I launched Madonna, hung with Keith Richards after heroin arrest and watched one rockstar down a $1000 bottle of wine
HAVING launched Madonna’s career and partied with everyone from REM to The Who, Barbara Charone has been on the front line of pop culture for nearly five decades.
When she started out as a music journalist in the Seventies, women in rock were so unusual, she says, “Security guards just looked at you as if you were a groupie”.
Now with her own talent agency, Barbara, has been dubbed “Britain’s most powerful music PR”.
Here, in extracts from her tell-all memoir Access All Areas, Emily Fairbairn shares her wild times with music’s great and good.
©Barbara Charone, 2022. Extracted from Access All Areas, by Barbara Charone, (White Rabbit) published tomorrow, £20 in hardback. Also available in ebook and audiobook.
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Keith Richards, nicked in Canada
BY 1976 I had a good relationship with Keith, having interviewed him on numerous occasions.
I eventually asked him if I could do a book on him, and much to my surprise and delight he said yes.
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Keith suggested I come to Toronto early in 1977 for the Rolling Stones shows at the El Mocambo club.
I flew to Canada at the end of February, but unfortunately the Royal Canadian Mounted Police reached Keith’s hotel before I did, arresting him for possession of heroin.
Keith was in big trouble. Suddenly rehearsal time for the upcoming club shows was cut short by meetings with lawyers and court appearances.
Keith was no stranger to the law but this was his most serious drug charge yet, with a prison sentence a very real possibility. The shows at El Mocambo (capacity 300) took place on March 4 and 5, and it is a testament to the band’s dedication and stamina that they pulled them off under such trying circumstances.
Alone and betrayed
They tore the place up. It was one of those “you had to be there” moments. However, the grim reality of the situation hovered like a very dark cloud.
When Keith appeared in court he was given bail, his passport confiscated. He and partner Anita Pallenberg and their seven-year-old son Marlon returned to their home for the foreseeable future, the 32nd floor of the Harbour Castle Hotel.
The future for Keith, and indeed the Stones, was uncertain. A couple of days after the court appearance Mick Jagger flew to New York City and soon after the others followed. I was moved to the suite next door to Keith, Anita and Marlon.
A couple of days after the court appearance Mick Jagger flew to New York City and soon after the others followed. I was moved to the suite next door to Keith, Anita and Marlon.
Barbara Charone
I’m sure Keith felt alone and quite possibly betrayed but no doubt my staying helped forge a tremendous bond between us. It also provided an upfront and personal insight into the man I was writing a book about.
God knows what my parents thought, knowing their loving daughter was living for a month in a Toronto hotel alongside a Rolling Stone out on bail for heroin trafficking. “It’s going to be a really great book,” I promised them.
Madonna’s big four-letter launch
IN 1981 I started working in the press department of WEA Records in London and one of the first acts I got to work on was a young US artist from Detroit. Her name was Madonna.
Her first two singles, Everybody in 1982 and Burning Up in 1983, didn’t chart but helped create a nice buzz.
It was third time lucky for Madonna with Holiday in 1983. Things started building considerably by the time she played the capital’s Camden Palace in October of that year.
Her 20-minute set consisted of those first three singles and the look was eye-catching: Crucifix earrings, black top, black skirt, leggings, that hair, the lipstick, the birthmark, the bare navel, the midriff, the whole nine yards. She was electric.
When Madonna next played London, four years later in 1987, the venue was Wembley Stadium. She’s the only artist in history who went from playing to a crowd of just under 1,000 to almost 100,000. Nothing in between.
When her Blonde Ambition Tour hit Wembley Stadium in the summer of 1990, BBC Radio 1 were broadcasting the show live and they asked her not to swear.
Not one to take kindly to being told what to do, Madonna threw out as many f***s as she could, managing over 20 in quick succession, much to the horror of the label’s head of radio, who had told the BBC not to worry. As always, the show was spectacular.
