Yoko Ono (2008-ish)

Yoko arrives noiselessly to let me in to her lovely creamy hotel room. She doesn’t wear shoes indoors and if you go to her creamy home in the Dakota Building in New York you leave them off at the door. A great leveller I think.

She is compact and tiny in her trademark navy tracksuit and pale blue tinted round glasses. Her hair is artfully spiked and her skin flawless, smooth, no saggy bits. It’s impossible to believe she’s just had her 75th birthday. She is weirdly ageless, her face unchanged throughout the years. It’s as if all her suffering has been contained on the inside and never made a line on her face. 

Her 75th birthday part organised by her son Sean was in “a punky kind of club called Joe’s Club in New York. Most people would give their 75-year-old mother a little dinner party. But there was a stage and he got his band playing and he backed me up and I went on singing until one in the morning. I was so high I couldn’t sleep till the next afternoon,” she giggles. “I looked at my friends and thought ooh, they look rather elderly, rather grey. Perhaps we should go home for their sake,” she giggles some more.

Sleep is something she’s not very good at. She’s just flown in from Tokyo and says she hasn’t had any sleep for days. This is only part due to jet lag. It’s part due to Yoko time. Her key to life seems to be to stay awake for as much of it as is possible. It was a family holiday in Japan where she went with Kyoko and Sean. Unusual and rare.

Sean is the son that she has always appeared to dote on. She always talks of him with immense pride. “He’s just so so talented.” She’s unstoppable in her praise.

Although it may have seemed a normal family thing to do, go on holiday together, for Yoko it was even more important to spend time with her children together. Kyoko, now 44, and Yoko have been separated for much of their lives. It’s a pain she doesn’t talk about easily. 

When she fell in love with John Lennon her life as she knew it fell apart on many levels. She was an established conceptual artist and her music was experimental. She lost herself in influencing Lennon. She once said, “John and I ruined both of our careers by getting together although we weren’t aware of it at the time.” 

For Yoko though it ruined more than her art and her music. Although one could argue it gave her another dimension. Her then husband, American jazz musician Anthony Cox, refused to let Yoko see their daughter Kyoko from the age of six.  

The relationship with Lennon was an unstoppable force. You’d think that she would never have got over the pain and the anger of having her daughter taken away. She simply says her ex-husband had his reasons, he thought he was doing it for the best. Ever the diplomat.

“I am into healing.” Perhaps that’s her way of survival, never to acknowledge the pain. In Japan she’s about to publish a self-help book. She says it’s filled with “recipes for life.” She’s certainly had plenty of practice at solving her own problems. Losing her daughter, living with John was in some ways “beautiful” but Lennon must have been an overwhelming, difficult man. He left Yoko for their secretary May Pang before they got back together to have Sean. But more of that later.

It was up to Kyoko to get in touch with Yoko and they were reunited in 1994. “Kyoko wanted to have a child and her husband said before you do this you should see your mother. And I think she missed having a mother.” The way Yoko says it in such an understated way it has resonance. A real mother, even though she had other mothers, presumably amoratas of Cox. “I missed her, of course. But I’d totally given up.” Can it be true that there are no remnants of bitterness for the years they spent apart? “It’s interesting, isn’t it. 

“I was suspicious at first that maybe she felt she had to be nice to me. But no, the thing is Kyoko is really nice. It could have gone another way but it worked out very well. And sometimes I think if we are together all the time my character and her character, we would have clashed.”

This is relentless Yokoism, the glass is just not half full it’s brimming with vintage champagne. Her attitude is everything is beautiful and everything that isn’t can be.

There is no doubt that the holiday in Japan was a bonding mission. Not that it could ever make up for all the years they spent apart. But Sean and Kyoko have a natural empathy. They get on well. 

“It’s strange, they have been separate most of their lives but they are both very intelligent people and they connected very well. It’s funny.” Is there sibling rivalry? “No. Sean treats her with respect and love and she does the same. I am lucky, instead of them hating each other. They could you know. But it’s not like that. 

“DNA is a strange thing. Kyoko and Sean’s handwriting is so similar it’s impossible to tell the difference. Mine is totally different to theirs. People say she looks like me. Sean looks like John and he just played me his latest CD which is an incredible piece of music. Actually I wanted to go to sleep in the car back from the spa in Tokyo because it was a long ride but Sean got out his music and it was very beautiful. I couldn’t sleep because I was so proud of him.

“And people say that Kyoko is copying me because she is an artist, a photographer. I never saw her work until recently. She finally had the courage to show me her photographs. I couldn’t believe it. They are so unique. They are photo collage, so original. I didn’t even know she did that.”

Of course there’s maternal pride when she talks about her daughter’s work, but also respect as a fellow artist. And as well as that a kind of fascination in the way her daughter has worked out. It’s as if her influences were a trace memory even though she wasn’t allowed to nurture her.

There’s a pause, and you feel a little of Yoko’s sadness for the years they spent apart. But only a little.  When I suggest that Cox took her away to punish her she says, “Maybe he just wanted control over his daughter. He didn’t think it was good for his daughter to be with us and maybe he was right because we were going through such an incredibly difficult time politically and all that.” 

Even though in 1969 Yoko won custody of Kyoko, Cox, then part of a Christian sect, scooped her away. It was the year of the famous Bed In. The end of The Beatles and the beginning of John and Yoko. Living together, working together, fighting for peace together. In 1973 Lennon went off with May Pang, an affair which Yoko encouraged. “I just felt I needed some space and it was really good that I got that, otherwise I don’t think I would have survived as a person. Also, when I look back, I see it was good for John that I gave him freedom. Since John announced that he was in love with me we were just together all the time. The more people that tried to break us up the closer we got to each other.”

The world certainly seemed obsessed with their closeness. No Beatles wife ever had an easy ride, especially one that proffered public displays of affection. Any images of togetherness, of either Paul and Linda, or John and Yoko, seemed to make people furiously resentful. In fact Yoko was reviled. Did she talk to Linda about what it was like to be the object of mass hatred? “Each of us was faithful and loyal to her husband and we didn’t want to complain.” Did she have any sympathy for Heather Mills McCartney. “It’s a different age now. It’s been interesting to watch. I feel very badly that this was happening. But you know Linda and I would never have thought of a situation like this.” She could say more, but she doesn’t. Odd, that one of the most famous couples in the world actually spent 18 months apart.  “I just thought we needed a breather. I didn’t know if it would end completely. I just took a chance.” 

First and foremost Yoko has always been an artist. Her art has always been a way to cauterize her emotions and extricate herself from pain. She has always been a loner and has always needed alone time. “Alone time is so important for a conceptual artist. When you have a partner always telling you what to do you always have to think about that person. Are you hungry? Shall we do this? When I was a little girl my mother would say, ‘Yoko, are you there? I’m talking to you’. And I was, ‘What?’” She creates a special vague expression. “In other words I created a solitude within me.”

But as well as needing solitude and needing to be an artist, she needed to be a woman, a mother, and she needed John. When he came back to her she very much wanted it to work.

“When we were broken up I went to see a psychic. I was with a girlfriend, we were just walking around the village and we saw a sign. Lines of people at about ten tables with psychics. When it was my turn the lady said to me, ‘You are going to meet somebody who is very like your husband. Extremely famous and also a musician and you are going to have a good time because this guy is going to be kind and gentle.’ Outside we were laughing our faces off. Somebody as famous as my husband? I would know that guy. There is nobody like that. This woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about. But then a few weeks later John came back to me. But he came back a different person. He was different. He had been nice before but he had a temper and all that. This time he was really considerate.” 

