Bonus Episode: Warhol Superstar Cherry Vanilla Opens Up About Her Friendship with David Bowie and Helping Launch Ziggy Stardust

Published Feb 17, 2021, 5:01 AM

Ziggy Stardust wouldn’t have been the same without the help of David Bowie’s new friends from the cast of Andy Warhol’s play, ‘Pork.’ The groundbreaking avant garde theatrical production shocked audiences by taking aim at pretty much every social taboo you could imagine — and maybe a few you can't. David loved it, but he loved the cast even more. He was entranced by their bold style, an unmissable blend of gritty New York street and gaudy old Hollywood glamor. They, in turn, appreciated David's own brand of artistic fearlessness. In short, they were kindred spirts. 

The ‘Pork’ crowd would have a marked effect on David's life and career, changing his relationship to performance and inspiring him to new creative heights. They also had a hand in launching him into the pop stratosphere. David's manager, Tony Defries, tapped the Warholites to head up the New York office of his management company, MainMan. Though few had any actual business experience, they made it work. 

In the latest bonus episode of 'Off the Record,' Jordan spoke to genuine Warhol superstar and alternative arts scene legend, Ms. Cherry Vanilla. After starring in the London production of ‘Pork,’ she was hired to work at MainMan as Bowie's public relations manager. Unlike most of her Warhol compatriots, she actually had a substantial professional background, having worked in the real-life ‘Mad Men’ world of advertising in the mid-'60s. The experience would come in handy when hyping David to the world. It was she who crafted some of the enduring myths and tall tales that surround his legend to this day. For a glorious stretch in the early '70s, she and David were friends, lovers and artistic comrades. 

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Off the Record is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of Off the Record. My name's Jordan Runtuck. Thanks so much for listening. Our latest chapter concerns the rise of Ziggy Stardust, Bowie's breakthrough persona that would become arguably his most enduring artistic legacy. The androgynous alien poet Messiah took inspiration from various elements of David's past interests and present obsessions, ranging from pulpy fifty sci fi TV shows to rock and roll burnouts, a cult American country act, Eastern philosophies, and an overall interest in show business artifice. Ziggy was, as David would later say, his grand kitch painting. David developed the concept throughout much of nine, but it's fair to say that Ziggy Stardust would have turned out quite different without the involvement of some new friends he met that August. They were an unabashedly outrageous gang of actors and performers from Andy Warhol's fact recene in downtown Manhattan. They traveled to England to perform Warhol's extremely off Broadway play Pork, The groundbreaking avant garde productions shocked audiences by taking aim at pretty much every social taboo you could imagine, and maybe a few they can. It was innovative, it was funny, and it was brave. David loved it, and he loved the cast even more. He was entranced by their bold attitude and style, an unmissable blend of gritty New York Street and gaudy old Hollywood clamor. They appreciated david Zone artistic fearlessness and deep interest in theatrical production, dating back to his days studying mime under Lindsay Kemp. In short, they were kindred spirits. The Port crowd would have a marked effect on David's life and career, changing his relationship to performance and inspiring him to new creative heights. They also had a hand in launching him into the pop stratosphere. David's manager, Tony de Freeze, tapped the Warhol Lights to head up the New York office of his management company MainMan. Though if you had any actual business experience, they improvised. Hey, they were performers after all. I'm so thrilled to talk to a genuine Warhol superstar and legend of the alternative art scene. Ms Cherry Vanilla. A list of her accomplishments is practically a podcast series in itself. I highly encourage you to check out her two thousand ten memoir Lick Me. She's a DJ, an actress, an activist, a poet, and a punk rock pioneer whose first backing band, Lady, revolved into the Police. After starring in the London production of Pork, she was hired to work at Maineman as Bowie's public relations manager. Unlike most of her Warhol compatriots, she actually had a substantial professional background, having worked in the real life Madman world of advertising in the mid sixties. The experience would come in handy when promoting David to the world. It was she who crafted some of the tall tales that surround his legend to this day. For a glorious stretch in the early seventies, she and David were friends, lovers, and artistic comrades. I'm so excited to share her story of how she helped launch the Starman into orbit. I was trying to write an introduction for you, and I didn't know where to begin. I mean DJ Warhol, superstar Bowie, publicist, rock singer, author, artist, I mean I didn't know where to start. You know, Um, I really sometimes I mean I've med hung out with, had relationships with, you know, mental or physical with you know, iconic artists, you know Van Gillis and um oh God, going all the way back in my life to you know Donnamici when I was a child, and Joel Schumacher filmmaker and a artist. And but you know, the two that have become so iconic are Bowie and Warhol. And I can't believe how iconic they've become. They are more than just you know, like the greatest artist of our generation. But they've achieved this uh stature of changing society in a way and giving lots of odd ball kids and artists a whole new outlook on life. They've really reached the status. And I can't believe I had. You know, this intimacy was each of them, you know, with