
to take on this mammoth responsibility. He nobody ever tried
to fool him or tell him that Live was his baby.
Nobody ever did that that. I don't know how that
rumor got started or why people say that, but nobody
lied to him and said, Todd, you know it's your child.

(01:17:01):
That That's not how it happened. He knew where I
was for two months, he knew I was with Steven.
He knew that. So when I came home scared to
death and he took me back, he knew all of that.
So chronologically it's really impossible for him to have been
the father. Does that make any sense? And what happened

(01:17:25):
was I think whatever reasons he had for wanting to
take that step, I don't know if it was for control.
I don't know if he was really concerned about Live's
well being. I don't know if he still loved me.
There's probably a variety of reasons, and probably a little
bit of all of the above. But as soon as

(01:17:46):
Live was born, it it was obvious this wasn't going
to work, and it was obvious that he loved somebody else,
and it was very very obvious that and he had
He got me an apartment. Patty Smith, of all people,
helped him pick it out because he wanted her guidance,

(01:18:07):
what do you think Bobe would like and what would
be a good apartment to raise a baby in, you know,
and found me an apartment on fifty eighth Street. He
certainly wanted to get me out of that downtown, didn't he.
So there I was on fifty eighth Street suddenly, and
Karen was living with him. I mean, it really did

(01:18:29):
happen that fast, and Live was being raised as his child.
And believe me, Stephen and I made very many feeble
attempts at trying to, you know, fix it or just
get it all down, you know what I mean, to

(01:18:50):
at least confirm paternity, even a simple blood test anything.
You know. He had his blood drawn and I had
my blood drawn. But this is way before fancy DNA tests.
She has my blood type, so there was you know,
we couldn't say, oh, well, this solves the problem. In

(01:19:13):
my eyes, there was no problem. I knew, everybody knew,
and everybody was living in this kind of fantasy. And
I'm not judging, and I'm not saying obviously, everything happens
for a reason. And whatever happened, look how Live turned out.
She's an amazing, self sufficient, beautiful human being. And she

(01:19:35):
is Stephen Tyler's child, but she's also in some ways
Todd's child physically. I don't think you could dispute that
either one of them could possibly be her daddy. And
that's fine. That's her spiritual journey, that's her karmic voyage
with those two people that she loves dearly. They're both

(01:19:59):
her beloved father's that's the way she looks at it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:02):
Okay, so they gave you this apartment, what are you
living on?

Speaker 2 (01:20:07):
Well, of course he was. He was giving me money,
you know he was. He was giving me an allowance,
he was paying the rent, and I picked up a
little modeling again. I started to I did my first
modeling job when when I was six weeks old.

Speaker 1 (01:20:26):
And uh, how long did he how long did he
continue to fit the bill?

Speaker 2 (01:20:32):
Well, if you put the bill that apartment. My my
mother came and cleared me out of that apartment because
she just felt that I was not that I needed
some stability. I mean, my my family was very supportive
and loving. I have a very very loving family. I'm
very lucky in that respect. So we closed down that

(01:20:54):
apartment and I moved up to my family's cottage and Maine.
So odd. What he was paying for was at that
point it was really I didn't have nanny's you know,
I didn't have any big expenses at that point. But

(01:21:14):
he always helped, you know, he was never I have
to say, he was never stingy. He was never mean
about it. You know, he was helpful, he was sweet,
He wanted the best for live.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
Okay, But she gets older by the minute, and it's years.
She's in high school, she's about to graduate from high school.
Is he still helping?

Speaker 2 (01:21:39):
No, not at this point by the time, by the
time she was I'm trying to get the timeline straight here.
The paternity thing became finalized when she was fourteen, So is.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
That the line of demarques He paid before then and
didn't pay after, That's correct, But he did did Steven
pay after?

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
Yes? Yes, And Stephen also paid for her private schooling
for that last year before anything was confirmed. Stephen picked
up that. But yes, no, Todd. For about a year
before everything was public and confirmed, Todd had stopped paying

(01:22:26):
for anything. And then Stephen, Yes, Stephen did pick up
the ball very willingly, as a matter of fact. And
then the court of course ordered him to pay a
certain amount of child support, but Live started making her
own money when she was fifteen, and by the time
she was sixteen seventeen, she was extremely wealthy, and I

(01:22:51):
was putting everything away for her and keeping her safe.
When she graduated, she was a millionaire. Just nobody could
take advantage of her. That's where I came in. I
was her personal pitbull, and I'm very proud of the
job I did, and I'm also I'm very very happy

(01:23:14):
with the way she maneuvered the emotional part of all
of this.