It wasn’t long before she became pregnant. When she talks about this time she chooses her words carefully, as if she’s reconjuring just how wary of it all she was. She didn’t want to do the wrong thing. She didn’t want to force John back into a relationship with her. And she was worried she would not carry the baby to full term. 

“John was very eager to have a kid but I didn’t want to just make him feel I’d grabbed him. I wanted to give him the choice of whether he wanted to be with me. I didn’t want him feeling depressed and angry. I’d had I think three miscarriages and John said, ‘You are going to have this one. And I said, OK. I would like to give it to you.’ I was a career orientated woman and I was 42. I could have lived without the pregnancy, but he had suffered so much from being separated from me… I thought I made him suffer so I should go through with this and make him happy. So because of my history of miscarriages I had to stay in bed for the whole pregnancy. John got a wheelchair and he would push me into the kitchen where there would be lunch. Isn’t that sweet? And I accepted that, so in a way we both changed. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly…”

In many ways it was the defining decision of her life. She and Sean were inseparable from the start. She reminisces of him now singing and playing in the studio when he was four or five and they were recording the Double Fantasy album. That really was their fantasy period. When John died she wrote, “Half of me flew away with him.” There is no doubt she feels connected to him still in death. Once she felt his spirit tapping at their window, like Heathcliff and Cathy in Wuthering Heights. Her round glasses look like his. Her work on the Imagine Peace campaign is perhaps his message speaking through her. But it was as much her politics that influenced him in the first place. 

Although she had a relationship with antiques dealer Sam Havadtoy, it ended in 2001 and there have been no other lovers. “It was more like friends.” She is still in love with John and John’s legacy. Does she get sad? Does she get angry? Has she become very detached in order to survive?

“I do get angry. But it’s not good for my body so I try to release my anger. If you have burdens that you don’t want to carry it becomes too much, so I always say I cast my burdens to the Almighty within, because we all have the Almighty within us.” There is no doubt that Yoko has something magnetic and powerful within her. When she says, “I’m going to try to learn not to get hurt because you don’t want that hurt going into your body, but you don’t want to live your life with a shield,” she says it in a way that you understand just how much hurt she’s had. It is a surprise that she’s not totally toxic. Instead her look, even without sleep, is fresh and clean. 

She shows me an invitation to her 75th birthday party. A young Yoko, about 14, in a printed forties dress. The eyes have the same intensity, wise and innocent at the same time.  How is it that so much has happened to her yet her face seems so unchanged? “The secret to not ageing is walk around a lot, don’t eat too much and be active in your brain.” She laughs. She certainly is active, not only for Imagine Peace. She is not only working on the Imagine Peace campaign and still writing music. 2006’S Yes, I’m A Witch album got her rave reviews and cool people working with her like Antony Hegarty of Antony and The Johnsons. 

No longer reviled, but rather admired, loved by her children and without saggy skin. She’s actually rather a miracle. 

 We are in her sumptuous suite at the Mandarin Oriental, London. It’s palatial, looking out onto Hyde Park with a creamy calm that must remind her of the stillness of her own home in the Dakota Building. Yoko Ono has just flown in from Tokyo, a family holiday where she announces she’s had no sleep for several days. She doesn’t seem to need it. She’s animated, unstoppable. 

Wearing her trademark blue tinted glasses and navy body skimming track suit, it’s impossible to believe she’s just had her 75th birthday. She is weirdly ageless. Her skin doesn’t have saggy bits or expression lines. Her hair is artfully spiky. She could be any age. She shows me an invitation to the party. It’s a young Yoko about 14 years old in a 1940s dress. The look is accomplished but vulnerable. Her eyes have the same intensity, a strange mixture of wisdom and naivety. The pose is both stoic and ready for anything.

The party organised by Sean was in “a punky kind of club called Joe’s Club in New York. Most people would give their 75-year-old mother a little dinner party. But there was a stage and he got his band playing and they backed me up and I went on singing till one in the morning. I was so high I couldn’t get to sleep till the next afternoon,” she giggles. “I looked out at all my friends dancing and I thought, oh, they look rather elderly, kind of grey.  Perhaps we should go home for their sake.”

There isn’t any part of her that fits with the idea of elderly parent, dependent or enfeebled. Through most of her life her music was rather mocked, but after 2006’s Yes, I’m A Witch album she got rave reviews and cool people working on it with her like Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons who restored a rather beautiful song, Toyboat, which she wrote when deeply depressed after John Lennon’s death. 

Maybe her time is now. Maybe all those years of her being reviled are finally a shadow. She once said, “In a way both John and I ruined our careers by getting together, although we weren’t aware of it at the time.” She led him into more conceptual experimental music and he led her further into him. There is a sense of a woman once confined now racing with adrenalin. 

She is in the UK to do an art show in a gallery in Liverpool. She is typically vague about this show in which she is to be “unwrapped”. [When she visited it in 1967 she asked the audience at the Bluecoat Gallery to wrap her in bandages. This time she appeared at the redeveloped gallery, after showing a film of the original event, and invited the audience to remove bandages she had wrapped herself in. This was April 4, so you need to put in past tense].  Always conceptual, sometimes controversial. She met John at an exhibition of her work in a London art gallery in 1966 where he asked her if he could hammer an imaginary nail into a board.  She is also running round the world tirelessly promoting Imagine Peace. “The secret to not ageing is walk around a lot, be active in your brain, and don’t eat too much. And I’m always solving very complex problems at a moment’s notice, by that I mean business or artistic problems, not necessarily emotional ones. I don’t know how to control my emotions in a way not to get hurt. I’m really trying to learn how not to get hurt because you don’t want that hurt going into your body. But you don’t want to live your life with a shield,” she says. Her mood weaves from giggly to ambiguous to poignant and sad. Many emotions seem to whir and jump through her body all at once.

She’s had a lifetime of extreme emotions, drama world class, while she has retained a kind of stoicism. Sometimes an outsider in her own life. Perhaps that was her way of survival. She’s about to publish a book in Japan. She says it’s filled with “recipes for life.” 

“I am into healing. Sometimes things just come to me.” She is whimsical and nurturing in equal parts. Extremely magnetic. One of the problems she had to solve in her own life was when she fell in love with John Lennon, her husband, American jazz musician Anthony Cox, refused to let Yoko see their daughter Kyoko, now 45. They were reunited in 1994. “Kyoko wanted to have a child and her husband said before you do this you should go and see your mother, and I think she missed having a mother, a real mother, even though she had other mothers. And I missed her, of course, but I’d totally given up.”

Incredibly there seems no remnants of bitterness for the years spent apart. Yoko agrees, “Interesting, isn’t it. I was suspicious at first that maybe she felt she had to be nice to me. But no, the thing is Kyoko is really nice. It could have gone another way but it worked out very well. And sometimes I think if we are together all the time my character and her character, we would have clashed.”

This is relentless Yokoism, the glass is just not half full it’s brimming with vintage champagne. Her attitude is everything is beautiful and everything that isn’t can be. The holiday in Japan with Sean and Kyoko seemed to be a bonding mission making up for years spent apart. How do they get on with each other? “It’s strange, they have been separate most of their lives but they are both very intelligent people and they connected very well. It’s funny. DNA is a strange thing. Kyoko and Sean’s handwriting is so similar it’s impossible to tell the difference. Mine is totally different to theirs. People say she looks like me. Sean looks like John and he just played me his latest CD which is an incredible piece of music. Actually I wanted to go to sleep in the car back from the spa in Tokyo because it was a long ride but Sean got out his music and it was very beautiful. I couldn’t sleep because I was so proud of him.