Bowie both mental and physical, and with Warhol just kind of mental and you know, really mental in both ways. But um you know, I'm the garbage man's daughter, you know what I mean. And I think the value of my life now that I'm seventy seven and I can like really start looking back on it is the intimacy I achieved with so many of these men. And I'm thinking how because I gave up sex at forty and that changed my relationship with men. But I think women would love most women would love to have mental relationships with men, and I think a lot of men, I don't know. It's not as offered to women as much as sexual intimacy, you know what I mean. And I think that's the whole thing with the whole groupie ear a thing like what was offered to you in the short time you ever got to encounter these people. They were going to be in town for twenty four hours or something, and that could be it. So what was offered was sexual intimacy, And so I think as a groupie, you just said, okay, I'll take it, because then there'll be that many more hours I'll be there to try to have some mental intimacy with him, which was so much more valuable, which is what you wanted so much more. And then of course creative intimacy with other artists. And in my case, I don't know, it seemed to be men in a way. I don't know why. That was a couple of women here and there who I worked with or whatever. But I look back at it now and I think that's what I was so lucky to have, was that kind of and I still have it. And as I said, once I gave up sex, I started to have it even more because when you're not putting out a sexual vibe, you're not scaring men either, you know what I mean, especially if you're putting one out in your seventies. God God knows. But so, yeah, it's been it's been an interesting trip. And I'm looking back at it, like you know these days and saying, well, you know, what was my life worth? And and there are some people trying to make a movie of my life, so they're always asking me those questions, you know, and why you and blah blah blah. So I'm always thinking about it for them anyway. Yeah, I wouldn't trade it with anybody, really, I don't think so. Now I was rereading your book and the path of your life is just so incredible. Take it back to the very beginning. How did this all start for you? Growing up as a little Irish Catholic girl in Queens to Madison Avenue and getting involved with the theater of the Ridiculous and getting cast in pork. Tell me how it all began for you. Well, the Copacabana had a big influence on me, because otherwise I wouldn't have known the life outside of Queens that I knew my father working for the sanitation department. But because my mother was a telephone operator where the copa was, um, I got to see like glussy, glamorous nightlife and incredible entertainers. When I was, you know, six seven years old, my father started, you know, letting me watch the shows and everything, and that gave me another vision, like a dream life. And I couldn't even really say it to my family. Couldn't. In my family, Irish Catholic, working class, we nobody called themselves an artist, you know. You just didn't say, learn how to type, forget about them, or get married, you know. So I had to kind of keep it to myself in a way. Although I took dance lessons and was in all the plays in school and all that kind of stuff. But when I graduated high school, I was seventeen. It was nineteen sixty one. My parents didn't have the money to sent me to college. I certainly wasn't a scholarship winner, and so and it was assumed, you know, you're just gonna get married, will be a secretary anyway, so just get out there and work. Advertising was still like a very glamorous field, kind of Doris day Rock cousin movie material and stuff and Madison Avenue. So and I had a boyfriend in my senior year in high school and he was he worked at an ad agency. So I got a job there and that was Sullivan stuff with Cola and Bellis was my first job. And it was fabulous, you know, it was a fabulous world. And it was know a cushy job. I mean, my family, everybody worked so hard at what they did, and advertising was cushy. I mean there was so many coffee breaks and long lunches and cocktails at five, the amount of hours you put in every day unless you were on a TV shoot or something. And there were handsome young men and it was kind of a great field. So I really enjoyed it, and so I kind of moved up in it, you know, when when they're an opportunity arose. There was a lesbian woman actually who was a producer, and I was like a lowly I had a lowly job in the radio TV production department, but she was leaving and she saw my value and she started training me. And when she left, I took her job and I became a radio TV producer. And I was like, I don't know, a nineteen twenty top. Yeah, yeah, you know. I went to school. I went to the New School UM for so sual research at night with Arnald Eagle was the teacher. And but I kind of dropped out after a while because I was learning so much more on the job and that's kind of always how I seemed to learn best. And I was loving it. I loved the whole you know, radio TV process, mechanical process side of it, entertainment side, I loved all of it. So that's how I did that, and I stayed. I actually had like a full time advertising job for eight years, and then you know, as time went on, I got interested in theater of the ridiculous, and pretty much I was only freelancing for like I would just do a TV production job something when I needed the money. But I was more already into like theater and music, and I had already moved on from advertising, and you know, that's how I then started. I was in one little play and then Andy warholsa on the in it, and when he took Pork to London in ninev one, he didn't like the girl who was playing the lead in the New York Pork. I wasn't in Pork in New York, and so I auditioned for him and I got the lead to play the pork in