Speaker 1 (01:23:20):
Okay, a rock chick moves to Maine, that's night in
the day, especially then from New York City. What's that
like for you?

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
I started a band, you know, my record came out
that Rick Okasik and Rick Darren's You're Produced. I started
a band called The B Sides, and nineteen eighty I
was doing my first show, and then before I knew it,
I was making a living off plane, you know, enough
to pay my rent and enough, you know, enough to

(01:23:53):
get by. I mean, I wasn't living some extreme life,
but I still had all my connections from the industry.
I still got invited to every wonderful party and still
felt very included in my industry. But I didn't mind
buckling under and really getting to work and do it,

(01:24:14):
and I obviously enjoyed it. You know, I enjoy writing.
I enjoy writing songs. I enjoy performing live. Grew up
with all of that. Some of her greatest memories they're
going to rehearsals with me and going to my gigs
when she was a little thing.

Speaker 1 (01:24:30):
Okay, you've been at it for forty years. Everybody from
our demo is certainly aware of who you are and
that you make music. You have never broken through huge
commercially such that other people are aware of you. You're
going to be seventy. I'm seventy already. Does this disappoint you?

(01:24:51):
How do you metabolize the fact that you didn't break
through on a certain level of success.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
Well, I think that I I have a lot to
bring to the table for that very reason. You know,
success comes in many forms. You can look at success
as being financial or status related, or you can look
at success as being finishing good work, getting good work done,

(01:25:22):
doing good work. Your work is your name, and I
feel that the work I've done has been good work
and I'm proud of it. I've written two books. I
was a New York Times bestseller with my first book,
and I've written probably close to three hundred songs at

(01:25:43):
this point. I've made tons of records, you know that.
And I've made singles. And I do it because I
love it. It's a passion and I have fans. As
long as I can pack a room, I'm okay. I
don't have to see my name at the top of

(01:26:03):
the charts to feel successful. And you know, when I
went to New York for my last book and did
the honor at the National Arts Club, just to be
touted by the New York Times and to have the
people that I've known since I was eighteen in that audience,

(01:26:26):
it made me know that I'm doing good work and
that has given me the greatest pleasure. And I don't
think this journey is over. I really don't. Who knows
what might happen, you know, anything can happen. I am
so open to the possibilities of breaking rules. I mean,

(01:26:47):
speaking of breaking rules, look at Tina Turner. Everybody told
her it was over, and look at the comeback she had.
And the thing that that's important about the message I'm
bringing to the table. It's not the same as like Paulina,
who's like, Okay, I'm hot and I'm almost sixty. You know,

(01:27:10):
deal with it. It's exciting to see somebody have that
kind of confidence. I'm trying to give something different. I mean,
if I could take my clothes off right now and
look as good as Paulina does in a bikini, I might.
I might do that for shits and giggles. But right now,
what I'm enjoying is continuing the chain of good work.

(01:27:34):
And all the projects are that are coming my way.
There's a treatment for a series, there's somebody that wants
to make a documentary of my life. There's somebody that
wants to make a movie of my life. There's so
many things that are in the works right now that
who knows, maybe my music will be reborn a La

(01:27:56):
Sugarman or something in a soundtrack. You know. I just
want to be proud of the work I do and
if someday it gets acknowledged, the heck.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
Okay, so what do you live in on now? Financially?

Speaker 2 (01:28:11):
Well, what do I live on? I have my Social
Security and I'm kidding no. I live on the work
I do, you know, the gigs I play, the performances,
I do the appearances, I make, the autograph sessions, I
do autograph conventions. I have a husband that co earns

(01:28:32):
with me. And the house that I'm in was just
an accumulation of everything I've ever done. It's just everything accumulated.
And I don't really I don't work a nine to
five job, but I consider the hours I put in

(01:28:55):
to writing and creating and doing things like this podcast.
That's my work. That's what I do. And when I
can make money, when I can make good money, I
accept the invitation to make good money. I enjoy it.
I do a little bit of consulting. I know that

(01:29:16):
my knowledge about the industry is one of the things
that's kept me afloat when young people that are entering
this business have parents that might be scared or worried
about their futures or how they're going to handle this.
I am hired as a creative consultant and I can help.