“And people say that Kyoko is copying me because she is an artist, a photographer. I never saw her work until recently. She finally had the courage to show me her photographs. I couldn’t believe it. They are so unique. They are photo collage, so original. I didn’t even know she did that.”

There’s an odd mixture of maternal pride and fascination for a daughter who grew up to be so similar to her yet spent most of her childhood with her father. When I suggest that Cox took her away to punish her she says, “Maybe he just wanted control over his daughter. He didn’t think it was good for his daughter to be with us and maybe he was right because we were going through such an incredibly difficult time politically and all that.” 

The holiday to Japan seems to have been an interesting cocktail of bonding and approval seeking, looking at Kyoko’s artwork and listening to Sean’s album. Is there not sibling rivalry? “No, Sean treats her with respect and love and she does the same. I am lucky, instead of them hating each other. They could you know. But it’s not like that. It was beautiful and I think they really enjoyed it.” She sighs reminding me of her sleeplessness. “But there was work too.” Perhaps because she was promoting Imagine Peace, even though it was supposed to be a holiday, or perhaps because suddenly there were all these people round her, Sean’s girlfriend, Kyoko’s husband etc. “Yes,” she says, “I’m always so alone. I do cherish my aloneness. Alone time is so important for a conceptual artist.”

When she was with John they seemed incredibly entangled, as if they themselves were a piece of conceptual art. They did everything together. And while the world couldn’t stand her and couldn’t stand that he was with her, for a time that seemed to drive them further into each other, very difficult if you are an artist and about the expression of the self.

“It’s very interesting when you have a partner always telling you what to do, when you have to think about that person, are you hungry, shall we do this. And then you get pregnant and most of your blood is focused on procreation. So I could not have the inspiration I needed when I was that way. When I was a little girl my mother would always say, ‘Yoko, are you there? I’m talking to you’. And I was, what, what. In other words I created a kind of solitude within me.” 

So were you always able to create that solitude when you had a screaming baby and a demanding husband? “No, but I developed a way of taking it in in a way that didn’t really disturb my core. I created a way of always putting myself in the corner so I could be an observer at arms length away from things that were really happening in my life. I am such an emotional person if I didn’t create that situation I would have been dead a long time ago.” (As a young adult in Japan her family institutionalised her for attempted suicide). It’s strange she appears very detached and very raw at the same time. “Exactly, I developed that as a way to survive.” 

Is she detached from all her emotions? Does she get angry? “I do, but anger is not good for my body so I try to release my anger. If you have burdens that you don’t want to carry and it becomes too much I say I cast my burdens to the almighty within because we all have the almighty within us. But a burden is different to an emotion. Emotions sometimes just overwhelm you… For instance I read somewhere about a composer and he was at a funeral and everyone was crying and he was saddened too but he realised the way his mother was crying was not the same as him. He was crying because the notes were not perfectly right. He was thinking of the funeral as a musical experience on the objective side as a composer, and that’s what happened to me when John passed away. I was totally devastated and people were singing songs outside. 2,000 people singing John’s songs. They certainly didn’t let me sleep. But then a song came to me called I Don’t Know Why. But I grabbed the paper so I could write it down.  In other words I survived my life because I had a security blanket called art.” She took a picture of his broken, bloodied glasses as if to cauterise her pain. 

Art gave her distance to be outside of herself and outside of her pain, yet it was the pain that inspired the art. As a Beatles wife she was hated. She broke up Lennon’s first marriage and was blamed for breaking up The Beatles. People were jealous, they didn’t understand her. She was tiny but self-possessed. Not glamorous or dolly birdy. She was obsessively hated. “I know. It was a bit scary. But what can you do. There are scary things going on in Iraq. I’m alive and that’s how it is. I was thankful for a very exciting experience. I learned about a totally different world.”

Did you bond with the other Beatles wives? Did you talk to them about what it was like to be the object of mass hatred? “Well, the thing is that each of us was very faithful and loyal to her husband, therefore we didn’t want to complain.” Does she have any sympathy for Heather Mills McCartney? “I think it’s a totally different age now. It’s been interesting to watch it. I felt very badly that this was happening, but you know Linda and I would never have thought of a situation like this.” She stifles a little giggle and emphasises, “Never.” Does she talk to Paul? “Yes. I’ve said many times that we do and nobody believes it. But we have been doing business together for the longest time…” Another enigmatic smile from Yoko. 

There is always a resonance of John, an omnipresence. The very image of Yoko, with her distinctive little round glasses, looks like she’s carrying him with her. Her constant promotion of Imagine Peace is another way in which his legacy remains in the world. She often feels him with her. “The first time I thought I saw him I was half asleep and I looked up at the window and it was John and he said, ‘come on, we’ve got to go.’ And I said I can’t come with you because I have Sean and so much to take care of. I said later, not now. And he said, OK. It was like Wuthering Heights. Cathy scratching at the window,” she says tentatively, waiting to see if I believe in the spirit world. 

Within the unstoppable force that was their love, in 1973 they broke up and Lennon took off with their secretary May Pang, at Yoko’s suggestion. “I felt I needed some space because otherwise I don’t think I would have survived as a person. It was good for John that I gave him freedom. We all need some fun in life. Since John announced that he was in love with me we were together all the time. The more people tried to break us up the more we got close to each other. I thought we needed a breather. I didn’t know that it would end completely. I took a chance. When we were broken up I went to see a psychic. I was with a girlfriend, we were just walking around the village and we saw a sign. Lines of people at about ten tables with psychics. When it was my turn the lady said to me, ‘You are going to meet somebody who is very like your husband. Extremely famous and also a musician and you are going to have a good time because this guy is going to be kind and gentle.’ Outside we were laughing our faces off. Somebody as famous as my husband? I would know that guy. There is nobody like that. This woman doesn’t know what she’s talking about. But then a few weeks later John came back to me. But he came back a different person. He was different. He had been nice before but he had a temper and all that. This time he was really considerate.” 

It wasn’t long before she became pregnant. “John was very eager to have a kid but I didn’t want to just make him feel I’d grabbed him. I wanted to give him the choice of whether he wanted to be with me. I didn’t want him feeling depressed and angry. I’d had I think three miscarriages and John said, ‘You are going to have this one. And I said, OK. I would like to give it to you.’ I was a career orientated woman and I was 42. I could have lived without the pregnancy, but he had suffered so much from being separated from me… I thought I made him suffer so I should go through with this and make him happy. So because of my history of miscarriages I had to stay in bed for the whole pregnancy. John got a wheelchair and he would push me into the kitchen where there would be lunch. Isn’t that sweet? And I accepted that, so in a way we both changed. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly…” Yet when she talks of Sean she brims with love and pride. She reminisces of him singing and playing when in the studio when he was four or five and they were recording the Double Fantasy album. 

When John died she wrote that “half of me flew away with him.” The part that remains is the Yoko that tries to distance herself. She had a long relationship with antiques dealer Sam Havadtoy, which ended in 2001. “It was more like friends and that makes a difference.” One feels that in a way she is still with John. She sometimes talks about him in the present tense and she often uses his words. His Imagine Peace message speaks through her. And she says very quietly, “So in a way I don’t think of that moment as the end of his life.”

