Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies

by Pamela Des Barres

  Elvis and the exotic dancer began meeting secretly whenever possible. Tura sneaked into his shows and was very pleasantly surprised to see how he had taken her shakes and shimmies and made them his own. "It was a thrill to see him do the moves on stage, and to know that I was the one to teach 'em to him. Also how to do it in the bedroom-that was even better." Tura insisted they keep their affair quiet so the relationship wouldn't damage his upwardly spiraling career. She also didn't expect him to be faithful. "When we were dating I said, `I know you're going to have women throwing themselves at you and you're not gonna be able to say no.'" He said, "I will, I will, if you stay with me." Tura knew better. "There were guys who could say no, and guys who couldn't, and Elvis didn't know how to say no. He was always afraid of hurting people's feelings. That's why they took advantage of him, especially the Colonel. They walked all over him because he was so giving. He was a down-home country boy who loved his mama."

  Tura leans into me conspiratorially, about to divulge some classified info. "He didn't have too much respect for his papa, not until he got older-because his papa was a player and Elvis knew his papa was cheatin' on his mama. He didn't like that one bit.

  Tura had already lived an unusually untamed life for one so young. She was a spicy seasoned doll with all the finesse that comes with life experience. Her offbeat relationship with the King gathered erotic steam as she continued to play the role of capricious muse to the unpolished Southern boy. "When we first started out, he was kinda like `wham, bam, thank you, ma'am,' until I showed him what to do. Eventually he became much more sophisticated." Does that mean Elvis became a good lover? "Yes, it was worth the effort," Tura says, closing her eyes. "He was definitely worth the effort." Remembering that long-ago night, Tura smiles. "I also showed him how highly sensitive my boobs are.

  Elvis was becoming more passionately adept, but there was one very important amorous pleasure he had yet to experience. "Four or five nights later I showed him how to give head." Tura grins. "He hadn't done it yet." Apparently other women had tried to entice Elvis in that direction, but that particular female scent had put him off. "I had just made love to him in the shower, and I said, `Wait a minute! Before I took you in my mouth, I washed you very well, because I don't know who you've been with. And the same applies to me. I will not make love to anybody until I know I'm clean."

  It seems Tura instructed Elvis in one of life's finest sensual arts. "When a man wants to give you pleasure, that's what makes the difference-'Honey, not so hard there, just nibble, and when you find that little man, nudge him. Several times. But try to do it gently at first ... then a little harder ... when you've got him nice and hard, then you start to suck. . :

  All of a sudden it's very warm in the room. Does anybody have a fan? Can you turn the air conditioning on, please? I'm palpitating here! Hmmm. Should I be crude and ask the obvious size question? Oh, why not, I may never get this opportunity again.

  "Elvis was about average in that department, and that was fine with me," Tura laughs wickedly. "It all depended on how excited you got him."

  When the Colonel saw Tura's risque act, he suggested that he manage Miss Japan Beautiful, promising to make her a very big star, indeed. But stripping was Tura's form of rebellion. She was totally in control and holding her own reins, thank you very much. "He said, `I could make you a big star,' and I said, `How much of me would you want?' He got 55 percent of Elvis. All he did was act like a big-league bodyguard. He kept Elvis away from everybody, kept him isolated." Her refusal angered the former sideshow huckster, and he went out of his way to break up the lusty lovebirds.

  Tura had been lonely on the road for quite a while. "Then Elvis came along and he filled up a big empty hole, so to speak," she laughs. "Literally, too! It was great while we were together. We were both very private people. He didn't like all the hullabaloo about who he was dating." She accepted that the studios made Elvis date his costarlets, but it hurt.

  One night after Tura performed in Memphis, a fervent, obsessed fan got into his car, put a double-barrel shotgun in his mouth, and pulled the trigger because she wouldn't date him. When Elvis came to pick Tura up in his pink Cadillac, he came upon the grisly scene. The cops were hassling her, as if she had something to do with the tragic mess. "The shotgun was still in his mouth and his brains were on the backseat," Tura recalls, "and when Elvis got there he said, `Baby, they ain't ever gonnaput you through anything like this again.'" He gave her a diamond engagement ring that night, claiming her as his own. "It was a total surprise-he turns me around, grabs me, kisses me, and says, `God, do you know how much I love you?' He fishes into his pocket and pulls out a box with this beautiful diamond ring." Yes, I had noticed the large flashing diamond on Tura's finger. Swoon. Elvis's ring. "It's three and a half carats," she smiles. "I said, `What is that for,' and he said, `I just asked you to marry me,' and I said, `You did?' At first I said yes. I wasn't expecting it because he knew I had a little run-in with the Colonel."

  Then things began to change. Not only was the Colonel out to break up the young couple, his influence over Elvis was becoming stifling. "The Colonel was pulling his strings and Elvis basically let him do it. He often had Elvis strung out, taking stuff to get him to sleep, to wake him up, keep his appetite suppressed. I felt so sorry for him. It was almost like he gave up, especially after his mom died. It was like he signed off." Then Elvis tried to put Tura on that age-old Madonna/whore pedestal. "I told him I couldn't live on that pedestal. I didn't want to be like his mom. I could be his wife and lover, not his mama, but he was trying to combine the two. I didn't mind being worshipped, but I didn't want to be mama."

  Tura wore the ring for a while, but Hollywood kept calling the King into the silver spotlight. Elvis told her he didn't want their engagement to be a secret anymore, but he was squiring actresses around. Tura saw the photos in movie magazines. When she tried to return the ring, Elvis wanted her to keep it. "He wouldn't take it; he said, `That's part of me and you. You'll always belong to me as long as you have that ring.' I said, `No, I won't. I will not belong to you anymore. From now on I'm gonna go out with other guys and I'm gonna do what I do best.'"

