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

by Pamela Des Barres

  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."

  The passionate songwriter who later embraced the Muslim religion and changed his name to Yusuf Islam was once a naughty boy. "For some reason, a lot of Englishmen have this thing about English schoolgirls," Patti smiles. "I was modeling, and one day I came back from a `go-see' wearing a miniskirt, well, a mini-belt, actually, it was so short. It was about three in the afternoon and I guess Stephen had just driven by a school that let out, and he said, `Come on, I'm going to take you somewhere and buy you something.' He took me to Marks & Spencer, a department store up on the West End, and we went into the section where they sold school uniforms. We started playacting, and Stephen told the saleslady, `I have to buy this little girl a school uniform, she's the daughter of one of my friends, can you fit her, please?' The woman was very officious and middle-aged, grandmotherly. Here was this twenty-one-year-old Greek kid with this however-the-hell-old-I-looked you
ng girl. I was really flat-chested and stick-straight, like a boy. I was supposed to be going into seventh or eighth grade, but must have looked about eleven. Every time the woman went to get another piece of the uniform, he'd say, `I can't wait to pull that skirt up and bend you over the car, maybe even before-in the elevator.' He got me a white blouse and a blue and grey plaid skirt with a little blue sweater, and blue knee socks. Then we got those snub-nosed Mary Jane shoes, a little hat, and a school satchel."

  I tell Patti that I'm tickled that he took the playful ploy so far. "Oh yeah, soup to nuts, baby: underwear, little girl's T-shirt, little white panties-all regulation. Then he told me to walk to the next corner. He said, `I'll get the car and you stand on the corner and wait for me. When you see me drive by, pretend you don't know me; just walk down the street and I'll follow you. Then you decide when to get in.' I wanted to hop in the car immediately, but I made him crazy. I must have walked three blocks, by all those little crooked alleys. Then he motioned me into an alley near Leicester Square, if memory serves. It was about six in the evening, twilight time, and I lifted up my schoolgirl skirt and pulled down my little white panties, and we had at it. We did it on the hood of his car ..." Patti pauses, reflecting. "Imagine that. Sometimes I let him take it all off. And because I couldn't wear the school uniforms to concerts or clubs, I'd wear just the understuff. He liked me to wear the white panties. And so did I."

  After a year or so of risque bliss, Patti became restless. "Yeah, it just kind of petered out, if you will. I remember we had taken acid at my flat and were watching Juliet of the Spirits. Stephen was a wonderful artist, and he was drawing my feet. There was something about him being at my feet.. . it was too much adoration, and it freaked me out. I could tell he was really falling in love with me, and I was feeling like I couldn't give him what he wanted. I felt trapped-and I was on acid. Feeling trapped on acid is a lot more intense than just feeling trapped. The gate came slamming down with him there at my feet. It felt like I was in the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Suddenly I was in a pod, and he felt me go cold. He said, `Come on, let's go home,' and I said, `I am home,' and he left."

  With his romance in tatters, Stephen was inspired to write the tragi-tune "Lady D'Arbanville." "I cried the first time I heard it, because that's when I knew it was really over. But I saw him on and off for a while, then went back to New York in '72 to see my parents. I remember Stephen sent me a postcard from Paris that said, `Here I am in Gay Paree,' and in parentheses he wrote, `Gay being the operative word.'"

  Patti later had another encounter with her sensitive flame in Los Angeles. "I'd been in Europe for three years, so it had to be 1975. I was standing at Dan Tana's restaurant with some friends, and there was this guy next to me-tall, thin, black curly hair, wearing sunglasses, and I had no clue. It was three years later and he was the last person I expected to be standing there looking at me."

  Stephen was in the middle of a tour, and on his way to Hawaii. "He said, `Why don't you just come with me, and it will be like old times?' So we went to Hawaii and met up with people who were into Krishna. We went to the temple and they made us the most amazing food. Stephen talked for hours with these people, and they gave us little wooden beads that he wore for the whole rest of the tour."

  I ask Patti if she was surprised when Stephen embraced the Muslim religion, and had to stop playing his beautiful songs. "Oh, yeah, I was flabbergasted, especially because I knew how much he loved music. But when I was with him, he was always searching for something-seeking forever. We were vegetarians together, he was a Buddhist, and wanted me to become one, too. He started out as a Greek Orthodox Catholic, for Christ's sake, hello."

  Much more recently, Patti ran into Yusuf Islam once again. "I was asked to be on a talk show in Germany. They fabricated an excuse for me to promote something. They were going to surprise Stephen with me on TV, but we got wind of it. I said, `I can't do that, but I would like to see him,' and he said, `I can't do that, but I would like to see her.' He came with a whole bunch of men to the studio and I was with my husband, Terry. Stephen, uh, Yusuf said, `I can't talk to you without your husband in the room.' He was married and had all these kids, and it was not proper. So we sat and had a little chat with Terry. He said some blah blah blah about the Koran, then he said, `Call me Saf' I think he found what he was looking for in the Koran, and knowing him, I think he embraced it on its deepest level. It resonated in his soul somehow and he was transformed yet again."

