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The JERRY HALL memoirs, written with CHRISTOPHER HEMPHILL
March 1985 Christopher HemphillThe JERRY HALL memoirs, written with CHRISTOPHER HEMPHILL
March 1985 Christopher HemphillLearn how a gangly ol' girl from the Texas flatlands ran away to Paris and, quicker than you can say Jumpin' Jack Flash, became a world-famous model, danced on tabletops with Grace Jones, bought herself a ranch, lassoed the slippery Mick Jagger, and birthed the new Jogger baby, Elizabeth Scarlett. Photographer ANNIE LEIBOVITZ caught up with Jerry in Rio, where she and Mick were making videos of his debut solo album. There, just in time for Mardi Gras, the dazzling Ms. Hall modeled Carnival costumes exclusively for y'all. She's only rock 'n' roll, but we like her. Now read on
TEXAS "My sister Terry and I used to play at being rich. We pretended our husbands were off playing golf."
I grew up in the middle of nowhere— Mesquite, Texas. It was real flat. I was one of five girls. My father wanted boys, but he had three girls, and then me and my twin sister were born—Terry Jaye and Jerry Faye. We were born in a town near Houston called Gonzales. We had a produce farm and two trucks. Mama would keep us twins in little bassinets in the back of her truck.
They were doing real well and then Daddy gambled away the farm. Lost the whole thing. He got so upset he crashed the new car into a brick wall and had to be in the hospital for like six months. It was a big disaster. That's when we came to Mesquite.
Mesquite's a suburb of Dallas now, but when we moved there it was all pastures and there was a creek and everything. We had a little pink brick house with three bedrooms and one bathroom that we all had to share. But we always had Cadillacs. Mama thought it was the only safe car to drive. She thought if you were in a Volkswagen and it got hit, forget it, but if you were in a Cadillac you were O.K. It protected you. She worked as a medical-records librarian at the hospital, and the doctors there would get a new Cadillac every year and sell the used ones to us. At one point we had three of them. There was a lavender 1956 convertible she'd gotten when Terry and I were born that never worked. It was on blocks in the driveway. I used to lie on the hood of it and look at the stars.
My father got a job driving a truck delivering explosive chemicals crosscountry. He'd get burned by acid, and he had marks on his face, and he'd have to drive and drive for hours and hours, so he'd take all these uppers to stay awake, and drink a lot of coffee. He'd come home for two days of the week acting like a maniac. But my mother always treated him like the king of the house. Everyone had to snap to. That's something we got from her—we all spoil our men.
He had so much anger in him. Mama used to try to keep him from beating us girls up by jumping on him, but then he'd throw her across the room and it seemed like she'd get more beat up from trying to stop him from beating us up. Sometimes he used to beat us with his belt so bad that we'd have blackand-blue welts on our legs and couldn't go to school. But we never felt that we were abused. In Texas everybody's kids are beat up.
When Daddy was away we were like "Whheww!" Then we'd do these beauty treatments with Mama. We'd all put egg-white masks on our faces. We never bought beauty products from the store. It was all natural stuff. We used avocado masks and beer for our hair and oatmeal and honey and lemon and mayonnaise. . .different things every week. It was always out of the refrigerator.
Since Terry and I were the youngest, we had to run errands for the older ones. Like with Cyndy we had to polish her boots and starch her jeans. She liked her jeans so starched they sort of stood up by themselves. It was a look. We used to do things like that, and run to the store to buy cigarettes for them. We always had hand-me-down clothes. Our socks were so old we had to wear rubber bands around the tops of them to keep them up. And instead of new crayons we had a bag of broken crayons from our sisters. But we had each other. I liked being a twin. I think it helps you in later life. You know how to be with another person without fighting all the time and getting bored.
Terry and I used to play at being rich. We dressed up in my mother's hats and gloves and dresses and jewelry, and we'd put water in champagne glasses and sit there sipping our champagne and pretending our husbands were off playing golf. That's what we thought rich people did—play golf.
I remember when Dallas became the number-one murder capital of the United States. We were so shocked, especially because it was right after Kennedy was assassinated. We were about twenty miles outside of Dallas, not close enough to hear the sirens or anything, but everyone was so humiliated to have it happen in our town. Texas was violent all right. I'm so glad I got out of there. In a way, though, it was great. They have really beautiful skies and the most incredible sunsets. And in Gonzales they had the most beautiful cactuses, with big red flowers on them.
We spent summers on my grandparents' chicken farm. We used to go from chicken house to chicken house changing the water and giving them molasses. You give that to chickens like medicine. And they had cows too. We used to swim in the cow trough, and it was all slimy on the bottom. Plus there were these gigantic feed bins and we used to dive through the feed. That was great.
