March 1979
After all the mega tours—the Stones, George Harrison, CSNY, Santana, Dylan—I kept wondering what might come my way next. That’s how I was back then—a typical Pisces, floating down the stream and letting the currents pull me along, trusting that life would take me where it wanted me to go, knowing that something interesting might be waiting just around the bend. I never tried to push the river.
So, from 1976 to 1979, I settled down in LA and led a relatively quiet life. I had a new boyfriend, Bernie Gelb, who I met on the Dylan tour, and we lived together in a beautiful house in Nichols Canyon. I adored Bernie, although he did have one big problem—he loved cocaine. But then, didn’t we all?
I patched up my friendship with Ringo, who was living in Beverly Hills with Nancy Andrews. Nancy and I had been good friends during the beach house days, and we even lived together for a few months. She knew how I felt about Ringo when she started dating him, but what could I do? I’d betrayed Maureen and now Nancy had betrayed me, or so I felt, and when you’re messing around with someone’s husband, you can’t get all high and mighty about morality. It was what it was, a complicated human mess.
One good thing came out of that situation, though. In the divorce petition Ringo cited his adultery with Nancy Andrews. That upset Maureen, who told me she wanted my name to appear on the divorce decree, not Nancy’s. That way the whole affair would have stayed in the family, in a sense, a terrible and deeply consequential indiscretion between friends, but not a sordid external affair with a beautiful stranger who didn’t know Maureen and thus could not understand her deepest feelings. I think those are the thoughts that might have been going through Maureen’s mind when she mentioned Nancy’s name on the legal papers, although I can’t be certain because she never wanted to talk about the divorce after it was finalized. But I will never forget that winter night at Tittenhurst when George told Ringo he was in love with Maureen. “Better you than someone we don’t know,” Ringo said. When you’re betrayed by someone you love, at least you know they’ll feel guilty about it, and there’s some small comfort there.
Guilt might have played a role in my renewed friendship with Ringo. Slowly and with some caution, we began to trust each other again, returning to the casual days of old when we could laugh and tease each other. Hilary, Ringo’s financial adviser and my great friend, wanted to help get me started in my own business and decided to lend me ten thousand dollars of his own money. We needed a name and after many suggestions, Ringo came up with Brains Unlimited. I organized tours and booked studios while my partner Tina Firestone planned parties and weddings. Our biggest event was Harry Nilsson’s wedding. We eventually paid back Hilary, but the business folded because, as Hilary jokingly claimed, “each time you or Tina got your period, things would come to a grinding halt.”
I helped out with a few tours in those years. The John Denver tour was the most forgettable. John was filming a television special and touring Australia, and I organized the travel. While he and his people were great fun, the television crew ruined the experience for me. I’ve never met a rock musician who had one-tenth the ego of those TV cameramen. After the tour I met Bernie in Sydney and we vacationed in Fiji. I was so drunk at the Fiji airport that the immigration people told Bernie that if I didn’t shut up, they were going to put me on a flight back to Sydney. The only good thing that came out of that vacation was my amazing suntan.
Touring with Jennifer Warnes on her first headliner tour following the phenomenal success of her hit single “The Right Time of the Night” was great. She was fun to work with and a real professional. Smart, sweet, and blessed with a laid-back personality and a great sense of humor, Jennifer devoted a lot of energy to making sure that we all got along and had fun on the tour. We used to joke about how she was usurping my job duties. And, man oh man, could she sing! She’d stand there on stage with her granny glasses and golden blond hair, looking like an innocent choirgirl, and in a sumptuous alto voice belt out one song after another. Jennifer’s good friend Leonard Cohen compared her voice to the California weather, “filled with sunlight” but with “an earthquake behind it.” She’s still singing her heart out.
The Ronstadt tour was a big deal because Peter Asher hired me to be Linda’s tour manager and gave me control over every last detail of the tour. Once upon a time, I’d been his secretary and now I was managing one of his top star’s tours. That was a thrill. I can’t be absolutely certain, but I think I may have been one of the first female tour managers ever in the history of rock and roll. The Ronstadt tour was a true on-the-road, no-frills tour, just a small troupe traveling on a converted bus from one town to the next, up and down the East Coast, and I was the ultimate authority on everything from sound checks to collecting (and counting) the money at the box office. I ran into a few problems with the head roadie, who didn’t like the fact that a “chick” was in charge—and, believe me, there was no respect attached to that word—but we worked through our difficulties and ended up with grudging respect for each other.
One evening we all decided to go out for dinner. We didn’t have a show that night, so it was a holiday of sorts, and we all sat around drinking, laughing, telling stories about being on the road. Linda didn’t drink, but she was more fun that the rest of us combined. I didn’t drink much on that tour, either, because I couldn’t afford the hangovers the next day. I’d have a drink at the gig or a few drinks after the show, but I was always careful to stay in control.