  As the back door opens and chatty teenage voices fill the room, I ask Patti how she got so wrapped up in rock and roll so young. "The music is what moved me, and everyone I found interesting was tied to music somehow. I was just naturally drawn to them. It all stemmed from Beatlemania; we used to go to hotels and scream for the Beatles. Then I heard `Satisfaction,' and that became my main objective-I wanted to get near Mick Jagger. I wanted that satisfaction." I laugh out loud, "Yeah, we all did!" And eventually we all got our satisfaction, but that's a story for another time.

  Patti stands to welcome her brood. Emmelyn and Alexandra are both two years older than she was when she started going out, and Liam is twelve. "They're all pretty sheltered in a way that I never was. I know where they are all the time and they actually report to me. Imagine that!" She smiles knowingly, "If you can dream it, you can be it, and if you can be it ... well, then you know how to be two steps ahead of your very clever kids."

  ere is how Patti D'Arbanville recalls the moment she met Catherine James.

  It was one of those sexy-hot days that we seemed to have all the time in the summer of '64 in NYC. I was kittening down MacDougal Street in my mini, certain I looked like the goddess of the world: shiny blonde hair that reached my shoulders just right, perfect, tight fanny, long, long legs (for my height, 5'3". quite remarkable), champagneglass titties ready and at attention. My mother had always told me that I was the most beautiful girl in the world. Naturally I believed her and never had any reason not to think she was telling the absolute truth. On my way to Washington Square, I ran into Lizzie Derringer who was talking to a tall, lanky blonde girl with her back to me, and when Liz saw me she said my name. I still see this in slow motion: the girl spun around, her long, long (just better) honey blonde hair swirling around her. She had storm-tossed, sea-green eyes, an aquiline nose, and a smile that could break your heart and fill you with joy all at the same time. She, too, was skinny, perfect, and her breasts were really there, quite a handful too. I was devastated. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes on, she had a great story, knew amazing people, and worst of all, I learned that day that my mama did lie.

  Yes, Catherine James was the most alluring of the classic rock and roll temptresses. She appeared on the Hollywood scene after I had taken the Strip by storm, and to borrow a line from Dylan, I immediately wanted this tall, elegant eyeful to go back to from where she came. Jimmy Page had been romancing her for quite some time when he first began to pursue me. We briefly wrangled for the exquisite rock prince, but Jimmy shattered her heart in favor of mine that time around.

  The nineteen-year-old elusive Miss James turned up uninvited at my twenty-first birthday party during my long-distance British phone call from the wicked Mr. Page. I was tripped out on acid, and she stood there glaring at me, draped around her glamorous prop for the evening, Pink Floyd's delicious David Gilmour. For a few months Catherine and I circled around each other in the clubs, hissing like spiteful cats, and I got my wish when she suddenly vanished from the scene.

  Surprise, surprise! A year later, when I moved to London to stay with my new boyfriend, Marty, owner of the supertrendy Granny Takes a Trip, guess who came to tea? Marty's partner and roommate, Gene, also had a new live-in lady-love, Miss Catherine James. Not only were we forced to be civil to each other, there was just one bedroom, where all four of us had to sleep in two big beds jammed together. Catherine's ringleted baby boy, Damian, slumbered along with us in his little cot in the corner.

  It didn't take us long to r
ealize how alike we were, despite how differently we were brought up. Catherine had a wildy eccentric absentee father and the mother from Hades, and I was an only child, swathed in adoring attention. While I was safely sequestered within my cozy Reseda tract home, living my teendream, Catherine was running away from a West Coast orphanage, in search of her then mentor, Bob Dylan. From the age of fourteen, she found herself in situations that boggle the heart.

  We avoided the topic of Jimmy Page, but soon bonded over boy talk, big, fat hash joints, and our crazy love of music.

  John Mayall wrote a song about Catherine called "The Elusive Miss James." And the lyrics Jackson Browne penned describe his muse well: "you're a warm and lovely mystery/abandon your sad history/and meet me in the fire ..."

  Catherine has just completed her memoirs (with much encouragement from me), but happily, I have convinced her to share a few tales, which are merely a teasing peek into her sizzling rock romances.

  Catherine has rarely lacked male attention. She always seems to have several suitors, as she calls them, vying for her charms, yet she has always been a very old-fashioned girl. When life overwhelms her, she needs quiet time alone, which irks her gentlemen callers no end. I often joke that she gets "the vapors," just as swoony damsels did in days gone by, taking to their beds while handmaidens cooled them with fancy lace fans. I think this is partly why she is so intriguing to the opposite sex. She speaks her mind, but she is also enchantingly vulnerable.