the in the play in London, and that's where we met David Bowie and you know, on and on from there. So it's quite quite an honesty. How did you you first enter David's orbit? When you were when you got to England. Well, we got a lot of publicity when we went with Pork because we were Warhol people, and so we were in the newspapers a lot and all of that. And he was not yet that famous. He had had space authority, but he had three or four albums already that you know, just didn't make it. He was he was still playing little teeny clubs and stuff like that. So we were like unequal footing artistically. In fact, we were like kind of bigger than he was at that moment in a way, you know what I mean. We were we had all the publicity and you know, Warhol comes to London. Although they ripped just to shreds. But but anyway, so he knew of us, and we knew of him because Lee Children's kept up a lot with um the press, because he took photographs for a lot of rock magazines in America and stuff, and he had heard of David Bowie. David Bowie had come to America a couple of years earlier on like a radio interview tour. He couldn't do any gigs because the work permits, but he did like a radio tour, so some people knew about him. I didn't know about him then. Most people didn't know about him. And Tiny Piece and Rolling Stone about him that Lee had seen. And we were on our way to rehearsal for Pork one day in London and we saw a poster for him playing at a little club, the Country Club, and so we went to see him that night, Lee Schilder's, Jane County and me and it was him on acoustic guitar, Rick Wakeman on piano, and Mick Ronson on electric guitar and people sat on the floor. It was like, you know, kind of a hippie club and it was well, it was just past the hippie era, sort of and he still had like long blonde hair and more you know, pleaded, kind of silky pants and yellow Mary James and I an't sure if Hunky Dorry was out already or had just been recorded, but they were already writing songs and Phyziggie started us, so he was in between that he played mostly Hunky Dorry stuff. And she didn't have a drummer or a bass player or anything, so I guess, and that ziggy stuff hadn't come out yet, so it's kind of in that era. And and she was there and she did the lights and the sound, and so we went up to her and introduced ourselves and said, you know, we're in the cast of Andy Warhol's Pork. It's called David. I love to meet you, darlings, Lola, Lola so and he had written that song, Andy Warhol, and so when he did it on stage, he introduced us as the cast members and asked us to stand up and take about so we did. I popped out one tip, which was some gesture I did all through the play because I was playing the part of Bridget Pulk, Bridget Berlin. And that's how Polk comes from Pork comes from Polk. Whatever, And in real life she was always like jabbing a needle with speed and right through her jeans and popping out one tit. So that was like a gesture I did in the play. And so afterwards we went to a discotheque together and we all danced and hung out, and then they came to see the play one night, along with Jannegspie and Tony DeFries, and of course they came backstage, and then we all went out again and we we hung out and then invited us to their house Fatigue, and we'd go out there for tea on a Sunday afternoon, and so we all became friends in that way. And Pork lasted like a month, and then it was supposed to move to the West End and we never did, and so we all kind of went our separate ways after that. But you know, we could see what he could be. You know, he was so talented and so charismatic that you know, we could see this was a guy we should tell everybody about back home, and so we did, and Tony Zanetta got to be really good friends with him, maybe even better friends than us. More quickly they related, and so then in September of seventy two, when Tony DeFries was managing David and In in England and decided it was time to bring him to America to tour. He hired Tony Zanetta to be like the head of main man the management company, and Tony basically called me up one day. I was living in Connecticut, I think, with the Berkshires. He called me up one day and I wasn't working. I was probably writing but not earning any money, and he said, oh, we could use somebody to answer the phones. We just got a little office on fifty Street and manotte night. So I said, okay. So I went to New York and I, you know, was taking on the job supposedly of answering the phones. But you know, I had background in first of all, I had my high school was like a business school, so I had background in all the business machines and proper letter writing and all that other kind of stuff. And Tony and the other people around Jeffries and David at the time when David was still in England, but they didn't that kind of sort of practical office experienced and in corporate structure that I had known. So all of a sudden I was like you know, ordering fax machines and desks and typewriters and telephone service and show for service and you know, so I was like running the office. And then little by little we were adding people to help. And then when David, when Tony brought David over for the first tour, Tony, Zanetta and Lee Childrens went out on the road with him and I at the beginning, I stayed behind to run the office and have them check in with me and keep everything going. And then eventually I got an assistant and I heard somebody and then because Tony Jeffries wouldn't let the press talk to David Bowie because he kept it like they couldn't get access, so they got to talk to me, and uh and since I seem to be a knack trail at that, you know, even though we didn't have the internet and everything, so I didn't even know that much about David back then. I mean, it was crazy because everything was going so fast, So I just made up a lot of facts when they'd asked me things that because truly it