We’d just finished dinner when Linda announced in a little-girl voice that she wanted dessert.
“Okay,” I said, feeling a little bit like the mom.
“I can’t make up my mind,” she said, after looking at the menu. “Should I have the chocolate cake or the mousse or the pie or the ice cream?”
The waitress waited patiently.
“Okay,” Linda said, looking up from the menu with a big smile. “I’d like one of each, please.”
We all just sat there for a second. “Anybody else?” the waitress asked very sweetly, but we said no, thanks, we were just fine.
She returned a few minutes later with eight or nine desserts and arranged the dishes in front of Linda, who very daintily took a bite of each. I remember thinking that was a little decadent, sampling every dessert on the menu. Funny, isn’t it, that snorting up five hundred dollars’ worth of cocaine in one night with Keith Richards didn’t seem decadent at all, but ordering every dessert on the menu seemed like the height of self-indulgence.
I never expected the call from Pattie. I was living in an apartment in the Brentwood district of LA and waiting to hear from Bernie, who was in New York scouting out jobs and a place for us to live. He’d lost his job as Joan Baez’s manager, I wasn’t doing much of anything, and we decided to give New York a try. Why not? I was always up for something new.
Pattie had been in town for several days, staying with her friends Rob and Myel Fraboni. We’d just spent an afternoon together, talking mostly about Eric’s excessive drinking and belligerent behavior. I was so angry with Eric when she described the way he belittled and mistreated her. Here he was, finally with his Layla, and he was treating her like shit.
“Chris, guess what—I’m getting married!”
“You’re what? To who?”
“Well, to Eric, of course!” I could just imagine her smiling on the other end of the line, enjoying the surprise. I was completely flummoxed, thinking back to the conversation we’d had just the day before when she said she was sick and tired of the way Eric was treating her. The relationship wasn’t working, she said.
“Eric?” I repeated. “What happened?”
“Yes, Eric!” she said, almost as if she didn’t quite believe it would ever happen. “He called today and I was at the beach, so he told Rob to call me and tell me that he wanted to marry me.”
I had to think about that for a moment. Eric asked Rob to ask Pattie to marry him? He used a go-between to propose marriage to the woman he loved so much that when she refused his advances, he locked himself up in his house for three years and almost killed himself with heroin? What was wrong with this picture?
Pattie was chattering on. She seemed so blissfully happy that there was no way I was going to say anything to upset her.
“When is the wedding?” I asked, lifting my voice to convey excitement.
“Four days,” she said.
“Four days?” I repeated. “Where?”
“Chris! You’re not going to believe this—we’re getting married in Tucson.”
“Tucson? Why Tucson?” I just couldn’t stop asking questions. Tucson was my hometown, of all places. It was all so completely unexpected and spur of the moment. I hoped—I had to believe—that Pattie knew what she was doing, and once again I had to remind myself that there was no way I could express my concerns, as loving as they were. I was not going to do anything that might negatively affect her bright mood.
“Eric’s tour starts in Tucson the day after we’re married, so he thought that would be the best time for the wedding.”
My heart was sinking fast. This was all on Eric’s timetable—he was fitting his wedding in at the beginning of his next tour. He might as well have been cramming in a haircut or a dental appointment at the last minute.
“I want you to fly to Tucson with me,” Pattie was saying.
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said, deciding at that moment to put all my emotions in a deep freeze. Pattie needed me to be joyful with her, and so that’s what I would be.
From that moment on, as always with Pattie, I felt like I was on a big adventure. It didn’t matter if we were at Friar Park preparing the evening meal, at the beach in Santa Monica planning our next shopping spree, or flying to Tucson for her wedding—we laughed and held on for the ride. The ceremony took place at a tiny church on the south side of Tucson. Pattie looked stunningly beautiful in a cream-colored silk dress that clung to her slender body and then flared out, ending just below her knees and showing off her gorgeous long legs. When Pattie, her sister Jenny, and I arrived in the limo, all the roadies were standing around in their tuxedos, a scruffy bunch all combed and fluffed and flossed for the occasion. We oohed and ahhed as they kicked the gravel with their sneakers and pulled at their tight collars, blushing with pride and embarrassment.