(01:29:39):
And I don't mind signing in das and having to
keep my mouth shut about because a couple of the
people I've worked with have gone on to become extremely famous.
So I'm very proud. I get to be secretly proud,
and just because everybody doesn't know about all the stuff
you do in your life. Doesn't mean you shouldn't be proud.

(01:30:01):
And you know the fact that I can go to
Trader Joe's and buy my own groceries, and you know
that it's a good feeling.

Speaker 1 (01:30:18):
Okay, let's go back a step Rick, Okay, sick. You
become friends, and he's a very close friend. You're talking
the book about, You're inebriated, and he drives you from
Boston to Maine. Ultimately, in retrospect, I'm reading the book
at the time. He is married and has children. He

(01:30:38):
ultimately jumps ship for Paulina.

Speaker 2 (01:30:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
Do you think he was calling you from overseas producing
your records that secretly he wanted to be with you?

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
Well, you know, my mother certainly thought that, and so
did several of my friends. But I think that I
was in denial. If that was his intention, he would
write me beautiful poems too. I have beautiful I mean,

(01:31:12):
I have poems from him that became songs. And there
may have been some unrequated desire there, but he never
pushed himself on me. He never was Maybe he was
waiting to see if I would bite. I don't know,

(01:31:34):
but I never did. I didn't want to screw it up.
Relationships always seemed to screw up, and I mean when
I started to date Rod Stewart, it screwed up. When
we were friends, we had a blast, We would run
around together and have the greatest time, and then as

(01:31:55):
soon as we became lovers, it just ruined our relation
relationship And I still to this day, I think Rod
Stewart is one of the most talented, lovely men I've
ever known. But I wasn't the right girl for him,
and we weren't right for each other. We were good
as mates. That's what we worked as with Rick. I

(01:32:19):
just to have somebody believe in me like that and
not be trying to get in my pants. I wasn't
gonna let that change. For one minute. I was in heaven.
It was like being taken seriously. It was like working
with a director that you admire and he's not interested
in you for anything but the role you're gonna play.

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
Okay. In the book, you make a big point about
identifying and recording the Wild One Forever off the first
Tom Petty album, and you do a great version of that,
and it's now been reissued by the same company that
has your new book, Rebel Soul. So tell me the
story of how you got hooked and you ultimately recorded

(01:33:03):
that track.

Speaker 2 (01:33:05):
Well, I was one of the lucky people that was
at the bottom line for those Tom Petty shows, the
multiple shows that he did. I'll just never forget it
in my life. You know, I've not been able to
meet Bob Dylan a whole lot of times in my life.
Every time I've met him, it's just been in passing, like,

(01:33:28):
you know, Hi Bob, and hi baby. Yeah, I read
about you and Cream, you know, you know whatever, just
small talk. But this was the night where I was
backstaying let's stop there for a second.

Speaker 1 (01:33:41):
Is that a true story? You're just throwing them off.
Would Bob Dylan read Cream?

Speaker 2 (01:33:47):
I don't know if he really did, or if he
just said that to be funny. I mean, you never
know with Bob Dylan.

Speaker 1 (01:33:54):
So he actually said I saw you in Cream, that
means you had to be paying attention somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):
Well, you know, oh, you never know. You just never
know with people like that, they're very mysterious. You just
never know. One of the first letters I got from
Costello cited something that was from Cream that he had
written Rick that he had read. So you know, these guys,

(01:34:24):
they'll surprise you sometimes. You know Dylan, you know when
you find out that he makes iron works and is
one of the best painters on earth, it's shocking when
you see how brilliant he is all around. But the
whole thing with the Tom Petty thing, I'm kidding, I'm

(01:34:44):
losing my train of thought.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
Oh you're perfect. You brought it back. I give you credit.

Speaker 2 (01:34:51):
Well with the Tom Petty thing, it was just being there. Well,
that was the night I was standing and Bob was
sitting on one of the you know how small that
backstage and line was, and you had just that tiny
little area that had a bunch of the equipment boxes
and everything, and Bob was sort of sitting on one

(01:35:12):
and he was gonna watch I think he was going
to watch the band from there. And I remember Grace
Slick was there that night too. Everybody was very curious
about this Tom Petty kid. You know, this this Southern
boy with the best hair and with the draw And
I just remember Bob turning to me and he goes,

(01:35:34):
what am I doing? Do you want to sit here
on my box? And he goes it seems to be
the only seat, and I said, nope, I'm going to
go in the audience. I said I want to see
this from the front, and he said that's the way
to do it. But he didn't go to the front.

