The year 1979 started out really well. With the kids in tow, Ronnie and I flew back to Nassau where the Stones had rented a big house by the sea. While the boys were in the studio working on the album that would become Emotional Rescue, I’d play with the kids on the beach: Jamie, now a headstrong four-year-old, Keith’s son Marlon and, of course, chubby little Leah, who napped happily in a sun-shaded stroller. I was still breastfeeding and taking care of the kids so I didn’t see much of Ronnie, but I’d leave him little love notes to find when he got back from the studio in the early hours. It was such a great holiday for me and the kids.
Although I had the responsibility of kids, in my early years with Ronnie we seemed to spend a lot of time just goofing around. One evening, the guys were all having a big meeting in the living room – all the boys were there, as well as Jane Rose, Alan Dunn and Prince Rupert Löwenstein, who ran the Stones’ financial affairs. I walked past the door and, instead of the usual music chat, heard them talking about aliens, debating whether UFOs actually existed. It sounded like things were getting pretty intense, too. I went into the kitchen where Marlon and Jamie were having a pre-bedtime snack and asked, ‘How do you fancy getting dressed up, boys?’
Trying to keep them quiet, I wrapped silver foil around our arms and legs, made antennae out of wire coat-hangers and covered our bodies in bin bags. The final touch was drinking-chocolate powder rubbed over our teeth to make them black. Then the three of us walked jerkily into the living room, me at the front, followed by Marlon and then Jamie. ‘Coooome aloooong, chiiiiildren,’ I said, in my best alien voice. As we paraded across the room, everyone in there fell totally silent and just stared, open-mouthed. I’m not sure what had been smoked that night, but for a moment they looked almost scared. I hadn’t been prepared for that sort of reaction, and when we got back to the kitchen, I turned to the kids and said, ‘Oh, God, what have we done?’
Moments later Jane burst in, doubled over with laughter. ‘You gave us all such a fright!’ she said, whipping out her camera to prove once and for all that aliens really did exist.
I’ve always been something of a fancy-dress connoisseur. I would have made an excellent Blue Peter presenter. On tour there would be nights when everyone would be sitting round, listening to music and getting stoned, and I’d end up creating these bizarre costumes out of whatever I could find in the hotel room. One night I transformed myself into Ronnie’s then manager, a big guy called Jason Cooper, by slicing an empty body-lotion bottle in half to make a huge nose, then cutting the bristles off a hairbrush and sticking them onto gaffer tape for a beard. A hat to cover my hair and a pillow up my top and–‘Hi, I’m Jason Cooper.’ Another time, Keith told me he’d give me a hundred dollars or a gram of coke if I could go back to my room and return dressed as a schoolgirl in 20 minutes. When I came back in full costume, he said, ‘All right, do you want the money or the coke?’
‘I’ll take fifty dollars and half a gram, please!’
When we returned to LA from Nassau, I made the decision to stop breastfeeding. My relationship with Ronnie had its roots in partying – drinking, smoking joints, doing coke – and I was desperate to be back rocking with him. I’d had the odd drink while Leah was tiny, but I felt terribly guilty because whenever I did the poor little mite always got a runny tummy so usually I stayed on the wagon. But now she was four months old and we were about to go off on tour again – not with the Stones this time, but with the New Barbarians, a band Ronnie had formed with his best music buddies, including Keith, Mac and the Stones’ sax player, Bobby Keys. As they rehearsed at our place, playing the material from Ronnie’s new solo album, I felt very much part of it from the start. I even designed the official tour T-shirt.
The New Barbarians got off to an ideal start – opening for the two Rolling Stones concerts in aid of the blind in Toronto that had been part of the court deal on Keith’s drug charge. Their warm-up man on the first night was none other than John Belushi and the pair of us hit it off instantly. While the boys were on stage, we spent the night being really silly and joking around.
When the tour stopped in New York a few days later, we went round to John’s house after the gig. He was running around me like a puppy. ‘Is everything all right, Jo? Can I get you anything? Do you need another drink?’ It was blindingly obvious that he fancied me – and I’m sorry to say I made the most of it.
‘John,’ I’d say, ‘I’m feeling a bit cold.’ He’d run off and turn on the heating.
‘Sorry, I’m a little too hot now!’ He’d jump up to open a window.
Over the next few years, John would be a regular visitor at our LA home. One day, while Ronnie was in the studio, he took me to the Playboy Mansion. There I was, surrounded by all these chicks in tiny little dresses with great big boobs and blonde hair. Ronnie was so furious when he found out; it’s one of the only times I remember him being jealous. But John made no attempt to hide the fact he had a crush on me. The phone would go in the night and it would be John.