“I want you to be my bridesmaids,” Pattie told Jenny and me just before the ceremony. We were helping her get ready in a back room of the church. I would have loved nothing more than to walk down the aisle and stand at the front of the church with the best friend I would ever have. But I couldn’t do it. I was afraid of Eric’s reaction. I imagined that he would be at the altar, hands clasped, smiling with pride and joy, and then catch sight of me and whisper or even say it loud enough for everyone to hear, “Oh no, what is she doing here?” I don’t know why I annoyed Eric so much, but it seemed that every time I visited with Pattie, Eric would get drunk and say mean things to me; then the next day he’d treat me like an old friend and act as if nothing had happened. Jenny told me that he was rude and nasty to her, too, lots of times, but he was always careful not to take it too far with Jenny—she was, after all, Pattie’s sister. I knew it all stemmed from some kind of perverse jealousy; Eric wanted Pattie all to himself. I understood that, sort of, because I was jealous of Pattie’s attachment to Eric since it took her away from me. But having some insight into the situation didn’t make it any easier for me to imagine walking down the aisle and having him sneer at me.
“Pattie,” I said. “I think it would be better if I was your bridesmaid in the pews.”
She smiled knowingly at me. “Okay, sweetie.”
I sat down next to Rob and Myel Fraboni on the bride’s side of that sweet little church, and the musicians and crew sat across the aisle on the groom’s side. The ceremony was so personal and private, with the light filtering through the simple stained-glass windows in the tiny church, casting a golden glow over everyone—the dust particles floating in the light seemed like sparkling fairy dust—and everyone was smiling and happy, and it was perfect.
At the reception Pattie told me that Eric wrote my name in the wedding book as one of the bridesmaids. That made me happy, and I warmed a little toward Eric that day. But I also knew I had to keep up my guard because that’s how it always was with Eric. I’d retreat when he was mean to me, move a little closer when he was nice, then retreat again when he lashed out at me, and on it went. It was always a push-pull with Eric. But Pattie loved him, and he loved her, and I wanted them to be happy ever after.
A few years later, when things were going bad between them, I asked Pattie who was her greatest love—George or Eric. “Eric,” she said, hesitating for only a second.
But, as I said, that would change.
Four months later I was walking down Park Avenue in New York City, wondering once again what I was going to do with my life. Bernie and I had completed the move to the East Coast, arriving in the heat and horrendous humidity of mid-August. I spent hours cleaning the Mid-town one-bedroom basement apartment Bernie had rented for us, scrubbing the toilets, scouring the sinks, cleaning the floors on my hands and knees. Sometimes I’d hang out with May Pang or Pierre, a makeup guy I knew from a Stones tour. Bernie was always off somewhere visiting relatives or making business contacts.
I was bored and seriously depressed. I didn’t feel any connection to New York. It was too big, too busy, too dirty, and I didn’t feel safe there. It didn’t feel like home. I looked up at the tall buildings on Park Avenue and I missed London. All I could think about was going back home to England, the only place where I felt I belonged.
Back at the apartment, I dialed Maureen’s number. Like me, she was adrift, living with her kids and Stella, the nanny, in her house in Ascot, outside of London. Like me, she was depressed, mourning the end of her relationship with Ringo, and wondering what to do with her life. Like me, she was feeling fragile and vulnerable. I’d be safe with Maureen.
“Chris!” she said, immediately recognizing my voice. “How are you? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I said in a way that told her I was anything but. “Look, Mo, I was wondering—would you mind if I came over and stayed with you for a bit?”
“Sodden hellfire, you might as well be miserable here as there,” Maureen said. We had a good laugh over that one. So once again, I ran away from my life. I never seemed to run to anything. I was always running away.
Maureen was in a dark, dark place. She was nocturnal, staying up most of the night and sleeping much of the day. She always wore black, that hadn’t changed, but she was wearing tight jeans now and layering her clothes as if to protect herself from a sudden chill wind. The windows in the front rooms were heavily draped, and the lighting was even dimmer than I remembered. She was drinking heavily—later she told me that during that difficult time in her life she’d “put away comfortably half a bottle of brandy a night”—and her behavior was increasingly erratic and bizarre.
One night I woke up, startled by a noise from downstairs. I crept down the stairs and found Maureen in the dining room, standing on the third or fourth rung of a six-foot wood ladder, paintbrush in one hand, cigarette holder firmly gripped between her teeth. She had already painted half the wall dark green.
“Maureen, what the hell are you doing?” I said as I stood in the doorway watching her.
She turned around, leaning her hip into the ladder to steady herself, and gave me a look that said, Well, what does it look like I’m doing? Cigarette smoke drifted above her, rising toward the ceiling.
“Painting,” she said simply.
Everything about that visit was bleak and sad. Maureen talked about Ringo constantly, and many of her stories dated back to the time they met, outside the Cavern when she was sixteen years old.
“He’d just that week joined the Beatles,” she recalled. “I was just a kid. I used to go down to the lunchtime sessions when Pete Best was with them, changing my school uniform around, trying to make it look like a frock. They’d do a gig, I’d see him afterward, he’d ask me to dance. He was six years older than me. I had to learn how to smoke. I mean, I got a girlfriend to teach me how to smoke. I used to pay her ten ciggies a day, for Christ’s sake, to teach me to smoke right.”