My grandmother was a religious fanatic. Every morning on the farm she'd beat us out of bed with a willow switch, saying, "Idleness is the devil's workshop!" She'd go, "Get up, you big old lazy girls! Your mother hasn't even taught you how to can. We're gonna can preserves!" She thought we had to learn all that stuff to get a man. Meanwhile, Mama was always saying, "You can do anything you want in life. Just because you're a woman doesn't mean you can't do other stuff."
I started my first job when I was eleven, baby-sitting for people on the street. And then I worked at different odd jobs. I worked at an old-folks' home changing their beds with them in them. I worked at a horse stable breaking horses and taking kids for trail rides. And shoveling shit out of the stalls. Then I worked at Wyatt's cafeteria as a bus girl, cleaning up the tables and giving people iced tea and cold water and filling up their coffee cups. And then I worked at the Dairy Queen.
My sister Rosy started working as a model at the Apparel Mart. So when I got old enough I started modeling too, following in her footsteps. They'd have a rack of clothes against a wall and a little dressing room and buyers would come in and we'd give them sandwiches and drinks. It wasn't really modeling, but they would occasionally ask us to try something on and we'd stand there and turn around. The buyers were dirty old men and the clothes were all like tarts' dresses...you know, evening things slit up to here. By the time I started doing this I looked a lot older than I was, because I was already as tall as I am now, plus I wore high heels and talked a lot. All the other girls who worked there were thirtyish with bleached blond hair and, you know... they wanted to be airline stewardesses.
Cyndy was more of a tomboy. I think my father sort of made her into a tomboy because we lived on a farm and he didn't have any boys to help him. She was the Texas State Girls' Bull-Riding Champion at the rodeo. She won trophies and belt buckles. She was really hot stuff in our town.
The rodeo was the biggest thing going. I used to ride in the Grand Entry with flags, doing formations. And cowboys from all over would come and they'd be real cute. They'd be so polite—real gentlemen—and then they'd get drunk and rowdy and have a lot of fun. Listen to the music—it's just like that. All the men are real rough and tough and macho and kind of sad. Everyone drinks a lot, and all the women are into crying and being brokenhearted. Tears, beers, beers, tears...
There was a lot of drinking on Daddy's side of the family. By the time I knew Daddy he could still be charming, but when he'd get drunk he'd get really mean and nasty. He used to fall out with his friends a lot. He'd say terrible things and get mad and gamble and lose money. I don't know how my mother put up with it all those years. But I know she didn't want us to get stuck in something like that. She wanted us to do things. She had all those books like Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking and she used to say, "The most important thing, if I ever teach you girls anything, is to think positive. Set your goals and go for 'em!'' She used to tell us that posture was very important. She'd make us walk around with books on our heads and stand up against the wall with our backs completely straight. We just wanted to scrunch down, but she'd say, "Be proud of your height! We're Amazons!''
The Texas idea of beauty never really fit me. They like cute little girls with, you know, big tits and big asses and perfect teeth, and of all my sisters I was definitely the weirdest-looking—skinny, tall, flat.. .everyone used to laugh at me. I tried out to be a cheerleader but didn't make it. They said I was too tall. They wanted them to be in an even line because that would look neater.
Then when I was working at Wyatt's cafeteria this guy who worked in the pet shop right across the shopping mall asked me for a blind date. We went with another couple. We were driving along and a car hit us going really fast and we went off into a ditch and hit a telephone pole. The other girl went through the windshield and my date hurt his knee and the other girl's date got a concussion. I'd hit my head, but I was the only one who was all right. I got out of the car and the hood had popped off and everything was smoking, so I dragged the girl out and she was bleeding and her teeth were knocked out. Then I dragged the guys out because in movies you always think it's going to blow up, right? Well, it didn't blow up, but that's what I was thinking.
The next day when I woke up my head was all swollen up with fluid. My mother took me to the doctors and they said I had to have my sinuses drained. They said it was a very minor thing. But they didn't ask if I was allergic to penicillin, which I am. So they were draining my sinuses and giving me penicillin, and they had this tube in my throat and tubes in my nose and they had to wake me up in the middle of the operation because I was having convulsions.
After the allergic reaction, I was so flipped out that when the doctor and nurse came in I started throwing things at them. So then they sent for a psychiatrist and he gave me these Quaaludes and Valiums. I went home and started taking them. And they were horrible. I wasn't my normal self at all. I definitely didn't have my sense of humor. Nobody at home wanted to have anything to do with me, because I was being such a drag. Eventually I flushed the pills right down the toilet. It had been a disaster. But the hospital had to give me $800 in compensation. And that's when I decided to go to Paris.