  So Tura Satana taught Elvis Presley how to dance, make out, make love, and give head. Then she kissed him good-bye. While Elvis surrendered to the Colonel's manipulation, making lessthan-stellar movies such as Speedway and Clambake, Tura continued to turn heads and raise blood pressure. She drove Francis Albert Sinatra to dizzying distraction and carried on a blazing love affair with Tony Bennett. She also proceeded to blaze distinctly diverse trails. After eighteen years on the burlesque circuit, she landed the sexy role of an unrepentant prostitute in Irma la Douce, then made cult history in Ted V. Mikels's films The Doll Squad and The Astro-Zombies. She's the star of her very own comic book drawn by wizard Mike Hoffman: Tura Satana: The Ultimate Femme Fatale. But Tura is best remembered as Pussycat's temptress Varla, whom John Waters calls .one of the best villains in screen history." Ballbreaker Varla definitely kicked opened doors for dolls ready to combine strength with their sexiness. Tura's advice to women? "You can be sexy, you can be hot, you can be feminine-and you can kick ass!"

  After his stint in the army, when Elvis brought the teenage Priscilla Beaulieu home to Memphis, he was still thinking about Tura Satana. "He always found my phone number no matter how many times I changed it," she says. "We were friends, but he wanted to get back to the physical aspect of our relationship. I always said no." Slowly but surely, the imported sweet-faced brunette who would become Mrs. Presley started looking more and more like a certain Asian burlesque siren. The hair became blacker, piled high on her head; the eyes thick with black eyeliner slanted dangerously upward. "He told me he wanted a replica of me, and I said, `She's totally a different person.' He said, `But I can make her look like you.' I told him it wasn't fair to Priscilla, and he said, `But I want you, and I can't have you.'"

  Ooh, what a night it was, it really was such a night! Slightly tipsy and reeling from all the hea
dy Elvis revelations, I thank the magnanimous Ms. Satana and gather up my stuff. We hug each other and plan to stay in touch. Before I head out into the leafy night, I ask Tura if she ever wished things had turned out differently. "I know Elvis was trying to get off the medications he was on," she says, "but he gained so much weight, he felt he had to go back on the pills. Nobody was taking care of him or feeding him the way they should have. They just let him glut on his favorite foods, deep-fried Southern things that weren't good for him." Tura is suddenly sad and slowly shakes her head. "When he died, yeah, I always felt that if I'd been with him, I would have been able to pull him through. I would have had more influence over him than the Colonel or anybody else." As Tura runs her hands through her long black hair, Elvis's diamond ring shimmers in the candlelight.

  The Happiest Broken Heart

  herry Vanilla. Just her name evokes the flashy, flagrant, shameless exuberance of her most adventurous decadethe gleefully unapologetic '70s. Look Cherry up on the Internet and thousands of entries emerge, revering this punk high priestess.

  Actress, author, poetess, DJ, and rock star ... author of the libidinous artbook `Pop Tarts,' her genuinely seductive singing voice made mincemeat of the more feted female vocalists ... ranking high among the most influen- tialfigures on the Anglo-American rock scene....

  While I was taking the Sunset Strip by storm in my garters and leopard-print spike heels, I knew I had a sensational counterpart on the East Coast. In those days, the groupie tom-toms were the most reliable form of information as to who was doing what to whom behind closed hotel room doors. I knew Cherry was part of the impudent Andy Warhol posse, that she was a member of David Bowie's tight-knit inner circle and worked for his company, MainMan, as his uberpublicist. She traipsed around with lots of stellar rockers and recorded a couple of raunchy rock and roll records of her own, Bad Girl and Venus D'Vinyl.

  I have crossed paths with Ms. Vanilla at glitzy rock functions through the years and observed her on the arm of the exquisite Rufus Wainwright more than once. We've always been full of mutual admiration, but I never had the chance to get the bona fide lowdown about her hunky-dory history. That changed recently when at I encountered the divine Cherry Vanilla in Fairmount, Indiana-the tiny, exalted town where James Dean was born and buried.

  We happened to be visiting mutually dear friends at the same time. Dean historian David Loehr and Lenny Prussack reside on Main Street and help keep the Rebel's flame burning bright in the heartland. Running into Cherry so unexpectedly added a colorful twist to my semiannual visit. One afternoon, I happily dragged her all over farm country, scouring antique malls and thrift stores, while we shared torrid tales. She plans on writing her own memoirs, but after much cajoling, she gave in and agreed to be interviewed about her groupie years. I was tickled hot pink.

  Before our scheduled meeting in L.A., I gave her two records a spin. Bad Girl and Venus D'Vinyl were rereleased as a doublealbum five years ago, and I got quite a kick out of her nervy lyrics and boisterous tongue-in-cheekiness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Cherry started working at an advertising agency in 1961, and wen
t to school at night, studying film production and acting. "It was the early '60s when the Peppermint Lounge happened and discos started," Cherry says excitedly. "The first discotheque I went to was Le Club, on East 55th Street. The music started soft during dinner, then got louder and more dance-y as the night went on. It was a revelation, because I was eighteen and ripe for it. After Le Club, there was Le Introde. I worked at ad agencies during the day and was DJ at Aux Puces on weekends. I had a lot of musical influences, but loved rock and roll the best. It was amazing-suddenly, you had the Peppermint Lounge, with Jackie Kennedy and Lee Radziwill shaking and doing the Twist, but you also had 42nd Street hookers. It was the first time you saw this clash of culture, which is what made discos like Aux Puces and Arthur amazingly exciting. People of all income lev els, all social strata, and all professions found themselves dancing close together in the same place. That was the biggest miracle of all. I thought, `Wow, the world is accepting this now. Rock and roll is here to stay.' Then came Flower Power, which we thought was going to be even more spectacular."

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

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