Marianne Faithfull (2012-ish)

On the way to meet Marianne Faithfull in Dublin I thought I was going to die. The plane couldn’t land because of horrific winds. It circled while everyone was tossed from side to side, and then decided to land anyway on top of the wind that threw us all about the place.
            By the time I arrived at the tinkling tea lounge of the Shelbourne Hotel I was in a heightened state. I had an out of body experience. I soon realised this was the perfect mode to meet Marianne Faithfull, who has been in a heightened state and out of her body most of her life.
            I’d read that she can be imperious, defensive. She’s none of that, but she has a curious commanding and demanding presence. We sit down for tea and she orders water for her French paracetamol. On her new album Horses And High Heels she’s written a happy song about eternity.
“Eternity and death. It’s quite a paradox to find joy in that, but I think that’s the right way to do it. I’m not facing death. I reckon that’s a long way off and I think by the time it happens you’re ready for it and you’re tired.”
Of course she did face death when she discovered a lump in her breast five years ago, but more of that later. Horses And High Heels is somewhat of a triumph. Songs that she’s written and songs from the seventies, like Love Song, covered by Elton John, sung in her haunting and pain soaked voice.
“I’m having a good phase really. I’m trying not to make people cry.” Her guitarist on the album, Doug Pettibone, says that her voice could sing a menu and make people cry. She insists though she’s not about the crying but the surviving.
“I’m having a great life and I want to go on having one. I’m not sure yet what my higher mission is but I have a feeling it might be great. Before I thought my mission was death, but now my mission is life. I feel quite different now to that bad, stupid, silly girl. I feel that everything is before me like a wonderful banquet.”
Uplifting thoughts from a 64 year old who has spent a life perfecting the art of self-destruction. She has a smoky cackle. She still smokes, but that’s about all she does. And later on in the interview, when she learns I know Paul McKenna, she asks that we call him now and be hypnotised to give up cigarettes.
“I think it’s really helpful if you don’t drink and do drugs. It’s frustrating sometimes. I can’t say it’s a bed of roses. But it’s better for my wilder emotions and my self-sabotage if I don’t. Drink breaks down your spiritual system, and then you go back on to the drugs and that would be awful.” She pulls almost a cartoon sad face and she reminds me of some of the awful places she’s been to.
“I know for a fact that heaven and hell are here on earth.” She talks with perfect recall about a vision, a dream she had during a ‘suicide attempt’ in 1969.  It was soon after she’d miscarried Mick Jagger’s child at seven and a half months; not long after the death of Brian Jones, luminous original driving force of the Stones. The Rolling Stones had just done a concert in Hyde Park and then Marianne got on a plane with Jagger to Sydney.
“It was a vision I had after I’d taken 150 Tuinols. I didn’t intend to take so many, I just kept taking them on the flight and I remember taking a whole load more after I ordered hot chocolate on room service. I wasn’t dead, I was walking along in no man’s land with Brian Jones and he said ‘this is where I go’ and he fell off the edge of the abyss and I didn’t, I had to walk all the way back again, and I walked a very long way. I was in an airport and there were planes coming in and taking off and I said I’m waiting for Mick to come and get me, which indeed he did, he brought me back. I remember it all. It was after that that we wrote Wild Horses.”
Keith Richards in his book Life is very kind to Marianne crediting her talent as being an über muse, not just inspiring songs but helping Jagger write the lyrics. “It wasn’t that I wrote whole songs, but I’d be ‘what about this line, what about changing that’ and he loved it. He wouldn’t have loved it if I’d tried to claim credit or money, he wouldn’t have liked that, ha, ha. And it would have been unfair because he’s the star, along with Keith.
Richards is kind enough to demystify the Mars bar incident once and for all. It never happened. It’s something that humiliated her at the time and has haunted her. “His book makes wonderful reading and he writes about the big stuff. I love and adore him.”
Reading it I wondered why didn’t she choose him over Mick. “Oh I would have done, but he was having a scene with Linda Keith and he was already in love with Anita, so no chance.”
Really? “You don’t know how silly a girl I was. He loved me all along but I didn’t know that. We’ll never know really. I was definitely mad about him. I spent one lovely night with him and got to know him later. The more I saw him the more I loved him. People have said we would have been so good together. I was too young to hold his attention.”
She was a teenager when she was first introduced to the court of the Rolling Stones, but she wasn’t exactly an ingénue. In 1965 when she was 18 she married artist John Dunbar and had a son, Nicholas. She left Dunbar for Jagger when she was 19. Long golden hair, big eyes, floral tiny mini dress, it’s a classic image of sixties beautiful person who was also known as an ‘angel with tits’. From the outside she had everything, even a sweet little hit record, As Tears Go By. She felt constantly displaced. She’d been intending to go to university or drama school and here she was, part of a circus. She felt undermined and had no confidence.
“I couldn’t even give a blow job. People care about that. Not that Keith cared. He’s a real man. But one of those things about being in that world…” she doesn’t finish the sentence. “I have never been able to give a good blow job, I would have been sick. I’ve always felt rather inferior. Keith didn’t care. We had such a great night. Wow, I’ll never forget that. I certainly did not have to give him a blow job. It was hot and sweaty.
“But I also had a great time with Mick, in bed and out of bed.” In her autobiography Faithfull she recalls that for months she and Jagger slept on opposite sides of a gigantic bed avoiding sex.
“The other bits were fabulous. We used to go out visiting sacred places, chapels on lonely hills. Keith would drive the Bentley with Christopher Gibbs and sometimes Michael Cooper took pictures. He was the court photographer there are pictures of me and Mick in the car having a row. You can see just how cross we were. We weren’t always having fun but we did have good times, it was a very creative relationship. He was very good at playing Three Sisters to help me learn my lines. He was a nice Hamlet too.” It was when she played Ophelia she started to think in a suicidal frame of mind and soon after she took all the pills with the hot chocolate.
She and Jagger had scant contact over the years but when she had her lumpectomy in 2006 he called her. “And that meant a lot. I was so lucky that they caught it so quickly. I didn’t have to have chemo. They got rid of it with a lumpectomy. I had a breast lift and a little bit of diminuation at the same time. Might as well make the best of it, that’s what I said to myself.” Who would have thought she was such a positive thinker. Essentially she is. It’s a strength that she sees in herself now perhaps for the first time.
She’s wearing a man’s tuxedo and a white ruffled blouse. Her breasts are still enormous. She says “they have grown back. I have lots of friends who are going through chemo now. I hope that when I die it’s not going to be frightening like that but I’ll just be in my bed and think I’ve had enough, I’ll fuck off now.”
She was afraid, of course, when she had cancer. “Maybe not as afraid as I should have been. All I can say is I’ve been lucky with body. Well done little body. I praise it and say you’re very good.”
She does think that the cancer changed her. That after it her love life could never be the same. “Cancer doesn’t make you feel sexy. It took me a long time to get over it. I went right off sex and that was a difficult moment because when I felt better again Francois had fallen in love with someone else.” Francois Ravard looks like a love child of Serge Gainsbourg and Woody Allen. He is her long time manager and remains so. “Yes, he looks after me,” she purrs. But it took her a while to get over the break-up. She wrote the song Why Did We Have To Part about him.
“In a way it’s about everybody I’ve parted from, but specifically Francois. It was hard to write. During the break-up I had writers block. I couldn’t write anything for two years. In AA I heard about somebody in the film business who retired, then they started drinking again because they let go. I couldn’t let that happen. But I’m well and strong and I’m loving working.”
She still lives in Paris and has a house in County Waterford, Ireland. Her son Nicholas wants her to move back to London. “He’s such a cool son, he’s perfect for me. I don’t know if he’d suit any other mother but he’s very free thinking. He’s a high finance journalist and he’s written a wonderful book, The Devil’s Derivative. How did this happen to me, how did I get a child like this. He’s very much like my father.”
Her father Major Glyn Faithfull was a spy in World War II who never got caught. Her grandfather invented a sexual device called Frigidity Machine which was designed to give women orgasms. He tried it out on her mother Eva, Baroness Erisso, a dancer and actress descended from the Sacher-Masoch long line of Austro-Hungarian aristocrats.
“I always thought he was a fraud. Why would he do that to his son’s new wife? But I don’t think my mother was very into sex and my father was very into it. So that was difficult for both of them.”
She talks more about her adoration of Nicholas. Perhaps the relationship is more intense because he was taken away from her when he was a child and she was a heroin addict living on the streets of Soho. “No, I was always around him, but yes, he was taken away from me, and that was very painful, no question. He was about seven. I’ve actually blocked it out now. Let’s not talk about it, it’s too horrible and I love John again even though he did that to me. It’s been years since I hated John,” she says all drawn out and languid. You get the sense she loves an audience.
What drove her to living on the streets? “I didn’t like living in the goldfish bowl.” Yet she loves applause. Another paradox.
“When I fell in love with Mick because I couldn’t get Keith the band were just like any other band. I hadn’t signed up for this incredible leap in their popularity. They became superstars and I was in the middle of it.  It was me who separated from Mick and not the other way round. It was me that separated from him and maybe from myself. I abandoned Mick and then I abandoned me. I left me lying in the road, anorexic and shooting up heroin. Heroin does make you lose interest in food but it was more than that. I wanted to disappear completely, get smaller and smaller and go down the plughole. But a part of me hung on to the love and the light. My mother’s love was strong and that part helped, the part of me that did want to make it. Why did I take those pills in the first place? I can’t remember exactly.”
Was it the end of your relationship with Mick Jagger? “No, but it hurried up the end. It’s very bad form to try and kill yourself when you’re with Mick Jagger and it’s all about the pretty stuff.”
Enormous orbital eyes look like they suddenly have another vision. “It was because of Brian’s death. That’s why I did it. I was going to punish Mick by killing myself. Mick didn’t kill Brian. I never thought that, but neither Mick nor Keith helped out Brian. They laughed and mocked and pointed. So I thought I’ll punish them all, fuck ‘em. I’ll show them, they’ll learn, they’ll miss me. But it wasn’t to be.”
She’s relaxed now and tells me how she loves to speak French with a strong English accent. She demonstrates and dissolves into giggles. Says she doesn’t speak real French at all and they find it incredibly charming.
She has returned to acting playing with Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the movie Belle de Seigneur. “I love making people laugh. I love performing. The best acting I do is in my life, not just on stage or film.” Is she acting now? “I’m not at the moment or if I am this is a virtuoso performance. A few years ago I might have got acting and being confused.”
She always said her homelessness was of her own doing. She wanted to be anonymous so she acted homelessness and drug addiction. Another bizarre paradox that she was in control of being out of control. “I have come to terms with the past. I took it personally and was too insecure and defensive. If you asked me a difficult question I’d get hurt and punish you all myself. And now it doesn’t matter.”
There’s certainly joy, even in the most bleak song on Horses And High Heels. You can sense her joy in working through the pain. There’s a real lust for life. She thinks for a long time she has been denying herself love. Of all her marriages, three of them, to punk rocker Ben Brierley in 1999 and writer Georgio Della Terza in 1988, she is only in touch with the first husband, Dunbar.
“I want to keep an open mind about love. Do you think there are some people out there that might love me?”
 