Daddy didn't want me to go. He wanted the $800 insurance money for himself. He'd been in Paris during the war and he said it was a really bad place. My mother had to sneak me out. She made me dresses for weeks and weeks before in secret.
We never had Vogue or Harper's Bazaar at home. We only had Frederick's of Hollywood catalogues. My mother always wore sexy fifties-style clothes she ordered from there. She had black push-up French bras with wires and stuff. We thought that was, you know, fashion. And that's the kind of clothes my mother made me to take to Paris.
I swear to you those clothes my mother made me were the main reason I had my success in Paris. I'd kept saying to Mama, "You're mad! I'm never going to wear these big evening gowns. I'm going to be camping out." That's what I thought I was going to be doing. My traveling outfit was cutoff jeans, a checked shirt, and sneakers. But in the end Mama was right. All I needed were the evening gowns.
I arrived in Paris in May '73 with all these great clothes, a Eurail pass, and a backpack. But I really didn't know where to go. A model at the Apparel Mart had given me the phone number of someone she thought could help me. So I called up this friend of hers and went out to lunch with a whole bunch of people and they said, "You've got to go to the Riviera—that's where everyone is in the summer."
When I got there I still didn't know where to go. Plus I was being a bit silly with my money. I bought this metallic crocheted swimsuit, a bikini, that was see-through but crocheted in certain places, and I went down to the beach at Cannes and spent the whole day lying there in the sun watching the people. I couldn't believe it. All the girls were topless. But I kept my top on. Maybe that's why this man noticed me.
I was going to the bathroom and he followed me. He was kind of handsome and real slick-looking, and he asked, "Are you a model?" So I said, "Well, I've modeled some in Dallas and I'd like to be a model." And he introduced himself—I'll call him "the Tunisian"—and put his card with his telephone number on it in my bikini bottom. He said he had a modeling agency in Paris. And he said he'd send me back to Paris and put me in an apartment with some other models and I'd be a model. I couldn't believe I was so lucky after just one day. "Give me a call,'' he said. And the next day I was, in Paris. It all happened so quickly.
"I know people think Mick looks strange, but I think big lips are attractive."
PARIS "There were always a lot of gay guys in and out of the apartment, and they used to say that I was camp."
For the next couple weeks or so I went pounding around from Metro to Metro going to see all these creepy people, photographers who said, "Great! C'est la nouvelle Veruschka!" Sometimes it got me down not having any money and I'd go around the comer to the agency and threaten to go home and the Tunisian would take me to lunch and give me a hundred francs. Out of his sock. That's where he kept it. Or my roommate Tom and I would go to the Piscine Deligny, the swimming pool that's on a barge in the Seine, and hang out. It was cruise city. Tom would meet some old guy who'd ask him out to dinner and he'd take me along as his sister. Or I'd get asked out by some old guy and take Tom along as my brother. We'd eat huge meals and when these old guys would get up to go to the bathroom we'd just disappear and go out dancing at the Club Sept and have some fun. We were like meal whores. I think everyone's done it. Mick's told me he used to do it on the King's Road when he was just getting started in London.
Everywhere I went I met famous people. I used to have tea and dinner with Salvador Dali. King Vidor, the old movie director, took me to dinner one night. When you're young, everyone's so nice to you—taking you around and everything. I'd wear these sexy clothes to La Coupole and places like that. I was sitting there once and Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir asked me to join them. I had lunch with them several times. They just loved to hear about the town I came from and about the family and what we did and stuff about the rodeo. I sort of knew who they were, because at home my girlfriend and I had watched this program on educational TV about existentialism. When I told Antonio about it later he couldn't believe it.
Antonio is a great fashion illustrator who was living in Paris at the time. He was my first boyfriend and the first man I ever lived with. I met him at the Club Sept with Tom. I had on this gold satin suit of my mother's—real tight, of course—and this blue feather boa she'd found for me at the Sewing Center in Mesquite. Then I had gold feathers pasted across my forehead and my platform shoes. Already I'm five ten and a half, and with these shoes I was like six three or something. Plus I'd curled my hair. It was like a mane—all frizzy. And then I had on lots of makeup and glitter as well as the feathers... I guess that's why Antonio noticed me.
He was wearing a white satin jacket and a red beret. He looked so chic. And he said, "Why don't you come and pose for me?'' I hadn't done any real jobs or anything but I started working with him all the time. And then he introduced me to Helmut Newton, and I got my first big job.