$1,000 liquid lunches with Lou
I ONCE took (rock publication) NME to New York City to do a cover story on Lou Reed.
The writer and I spent four days waiting for Lou to agree to do the interview — typical Lou fun and games driven by his love/hate relationship with the Press (they loved him, he hated them).
He finally agreed to do the interview at Nobu restaurant in Greenwich Village, which was all the rage at the time as it had only just opened.
He ordered an exorbitantly priced bottle of wine, knowing the label would pick up the tab, almost $1,000. It was all for show.
Much to our surprise, Lou asked us if we wanted to go to a party with him as we left Nobu, so we got into his waiting car. He immediately took us to a Gray’s Papaya hot dog stand, an NYC institution, and insisted the writer try their infamous hot dogs, even though we had just eaten a very pricey Japanese dinner.
The massive contrast between the pricey Nobu and cheap Gray’s Papaya was not lost on anyone. Another show. No sooner had we chowed down on the dogs than Lou decided he was done and got dropped off at home.
It was almost as if he was afraid of revealing too much.
A Mad day with Suggs
IN 1997, the record label signed Madness frontman Suggs. He is a massive Chelsea fan, so our paths had often crossed at games. And that was also the year Chelsea made it to the final of the FA Cup.
As fate would have it, the songwriter Mike Connaris brought me a Blue Day, which he thought was perfect for Suggs and would make a great FA Cup final song.
Suggs loved the track, as did the club. I somehow managed to convince WEA to pay for the recording and to put it out as a single.
Before you could say dreams really do come true, I was in a London studio on a Sunday afternoon with Chelsea captain Dennis Wise, Gianluca Vialli, Mark Hughes, Steve Clarke, Gianfranco Zola and the entire Chelsea team making a record.
When the team left, Suggs and I sat around having a beer, practically speechless, literally in dreamland. It was a real pinch-me moment.
Chelsea won the FA Cup, beating Middlesbrough 2–0.
Hearing Blue Day blasted on the Wembley Tannoy brought tears to my eyes. The song is now part of Chelsea folklore and is played at every home game.
When Chelsea started their own in-house radio and TV station, Suggs and I were asked to guest on the first matchday show. Suggs hadn’t been to bed and arrived straight from a big boozy night out.
Our interview quickly disintegrated into a very amusing car crash. We were not on air for long. Nor were we asked back.
Elton’s shambolic interviewer
MY time working with Elton John was short-lived but fun while it lasted.
I’ll never forget his collection of bobble heads that goes with him around the world and gets set up in his dressing room.
He has literally hundreds of bobble-head versions of sports stars, musicians and celebrities — they even have their own flight cases.
In the summer of 2004 Boris Johnson came to Vegas to interview Elton for GQ mag. He had his daughter in tow for the summer holidays.
I never, ever imagined for one minute that this rather shambolic journalist would one day become Prime Minister.
Reading the scores to Rod
ROD STEWART is a massive Celtic fan and really loves football. Likewise, I am passionate about my beloved club Chelsea.
Once, while we were in Sweden to shoot a Rolling Stone magazine cover, Rod asked me to read him the scores of that Saturday’s top-flight games before a show.
I ran through the scores, leaving off Chelsea’s 7–0 thrashing by Nottingham Forest.
The next day, before I left Stockholm, my phone rang, and the voice just said “seven–nil!!!!” and laughed. Rod hung up before I could get a word in.
Harrods sales with Cher
HARRODS used to have celebrities open their summer and winter sales.
Sometimes the artists would arrive riding a horse or in a horse-drawn carriage — it was always a little bit mad.
And so, on the back of the incredible success of her song Believe, Cher opened the Harrods sale in January 1999.
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She was invited to shop in the store after it had closed the night before the sale and consequently my business partner Moira and I found ourselves walking round the whole of an empty Harrods with Cher, grabbing some pre-sale bargains.
Definitely one of the more surreal experiences we have had but tremendous fun.