(01:35:54):
But I just remember the exchange him going, do you
want my box? He was gonna give me his seat,
which was very very sweet and very gallant. But that's it.
My exchange is with Bob Doll.

Speaker 1 (01:36:08):
But we're talking about the wild One forever.

Speaker 2 (01:36:10):
Yeah. So anyway, I saw Tom Petty perform that night,
and when I saw him do that song, it just
it resonated with me. It was it just grabbed me.
It grabbed me. And I don't even know if it
was on a record yet. I'm not sure because I

(01:36:32):
can't remember the order of the records. I just remember
what year this was.

Speaker 1 (01:36:37):
That was nineteen seventy seven in the record, it was the.

Speaker 2 (01:36:40):
Fall of seventy seven at the bottom line, right, Yeah,
because Live was just a little baby, she was just
a couple of months old and he met her. But
it was when I actually got the records and I
started listening to Tom Petty's music that it rest It

(01:37:01):
hit me the way the Everly Brothers. Did it hit
me in the way that that, you know, the first
time I heard that song, I will follow him, you.

Speaker 1 (01:37:12):
Know, followel little Peggy March.

Speaker 2 (01:37:16):
Yeah, there you go. And there just wasn't a bad
song in the Tom Petty repertoire. There wasn't a dud
in the bunch. And he just became my favorite songwriter.
And I chose the Wild One because I could sing

(01:37:36):
the shit out of it. You know. I did a
good job with it. And when I sang it for Rick,
he cried, I mean not okay, sick, but Darrenger. Darrenger goes, okay, well,
show me sing it for me. So I did an
acappella version of it for him, and I made him
actually get a little misty. He goes, okay, we'll record it.

(01:37:57):
So I mean that's how I sell everything because I'm
not a real musician. I can play harmonica. I'm a
good harmonica player. If you hand me a bass, I
can play a little bass. I can tink her on
a piano a little bit. But my mic stand is
my my my my piece. That is my instrument. And

(01:38:20):
you know, the way I get my songs across is
a cappella. I just Okay, the way I get a
riff across. If I want to get a riff across
to my husband when we're writing a song, I'll just
you know, I'll grunt it, or I'll snap it, or
I'll sing it. You know, just do the melody.

Speaker 1 (01:38:42):
Okay, you're talking. You're talking about your husband. How did
you meet him? How did you decide to get married
for the first time? My understanding and why is it lasted?

Speaker 2 (01:38:54):
Well, you know, I met Jim. It's funny because we
both had the same friends. We should have met years before.
But you know, the thing about what I keep saying
is that you meet the people you're supposed to. When
you're supposed to, you have the experiences, the life lessons,
the tragedies, all the stuff that goes along with all

(01:39:14):
the bullshit. We were both He was in a band
called Dost Dommen, but they had broken up, and he
was quite the cult figure and very respected within the
musical community. Dust Doman Thurston Moore Sst. Subpop, you know,
they they were quite the darlings of that sonic youth

(01:39:36):
smashing pumpkins, you know, that whole crowd, and he was
he was in a new band, and we were both
playing the Christmas party. Both of our bands were playing
the same Christmas party at the Continental, and we sort
of got a look at each other that night, and
it's and I thought to myself, how come I've never

(01:39:59):
seen him before? I mean, I noticed him, So I
told Hilly Crystal. Hilly Crystal was like my father at
the time, and I remember going down to Sebe's and
sitting with him at the desk and telling him all
about this guy that I had seen across the room
and I felt something for him, and it was so weird,
And how come I've never met him before. He's known

(01:40:19):
Jesse Mallin since he was fifteen. He went to NYU
with Rick Rubin. He grew up in Rutherford, New Jersey.
How Come I've not met this guy? And Hilly was like, oh,
I don't know. He's pretty fabulous. He's one of the
nicest guys I've ever met. Hilly knew exactly who he was,

(01:40:39):
So I'm home. I lived on Mercer Street at that point.
I lived on Mercer and Broadway, three hundred Mercer that
building and my phone rang and it was Hilly calling
me from CBGB's and Hilly goes, Boebe get down here.
I literally had five minutes from Sebe's. I go, why
what's going on? He goes, you know that guy, you like,