Sam Smith (Chrissy Iley Exclusive – October 18, 2020)

Sam Smith and Chrissy Iley
Sam Smith and Chrissy Iley

Sam Smith’s voice is like honey seared in raw pain.  It vibrates on a level of vulnerability previously not known to human beings.  They reach in and grab you by the throat, the heart, the soul, and stain you.  If there is pain to feel, they’ve felt it deeper and harder.  Propelled by these uncanny abilities, Smith – gender queer who uses they/them pronouns – has won four Grammy’s, three Brits, three Billboard music awards, a Golden Globe and an Oscar.  It is also the reason that my burly builders working in my basement turn up to early every day because they know that I am playing the new Sam Smith’s album Love Goes.  

 
They wave me off like I am the Queen going to launch a ship when they know I am going to meet them for the interview which is in management offices in Hampstead.
 
“I am good with builders, they are my fan base.”  We agree their fan base is as wide as his inspirations. “Ever since I was a kid I have listened to women singers, I think I see myself within the lyrics, within the stories.”  (Amy, Britney, Bey Madonna, Christina.)
 
“Singing completes me. And during Covid I was singing all the time, I just came to this place where I was falling in love with singing again.”
 
The album Love Goes is nostalgic, referencing ends of relationships, but not the end of love.  They are comfortable embracing extremes – young and a very old soul. They like to mix the euphoria of disco and the pain of loss.  They like crying and dancing at the same time.  Their birthday is May 19th, Taurus, stubborn.  And do they like to use lots of fabric conditioner?
 
“Yes!  Yes!  I have got very sensitive skin.”
 
They love to feel softness around them.  They are delighted when I tell them as soon as they came out as non-binary I was listening to their music on Alexa who immediately referred to Smith as they/them.  
 
“Wow, I did not know that and it is clever and lovely.”
 
I tell them that I have messed up a few times with the they/them.
 
“I mess up, my mum messes up, my family messes up.  What I have learned over the past year is that it is not an ideal world.  It would be wonderful if we could change lanes like that. When people correct themselves it is a wonderful feeling because people try.”
 
Do they feel more comfortable in their own skin?
 
“Yes.  I have always been non-binary, I have always felt the way I’ve felt and just hearing other non-binary stories made me suddenly feel seen and I felt this is a way that I can live, where if I tell people this is how I feel and this is how I like to be treated life is easier.”
 
Did they have to change their name and title on their passport?
 
“I don’t think you are allowed to do that yet which I find sad.  I am pretty sure mine says I am male and you have a choice to be male or female.  It would be wonderful if it could change, hopefully in my lifetime.”
 
They are wearing a soft grey sweatshirt and jeans.  Their thighs are very shapely, girlie and they like that.  Was there a moment that inspired the pronoun change or was it a process?
 
“For me, what triggered everything was the work I was doing with my body issues.  I always had body dysmorphia.  As I started to address that, I started to address my gender and realized that I was holding myself to these ideals of how a man should look.  As I looked into it, I did therapy, I realized there was more to it.  I have got girl thighs and I have got girl breasts too.  It started to awaken this conversation that had always been in the back of my mind.”
 
Years ago, he went to Amelia Freer the nutritionist that James Corden and Boy George used and he lost many pounds.
 
“In the words of Rhianna, I have been gifted with a fluctuating body.  I can lose weight I can put weight on quickly, I am a shape shifter. When I read Rhianna I felt very seen.”
 
“Seen” is a word they use a lot.  I think for them it means being accepted, but it’s paradoxical too, as a famous pop star losing and gaining weight is a shackle.  Do they have a love/hate relationship with fame?
 
“I wouldn’t say that I love fame.”
 
“Fame means I can get certain messages across which is a wonderful thing… but it’s very invasive.”
 
The songs are so confessional anyway, how much more can they be invaded?
 
“It’s a weird life change, it’s quite traumatic.  I was 21 when fame happened (28 now) and my whole world changed.  I didn’t realise how much of a home body I was and how much I loved my privacy.  You can’t go back. I have gotten used to it and aware of how lucky I am… also I have to be cautious.
 
“It was very difficult, I remember I got papped when I was 22.  I have always looked at myself with affection no matter how big or small I am, but I saw this and I felt ashamed.  So now, I don’t look at pictures or read anything about me, good or bad.”
 
