There was no hanky-panky between Catherine and the guitar god because he was gaga over another music muse. She was not only Clapton's cook; Catherine also became his confidant. "Eric was in love with Pattie Boyd Harrison, but it was still a big secret. I got to listen to him write `Layla,' and I was the only person who knew it was for Pattie. Not even the band members knew."
She's told me about the delicious meals she created for Derek and the Dominoes, who were all living at the house. How did she learn to cook so well at the tender age of nineteen? "I had a cookbook from Alice's Restaurant," she laughs. "Everybody enjoyed my cooking, and I loved it in the country-all that amazing music! Damian toddled around the manor, coloring on Eric's walls. The dogs frolicked, and I was the lady in residence. Denny kept trying to woo me back, and I started letting him take Damian for a day or two." It was during one of Damian's visits with his father that Catherine had a dreamy, steamy encounter.
"Eric was throwing a big party for the drummer, Jim Gordon. It was his birthday, and everybody was coming, including George Harrison and Pattie. I was glad when Mick Jagger arrived. He'd been to visit Eric before, and even though we'd never really interacted, we knew about each other. He knew there was a girl at Eric's that he liked. That night somebody spiked the punch with mescaline, and before we knew it, we were all lost in ecstasy. It was getting late so I thought I'd better call Damian at Denny's to say good night. I went into the study and could still hear the music. I heard George Harrison say, `Here's my new song,' and he started playing `My Sweet Lord' for Eric, then everyone joined in. It was unbelievable. That gorgeous song could be heard all over the entire village at full volume. As I was talking to Denny on the phone, somebody walked into the study. I heard the door close, and he walked right up close to me. The mescaline was coming on, and I looked over and saw houndstooth trousers. The black and white fabric was undulating with psychedelia, and when I looked up, Mick was standing there. He knew exactly where I was; he had found me in that little room. The vibe was so intense. I told Denny I had to hang up and he said, `Why?' I said, `I just have to get off the phone,' and he said, `No, I don't want you to hang up.' I said, `I have to go now ... good-bye!' Music was filling the whole house, and when I hung up the phone, Mick just picked me up, pressed me against the wall, and started kissing me passionately."
While the band played on and the Eric/Pattie/George/Layla drama played itself out in the other room, Catherine was literally swept off her feet.
"Mick was unbelievably gorgeous, and I was instantly smitten. He kissed me hard as we slid down the wall, then we were on the floor, passionately making out. We went outside and walked around Eric's garden and found a little path that led to a trellis with a seat just big enough for the two of us, and we kissed for ages. We must have been gone a long time because when we got back to the house, a lot of people had left or gone to sleep. We went up to my room and made out until the sun came up.
"Mick called later that day and asked Eric and I to go see Stevie Wonder's concert with him. I dressed in my finest silk velvet and wore my silver platform boots covered in crescent moons and stars." After that night, they had several sweet latenight phone chats. "I started taking the train into London to see Mick. After a few dates I was finally going to spend the night at his house. It was his twenty-fifth birthday, and he had a huge party. Believe it or not, we were both nervous, and chatted in bed for half an hour before we even did anything. I thought `Oh my God, this is finally going to happen.' And of course, we had incredible sex."
Catherine gets up and mixes us another round of lime martinis. "I've been so lucky to experience this amazing life," she says with a giggle. "I know what the possibilities are." She takes a slow sip of her cocktail. "After about our fifth date, Mick asked me to move in."
Catherine transferred all her earthly possessions, including her adored toddler, from one rock god's estate to another. "Damian was about two years old and Mick loved him. He was so sweet with him. He'd show him magic tricks and say, `Where did you find Damian anyway? You must have found him under a mulberry bush!"