(01:41:02):
the one that you talked my head off about. He's
here right now and he's gonna be going on in
about forty five minutes. He's in the club as Hilly,
and so I think, So, of course, I just I
was already in my pajamas, and I threw on some
jeans and a T shirt and a pink puffer coat,

(01:41:25):
and I went down there and I just you know,
we met and we sort of we sort of clicked,
you know, and he went off that night after his gig,
and I thought, I'm niable I ever see him again,
you know, I didn't know, And and then it was

(01:41:48):
shortly after that that I went. It was really funny.
I wasn't gonna go there, you know, I was going
to stop into the Continental because I wanted to talk
to Trigger about gig. So I went into the Continental
and I look up and they're literally on stage. This
boy now my husband man. And so I invited him

(01:42:15):
over to my apartment because I literally lived across the
you know Continental, CBS my apartment. I invited him over,
and it's like he says, we were never a part
a day after that. We didn't consummate our relationship right away.
It wasn't like we jumped into each other's arms. We courted,
we did all the old fashioned stuff. We dated, We courted,

(01:42:39):
and we fell in love, and he asked me to
marry him on one knee in Atlantic City. We went
to Atlantic City to get away for the weekend. He
asked me to marry him, and then, you know, it
was nine to eleven sort of changed people's headspace about
New York. And so we moved to Maine because my

(01:43:01):
family is up there now, including my mother, my mother
who raised me in Virginia in North Carolina. So we
spent a few years there, and my book came out
in two thousand and one, right before nine to eleven,

(01:43:22):
which was terrible because the whole book tour I was
doing and everything got canceled, of course, because understandably it
was a horrible situation nine to eleven, as we can
all remember. And so we got married in two thousand
and two after being engaged for about a year, and

(01:43:46):
we've been together ever since. I've never been happier. I
have never felt more safe. Is that a bad word
to use? We said, but I feel feels safe. And
my husband has an amazing work ethic. He has a
great job. You know, he works hard, and we both

(01:44:08):
we both were both just hard workers. You know, I
I everything. I take everything seriously, even cleaning my house.
You know, I take that very seriously, my floors. I
like cleaning my own house. I like cleaning my floors.
I like cleaning my bathroom. I like cooking beautiful meals.

(01:44:29):
I like being there for my friends. You know. I
love doing the creative consultant work because I can do
it sort of undercover. Nobody has to even know that
I'm doing it.

Speaker 1 (01:44:42):
Okay, I'm talking to you now. You were a model.
You don't appear to have any plastic surgery. How do
you feel about being an older woman in society.

Speaker 2 (01:44:57):
Well, I've had a little bit of plastic surgery. I'm
not going to say that I've never gotten any botox
or I didn't get a tweak here and there. But
I did all that stuff a long time ago. I
did that when I was in my forties because that
was when I still felt insecure. You know, about who
I was. I don't think I really came into me

(01:45:20):
until I was in my fifties and I just started
to not care anymore. So if I start to droop
a little or I'm okay with that, it doesn't scare me.
It might have scared me when I was younger, but
I'm not sure for what kind of reasons. Because I

(01:45:40):
feel like whatever changes we go through physically, we're all
in the same boat. We're all just walking each other home.
Everybody's going to die, and everybody's going to get a
droopy face, you know. I mean, it's just going to
happen to all of us. So it's what we do
with the time that we've got. And right now, with
the time that I've got, I want to let not

(01:46:03):
just women but men. I want all humans, people that
identify as both men and women, people that identify as nothing.
I want everybody to know that none of that should
stop you from doing what you do, none of it
whatever brings you happiness. I sound like a meme, I
sound like one of those Facebook affirmations or something, but

(01:46:29):
it's true. I feel like I'm much more beneficial to
women now at my age because I can actually say,
you know, I'm not going to say that was a
bad choice or a good choice. You know, people go, oh,
don't you wish you had married this guy? And don't
you wish you had done this? And don't you wish

(01:46:50):
you had had more children? And well, of course sometimes
I think about stuff like that, but I don't dwell
on it. I've learned how to discipline myself. And as
Tina would say, not your renguaekio, no, your ranguae kill.
That helps. Chanting really helps you to focus. You know,

(01:47:11):
you don't even understand why, but I have to focus
on bringing as much positivity, not just to myself but
to others. That's important to me.