A few years ago they had a file on their phone called Crack where Instagram and Twitter lived.
 
“I have changed it now. I am still on those things, but I have stepped away for sure.  I keep it mainly music focused, all the information people need is in the albums.  When I sing and tell stories – I write everything I do.  I don’t think people really realise because of the pop umbrella, that the way I make music is organic and from the deepest part of me.”
 
On the album their favourite song is Another One.  It is very trance-y.  It is about loss and hope.  My favourite is Dance Until You Love Someone Else.  
 
“I think I was going through a breakup when I was writing the album, it was after my main relationship of my life.”
 
They were together with Brandon Flynn from 13 Reasons Why for 9 months in 2018.
 
“That was my longest relationship basically, so there was a catharsis going on.   When you write songs you may start with an initial inspiration but then it becomes something else – a story that everyone can relate to.  I also found it hard that the relationship was public.”
 
This was a big conflict.  They wanted the relationship known because they were proud, they’re are not so many gender queer couples, but they didn’t want it because it put pressure on the relationship.
 
“I think there are ways to get around it, where you can maintain a level of privacy, but it was hard.  I was 25 during that time and in many ways I seem a lot older but when it comes to relationships I am still a bit of a teenager.”
 
The relationship was played out, at least for a lot of the time, in California.
 
“I actually do love California. I didn’t love California.”
 
They were lonely there.
 
“Even though you could always find me in West Hollywood dancing down the streets.”
 
Is it more important for them to love or be loved?
 
“Before it was more important to me to love – that is part of the reason the album is called Love Goes.  I was addicted to the melancholy of love  – you are putting yourself through pain to be inspired because it is a creative space.  Now I understand what love is – for me it is something that you nurture and someone is nurturing you and there has to be an equal amount of nurturing going on.”
 
In their songs they break up with people, but they still love them.  Isn’t it much easier to hate the people you break up with?  Their deep eyes twinkle.
 
“I have tried to look at every relationship as a different experience and something that has helped me understand myself.  I have had a lovely time with the people I have been with and there is a lot of love there.  Love doesn’t go away, I will always love these people and by putting them into songs it will live on, although when I listen back to The Thrill of it All or The Lonely Hour I don’t think or feel for those guys at all now.  It is just like looking through an emotional photo book. Sometimes I listen back to my music and think, ‘I was so childish’ and so thought I knew everything about love.”
 
They are single now.
 
“On the front line.”
 
Just now they are more in love with their album.
 
“I want it to be an empowering break up album.  Just step in and own that heartbreak.
 
“When my parents broke up, I was very lucky.  There was not a lot of nastiness and I know divorces can get very nasty.  My parents still love each other very much even to this day.”
 
They use this theme of love outlives the relationship as a blueprint.
 
“You let the relationship last as long as they are going to last.  They got 26 years and 3 kids… they are happy now, it is a lovely, happy, dysfunctional family.”
 
And what does the family think about the theyness?
 
“They fully support the theyness.  My mother has always known I have been that way and so has my dad.  A lot of people just know me from my first record, but I was wearing makeup and female clothes from the ages of 15 to 18.  I was fully glammed up every day for school.  My dad, before school a few times, would say, ‘You need to powder your face because you look orange.’  My family want me to feel happy and settled so they are incredibly supportive about my pronouns.  They say live it and enjoy it. 
 
 “It is not my job to be an activist. My job is to make music and I needed to enjoy being out as a non-binary person for a bit.”
 
Do they feel responsibility for their young fans who may be struggling to come to terms with their identity?
 
“I think there is a lack of education and a lack of understanding. No one ever talked about queer sex or queer love growing up and I have been put in dangerous positions because of the lack of education and understanding from society.  I feel that if my music or gender expression helps anyone of any age who feel like they see themselves in me, or it helps them understand… because if I were a young kid and I was a non-binary artist talking about this it might have saved me a bit of heartache and pain. So, if I could be that to someone that’s wonderful.
 
“I am a singer and I am very human.  The concept of being a role model is wonderful, but it is not something I am looking for.  I make mistakes.  I am flawed.”
 
Are they looking for a relationship?
 
“Of course.  I am not looking, I am hoping – it is like wading through water and trying to catch a fish with your bare hands.  I am just sitting by the side of the pond now.  Being single during lockdown was not fun.  I spent it with my sister and felt very lucky because we get along so well.”
 
Do they think about the future?  Do they want to have kids?
 
“I am trying to seize control of things and let life happen, but I would love to have kids, I want to have a kid before I am 34.”
 
How are they going to acquire one?
 
“There are lots of options, adopt, surrogacy, I have got friends who have done both.”
 
They have friends who are non-binary and friends who are not.
 
They won an Oscar in 2016 for the Bond track Writing ‘s on the Wall.
 
 Billie Eilish sings new Bond No Time To Die.
 
“Billy is absolutely beautiful and it is a beautiful song.”
 
Were they overwhelmed during their Bond period?
 
“I was.  My whole life changed and I was trying to navigate through it.  I hadn’t been home because I was touring and I found it a strain on my mind and physical body.”
 
 
“I would wake up and think what is going on?  Chemically? You go on stage every night, your adrenaline is off the roof, and then you walk off stage into a dressing room of complete silence.  It’s addictive because the feeling is amazing, but it doesn’t warrant for a steady mental ride. You are made to feel you are very important then you realise you are like everyone else with the same issues and boyfriend problems.”
 
“I have got some wonderful queer friends in London, but my closest queer friend is in New York.  During lockdown we had FaceTime dinners and cocktails.
 
“I love food as much as music, I am a foodie.  I am staying healthy now, I have got a plan to move to rural Scotland someday and enjoy eating. 
 
“My skin is very Celtic, the sun and I don’t get along.  My grandmother’s mum was French and there is definitely Scottish and Irish in me, perhaps I was a non-binary Celtic Viking.”
 
We talk about The Three chimneys on the Isle of Skye. 
 
Excitedly they say, “I went last year with my cousin and her husband on a road trip all around Scotland.  Very special. Skye is wonderful, very haunting, then I went to the outer Hebrides which is wild.  Scotland is my favourite place in the whole world, my family were from Whitley Bay (Northeast of England).”
 
I remind them they once said, “Life is like a Richard Curtis movie because I am so romantic”.  At what point in the year do they start watching Love Actually?
 
“All throughout the year.  I am obsessed with Sense and Sensibility at the moment.  I am a romantic – I think I could over romanticise things – I would adore to write a soundtrack to a Richard Curtis movie, and one day I would love to make a queer romantic film.  I see romance in different ways, always have.  Life to me is romantic, the ups and downs, the sadness and happiness, I look at the whole and sometimes i can get carried away.  I have OCD so I try not to linger on too many thoughts for too long.”
 
They still get a thrill from heels.
 
“OMG!  I love heels, love heels! I was starting to wear them every day last year, but it was exhausting.  I am 6’2” so there is a lot of weight on a heel and a lot of height. I find I don’t want to stand out that much. One walks differently in heels. I strut.  I look fabulous in a heel. But OMG, I am a size 13. I have to go to specialist drag shops or places to get boy heels.  Or they heels.  They is a beautiful word.”
 
They love clothes from Random Identity – all gender fluid clothing.
 
“Also I like Ella Boucht, she is incredible, she’s a they/she.  I say I am a they/them but many people like to be known as they/he or they/she – all beautiful words.”