was there was no time. I mean I was also taken care of, like like I would go ahead if they were going to go to a certain city. I would go ahead by a week or something to that city, and I'd get myself on the radio and you know, do interviews and stuff so that we could drum up ticket sales. So then I would go on to the next city, and I would also like do little bibles for them, like where the dry cleaner was, where the late night bar was, where the best Indian restaurant. What you know. I was doing all these little chores, uh, and publicity, and then I would go on to the next city. But then because I wanted to see all the shows, I would fly back to the other city where I had just been to catch the show because I didn't want to miss a show because you know that that was like the most fabulous time. That was ziggy star dost time, you know, the most fabulous time. Gorgeous young David and gorgeous young Nick. And so I was on planes, you know. I remember one day. I was on three planes that day, three different cities that day. Um, yeah, and you know, and I loved it. I loved it. I loved it, and I love being able to see all the shows. And um, I missed one or two. I missed New Orleans. I never got to New Orleans. Isn't this funny? I'm still never have been to New Orleans. I've got to get there one day. But um, I missed a couple of cities here and there. But that's mostly how it happened. And then um, from there, you know, that was it? Bowie rose like a star and uh that we knew he was thinking of all the promotional work you were doing and try to hype David. Was he a hard sell in nineteen two or do people catch on quickly that this was somebody to take notice of? Well, thanks to my publicity. The thing is, the thing is he came at a certain time when the sexuality look, sexuality is always going to grab people. And I didn't have I didn't even know how to do PR. I knew how to do advertising, but PR for Rock Stop R for anybody I never did, it was a little different. And I didn't have a strategy. None of us had, even DeFries didn't have. He had his own strategy for management. But he didn't really have a PR strategy except well he did in a way because like he had karate clad um uniform bodyguards you know around David. But nobody has been trying to get near David, you know what I mean. And he told the press that David wouldn't do any interviews even though they weren't banging down the doors for interviews. So yes, he did, he did. I shouldn't say that about because he did. We all played a part in the pr but on the sexuality, and which I knew would get the talk going. You know, there was this edge where people wondered was he gayo straight? Everybody wondered was he gayo straight? You know, so that I knew was like a point to get people talking, especially the people I knew in in New York and Los Angeles and all that. And so as time went on, when he said he was bisexual and and I at the same time was saying he was great sex being a woman, and I'm so I'm sort of intimating he was heatero And then he's saying he's by and then somebody else says, uh, he's gay, And so I think that helped boost the publicity a lot. And then Tony's Tony different his genius which he was at management and um and you know, all of us together Lee children doing all the photos and Tony another managing the tours, and you know, we were actors, so we looked at it like improvisation, like we were given a play to play, and it was total improv for all of us. And in a way that maybe is what made it so different and so fresh and so new seeming and stuff, because we didn't really know what we were doing. We just loved him, believed in him. We're having a ball, getting paid hardly any money at all. We were doing this for the love of it, which corny as it sounds. When you do something for the love of it, that's real success, you know. So you know that's the way it went. And it was, you know, wonderful, marvelous, incredible time in our lives, you know, an incredible time and we were young and hot, and you know, we were having a ball. So, um, I forgot your question, whatever it was you answered it. I just there's a great quote you gave it an interview once that I love life presents people to me and I say yes or no. What made you say yes to David Bowie? What was it about him that attracted him to you? Well, first of all, I think there's a thing called pheromones and aura and a spirit body so I think there's a chemical element and a spiritual element in what people like. I meet a lot of people, and some people I can't remember their name after ten times meeting them, and other people, the minute you know you've experienced this too. The minute you meet them, like you know, there's something this person is going to be in your life. So there was that, But of course I didn't meet him right away. I saw him on stage the first I was in the audience, So the first thing I saw was his artistry and his he was just born to do it. He was just born to be a rock star when he came out on the stage, even though he he didn't have all the ziggy look together yet, which really helped, you know, him sell himself to the public. He was born to be a rock star. You just saw it. You knew it. The way he related musically. You know, he could play the guitar. He had a beautiful voice, His songs had some even humor in them. His lyrics were fabulous. His connection with the audience was instant, and you could tell everybody just you could hear a pin drop in the room and it was just a little club. So he already had that aura he already had that thing, so that was on stage. So then when afterwards when we got to meet him up close, you know, the vibration was right there, this vibration of like, yeah, this person, I'm I'm not letting this person go. This person is going to be in my life, you know, And so I can't explain it any other way than that. And plus he was so down to earth and friendly and funny and easy to meet. It was