Speaker 1 (01:47:24):
Okay, let's go back to your more renegade years when
you weren't married. A lot of rock stars you see
them with women, and the women are perceived as eye candy.
I've certainly been around somewhere that has been the case.
Needless to say, you are a very verbal woman, so

(01:47:46):
and a lot of these you know, unfortunately a lot
of these rock stars speak through their music. They don't
have much to say, but that certainly is not all
of them. So you mention all of these iconic people,
did they pursue you or were you constantly putting yourself
out there?

Speaker 2 (01:48:04):
You know, I don't know how to put I was
living the life that I was living. I was living
the life of the girlfriend of a rock star. So
of course you get invited to all the parties. I mean,
everything that happens, you get invitations. I mean Todd and
I used to get invitations delivered to our doors by courier.

(01:48:24):
And Liz Dringer was my best friend, and she was
married to Rick Derringer, and she was a journalist and
she was really plugged into the scene. Ron Delsner was
our best friend, and whenever there was a great show,
Ron would call and say, you're on the list, meet
me backstage at eight fifteen or whatever. You know, we

(01:48:46):
were living the lifestyle, and through living the lifestyle, a
lot of relationships were formed and made. It's really it's
not something you can plan, because.

Speaker 1 (01:49:02):
It's certainly not something to planned. You were in the area,
But you have recited a litany and I don't mean
that in any negative sense of household names. Right, So
did they hear you were available or did you run
into them and say, hey, I would be pursued.

Speaker 2 (01:49:21):
I mean of course Mick Jagger. He pursues when when
Mick wants to date you, he he brings out all
the bells and whistles. It's it's it's very charming, and
he's notoriously Mick. And you know, I dated Jack Nicholson,
So I've been with some of the great flirts, the

(01:49:41):
great Don Juan's of history. I've done that, and I
don't regret it for one minute. You know, dating Jack
was never I knew it was never going to be serious.
I knew that, but I enjoyed his company so much.
We had so much much fun together. We would just

(01:50:02):
drive around, you know, he loved to He would show
up when I would be in la He had this
white Volkswagen that he had for his entire life. It
was and I wouldn't say it was beat up, but
it was an old Volkswagen that he would drive around
Hollywood when he wanted to be undercover. And one time
I was staying in Laurel Canyon with my girlfriend Pam,

(01:50:24):
and his house was over on Mallholland, and he showed
up at Pam's in the white Volkswagen. And I'll just
never forget him getting out of the car. With a
white Volkswagen with some flowers that he had picked and
wild of course, and just being I introduced him to

(01:50:45):
Pam and he was just so polite. He used to
call my mother. He used to talk to my mother
on the phone. And Warren Beattie, who I never even met.
I mean when I say never met, I never met
him under the sheets, is what I'm trying. I never
dated Warren Beatty, even though he always gets listed as
one of my boyfriends. But I think the reason why

(01:51:07):
is because he and Jack were such good friends, and
I hung out with both of them quite a bit
and a lot of times over at Warren's house, and
Warren was an amazing piano player. I remember the very
first time I met Warren Beatty. Jack brought me over
there and when we walked into the room, Warren was
sitting behind the piano playing unbelievably. I was shocked. Who

(01:51:33):
would have ever known? But he was an exquisite piano player.
But no, I didn't date him, and I just I
enjoy the company of like minded people.

Speaker 1 (01:51:46):
I I'm not just ask you then, because a lot
of these people I don't mean specifically, but rock stars,
movie stars are very narcissistic. Oh god, did they listen
to you? Did they want to engage in you? Did
they want to hear what you had to say?

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
Of course, yes, very much so. As a matter of fact, Jack,
when I was, you know, going through the big transition
in eighty eighty one where I was forming a band
and living in my family's cottage on the family compound,
and when I was trying to get the band together,

(01:52:21):
he would listen to all my demos and it was
constantly supportive and really really, really nice. And he even
offered one time to buy me a house. He said,
let me help you buy a house. He was like,
let me give you some stability, and he goes, I'd
like to help you, and I was like, no, I'm
not going to let you do that. I mean, I

(01:52:42):
look back on it now and thinking was I crazy?

Speaker 1 (01:52:45):
But you know it just okay at this point in time,
to what degree do you interact with all these people
famous and not known from your earlier days?