Helmut took me shopping in Pigalle. We went to the sex shops and bought leather shorts and bras and boots and whips and chains and all sorts of gadgets. I was embarrassed, but he seemed very businesslike and precise. He knew the look he wanted. I went along with it all, but by the end of the day I decided that I'd gotten into the wrong thing. I burst into tears and said that I didn't want to do porno photos. Helmut was very kind and guaranteed me that this was art, but he promised me that the next time we worked together it would be for normal pictures. And, sure enough, right after that he took photos of me for American Vogue and a cover of me for French Vogue and that's when my career started taking off.
When I started getting work I told my sister Terry about it and she came to visit. We moved into the hotel next to the Cafe Flore, the Crystal, and then Grace Jones came to town. She didn't have any money or a place to live and we thought she was really fun and she moved in, too. She was just starting out in modeling.
Then I moved in with Antonio and his friends Juan and Paul. We had an apartment on the rue de Rennes, where I lived for about a year and a half. It was a big apartment and we used to have lots of people coming in and out. Everybody got into talking real Texas, especially 'cause I was laying it on thick. I would walk around in my Frederick's of Hollywood high heels with fur around the edge and everyone would say how great they were. There were always a lot of gay guys in and out of the apartment, and they used to say that I was camp. You see, I still thought these Frederick's of Hollywood getups were actually chic.
Antonio really made me over. I plucked my eyebrows the way he drew them. They're still the way he drew them. He wouldn't pick a girl who didn't have some sort of personality that was there from the beginning, but then he'd teach you how to put it into channels that were more salable. He'd teach you what to do with your hands when you were posing and every other little thing. I posed for him for so many hours I can't tell you. He taught me how to be still. I'd sit with his drawings of me and copy the makeup exactly.
It's amazing how fast it all happened. In September '74 Newsweek did a little thing about me where they ran a picture and did an interview and said I was the new model taking Paris by storm. Then I had all these magazine covers that came out around the same time—Elle, 20 Ans, Stern, Vogue Beaute, and some Italian magazines. I was so excited. I walked by the newsstand near the Flore and bought them all up. And everyone started calling me "the New Girl." I used to get so shocked when I'd go with Antonio to the Flore and everyone would look at me and I could hear my name being whispered.
LONDON "I learned a lot about antiques and paintings in London. Plus thats where I first got into hostessing."
It was such an exciting time to be in Paris. All the models would go to the Sept—Pat Cleveland and Grace Jones and everyone—and dance on the tables and take over the place. It was a period when fashion shows were picking up. The black girls used to walk like magic and drive everyone wild. The audience would holler and scream and fashion shows became a sort of entertainment. It wasn't just for buyers. People who weren't involved with fashion would try to crash because it was so exciting. It was a black thing—definitely. What I didn't learn from Antonio I learned from watching the black girls in Paris. They had the greatest turns and really knew how to move the clothes.
A lot of times they'd send me and Pat Cleveland out together. She's part Indian, too, and we've been working together for years now. I think she's the greatest runway model of all time. She's a genius. She has this poetic kind of chin and neck. Her profile's like a tree bending down. And she spots with her head like a ballerina. She can spin on a dime.
We'd work out our routines right before we went out. It's much fresher that way and you can change things around. We'd say, "O.K., we'll walk down like this. Then we'll turn. Then we'll stand there and look over our shoulders. Then we'll walk down to the end and do this spin and then we'll do a figure eight and then we'll come back and stop and look over our shoulders again." And the audience loved it. It must be so boring watching a lot of shows in a day, so we'd try to entertain them. That was a new thing, because before, the girls weren't supposed to have any personalities. Afterward they started hiring choreographers. They'd hire these jerks who made up stupid moves that didn't work at all. It was much better when they just left it up to us.
When I started working with photographers, I tried to do inventive things like lounging around in odd places instead of just standing there. I always liked to have an idea. I used to study Antonio's books of fifties pinup poses and do research the night before. Plus I always remembered Frederick's of Hollywood. That was still my favorite, even after I learned it was camp.
Antonio used to laugh at my poses and my getups and say they were great, but he also used to say I should be more "classical"—more the way I look now. When I met him I had much fatter cheeks. He used to draw them thinner. Now I look more like his drawings.
I learned so much in Paris. But I was still a fool about money then. I just took whatever that Tunisian gave me out of his sock. I did all right, though. I used to keep my money in a box under the bed. I think the most I ever had in there was $10,000.
I had it in dollars. I never liked it in foreign currency. It never seems real. It's the same thing with getting well known. It's never as good as when it's in your own country and in your own language. Plus Antonio was moving back to New York and my father got sick. So I decided to come home.