easy. He was easy, He was comfortable. You know, we were comfortable with him, and he was comfortable with us, and he treated us like equal artists or even you know whatever. And I guess, you know, it was just that thing that one can't really explain what it was. It was just something I knew that, you know, we all knew. Although Jane County and Lee they afterwards when everybody talked for them, he wasn't rock and roll enough, and so they were a little bit like, oh, he's kind of a hippie folk singer. But I knew because Mick Ronson was going to make a more rock and roll and even though I hadn't heard the ziggy stardust stuff yet, with guitars and drums and all that kind of stuff. You knew that with mc ronson he was going to be more electric soon and and that he had to go that way in a way to be the rock star I envisioned, and so I I saw that immediately, and they were like okay. But then of course they saw and they saw the other aspect of him, you know, the charisma for sure. And I like the guys you hung out with her awakeman and Nick Ronson. In fact, I thought Nick Ronson was you know, oh my god. I was so you know, sexually attracted to Mick more than David. But but that's because David had a wife also, and um, you know she was there. But but Mick I scared to death. I never had sex with McK ronson, but I became because I came on so heavy from New York with the sexuality. And Mick is is such a you know, such a small town boy from Hall. I mean, have you ever been to Hall? I have not. It's in the very northern tip of the UK, about of England rather, and it's really I mean, he was a small town boy, you know, and I was coming on like, you know, right away, wanting to go to bed with him. That night, you know, and that just was too much for him. But we became friends, of course, and uh and I just adored him, Oh God, I adored him. So anyway, Um, yeah, that's that's what I So what do you think that that David learned from all of you? I feel like you were such a huge influence on his life as well as as as him on yours. What do you feel like that that he got from all of you. It seems like you gave him permission in a lot of ways to be more himself and confidence and that's what he gave to, you know, the world, to two kids who were confused about whatever their sexuality or you know, they're being a nerd or whatever. But um, first of all, on a I don't know, geographic basis, he always wanted to know more about New York. I think he liked lou Reid and all of that, and he had made that one trip to America, and he liked our New York Street nous that we would like New York Street urchins, actors in the kind of theater, like the kind of theater we had been doing in New York was like on the same level he was doing in London with Lindsey Kemp. You know, it was small theaters, nobody made any money. He made your own costumes, and you know, it was far out avant garde kind of and so I think that interested him that we were like we were kind of doing the same thing. I was wasn't mine, his was mine, but it was on the same level and it was like off off Broadway, and so he wanted he wanted information about that, and he wanted to be associated, I think with that kind of artistry and theatricality and also, um, you know, the American nous of us in a way um and you know, on a on a business level, like how radio worked in America, how the uh newspapers worked Ina Like in England, you know how the newspapers are. They're national, so you get you getting one year, you're a star in the country. But in America the radio and the and the newspapers and stuff are also regional or war then, you know, and so you have to do it for a lot of different regions, for a lot of different types of people in America in each city you visit and so forth, and you have to learn to relate to a lot of people in different ways and stuff, and and our freedom I think are are Although we thought we were so free sexually, but when we got to England to London, we were We met a lot of people and including the Bowies and a lot other people who were you know, already way free sexually. They just called it kinky over there, you know. And but I think the fact that he could be himself around us, and if it was sexual, it was sexual, and if it was business, it was business. And and the fact that we could all play these different roles with him, you know, and uh, and yet kind of be on his level. Of course, he rose to stardom way above any level we ever achieved of stardom, but we kind of always stayed on that same thing where we were friends on an intimate on many levels, like getting back to that intimacy thing of mental intimacy. We could exchange ideas, we could understand, you know. I remember once I worked I wouldn't say who it was, but I did some work once for a famous director and I said, what is it you need from me? He said, I need somebody who anticipates my needs. And then went, oh, okay, that's to say and very nail things to say right, and but it got me, you know, on my toes. And so in a way, we we had a shorthand with each other when it came to show Bisbowie and us, you know. And so even if it was like arranging the tour bus or you know, make sure his clothes came back from the cleaners, or you know, we got to do it with you know, fellow artists and friends, and and we didn't mind all this practicality that I had to go with it. That was just the business side of it. So I think he probably appreciated that in us, you know, And we never had like big egos about it. Like people often say to me now, like oh, well, you maye Bowie say this. I said, no way. I was part of a team of a lot of people. And when you get a lot of people together and that their energies all going the same direction, that's how you achieve things. And so I was a part of it. I would never take big credit like I did this. I made him a star in no way. So I think it was that like we were all in a play together. He was in the place, like