Sam Smith and Chrissy Iley
Sam Smith and Chrissy Iley

Dennis Quaid (London Sunday Times Magazine, December 2, 2018)

Chrissy Iley & Dennis Quaid
Chrissy Iley & Dennis Quaid

I meet Dennis Quaid in The Village recording studio, West LA. Every rock God from Tom Petty to Robert Plant seems to have made their greatest albums there.  Quaid, 64, is recording his first album with his band The Sharks. He jokes, “The oldest rock band ever to make a debut album.”
      Everybody says it but it’s true. He’s handsome.  Tall, ripped, good cheekbones and good hair and inquiring eyes – the kind that make you feel he’s interested in what you have to say. He’s in skinny jeans and a dark tee. 
    He was born in Houston, Texas. Grew up wanting to be a cowboy or an astronaut. As an actor he could and was indeed both. His breakout leading role was in The Big Easy in 1986 famous for his sexy chemistry with Ellen Barkin. He was Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire (1989), played opposite Meryl Streep in Postcards from The Edge (1990) and was Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp (1994).
     He disappeared for a while as a leading man but returned in a Globe winning performance as the closet gay in Todd Haynes Far From Heaven (2002). He was in last year’s super weepy surprise hit A Dog’s Purpose.
     And he’s next up reprising his role in the Sci-Fi TV series Fortitude (Sky), set 400 miles from the North Pole – the safest place on earth that suddenly becomes violent, dangerous and spooky.  
     “I really loved it,” he says of the extreme temperature. “I’ve been colder in New York.” In the last series his character (Michael Lennox) went a little crazy. After obsessively trying to find a cure for his wife’s far too rapidly progressing wasting disease, she dies.  He becomes undone with grief and starts drinking.  “How about that…”
     “I connected to my character because we’re both extremely bull headed.”
     Astrologically he’s not a bull, he’s an Aries and I know this because he’s the same day as my dad and Hugh Hefner – April 9. He and Hef had a birthday party together once.
     “It wasn’t really a joint birthday party. It was his party which I was at. It just happened to be my birthday.” He’s exactly the type who would never miss a Hef birthday bash.
     “April 9th people are filled with adrenaline. They are tenacious and optimistic. They run before they think. They are comfortable in extremes. The middle ground is…” (he pulls a face) “we don’t want that.”
    Quaid calls himself a romantic – has been married 3 times, divorced 3 times. The first to actress P J Soles (1978-1983), most famously to Meg Ryan (1991-2001), most recently to Texas real estate agent Kimberly Buffington (2004) and his divorce finalised just a few weeks ago.  
     “I think what divorce does is it takes away your identity. It’s like a death. Your identity is wrapped up in the relationship and if it’s not going to be there…” His eyes are searching, troubled. He finishes the sentence, “who are you?”
     Isn’t it death of a family member and moving house that are supposed to cause the most stress to the human psyche?
     “And then there’s divorce which is death and moving. The birth of a child is another stressful situation. Not just because things could go wrong (his ten-day old twins were given a thousand times stronger dosage of blood thinner by mistake and the babies nearly died) but also because you have to redefine who you are.”
    Does he mean he was no longer Dennis but daddy? “Yes, my son Jack is 26 now. I was 38 when he was born and I realised my life was over. I could no longer have any guilt free experiences… I’m exaggerating but I am responsible for someone else in the world and that’s never going to go away. My mother (91) still worries about me.”
     She texts him nearly every day. His mother Juanita was in real estate and his father William Rudy an electrician.
     “He passed away when he was 63 in 1987 of a heart-attack. And I’m 64 so when I had my 63rd birthday it was a psychological moment – it definitely ran through my mind then I forgot about it until one night a few months ago I was having trouble sleeping and it hit me. My dad’s birthday was November 21st and he died on February 8th and I started adding up the days and I was exactly that age. Then the next day I realised I was older than he ever made. I made it past. I intend to live until I am 130.”
     How did he redefine himself when he had the twins Thomas Boone and Zoe Grace born via a surrogate in 2007?
     “It was very different. You have both of them coming at you at once. The good part is that they each have a playmate and the hard part is that you have to do everything double.” They are now 10.
     Did having twins change the relationship with his then wife? “Having kids always changes your relationship.”
     He says of Meg Ryan “We are friends.” I’m sure that wasn’t always the case. At the time of their separation in 2000 they were the biggest couple in Hollywood. They were at the peak of their careers. When they lost each-other they lost grasp on that, with only Quaid regaining acclaim and ratings.  America’s sweetheart got puffy and pillow faced with fillers. Her currency redundant. Quaid stayed himself, determined, chiselled, handsome. He says he works out a lot because, “I’m vain. The industry’s vain.”  Plus remember, he’s planning on living to 130
     The most unusual place he had sex is in an elevator. “Is that really unusual?” he muses. “It was a slow elevator. It was in Quebec.  It must be the French influence. It was the elevator going to my own apartment so it wasn’t like a public building.”
     That makes it a little more boring. “Well, not for me.” But there wasn’t the excitement that someone could call the elevator and the doors would open. “It’s true. I knew the other floors were currently unoccupied and no one was coming in but she didn’t,” he laughs. Was this a while ago? “Not too long.” Out of politeness I stifle my giggle because in the next room is his girlfriend of 2 years, French-Canadian model Santa Auzina, 31. She’s tall, blonde, endless legs, tiny lycra shorts, tiny vest, smiles a lot like nothing bothers her.  We all wish we had that smile. She’s documented their love, their soulmate status with many Instagram posts of their exotic holiday destinations as a couple.
     I think Quaid enjoys talking about his mistakes.  We start from the movies he turned down.
     “I turned down Big. I hit myself over that. At the time there were three other movies with a similar storyline and Big was going to be second but it wasn’t. I should have taken Big.”
     He also missed out on An Officer and a Gentleman. “I didn’t turn it down. I was on an around the world trip with my wife. In those days you could buy a ticket for $1000. My then wife PJ Soles and I were going around the world. We were literally half way round, in New Delhi, when my agent called and said, ‘The part is yours. You just have to come back. Taylor Hackford wants you’. We cut short the vacation. We flew back to LA and either they had decided while I was en route they wanted Richard Gere… I did not get the part.”
     Did that contribute to his first divorce – cutting short the big vacay? “No, they even said they would send me back on my vacation if it didn’t work out. They didn’t.” 
    Curiously, he’s already played several presidents. Why does he think he’s such a good presidential candidate?
     “You get to a certain age and you can play presidents if you have that trustworthy/untrustworthy look.”
     So far, he’s been Clinton, Bush, and he’s just about to be Regan. “I was Bill Clinton in A Special Relationship (2010) when Michael Sheen was Tony Blair and a Bush like character (President Staton) in American Dreamz (2006). I was offered George W Bush for the Katrina film but I turned it down because of conflicts in schedule. Regan is a very interesting person. So many stories that people who were close to him didn’t really know him.”
     He became friends with Clinton. “I spent a weekend at the White House when I was married to Meg. We went there when we were invited to the King of Spain’s state dinner.”   (In a frighteningly convincing Clinton impersonation he continues) ‘You’ve got to stay, you’ve got to stay. We’re gonna play some golf.’”
    “Meg went home, Hillary was out of town so it was just me and Bill. We played golf, we got in the Presidents Limousine and had a couple of Subway sandwiches. At the time I was better at golf but he would have been a much better golfer if he wasn’t President.
     “He was the smartest guy I’ve ever met and very kind to me. When it was announced that Meg and I were getting a divorce he called me from Airforce One. He was over the Atlantic right after Palestinian talks had collapsed. I don’t know how he found me but he did. He just wanted to let me know he was thinking of me.”