Speaker 2 (01:52:59):
Oh my god, Well, you know, the only time I
see people like Mick and stuff is when they play
I've gone to both of the times the Stones have
played Nashville, and but no, we're all living very different
lives now. Bowie, of course, you know, passed away. So
but he came to my daughter's first wedding, and and

(01:53:20):
you know, we socialized. We would see each other at
various events. But half the people that I used to
hang out with are no longer alive. Most of them
are gone. And and and you know a lot of people.
But you know, I see my daughter's father a lot.

(01:53:40):
He brought me up on stage when he played FONTANELLEH gosh,
I'll have to send you a little iPhone video of this.
I think you'll get a kick.

Speaker 1 (01:53:51):
Out of it.

Speaker 2 (01:53:52):
We did train kept a rolling together in front of
thirty thousand people. So, you know, I run into people.
I live in Nashville, so of course I you know,
I run into people and recording studios now and then
I see people here and there, Robert Plant over at
Sound Emporium or but you know, everybody is always So

(01:54:13):
I see Jules holland you know, we're still very good friends.
And I talked to Clive Arrowsmith quite a bit. And
I you know, I've kept most of my friendships. The
only estrangements that I have, which is very strange, are
with two of the most important relationships of my life,

(01:54:34):
and I guess those were the guys I hurt the hardest.
I are. That's Todd and Elvis and.

Speaker 1 (01:54:46):
Okay, let's switch gears very briefly give me the rap
on the aliens.

Speaker 2 (01:54:55):
Well as I just believe that. Oh it's if I'm
going to put it into synopsis format, I would have
to say that I believe that we live in a
multi dimensional universe, that we are present in a three
dimensional world, but I feel like we're getting ready to
move into a five D existence on our planet. I

(01:55:16):
don't think we have a choice because if we don't
stop what's happening now, the planet is not going to
exist anymore and we're all going to be dead. So
we have to move into a five D consciousness. And
what is D five D's two above three. It's a
deeper it's a deeper understanding that these are our bodies,

(01:55:42):
but our souls and our consciousness are much bigger, and
that I believe we do this many times. I believe
that I believe that the soul travels many lifetimes and
inhabits many bodies, and goes through many experiences. As far

(01:56:05):
as aliens go, I believe in the multi dimensional aspect
of our existence. I believe that people can come in
and out. I believe that there's more sophisticated life forms
and consciousness. So I'm just trying to keep myself elevated

(01:56:27):
and open to the metaphysical aspect of the creation of
our planet, the creation of the universe. You know, you
can drive yourself nuts going where did it start? Where
did it the Big bang? Okay, who did the Big bang?
Who invented that? And how do you know that the

(01:56:48):
universe is expanding? Okay? We know that? Why? I mean,
you can go crazy asking yourself all these questions. So
the way I've decided that I can internalize it and
understand it the best is to just think there is
no beginning, there is no end, there is no time.
There's dimensions, and there's textures, and there's layers, and I

(01:57:14):
believe that we can go in and out.

Speaker 1 (01:57:16):
Okay, but have you you haven't seen little green men or.

Speaker 2 (01:57:24):
They? Well, the ones I met were gray?

Speaker 1 (01:57:27):
Okay, how you met them?

Speaker 2 (01:57:29):
Where?

Speaker 1 (01:57:29):
And when?

Speaker 2 (01:57:30):
Well, it's it's really this is this would take up
an entire one of them. Okay, just a couple, all right.
When I I've been having experiences with orbs or light
since I was very young. One of my earliest memories
in my crib is of these bouncing lights around my

(01:57:54):
crib and I could sort of they would come when
I wanted them to come, and they would. I thought
they were playing with me. I thought they were toys.
And I would tell my mother that I loved the
lights that would come to see me, that the lights
were fun. Thanks, you know, Mommy, I love those lights,
you know. And there were and of course you didn't

(01:58:16):
give me any lights maybe a night light. But I've
always felt connected to something. I've had some experiences that
cannot be explained at all. Like one time I was
in a car with my girlfriend, a Volkswagen. We were
high out of our brains. I'm not proud of this moment.

(01:58:38):
I'm not bragging or anything. We were driving, I was seventeen,
sixteen or seventeen, and we're driving along. This is in Jacksonville,
North Carolina, when my father was stepfather was stationed at
Camp La June, and I was getting ready to go
into the next lane. I was being frivolous and free,

(01:59:01):
and literally a voice and I am not exaggerating, said
don't go left. Very clearly and very loudly. And when
I turned my head like this, there was a giant
semitruck coming And if I had gone like that, I

(01:59:22):
would have been pulverized.