we lived our lives like in a play. Okay, I'm going to play the role of the pr lady now and I play the role of a tour manager now and a president of may man or whatever Tony's not. It was playing and and he was playing the part of the rock star, and we all improvised our roles, you know. So I think that must have kept him interested and excited as us, as much as we were interested and excited in him, you know. And then of course one day he moved on from us and learned things from other people, but we moved on from him also, So you know, that's the way it goes in this play that you're all performing. Is there a climax for you? Is there a moment that really crystallizes everything, that is just the golden moment that you hold on to. Oh, it was the first time I had sex with him, for sure. That's a good more literal climax than I met, but very good. Well on the mental climax part, Yeah, I tell us a little story in the book and it really meant a lot to me. Um, And it wasn't any great creative thing we did together or worked out. I mean, I really got off on making the TV commercials on him for Diamond doggs and stuff like that. That was great because I was taking my expertise and experience at the time and with very little money making you know, TV commercials for him and radio commercials and stuff, and that I took great pride in. And but um, there was a moment that I loved a lot. And it was when we were in London and he was doing a show in London. Um, and I was in charge of who he was allowed to talk to in the press, and everybody wanted an interview. This is when he was already had become pretty big. Everybody wanted an interview. So I chose, you know, the two or three people that we were going to give interviews to, and I chose this one guy. And um, he promised me a front page picture and story and all that. And uh so I promised that to David and and he was at sound check the day the paper came out and he wasn't on the front page, and uh he had about a quarter of a page, a few pages back and a photo. And uh, I was mortified because it was like I had made him to this interview and uh, uh you know, and not that I had any control over this person. You never have control when the journalist tells you that's what's gonna happen unless you get it in writing or something in contract. But um, so I had to walk down to the stage, walking down the center aisle of the empty theater where they was sound checking, and go up to the stage and call him to the edge of the stage and show him the paper and say, you know, I'm really sorry, David, you know. And I love that moment because he could have you know, I I've seen other stars could slap you in the face and say, you idiot, why did you ever let me bother? But he just went, don't worry about it, Cherry, It's okay. Like that, And the way he took it so easily, and so the way he recognized already that this was not the biggest thing in life. Like when you're a big rock star, you know everything you do you think it's the big This this is what I've experienced with other big stars anyway. They think everything they do is big and if you don't get it right, you should be fired or slapped in the face, or you punished or you know what I mean, They get ego. The fact that he just was took it so he sids, Okay, is if like he didn't say, it's no big deal. But it's just like, this is not the end of the world, Cherry, It's just a newspaper, you know. I who loved that about him. And then, of course, about a couple of hours or an hour or two, I forgot how long later, a special edition of the newspaper was put out and he was on the cover and it was all about him. So yeah and so, and then I was able to go to him and like I had scored. Now he could have like slapped me in the face earlier in the day and then I'd come back to him with this and I'd be like, he'd have to have his tail between his legs, but instead his attitude just made it also made him so human. It was a human moment with him, a very human moment. And so that stands out in my mind a lot, that moment. So um, yeah. But the night I had sex with him the first time was also really great. Do you can care to elaborate anymore on that or I did in my book. I did in my book. Um, it was just beautiful. I mean. The thing about David is that when you were with him and he was giving you his attention. If he had decided, you know that that time was dedicated to you. He was really giving you his attention. Whether that's just what great actor he is. It was um, but you really felt like you were making love. It wasn't just when you were the pr lady and working with him and you happened to be in the same hotel with him that night, and he hadn't picked up any other girl, so come on, let's go to bed, Jerry. I mean, um, it just um. He made you really feel like he wanted to make love to you and and that he adored it and was having a wonderful time. And it was nice. It was very um, touching and uh intimate and in in in in feelings. Now, if those feelings were genuine or he was just a great actor, I don't know, But in those moments you don't care because just you know, just yeah, baby, you know, I'm having a great time too. So it was. It was just very lovely, very lovely, and and kind of funny in a way. You go back to my book, you can read it because read about the bandages. It was kind of funny. But that's all I'll say. Um, but uh. And there were a couple of other sexual times with him in my apartment or something, but um, they were all wonderful. They were wonderful. He was great too, you know the other times that stand out, which I did write in the book about a lot with him. When I had this apartment on twentieth Street, after I didn't work for main men anymore. Bowie was in his coke period and I had hooked him up with Norman Fischer, who was the biggest best coke dealer in New York and everything. And he was at that point just doing tons of coke, drinking only milk, not eating anything