     The week after our interview he is off to Canada for a sequel to A Dog’s Purpose. He’s heard the stories that people who never cry dissolved during that movie. It’s sentimental, it’s about dogs who are devoted, who love you and then they die but the love goes on.
     Quaid has always been a dog person. Grew up with them. At the moment he has a miniature English bulldog named Peaches. 
     “Just one. I had two French Bulldogs die in the same year. One natural causes as they say, he went into the kids bathroom which he never went into, lay down and had a stroke or heart attack. The other drowned in the pool. It was really hard to take. They weren’t brothers, they were two years apart but they loved each other.”
     We wonder could the second one have thrown himself into the pool on purpose? He nods, “It could have been. If you’re going to have pets you’re going to have death.”
     In the dog movie the dog is reincarnated and comes back several times as a different type of dog. Quaid has always been interested in various kinds of spiritual thinking – he doesn’t like organised religion.      
     “When I was 11 I was baptised into the Baptist church. Then I was re-baptised in the Ganges river by a friend of mine who was a preacher. When I went round the world my question was ‘Who is God to you?’ I’ve read the bible twice, the Koran, the Baghavad Gita. I’m a seeker. I used to call myself a Zen Baptist. Basically, I’m a Christian but everyone goes through a crisis of faith. I have crisis all the time… but some of them are champagne crisis meaning that’s a pretend crisis.”
     The crisises in his life have been quite documented, especially the divorces and cocaine addiction, yet more recently he had a new addiction – the Swiffer.
     “Yes, it’s true. I got obsessed with dusting with the Swiffer. It was right after the divorce in my single life. I would get into bed and my feet were just black from everything.  I didn’t like that feeling so I discovered the Swiffer. It works quickly and it picks up all the dust. Doesn’t that say something about my champagne crisis?”
     It says that he wasn’t comfortable without someone taking care of the home. It says that the dust in the apartment and the black feet symbolised that he was alone. He still drinks champagne and other forms of alcohol. He gave it up for 10 years as part of the process of giving up cocaine in the 90s.
     “Then I started drinking again because alcohol was never my problem. I never liked the feeling of being drunk.”
    Alcohol high and cocaine high are opposites.
     “I would do coke and I would use alcohol to come down.”
    What about doing coke so he didn’t feel drunk?
    “That was the deal back then so I had to break the cycle.”
     He reminisces. “I liked coke. I liked it to go out.  I missed it for quite a while. I used to grind my teeth for four years. I was doing about 2 grams a day. I was lucky. I had one of those white light experiences where I saw myself being dead and losing everything I had worked for my whole life so I put myself in rehab. I had a band, basically Bonnie Raitt’s backing band and the night after we got a record deal we broke up. (Like in The Commitments) The next day I was in rehab.” 
     “I took anti-depressants back in the day around coming off cocaine because there’s a depression that goes on. It’s a temporary thing. I don’t think they were ever intended to be taken on a long-term basis.”
   When he was coming off cocaine did he want to eat a lot? “Yes, I wanted to sleep too. I suddenly discovered sleeping.”
   He does eat. I’ve just seen him bolt a giant sandwich down in less than 30 seconds. “I’ve always had a high metabolism. I get high from exercising. I really do. I think it does what all those anti-depressants are supposed to do.”
     When he played Doc Holliday in Wyatt Earp, he lost 44 pounds because the character was wasting away from tuberculosis.
     “I went down to 138 pounds and it took me a year to put it back on because when you get into that compulsive obsessive behaviour of not eating it does strange things to your mind and it took me a while to get over that self-image of myself. I got over it and now I don’t follow any diet and I like cooking. My signature dish? A Louisiana seafood gumbo.”
    “But I also like caviar. Would you like some? I’ve just bought some. It’s here in the studio fridge.” I decline to join the caviar party although any partying with Quaid has got to be fun. I am impressed with his self-confidence, his charisma.  He has not had work done he has just worked on himself.  For a minute I am confused but he reminds me, at my request, of some chronology.  He was not doing drugs or alcohol went he met Ryan and they were married for 9 years.
    “I was single for several years and I met Kimberly.  We were married in 2005 and our divorce finally wound up a couple of months ago.”  The divorce with Kimberly went on and off a few times and the only constant was his band.
    He formed the Sharks 18 years ago. He tells me he was always a performer.  Always a song writer.
    “The Sharks are having a great time. We’ve done about 40 gigs this year. After this last divorce I’ve really got back into music again. I was going to be a musician before I was an actor.”
     Has anyone famous ever recorded his songs? “No, that would be an ideal thing. I’ve been going to Nashville quite a lot recently. It’s my favourite city. It’s such a collegiate feeling. Everyone is there for each other.”
     We talk about the possibility of living in Nashville. “I tried to move back to Texas (Austin) because I grew up in Houston. But when I moved back I found myself meandering around the house. I didn’t factor in that I’d already spent 35 years in Los Angeles and your friends and the places you haunt… so I moved back.”
     “For 30 years I had a ranch in Montana. It was beautiful. I used to spend 4 months of the year there but then it dwindled down with work and whenever I’d go there I’d find for the first week I’d just be fixing things but I felt too guilty to go anywhere else so I decided to sell it.”
     “I grew up wanting to be a cowboy but as I grew up in Houston – a space city and I wanted to be an astronaut. Gordo Cooper was my favourite astronaut because he was a bit rock n roll and had a cool name. Gordo is short for Gordon. I read his book and said if they’re ever making a movie I want to play him. And I did. I met him and he put me in touch with a flight instructor. I’ve got my pilots license so now I can fly jets. I’m learning to fly a helicopter. It’s like riding a magic carpet… I love to travel. I just hate to leave but it’s always really great to arrive.”
     He does enjoy simple pleasures such as calf roping. “Calf roping is where you’re on a horse and another person is on the left and on the right the calf is let out of the chute. He runs, you catch the horns and the other person catches the foot. It was a skill learned when they gathered cows for branding but you get timed for it. 
    “Horses are such sweet animals. Such intimacy when you are on a horse, especially bareback. He can feel your heartbeat and you can feel his.  They are very sensitive animals, not predators. They always look around for danger.”
     He mimics a horse with eyes doing a panorama.
    He shows me pictures of the Icelandic horses he encountered when filming Fortitude and teams of dogs pulling his sledge. He explains that the dogs are ranked fastest at the front and get competitive with one another and that the horses are climbers. 
    “About 3,000 people live there and 5,000 polar bears although I didn’t see a single one. It doesn’t snow the whole year but the snow blows around. They don’t have immigration or tariffs so it reminds you of the old West.”
    So once again a dream come true – an Arctic cowboy. He enjoyed the extreme of Fortitude where they had 5 days of almost total darkness. “I don’t know if there will be another series. If you’re an actor in a series you want to keep it going but maybe the golden age of many seasons is over.”
   He doesn’t seem to have the slightest insecurity about that. 
     Santa is patiently waiting in another room. I wonder was it a conflict with his recently ex-wife?
     “No, it wasn’t a conflict. I met her very close after my ex and I were separated. I was just going to be single and that was just going to be it. I was going to be stone cold Steve Austin when it came to love and then Santa came along. It was like….”
     She replaced the Swiffer?
     “She’s better than a Swiffer, that’s for sure. She was not going to let it go. Couldn’t help it.  So, I had to go with it.  I am a romantic. I like being in a relationship, I really do. It’s fun to be single up to a point but I like being in a relationship. I also like having kids around, as annoying as they can be sometimes, I am a family orientated person.”
     Is he planning more kids?
     “I’m not planning kids. I don’t rule anything out.”
    And that’s how Dennis Quaid gets to be Dennis Quaid… he works out every day and he doesn’t rule anything out.