I imagine life must have been particularly sweet living with the most coveted rock star on the planet. "We walked around Chelsea, and he'd tell me about the architecture, the carriage houses, who once lived in this house or when that home was built. He taught me all about the Pre-Raphaelites. We'd go to fancy little restaurants for dinner that weren't on the map, places that nobody knew about. We'd stay home and listen to music, get high, and drink champagne. He'd put on a James Brown record and do his Mick Jagger dance for me. We listened to Stephen Stills, Gram Parsons, Clifton Chenier, and all those fabulous blues artists he loved."
But how long could this kind of ultimate rock and roll bliss last? "Two months after I moved in, the Stones were going on a European tour, starting in Brussels. While Mick was away, I decided to use my ticket to California that I'd had since I saw Eric at the Speakeasy. Before we left, Mick asked me to go to Paris for a little vacation, and we stayed at Johnny Halliday's house-he's the French Elvis-and we had a perfect time. Really, it was so lovely. Johnny had this beautiful house in the French countryside and we'd go out in the forest and search for rare truffles. At nighttime, we'd go to fabulous country inns and eat carpaccio. After our holiday, we were only at Cheyne Walk for one night, and when he kissed me good-bye to leave for the Stones' tour, I didn't even wake up all the way. I just stayed in bed and fell back asleep."
During what she thought was a brief stay in Los Angeles, Catherine started seeing disconcerting photos of Mick in the newspapers alongside a dusky, dark-haired dame who looked very much like the Stone himself. "At first, he called me a lot, then the calls came less, then they stopped altogether. I tried calling him to see if the tabloids were right, and she answered, `Hallooo.' I just put the phone down. I didn't take it that hard because we never really broke up. We didn't argue or anything. There was no discussion; it was just over." Bianca's presence certainly curtailed Mick's extracurricular activities, because the same thing happened to me when I called him right around that time. Bianca answered the phone and growled, "Don't you ever call here again."
If you don't count Catherine's occasional tete-a-tetes with Jimmy Page, she hasn't dated a musician since 1971. By then, she had experienced enough rock and roll to last several lifetimes. She decided to disappear to the country, taking Damian to live in a cottage in Connecticut where they spent the next seven years. "I've seen Jimmy, I've seen Denny, I've seen Jackson, but I haven't lived that rock and roll lifestyle since I was nineteen. I had smoked a ton of hash and did my share of LSD. I probably would have dropped dead if I'd kept it up. I moved to the middle of nowhere so I wouldn't get sidetracked. I gave things up for Damian because I wanted him to have a good life. I was asked to go to Paris to model but couldn't afford a nanny. I became a model with Wilhelmina in Manhattan out of necessity. I took the train into town and my son came with me." Amazingly, Catherine is now a grandma to Damian's son, sixteen-year-old John. "I speak to Damian every day. He's thirty-eight and still likes to talk about his unique childhood."
Jimmy Page took a couple of limo trips to Catherine's Brookfield hideaway, and in 1975, when I was doing the soap opera Search for Tomorrow in New York, I paid her a visit, bringing along a fellow from my acting class who later became her hus band. "Yes, thank you for ruining my life," she says wryly. "I spent six years with Joe, then five more with Steven, my very interesting British husband." Today she happily juggles her quartet of suitors with ingenuity and finesse. Catherine just isn't herself unless she has a couple of besotted swains dangling on the line.
Her last encounter with Zeppelin's guitar wizard was ten years ago. Over dinner, Jimmy pulled all the old romantic lines out of his crushed-velvet pocket, and Catherine was close to caving in. "Thank goodness I caught myself in time. He looked different, but his eyes were exactly the same. When I gazed into his eyes, it was Mr. Page, all right. I thought `Maybe,' then, `Nnnnoooo: He was still too dangerous. The hand grenade is to
tally viable."
Music continues to be paramount in Catherine's life. Whenever Al Green comes to town, she's front and center, swaying and swooning. Among the family photos on her library table there's a recent shot of her beaming at Smokey Robinson the night they met at a charity event. "I've been exposed to every kind of music there is since I was a baby girl. My great-greatgrandmother was a classical violinist, my great-grandfather was a concert pianist; and my grandfather played with all the big bands and wrote boogie-woogie. I miss the sound of a guitar or piano in my house. I miss the music vibe all around. After all, I was right in the middle of the revolution that changed the world."