Late in '74 I arrived in New York wearing mink. That's what I'd done with the money I'd saved in the box. I went out to Revillon and bought it with cash. It was designed by Fernando Sanchez and it was a cape that came down to mid-calf. It was creamy beige trimmed all around with this great big heavy trim of silver fox. It was wonderful. I can remember walking down the Champs Elysees and looking at the reflections in all the windows with the cape flowing behind me.
Eileen Ford had seen several pictures I did with Helmut Newton for the American Vogue, and when she came to Paris she and her husband, Jerry, said, "Come live with us. We'll organize everything and see how it goes." They do that with a lot of models they think have potential. They take them in. They always say that they're the parents away from home. And once the girls start working and making money, they get their own apartments. It's a way of getting started.
I loved working in New York. Everyone was much more precise with their time than they were in Paris and there was no dillydallying. Of course, there's always a lot of fun in fashion, too. I still had my party side from Paris, and I used to love to go out dancing. The problem at the Fords was that I wasn't allowed to bring anyone to the house, and I was supposed to be home by a certain time at night. Plus Eileen always wanted to know who I was dating. She wanted the girls to get married to someone nice like, you know, a wealthy lawyer.
I think I stayed with them about six months. Then I met Alvenia Bridges, who was working for Jonathan Hitchcock, the designer, as an assistant. Alvenia and I decided to get a place together. The first place we got was a loft way downtown. It was a really bad neighborhood with warehouses and stuff and we didn't have any heating. We used to freeze. We'd sleep on tatami mats with tons of covers over us. But the loft became impossible, so we found another place, in the Village. It had three little teeny bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and this long hallway. But we always had roses and champagne and Floris perfume and all the nice sort of things that are important. We had pretty simple tastes really.
Then my sister Cyndy came to New York. And Rosy came to visit. Then sometimes we'd meet a dancer at the health club who was there with the ballet for a few months and we'd invite her to come stay. It was like a gang of girls.
Now I realize that a man would've gotten in the way then. I was always traveling. I went to Russia with Norman Parkinson. I went to Jamaica with him and Antonio. I went to India. My passport from this period has all these extra pages I had to get for all the stamps. But the picture of me in it was still the picture I had taken before I went off to Paris. I used to hate that picture.
When I met Bryan Ferry, the lead singer of Roxy Music, I was in my rowdy period. He chose me out of English Vogue. It was the series I'd done in Jamaica with Antonio as the other model. They were some of my best pictures. And when Bryan saw them he decided to use me as the girl on the cover of the new Roxy Music album, Siren.
He picked me up at Heathrow Airport, in London, in this big old Daimler limousine—you know, one of those old-fashioned cars that the queen has. And he put me in a nice hotel and then took me out to dinner. He was charming. He was a real gentleman and handsome and beautifully dressed and his hair was all black and shiny and slicked back and he smelled of Floris. I didn't have a boyfriend then and I really fancied him. I could see he liked me, too. The next day we took a train trip up to Wales. I'd never been on a train like that—a beautiful old-fashioned train with old leather seats.
We really liked each other—Bryan and I. I stayed with him a couple of days, and when I went back to New York we stayed in touch. And then we had this really nice Christmas in London and went on holiday to Mustique, a small island in the Caribbean where you see the same people at least ten times a day. There were some friends of Bryan's there, and one night we got good and drunk. I've never been a big drinker, but this night was an exception, and I started telling everyone the story about how I'd been girls' champion leg wrestler back in Mesquite. Then I decided to give them a demonstration. And I'm doing this leg wrestling and hooting and hollering, and all these people were egging me on. Bryan thought I was making a fool of myself. When we got back to our room he was very upset with me and I was crying because he said I'd embarrassed him in front of all his friends with my leg wrestling. And I said, "What do you have to say about it? You can't tell me what to do!" And then... all of a sudden he said he wanted to marry me. I was stunned. We knew we were in love and everything but we hadn't discussed marriage. I really don't know why he proposed just then. But maybe it was because I'd said, "You can't tell me what to do!" It was like a challenge. Maybe he decided he could tell me what to do. But the leg wrestling was always a sore point between us. He wouldn't ever do it with me. He didn't even like to think about it.
Bryan has very refined taste. He knows all about art and the quality things in life. I learned a lot about antiques and paintings in London. Plus that's where I first got into hostessing. I became the mistress of the house, fixing it up and buying china and linens. Every afternoon I started having tea with smoked-salmon-and-cucumber sandwiches on brown bread. It's a little habit I still have.