skinny as a rail that's in white duke. And he was like sort of getting beyond the rocks with Tony Differ, like it was coming to and he needed somebody to talk to a lot, And so he would come over to my loft I had on Twentieth Street between nine and ten. He'd come over there, and I didn't do coke. Rarely did I ever do coke. I was a pothead, And so we would stay up all night and not having sex. Once in a while we had sex, but rarely. Mostly it was just talking and and he would do his coke all night and and and drink his milk, and I would drink coffee and smoke pot and stay up talking to him all night. And and of course he talked to me about, you know, his feelings about you know, because Tony it had come to that point where he felt, you know, giving ton wasn't cool. I don't know, that was starting to have things, although I think it all turned out all right in the end anyway. But so he'd talked about that, about main ma'am, what was going on about things. But really we talked about you know, Alistair Crowley and Marilyn and magic and psychedelics and spirituality. And he knew history a lot better than igent, So he would talk about Hitler and a lot of things. He'd educate me on a lot of things and other things I knew about, and you know, um astrology and witchcraft and you know, things like that. So they were wonderful times with him, because you know, he was on coke, so he would just go on and on and on out into the stratosphere with his mind, you know. And I was sitting there smoking my pots, so everything just seemed magical and fabulous to me, and and I that they were wonderful moments. They were wonderful moments, and I didn't work for him anymore. So I had now had the experience of meeting him as a fellow artist and a friend, and then being a worker for him, and now back to being a friend and artist fellow artists kind of friend with him. So I didn't have the rules that maybe I had to play by or set for myself when I worked for him and stuff. So it was kind of a freeing of our relationship in a way too. It was like, and you know, while I worked for him, I couldn't say anything bad or negative about Maine Man or uh and about some people we worked with it. But now I was just a friend, so you know, those things, the rules weren't there for me anymore. So that was wonderful moments. Yeah, did you follow David's career after you stopped working with him at Maine Man. Isn't it fantastic how he did his whole death and it was an artist right to the end. And god, I just I couldn't believe what he did with that last album, Oh, with Black Star, I mean it's supernatural almost, I mean not almost. I think it is supernatural how he he reorchestrated that on on his terms. It's it's I know, and it's just I can't put it on without you know. Yeah, I've only listened to the album twice because I just break down crying when he's saying, look at me, I'm in Heaven. I'm like, oh, you know, it's just too much. It's just too much, you know. I tried to sing Heroes on stage one night and a little show we did in Hollywood, and I broke down crying on stage. I couldn't even sing it. It was just it was it was only about three weeks after he died. It was just too fresh, I guess, and I hadn't really cried. Uh, And all of a sudden it all hit me, you know. But what an iconic life, right to Lee end doing that album and that play and everything. I never got to see the play. Did you see the play? I wish I did. I would have loved it. If I couldn't get tickets, Ah, he didn't know me, then I couldn't have got I probably couldn't have got your tickets anyway, because I didn't really have the relationship with him for the last I don't know, thirty years or something. Though when I did, um, I did ask for There was a you know, I used to do those My World columns by David Bowie from the magazine. So when somebody wanted to publish a book, hat Chet Publishing in Paris wanted to publish a book of them, and um, they they put they sent me this this sample book and um whatever you call that first book you get and they had used what Bowie wrote on his website about them as like a forward. And I said, well, you can't just do this, you have to ask permission. I mean, surely that's his copyright. He wrote that on it. So they said, oh, will you ask him? And I hadn't, you know, spoken to him in all those years, and I didn't speak to him then, but I must say I called his manager of the time, and within twenty four hours they called back and said, oh sure, he said, go ahead, I use them. So that was, you know, lovely, although I wasn't you know, I wish that I had had more contact with them over the years, but you know, people move on, They move on. I love those those those pieces you wrote. They're so fun, they're so well written that I love when you put in like my my incredible publicist Jerry Vanelle, I love when you put the whole shout outs to yourself. And you know, there was no I didn't. I wasn't even very much of an accomplished writer in any way yet, And there was no time. I wrote those in the back of limos and taxi said. There was no editing, there was no nothing that you know, they were just as fast as they could. I could write them down and give them to a type of store, type them up myself if I was in the office, and just make up things. And sometimes i'd have like a phone conversation with him and try to find out what he was doing that week and incorporated. But half the time I just had to make them up. But but yeah, they were fun and they were just you know, they were for a teenage girl audience, you know, not preteens. Actually that magazine was aimed at like eleven twelve year old girls. What a great audience to build, right, So, speaking of writing your memoir, Lick Me is amazing. It's filled with so many fascinating stories, and it's amazing how candid and intimate you are, like you really went there and got into so many tough and vulnerable moments. I really loved the book. God, I