Kicks
rom the moment my creative mentor, Frank Zappa, titillated me with the tale of Cynthia Plaster Caster back in 1968, I have been fascinated by her brazen art. Riotously enamored with rock stars myself, I was also impressed by the ingenious way she set about meeting her personal faves. Frank believed Cynthia was an innovative groundbreaker and had decided that the shy, chubby, dark-haired girl from Chicago should join his wacky ranks, even though her particular art form couldn't be captured on vinyl. Thankfully, our squealy first meeting was captured when Frank introduced us on the phone and recorded our giggly call for a track on Permanent Damage, the album with my all-girl group, the GTO's.
Cynthia has been praised as "The Rodin of Rock," an apt description for such an undeniable artiste. I have watched people blush and stammer, fume and pontificate, laugh uproariously and bow down to her audacity, her spunk (so to speak) when discussing the merits of Cynthia's artwork. Some of them might not consider what she does (making plaster replicas of rock stars' penises) to be an art form, but those folks are supremely uptight, shortsighted, and don't have a very good sense of humor.
Just to set the record straight, I looked up the word artist in Webster's:
One who professes and practices an imaginative art.
That's for sure! And the meaning of art truly helps describe what Cynthia does so well:
skill acquired by experience, study, or observation (the art of making friends); an occupation requiring knowledge or skill (the art of organ building); the conscious use of skill and creative imagination.
God bless Merriam-Webster, I couldn't have put it any better myself! Cynthia and I have been friends since the day Frank threw two kinky kindred spirits together. We found we were besotted with the same spindly, frizzy-haired British rock star, Noel Redding, and bonded immediately. I've long known about her stifling upbringing and thorny, troublesome relationship with her mother, a portentous, pious presence she still calls "the Warden." I have been privy to many of her infamous antics and treasure trove of plaster casts. I've had the unparalleled pleasure of sleeping among the many shapes and sizes during my frequent visits to her pad in the Windy City. Something about their proud, silent presence makes me feel right at home.
I'm always chuffed when our fun-intensive schedules allow for a little visit, so when Cynthia called to tell me one of her favorite new bands, the Redwalls, asked her to appear in their upcoming video here in L.A., I jumped for joy. Of course, I invited her to stay with me, and in between our lively dinner party and shopping sprees, Cynthia and I manage to curl up on the couch and trip the light fantastic.
Just like me, young Cynthia was struck hard by the limey lightning bolt called the Beatles. Up until then, she had been a devotee of show tunes and live theater, and when she saw a picture of the four mop tops in their matching outfits, she thought they were a new comedy troupe. "Then I heard `I Wanna Hold Your Hand' and was blown away-because they were goodlooking and made proportionately great music." Virginal and completely ignorant about the facts of life, Cynthia still realized there were far more fascinating prospects to consider. "Fuck the high school swills. This is what I wanna date!"
Swimming, gymnastics, and ignorant high school lads were all but forgotten as the Brits triumphantly invaded U.S. soil. "As each new British Invasion band arrived, I got more interested, but so did more and more other girls: competition, and this growing number was becoming a big problem for me." In 1965 the disorderly Rolling Stones came to town to record 12 X 5 at Chess Records. "I realized they stayed at a hotel, so that had to be mecca. I also figured out that when I called I should ask for the least popular band member, and that's how I found the Stones at the Water Tower Hotel. I asked for Bill Wyman."
The first day Cynthia showed up with her best friend, Pest, there were three girls waiting at the hotel; the next day there were six. Cynthia giddily gave Brian Jones a box of cough drops and got Mick and Keith's autographs, but knew there had to be a far superior way to meet the bands.
Up until Cynthia briefly met Gene Clark of the Byrds, she thought all she wanted was to make out with her musical heroes. "We talked to Gene and he said, `Oh, you're virgins, huh? Why?' `Well, why shouldn't we be virgins, huh?' `Because sex feels good!' `What, Gene? You're kidding!' Pest didn't believe it either, and we wondered, `How does it feel good?' I mean, nobody in high school talked about it."
