Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (11 page)

've always been drawn to imaginative, uncommonly bright women. As far back as I can recall, I've counted on them to encourage and embolden me to be creatively fearless. From my dear mama to Mary Magdalen to Gail Zappa, the feisty dolls I admire have blessed me with their unique perspective and tilted take on life. So, not surprisingly, all three of my best girlfriends are brimming with inspiration and have been writing their own books. Iva Turner has written an extremely funny and erotic novel entitled Sex Season, with salacious sequels to follow. The beauteous Catherine James has recently completed her memoir, and Patti D'Arbanville is hard at work on her outrageous tellsome autobiography.

Years before I met my wild Gemini pals, Patti and Catherine, they had frolicked together on the Greenwich Village streets in their early teens. Catherine left a nightmare behind in Hollywood and traveled three thousand miles following a dream. Patti was a frisky little piece of work, pretty much unsupervised by her bohemian parents, and already familiar with trouble.

I stand in awe of Patti D'Arbanville's cheeky audacity, always hoping to glean a few pointers. Here's an event that reveals her nature perfectly: she had picked me up from my plastic surgeon's office in Westwood, where I had undergone a horrific chemical peel, hoping to erase some of the teen-angst acne scars that had bothered me since high school. I was a drowsy, lolling goofpot, heavily swaddled, with raw pink spots gleaming between my Vaselined bandages. We were stopped at a red light when a couple of creepy dudes in the car next to us started pointing at me and blatantly snickering, close to guffawing, actually, at my obvious medical ordeal. Even in my blotto condition, I was aware of Patti's instant response to their rudeness. Enraged, she burst out of the car, marched over to them, her blonde ponytail flying, and began pounding on their windshield, shouting the consummate obscenities required to put the insensitive schlubs in their place. They quickly rolled up their windows, eyes popping with terror. Patti is definitely somebody you want on your side. She'll always go the extra few thousand miles.

I had heard tales about Patti for a couple of decades before we met. One of the best flower-child albums from the 1970s was Cat Stevens's poetic, genteel Mona Bone Jakon, featuring the mournful love song "Lady D'Arbanville." It was all about a lass with lips that felt like winter and a heart that seemed oh so silent to the troubled troubadour. I figured she must have broken Cat's heart to pieces, which of course intrigued me no end.

It was the summer of 1984 when Melanie Griffith called to invite me to a big beachy birthday bash for her then-hubby, Steven Bauer. I was especially curious, because my once-adored boyfriend and Melanie's first husband, Don Johnson, was bringing the girl who had tamed him enough to turn him into the daddy of a baby boy-the beguiling Patti D'Arbanville.

Here's a snippet about our first meeting from my second book, Take Another Little Piece of My Heart:

There they were, D.J. and My Lady D'Arbanville looking way too good with her yards and yards of wavy blonde hair. Thumpy-hearted, I started through the crowd, and when Donnie spotted me, he grandly stood up and, laughing, opened his arms for me to run into. He told me how gorgeous I looked and introduced me to Patti, who sort of snarled at me like a taunted, ticked-off cat. Oops. After attempting some trivia talk with the two of them-with Patti glaring at me as if I was about to unzip Donnie's pants-I excused myself to find Michael, hoping that a glimpse of my real live husband would make Patti retract her claws.... I hung onto Michael, making sure to gaze adoringly, and I could feel Patti finally relax and start to soften. I wasn't a threat after all.... A new friend! Meeting a new girl and hitting it off is almost as thrilling as falling in love. In some ways it's even more rewarding because romantic passion and honey-devotion can be back-breaking, feverish work, whereas female kinship is a constant, consistent, uplifting experience you can always count on.

Two decades later, I still rely on Patti for consistently loyal, exhilarating kinship. We've certainly enjoyed our shared bouts of waywardness, and she has dreamed up the titles for three of my four books, including this one. I believe I have laughed with abandon harder and longer with Patti than with anybody else on the planet. She is so willing to throw her head back and roar, open her heart to the world and expect miracles in return.