wish I had a million more fans like you. I mean, I didn't sell that many books, you know, And but then again I don't try. I mean, you know, it's funny because publicity was, you know, like sex to me in the early days. I I loved doing publicity for other people and myself. But you know, I kind of it's almost like when I gave up sex, I gave up publicity. I kind of like went the other way. Like, you know, I kind of hide now, you know what I mean. I don't have to hide because I can be totally unrecognizable in the world, you know, which I love that. And so it's funny. I'm like, not that I'm anti publicity, but I love to do interviews like this once in a while. But um, you know, I don't like my friend Pamela Dabars, who got me the the agent to do the book. She really milks her books. I mean, she writes one book after another, and then she goes on and she has she teaches women's writing classes, and she goes on these things where you sign pictures of yourself and sell them for ten dollars and bless her heart. I really admire her for doing that. But I was like, yeah, the book was done, it's done. It's out there now though some people are trying to make a movie of it or a TV show. So now my energy is going there. I'm trying to, um, give them ideas, help them, um and uh so we'll see what happens. That is so cool. How's that going? Well? You know, that could take forever. The guy who's trying to do it, he's produced one movie, freak show. Did youivverssy Freak Show? Yeah, with Bette Midler's he Brian Raybin. He he ran Club Cherry. He's famous event person in rock and roll. He had Club Cherry and oh god, he just had a Georgio at the Standard and for years and and he um he I gave him the rights to sell it. Now I know how Hollywood goes. And I think he has great tenacity and he's the person I would want to be the producer because he he really gets me, and he knows he lived through the whole thing, and he really gets the whole period. And and um he's a little younger than me, but he gets it all. He's got incredible tenacity and incredible connections because all those years that he ran those clubs and did those events, you know, he was in charge of you know, who got behind the velvet rope, who got on the list. So a lot of people who he recognized something in back then they were young fledglings since became agents, writers, producers, directors, you know what I mean, stars, actors in Hollywood, rock stars started. So he has a lot of great connections with the people I like in that in that whole world. I love his circle of people that he's recognized, like Norman Reads and you know people I find really I don't know, just on a level of artistry that I appealed to me, and so he's out there doing it now. I know it'll get done one day. I would love it to happen before I die, so I could go, you know, enjoy premiers and all that kind of stuff. But it it might not get done to lefter I die, And I don't know if they'll get to make it a movie or a TV series. I don't know. They're they're trying, and they're hooking up with I talked to I'm not allowed to name her yet, but I took to one producer via Zoom via a zoom meeting, and she's pretty big. She's produced a lot of TV stuff and movies, and she's very interested. You know, it's some people don't get it that. You know, why was I with all of these unbelievable people all my life? You know? Why me? Is kind of an interesting story, you know. And I don't know. I know they'll find the right people and click with them eventually. And this producer she I think now they've found the writer who will do what they called the Bible, and he's thinking more movie. I think it needs to be a TV series because by the time you get all those people in there who are famous, who I've had something to do with. I don't know. It's kind of a long movie. But I don't know what. I don't care how they do it, and I told them I'll help them. I've been like, any time I think of a little scene in my head, I sent it to them. Nut. I don't think I'm capable really of writing the screenplay about myself. I think it needs an objective writer in blah blah blah, And I've never really written a screenplay except in school and stuff. So um. But they asked me if I would like write scenes when I think of them and send them to them just to kind of give them idea. And I do that, and I and like, now they're trying to get to the essence of the cell of me, the hook, Like what's what's the essence of me that they can sell to a network or something. So I'm always trying to give them little ideas about that too. Like the intimacy thing. That's why I was talking to you about it when we first got on, because that's what I had been thinking about. What was it about you know, I was looking at the Bowie movie and I was thinking, what was it about me that would make like a young girl now think she would want to have my life? Because I wasn't the biggest star in the world. True. I wasn't the you know, biggest saint Theresa or scholarship scientist or you know whatever. Um. But I think the intimacy that I had mentally and sexually with men is of interest to young women now because I think women want to have that intimacy with men and be able to have that. It doesn't have to just be sexual between a woman and a man. It's great when you can collaborate on things and write songs together, and you know, do radio interviews together, and you know, having that kind of without you know, the threat that there has to be sex at the at the end of the night from either the man or the woman. That's it's a new kind of intimacy. I think it's kind of cool, so anyway, But they will make it one day. I truly believe in my heart they will get this thing made. But I hope I'm alive because I want to go to the parties. Off the record of the production of I Heart Radio. If you liked what you heard, please obscue hibe and leave us a review. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.