Speaker 1 (01:59:24):
Well, you are here, and you're a fountain of amazing stories.
I mean, I don't know anybody who has as many
stories as you, with so many famous people. And you
have a new book, Rebel Soul, which is photographs of
you throughout your life, but also essays of your belief

(01:59:47):
We'll have one more topic and then we'll go. You
make a big point in the book that you're not
a groupie. Why focus on that so much?

Speaker 2 (01:59:57):
The word groupie? It's just gotten soiled, you know, like
there's certain words. I know they're just words, But you
don't want to be defined as somebody that when you're
when you're an entertainer yourself, when you when you go
on stage and you make people happy and you sing

(02:00:18):
for people, you don't want to be known as just
the person that that Google goggles over the other people.
I just think that the word is misunderstood. I think
that it's been tainted to the point where it's become
sexist in a lot of ways. Because I don't see
it used to define men ever, and I I just

(02:00:42):
at this point in my life. I've been married forever,
and I consider myself a nurturer and a healer and
a person that loves to give. I'm just not in
a comfortable place where i can deal with being tagged labeled.
I don't want to be like a cow with a

(02:01:03):
tag on my ear. Oh that girl is a groupie,
you know. I want to be known for many things.
I'd rather be known as a historian and a storyteller
and the original Alice in Wonderland who fell through the
looking glass. I'd rather be known as a person that

(02:01:23):
lived an extraordinary life, and I hope that I would
love my life. I would love to see a series,
because there are too many stories just for one documentary
or for one movie. I know that there's ideas that
people are having right now to do a documentary or
a movie. But I see a series, I see many episodes.

(02:01:47):
I don't see how you The Aliens, for instance, would
take up one episode. Savador Dolly would take up an episode.
Tom Petty would take up an episode. Just the experiences
with these brilliant human beings that I've brushed with, obviously,

(02:02:07):
you know, I touched their lives too. We've all touched
each other's lives, and I want people to realize that
I'm not a service dog. If I was a service dog,
I would proudly say I'm a service dog. I am
here to service these beautiful rock stars. I'm not a
service dog. I am a human being that has had

(02:02:29):
an extraordinary experience and extraordinary experiences and I don't even
have the complete formula, nor do I have the complete
explanation as to why. And hopefully I'll live long enough
that some of these wonderful experiences can be shared, and

(02:02:50):
not just in a little, condensed, tiny thing. I think
there's so much to life, you know. I think people
we all know each other for a reason, we all
connect for a reason. There must have been a reason.
There has to be the other way around. It's not

(02:03:11):
just them being in my life. I was in their
life too, and you're in.

Speaker 1 (02:03:17):
The life of many people right now as a result
of doing this. Maybe I want to thank you so
much for taking the time to share your life and
thoughts with my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:03:28):
Oh my god, I could do another hour with you.
You're just You're just interesting. I have to be honest,
I am a fan. My husband religiously reads your newsletter.

Speaker 1 (02:03:41):
I just want to let you know that, and I'm
glad you did.

Speaker 2 (02:03:45):
I like that well, Tick wn Gate, you know, he's
always been a champion of mine. He wanted to sign
me way before anybody and eighty one. I should have
gone with the Wynn Gate. He's still my friend to
this stay. But you know he he said that he

(02:04:06):
was going to ask you, if you know, if I
could be on your show, and I'm so glad that
he did. I'm grateful. See what I mean, how we
all know each other and how it all cross pollinates.
See to me, Dick Wingate and my old editor at
Saint Martin's like Elizabeth Byer, those are my rock stars.
Those are the people that I'm indebted to and that

(02:04:29):
I love. Danny Fields, these are my rock stars. These
are the people that I will love and cherish till
the day I die, because they're the people that believed
in me and gave me chances in life, chances to
do things myself. And there's nothing better than taking over

(02:04:50):
a room. I love to be in front of an
audience with a microphone. I don't even need instruments. I
don't need anything. I'll sing the whole thing without one
drop of an instrument. It brings me so much joy.
But anyway, I'm thrilled and honored. It's an honor to
be with you, mister Bob.

Speaker 1 (02:05:12):
I think you and I'm glad I had the chance
to talk to you. In any event, till next time.
This is Bob left Sis

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Bob Lefsetz

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