Patti's dear mama drank and her father was a bartender, so she grew up without much parental guidance. At fourteen, she had already driven cross-country with her girlfriends in a five-cylinder Mustang, and she says the first time she heard the phrase "wild child," it was being spoken about her. Patti has been working as an actress since her early twenties. I remember enjoying her fetching portrayal of a naughty nymphet in the dreamy French romp, Bilitis, and just last year, she courageously appeared naked in The Sopranos, crawling across the room on all fours before getting assassinated by TV's favorite mob. She had a ball working with our old friend Bruce Willis in his latest film, Perfect Stranger, but insists that raising her three teenagers is by far her most important gig.

Even though she's penning her own memoir, I persuaded her to share her Cat Stevens saga one afternoon while her offspring were safely ensconced at school.

"I was in London, modeling, and went to Sir William Brown's country house one beautiful, sunny Saturday," Patti begins wistfully. "Stevie Winwood was there, Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jimmy Page. Everywhere you looked, there was an amazing musician. I used to be painfully shy, which should probably come as a huge surprise to you. I eventually overcame it because it was really getting in my way. But to this day, the only person I've ever been tongue-tied around was Jimmy Page. He was the most gorgeous man I've ever seen in my life. He must have thought I didn't like him, but the words just wouldn't come. Jimmy Page was like a painting; therefore, I was unable to say a word."

There was a less daunting fellow at the country house that day. "Across the room I saw this wan, thin, dark guy, smoking a cigarette. We just stared at each other. Then I went over and asked him for a cigarette. He told me he had just gotten out of the hospital with tuberculosis. I said, `And you're smoking?' He told me just as his hit record was peaking, he started coughing up blood. He talked about his parents-his mother was Swedish and his father was Greek. I had no idea who he was."

Patti had been dating singer Barry Ryan, who was in a group with his twin brother, Paul, who just happened to be best pals with Cat Stevens. "I walked in one evening with Barry, and there was the dark guy from the party, playing guitar with Paul-and he smiled. He started coming over more and more, and there was flirting going on every time, but Barry was absolutely clueless. Then one day, a whole group of us went to an amusement park. I'm afraid of heights, and there was this ride with two buckets that went up and down and 'round and 'round at the top. I had never even been on a roller coaster. Nobody would go on with Stephen (his friends never called him Cat), and when he said, `Who's going on with me?' I said, `I'll do it.' It felt like I was going to the chair. The bucket started swinging and I held on to him-I wouldn't let go. He held me tight and it was the first time since we'd been eyeing each other that we finally got to be alone together. It was extraordinary, and by the time the ride was over, I was totally in love with him and he was in love with me."

The would-be sweethearts didn't know how to break the news to the twins, so Stephen kept coming to the house to play guitar with Paul, and one day, Patti and Stephen found themselves alone. "He said, `Let's get out of here,' and we went to Hampstead Heath and spent the whole afternoon together. We rolled down hills, kissing in the grass; it was such a beautiful summer day in London, simply gorgeous. We went back to his flat, which overlooked his father's Greek restaurant. His bedroom was painted all red, and the only thing in it was a bed and a piano. His father had a thick Greek accent and his mother had a thick Swedish accent, really bizarre. So Stephen and I were in bed together, trying to figure out uh-oh, now what are we going to do? I wasn't going back to Barry's, and Stephen's best friend Paul was Barry's twin brother. So I finally said, `I guess we're gonna have to tell them.' I called Barry and said, `I can't see you anymore, I met someone else.' He was heartbroken and wanted to know who it was. I just said, `You don't know him.'

Patti kept her own flat, but spent most of her time in Stephen's small red bedroom. Of course, I have to ask if he was good in the sack. "He was terrific. He was put together very well. A little thin, but back then I liked them thinner than I do now. I just liked everything about him. He was very into it, and we stayed together for quite awhile. Somebody told him he looked like a cat once, and he used it instead of Stephen Demetre Georgiou. It was very clever because that's how he'd know if someone really knew him. He'd get phone calls-'Is Cat there?' `Yeah, he is, but no, OK?' He was easy to talk to, compassionate, and very passionate. He played music for me all the time. We'd be in bed and all of a sudden he'd have to get up and write lyrics down. I'd be laying there and hear the first couple of notes, like the beginning of `Maybe You're Right,' or `Wild World,' the songs he wrote for me. He had a guitar, but he always wrote on the piano. We watched the first moon landing together. It was close to his twenty-first birthday, July 21, 1969, and we were lying in bed watching men walk on the moon."