Bryan would get excited about anything I did that was like a housewife. He loved it when I took up needlepoint. A lot of it I liked. I loved going shopping in London, like at Fortnum & Mason. They have these guys in uniform with white gloves there and they never rush you. They stand there forever. They'd say, "May I help you, ma'am?" and I'd say, "Mmm.. .maybe I'll have this can of soup." And they'd say, "Oh, that's a lovely brand, ma'am—one of our most popular." And they'd hold up the can of soup and follow you around for like an hour holding up cans of soup and boxes of biscuits and jars of all sorts of sauces... "And this one, ma'am, is so lovely with duck." They'd go on and on. I couldn't get over it.
It was in London that I started learning about publicity. I would get in the papers just for being with Bryan. They used to call us "the Perfect Couple." I was so happy. I really was. I thought I could have lived like that forever. But I always had to be so ladylike and I kept saying the wrong thing and Bryan would get upset with me. Every time I'd get drunk and have a great time he'd get mad at me. It was a pattern that started with the leg wrestling in Mustique.
Bryan did two tours of America, and I went on both of them. During the first one I took him home to meet my family. Then, around the time of the second tour, we tried living in L.A. We rented a house in Bel Air with a pool. We had a lot of fun times there. He used to ride me around piggyback and we'd throw each other in the pool. We used to see a lot of Joan Collins. She'd give parties for all the English people, with things like bangers and mash—sausages and mashed potatoes—on Jubilee Day. But I used to feel lost at most of the parties.
I didn't like Hollywood people that much. They were so rude, and all they talked about was movies you'd never heard of because they hadn't been made yet. And meanwhile, I'd met Mick.
Things started going wrong with Bryan, but it's hard really to say when. Maybe it was when I took him home to meet the family, in 1976. My father was still alive, and he thought Bryan was great. He was probably just relieved, you know, thinking, Another one married. But my mother and sisters thought he was kind of snooty. I think a cockroach crawled across the wall. That can happen, you know. There're roaches everywhere—except in England. Bryan sort of freaked out about it and everyone was embarrassed. Plus I don't think he liked my mother's cooking too much. He made faces and picked at his food. He wasn't exactly what you'd call a sport. Mick would've just laughed at the cockroach.
I'd met Mick in London in the summer of '76. He'd called up Bryan and asked us to see his concert. Afterward we went backstage and Mick was sitting there in his dressing gown and he was so much smaller than I'd imagined. There he was, all scrunched down on his knees by the coffee table, and he looked really small and slim and fragile and feminine somehow, but really sexy and interesting. And then we went out to dinner and he was doing his cockney bit. The thing about Mick is that he's really an actor. His face is so expressive. I know people think he looks strange, but I don't think so. I think big lips are very attractive. I was overwhelmed. It was love at first sight.
Then Bryan went off to tour Japan and Australia for two months. I wanted to come with him but he said I couldn't go. Plus he'd said that he wouldn't call me for the whole two months, because it was too expensive. I couldn't believe that. I mean, he is a rock star. So I decided to go back to New York and work.
I started seeing all my old friends, and one night Ara Gallant, Richard Avedon's hairdresser, invited me to dinner. So I get to the restaurant and there's Penelope Tree and her boyfriend—they weren't married yet—and Warren Beatty...and Mick! It was May 21, 1977. I'll never forget that date.
Since then I've learned that Mick had set the whole thing up. I was the only single girl, so I was put between him and Warren. They were both being pretty keen. I'm sitting there and Warren starts to chat and then Mick leans over to talk and then he gets mad and says to Warren, "She's with me,'' because he had arrived first. And Warren looks at me and I say, "I'm not with anyone. I'm engaged. I just happen to be at this dinner.'' And then Mick says, "Now, Warren, listen, man... '' and drags him off. And he takes him over to the telephone booth and starts calling up models, trying to fix Warren up with someone else.
After dinner we went to a few jazz clubs, and we ended up at Studio 54. Finally, at about four or five o'clock Mick came out of the back room and I said, "I've got to go home. I can walk, because the place I'm staying is just a few blocks away.'' And he said, "Let me drop you off." The next thing I knew we were in front of his house. So I said, "I really have to go home," and he said, "Oh, please come in just for a cup of tea." He seemed so friendly and everything, so I went in and we sat down and drank our tea and the next thing I knew...
The next morning I was pulling on my clothes, running out of the house, trying to grab a cab... it took me five seconds to get out of there. Cyndy was just getting up when I got back to the apartment. I said, "You won't believe what happened." And she said, "Mmm...you better be careful, you know." And I said, "I'm never going to see him again. It was just one of those things that happen."