Cynthia's mother had thrown her father out of the house years earlier due to heavy boozing, and had no use for the opposite sex. Not only was the Warden was a hard, chilly taskmistress, she neglected to tell her daughter a single thing about s-e-x except that she considered it to be a very evil deed. "I'd been wanking off since I was five, but didn't know that was considered sex. I didn't know what the fuck it was! I never talked about it to anybody and nobody asked me about it until I was thirteen and my high school music teacher saw me wanking off behind my desk and yelled, `What are you doing?' as I moaned loudly. It so embarrassed me that I didn't do it again for a long time."
The first British group the girls managed to spend valuable time with was the Hollies. "They were the first band I actually hung out with, one-on-one. But not the cute ones; they were Bobby Elliott, the drummer, and the teddy-bear bass player, Eric Haydock. We somehow got into their hotel room and laughed with them-we loved British humor. And because they were not the main rock stars in the band, we felt more like their equals."
Their semi-comfy experience must have triggered "I want more of this!"
"Yeah, it subconsciously told me I could hold a conversation with them. I was more comfortable if they made me laugh and I could make them laugh. This was a real important discovery because I figured that was the only way I could get laid, which I found out was something that was supposed to feel good; part of the sexual process that my mother said was a very bad thing for me." When Cynthia read in the paper that the Beatles took their girlfriends along on a vacation to the Virgin Islands, she naturally assumed they'd be sharing hotel rooms.
"I figured that fun/sexual reproduction was going on in the Virgin Islands, and thought, `Okay, if that's what they want, that's what I want.' The same time this realization came about, we learned about Cockney rhyming slang. Most importantly, we learned the dirty words. The slang for `dick' was Hampton Wick and `wank' was Barclay's Bank, which was the key to opening the door behind the hotel room doors-our first really successful means of getting close to rock stars and indulging in conversation."
Clever, clever, clever. As the competition got as stiff as youknow-what and girls piled up in the lobbies, Cynthia and Pest were on the fast track to possible pop paradise. They began leaving naughty letters for the bands. "We incorporated Cockney rhyming slang into these goofy notes, like, `Hello, Gerry and the Pacemakers. We are the Barclay's Bankers of Chicago. We have convenient nighttime hours. Would you like to make a deposit?"
Cynthia slipped the Pacemakers a note, including her phone number, through the window of the tour bus. "I gave it to the drummer. They all looked me over and I thought nothing of it until he called me at home. The Warden's in the next room of our little bitty apartment, looking at me. I was so impressed because back then, long distance was very expensive, probably put through by an operator. He called all the way from Ohio and found out very soon that I didn't know what the fuck I was talking about in the note, and politely hung up."
Cynthia handed over a few more bold missives and got more calls and scathing looks from the Warden, but fate was about to dial her number.
In April 1966, the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars was in Chicago and this particular tour starred Paul Revere and the Raiders. "Their song `Kicks' was number one on the charts, which was really hot! Because as you know, part of the appeal of being a groupie is to impress your friends with the fame and success of the band-especially when we were young. It was a real treat, besides the fact the guys were good-looking and talented.
"I was an art major, and was on my way out of art class to meet Pest and find the hotel. We didn't know how we were gonna meet them, but presumed we'd try the `passing the note' trick. I stopped dead in my tracks when my art teacher gave us the homework assignment: `Make a plaster cast,' he said, and the object had to be solid. `Solid! Wait a moment,' I thought. `Don't Hampton Wicks get solid? Okay, let's make it really absurd.' I took extra plaster, put it in a brown paper bag, and wrote PLASTER so it was official looking. I couldn't wait to tell Pest, and her reaction was the same as mine-we screamed our heads off! We took the kit to the hotel and found Paul Revere and the Raiders rooms.
Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies Page 9