At one point Ringo broke up with her. “I went apeshit,” she told me. “All I did was sit on the end of my own bed and rock. That’s all I did. That’s it. Honest to God. Meanwhile, those four days when he hadn’t phoned me, I knew he was with the Ronettes. They’d arrived in London and I bleedin’ knew he was with the Ronettes. Think about it. Sixties. In London. The Beatles. And the Ronettes were in town. Now work it out with a pencil!”
But after those four days he came back to her. “Are you ready for this line? He said to me, ‘I had to test our relationship, Maureen, whether I needed you or whether I didn’t.’ And I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. It’s not a bad line to use, actually. He said, ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’ And that’s how I got myself where I am right now—with three kids.”
One evening I walked into the kitchen and asked Stella if she knew where Maureen was. I hadn’t seen her all day.
“She’s upstairs in her room,” Stella said. She was peeling potatoes at the sink, preparing the children’s meal. Maureen and I usually didn’t eat with the children, who would have their supper around six in the evening, far too early for us night owls. We’d barely finish our coffee and toast by midafternoon (if we bothered to eat at all) and often we’d skip dinner entirely.
I knocked gently on Maureen’s door.
“Come in,” she called out. She was sitting in the middle of her bed with the plush velvety spread gathered around her, cigarette in hand, drink on the bedside table, talking on the phone.
“It’s Chris,” she said into the phone. Then she turned to me and mouthed, “Richie.”
I sat down on the side of the bed.
“No, Richie, I need money. The children have to eat.” The rough edge to Mo’s voice didn’t match the tortured look in her eyes.
“Okay. Hold on a minute.” She covered the phone receiver with her hand. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Me? Why?” I didn’t want to talk to Ringo. I had a bad feeling just looking at the expression on Mo’s face.
She shrugged and handed me the phone, reaching for her drink.
“Chris.” He was angry. “What are you doing there?”
I had never heard that tone in his voice before. When Ringo was drinking heavily, he could be verbally combative at times, even slightly belligerent. But on the phone he was talking to me as if he despised me, as if I had done something unforgivable.
“I’m visiting Maureen.” I was pissed off that he was taking this derisive tone with me. I hadn’t done anything to deserve his contempt.
“Listen, Chris, Maureen doesn’t have very much money,” he said, still using that scolding tone of voice. “And you’re eating the children’s food.”
I heard the slur in his words then and knew he was drunk and probably high on cocaine, too. I’d heard from friends in LA that he was doing a lot of coke. But that didn’t excuse his behavior. How dare he accuse me of eating the children’s food? Where did that come from?
“Are you kidding me?” I raised my voice a little. I wasn’t afraid of him.
“Look, I’m just upset.” He sighed and I imagined him putting his head in his hand, eyes closed, trying to calm himself down. I didn’t have much sympathy for him at that moment.
“Okay, well, rest assured I won’t eat your kids’ food. Talk to you later.” I handed the phone back to Maureen, who quickly ended the conversation.
“He has no right talking to my guests like that,” she said, finishing her drink and lighting another cigarette. I noticed my hands were shaking. After everything Ringo and I had been through, how could he talk to me like that, as if I were a servant or, worse, a freeloader taking advantage of his family’s hospitality? And if Maureen was hurting so much for money, why hadn’t she said something to me?
“What was that all about? Why was he so angry with me?”
Maureen shrugged her shoulders, an apology of sorts. “I told him I needed more money,” she said.
“Am I really eating too much of your food?”
“No,” she said. “Of course not.”
But there I was, in the middle again, with no power and few defenses, an easy target for Ringo to focus on. It was all so horribly complicated. Maureen wanted Ringo back. Ringo was involved with another woman. Money was tight, there were kids to feed, Maureen and I were both drinking too much, and oh, it was a mess. I couldn’t take any more of it.
I had to leave, I knew that, but where could I go? Going back to New York or LA seemed like moving backward, and what did I have to go back to? London was too expensive, and, except for Maureen, all my friends and business contacts from the Apple days were gone. Derek had six children now and he’d moved his family up north; I rarely heard from him. George and Olivia were still at Friar Park, but they had a son now, one-year-old Dhani. Pattie was touring somewhere in America with Eric—the last time I saw them was in Philadelphia, and Eric, as usual, acted like an absolute jerk.
I didn’t have anything else to do, so I kept going east, ending up in Frankfurt, Germany. There are times in my life that seem to be black holes, where memory disappears and only a few flashes of light illuminate the passage of time. The years between 1979 and 1983 were full of darkness and shame brought about by my ever-worsening addiction to alcohol and drugs. I call them my lost years.