‘Jo, guess what I’m doing?’
‘I don’t know, John.’
‘I’m playing with myself while I’m speaking to you.’
‘JOHN!’
Then one night we were all hanging out together – Ronnie had passed out on the couch – when John suddenly asked me to run away with him. ‘Please, Jo, I love you,’ he said earnestly, while Ronnie snored a few feet away.
‘I can’t run away with you! I’ve got a boyfriend!’
‘Please, just say you’ll think about it,’ he said.
‘No, John, I think it’s better that we just stay as friends, okay?’
The New Barbarians were on the road for two wild weeks, and from what I can remember – not much, if I’m honest – the tour was a brilliant success. Even the fact that Ronnie had funded it out of future proceeds from the solo album (and ended up in debt to his record label) didn’t take the shine off the satisfaction I knew he felt at how well everything had come together.
And now that I was free to party with the guys again I went absolutely ballistic. Ronnie chartered a plane and we partied our way across the States. There’s a photo of me dressed up as a sexy soldier in a peaked cap and miniskirt, marching along waving a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, leading Ronnie, Keith and Lil across the tarmac from our jet. I went crazy on that tour – up all night every night, as high as a kite on coke and adrenalin – and the madness continued when we got back to LA. I had always been a proficient partier, but now I went hardcore–quite literally. Chuch had a team of roadies who prided themselves on being able to stay up all night, take drugs and still do their jobs the next day, and they called their gang Hardcore. One morning, after we’d had another wild night’s partying, those boys were all crashed out on my sofas. While I collected all the dirty glasses and emptied the overflowing ashtrays, it suddenly occurred to me that, as I was the only one who was still awake, I was probably the most hardcore of the lot.
Later that day, I cornered Chuch.
‘Chuch, I think I should be in Hardcore,’ I said. ‘You should really make me the only female honorary member.’
‘Okay,’ he said, with a smile. ‘If you go round and ask all the guys in Hardcore, we’ll see what we can do.’
Over the next few weeks I went round and got everyone’s approval, and from that day on I was officially Hardcore.
Our lives were one long party. At times, Ronnie and I would wake up around 2 p.m. and have a bit of breakfast, usually yogurt with honey, often followed by a line of coke. I’d spend the rest of the afternoon running errands, doing household chores and hanging out with the kids. When the sun went down I’d have my first drink and more lines, and then we would be up all night partying. Ronnie loved having people around, so there would always be a houseful – friends, dealers, musicians, actors. I suppose the only time the two of us spent together alone and sober was when we were asleep, but it didn’t matter – we were crazy for each other! The pair of us barely argued, and the sex was fantastic. Sure, Ronnie could be annoying when he was drunk, but I was drunk, too, so it didn’t matter.
And the harder I partied, the thinner I got. I started to lose interest in food; there were days I’d wake up shaking because I hadn’t eaten anything for so long. But I didn’t care: I was skinny! I’d always struggled to lose weight, but now I was so tiny that I could fit into kids’ clothes. At my thinnest I was seven stone and comfortably fitting a size 24 waist jean. It wasn’t until I saw a video of myself on a trampoline in our garden at Mandeville Canyon that I realized quite how thin I’d got. I remember staring at this scrawny, stick-limbed figure in a black leotard, miniskirt and pink shiny leggings with a big bow in her hair, crazily jumping around, still wearing her high heels, and thinking, Oh, my God, it’s Olive Oyl!
Looking back, I have no idea how I managed to make that lifestyle work, but there were always home-cooked meals on the table, the house was tidy and my kids were secure and happy. Like many working mothers, I became adept at juggling – it was just that, rather than working in an office, my job was partying. My brother Paul, then 21, was staying with us to help out, plus, of course, I had the wonderful Jaye, who had quickly been promoted from housekeeper to nanny to both. Meanwhile, I had enrolled Jamie in the local nursery school, where Rod Stewart and Alana were sending their daughter, Kimberley. During the hours I spent with the kids, we had something resembling a really normal home life. And it was normal to us. I’m sure our lifestyle would have raised a few eyebrows, but we were living in this wonderful, crazy bubble, and we didn’t really concern ourselves with what was going on outside.
In September the band returned to Paris to continue work on the album they’d started in Nassau. We rented a lovely apartment on avenue Victor Hugo and it felt great to be back where it had all begun for Ronnie and me. His mum came to visit – the first time she had ever left England – and they drank every pub in Paris out of Guinness. We had a beautiful first-birthday party for Leah in France, followed with a stop in England before we headed back home to LA. And that was when our perfect little bubble suddenly burst.