So I go to sleep and that afternoon the flowers arrive. And then Mick phones and asks me out again and I say, "I really can't see you." And Mick said, "But I really like you... " So I started thinking, Well, this is just a last fling.. .You know, trying to rationalize things. Plus, it really seemed that Mick's place was like Grand Central station—one in and one out. I didn't see how it could get serious.
But Mick was calling up and calling up, from the studio, from here, from there, and always sending flowers. And I thought, God, this guy is really keen. I really liked him. But I said, "Well, we can only go out every other day. Every day is too serious."
Then my father died. I was in tears and Cyndy was there and she was in tears and Mick sent over some flowers and then he came over. And I'd been trying to get ahold of Bryan because I had a closer bond with him and I had to talk to him but I couldn't get him. Finally I sent a message to his office and he still didn't call me. He sent a letter saying he was sorry he couldn't call but that he was traveling a lot and he missed me. I was so upset. Mick was there when I needed someone. It made me closer to him, and our relationship speeded up somehow.
I was really crazy about Mick. But all along I'd been thinking, How long is this going to last? You're being flaky. Bryan's a sincere person and you're engaged. Mick's just a playboy. I never wanted a playboy, you know. And I thought, If this lasts a year it's a miracle. And now it's been—what? Eight years?
It was strange at the beginning. For one thing, there were all the girls—the groupies—chasing after Mick. That was a problem. But the strangest thing was the hours. So many girls I've seen who've been with guys in the music business have given up their careers and just slept all day and stayed up all night in the studio. But not me. When Mick and I first started living together in Paris I'd be getting up in the morning when he was coming home. We'd have breakfast together. And he'd go to sleep and I'd go off to work. Then when I came home I'd go to sleep again and then I'd wake up around eleven and we'd go out and have dinner. Then I'd go back to sleep and he'd go back to work. In a way it was nice. I felt so rested sleeping twice a day. But it was strange. It was two different worlds. It's only recently, since our baby was born, that that pattern's begun to change a bit.
I didn't go on as many modeling jobs when I first moved in with him—you can't be away all the time when you're starting a relationship—but I never stopped working. I'd go away every other month for a week if a good trip came up. And on the first tour I worked in a lot of places that the band went.
Mick becomes a totally different person on tour. Instead of the nice gentlemanly guy I live with, he becomes this incredible egomaniac. On tour he never opens the door for anyone. He goes towards a door and you follow three steps behind. And if the door slams in your face, that's too bad. The first tour was a bit of a shock for me. But when I saw what it was like to perform before, say, 85,000 people, I could understand it. They're young kids. They're drinking and they're stoned. They want excitement. They want action. And to get up and perform for them you have to psych yourself up. You have to get into this whole thing of being invincible, of thinking, I'm it! And if you don't like it, fuck it! Mick needs that edge.
My nesting instinct is pretty strong, but, for the first few years, we were nomads. We were in a hotel in Paris because he was recording the Some Girls album. Then he was getting ready to tour and we rented a place in Woodstock. The rest of the band was around in other houses because they were rehearsing for the tour. Millions of dollars depended on it. And the whole thing was going to fall through if Keith didn't get off heroin. Mick loves Keith, you know. They're like a married couple, and it gave Mick a very good feeling to be able to help Keith. He did it staying with us in Woodstock. He got off heroin right on our couch.
He never went to the bedroom once. I think the couch made him feel more normal. He was lying there wearing these things that looked like headphones. There's some clinic he'd gone to where they'd given them to him. They had clips that hook onto your earlobes. And they were attached to a little machine that makes this vibration. At first it makes you completely out of it. I don't know if Keith even remembers this, but for a few weeks he was just lying there. Mick and I would feed him. And every time the clips would fall off we'd hook them back on. And then we'd cover him up with a blanket at night.
It must have been so painful. He just slept and slept all the time. And he lost a lot of weight and when he got up he'd be so weak. And then he started getting better. You know the feeling you have when you have a child and you watch him grow? That's how Mick and I felt about Keith. We were like "Look, he's having a bath!" And "Oh, did you see what he was doing today? He's really much better." It was very odd.
Then when he started getting more together you could see him getting more macho. He'd start going out and throwing knives at trees. He started getting his temper back and we didn't mind that because it was a good sign. And then he started suntanning and exercising and Mick talked to him a lot and it was so sweet to see.
It was while we were in Woodstock that Mick and I started talking about settling down and getting some property. We were always traveling but we started to see what our pattern was—New York, Paris, London, and Mustique. So we decided that instead of renting we'd get houses everywhere.
Now we've got the house in New York. And the house in France, the Chateau de la Fourchette, that we're still fixing up. That's really nice. We're building another house in Mustique. We both have a big interest in the Orient and we're doing the house in the Japanese style. We talked about it for years and when I was in Japan I photographed a lot of details of houses I liked for ideas. The house is begun now and we're already planting the garden.
It was always my dream to have a ranch, so I went ahead and got one, and Mick thought it was a very good investment. Now it's worth twice what I paid for it. Last year I bought another hundred acres, with a forty-acre lake. And Mick bought another two hundred acres next door to me. Now we're buying another 160 acres. Together it'll be 750 acres.
It's a real ranchy-looking ranch. It's just an old white frame house. And the town is nothing. It's so small that if you blink an eye you miss it. The big local topic of conversation is the weather— it's mostly freezes and droughts.
I planted a hundred pecan trees, so in a couple of years I'll have some pecans. I already have some really nice show cows and bulls I got from Shelley Duvall's mother in Houston, and I've bought a lot of beef cattle too. They're sort of a guaranteed small income. You can't lose money on them. They don't make much money but they'll at least pay for the three people who work there.
Mick knows the way to my heart. One year he bought me a tractor for Christmas. And another year he gave me a Ford Bronco. First he gave me a little toy one and then he had the real one delivered. It was so sweet. And this last year I asked for a four-horse trailer. I didn't get it. I got a diamond brooch instead. But I'm not complaining.
Mick and I loved having his daughters around, Jade and Karis, and we realized that we wanted a child of our own. We planned it. It took three months. We were out in Connecticut when I conceived, on a rainy day after riding horses. We'd been trying a lot and I had to lie there without jumping up, because I hear then you have a better chance. And then it happened. You can take your temperature and know when you're ovulating but I knew I was pregnant right away.
I went to Lamaze and did all the breathing and small-of-the-back exercises for natural childbirth. My sister Cyndy had her son naturally with the same doctor I did, and she went to every class with me to be my coach. Mick said he thought he was too English and might just freak out. Mick was getting nervous enough the way it was. But I could see he was real excited.
Meanwhile, the press were getting more and more excited, too. It was like in that Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds—every day there was another reporter or photographer outside the house. I'd go shopping with Cyndy and we'd get into a store and they'd comer me in the back and I couldn't get out. Mick didn't see most of this. He was going to work in the studio at night and sleeping all day and he didn't realize that this was building up. I said,' "I think we should have some extra security, because this is going to be a bigger thing than you imagine." Mick doesn't like to get hung up on being a star, and always feeling that he needs bodyguards around, so he said, ''You're just being neurotic and pregnant and paranoid. Who do you think you are, Jerry—Princess Di? Everyone has babies. It's not going to be a big deal."
But when the time came the press had the whole hospital staked out. There were photographers sitting on every comer for days. My mother couldn't believe it. Then the press figured out who she was. She got her picture in the paper with Cyndy. Finally Terry was the "unidentified woman" who was carrying the baby out. I hated the idea of not getting to carry my own baby home, but Mick's security people decided that if I did, the photographers would all rush me, and they thought it would be safer if Terry did it.
I didn't want to be away from the baby for a minute, but it took hours to get home. There were a lot of photographers barricaded at the comer, plus TV news cameras and everything. I had a police escort and I got out of the car and they were all lined up like a receiving line. They looked so weird and crazed. I couldn't believe how awful they were. That was the worst. But the best was when they handed me my baby. She's got big lips like Mick's, but I think she's got my forehead. And she's got high cheekbones. Plus she has slightly almond-shaped eyes. I think that must come from my Indian side. We decided to call her Elizabeth Scarlett. Mick and I always hated all those weird names that came out of the sixties.
Mick's been great with the baby. Every morning he plays with her and carries her around. And at night he sings her a lullaby to get her to sleep. So often the guy feels left out, so I encourage him by giving her to him. He calls her "Sausage"—"Hello there, Sausage."
My birthday was right after her christening, and I asked for an antique silver teakettle. Lately I've wanted house things because I've been thinking of handing them down to Elizabeth. I want really nice things. So when I said that, Mick started laughing. He said, "You can't buy heirlooms, Jerry. You have to have them in the family.'' And I said, "Well, Mick, you have to start somewhere!"
He gave me a ring instead. It's in the shape of a pyramid, of lapis lazuli, and there's a diamond on top. It was made by the owner of the Cartier boutique in Paris for his wife in the twenties. It's not a wedding ring but it's the next-best thing!
I still want to marry Mick. But I'm not nagging him about it. All I really care about is our happiness and our baby. The way she looked me in the eye that first time...I still haven't gotten over it.
Everyone imagines me being this real coldhearted, gold-digging kind of slut and Mick being this drug-addicted evil devil. We're both pretty normal nice people, you know.
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