Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies by Pamela Des Barres Page B

like I was going to the chair. The bucket started swinging and I held on to him-I wouldn't let go. He held me tight and it was the first time since we'd been eyeing each other that we finally got to be alone together. It was extraordinary, and by the time the ride was over, I was totally in love with him and he was in love with me."

    The would-be sweethearts didn't know how to break the news to the twins, so Stephen kept coming to the house to play guitar with Paul, and one day, Patti and Stephen found themselves alone. "He said, `Let's get out of here,' and we went to Hampstead Heath and spent the whole afternoon together. We rolled down hills, kissing in the grass; it was such a beautiful summer day in London, simply gorgeous. We went back to his flat, which overlooked his father's Greek restaurant. His bedroom was painted all red, and the only thing in it was a bed and a piano. His father had a thick Greek accent and his mother had a thick Swedish accent, really bizarre. So Stephen and I were in bed together, trying to figure out uh-oh, now what are we going to do? I wasn't going back to Barry's, and Stephen's best friend Paul was Barry's twin brother. So I finally said, `I guess we're gonna have to tell them.' I called Barry and said, `I can't see you anymore, I met someone else.' He was heartbroken and wanted to know who it was. I just said, `You don't know him.'
    Patti kept her own flat, but spent most of her time in Stephen's small red bedroom. Of course, I have to ask if he was good in the sack. "He was terrific. He was put together very well. A little thin, but back then I liked them thinner than I do now. I just liked everything about him. He was very into it, and we stayed together for quite awhile. Somebody told him he looked like a cat once, and he used it instead of Stephen Demetre Georgiou. It was very clever because that's how he'd know if someone really knew him. He'd get phone calls-'Is Cat there?' `Yeah, he is, but no, OK?' He was easy to talk to, compassionate, and very passionate. He played music for me all the time. We'd be in bed and all of a sudden he'd have to get up and write lyrics down. I'd be laying there and hear the first couple of notes, like the beginning of `Maybe You're Right,' or `Wild World,' the songs he wrote for me. He had a guitar, but he always wrote on the piano. We watched the first moon landing together. It was close to his twenty-first birthday, July 21, 1969, and we were lying in bed watching men walk on the moon."

    The passionate songwriter who later embraced the Muslim religion and changed his name to Yusuf Islam was once a naughty boy. "For some reason, a lot of Englishmen have this thing about English schoolgirls," Patti smiles. "I was modeling, and one day I came back from a `go-see' wearing a miniskirt, well, a mini-belt, actually, it was so short. It was about three in the afternoon and I guess Stephen had just driven by a school that let out, and he said, `Come on, I'm going to take you somewhere and buy you something.' He took me to Marks & Spencer, a department store up on the West End, and we went into the section where they sold school uniforms. We started playacting, and Stephen told the saleslady, `I have to buy this little girl a school uniform, she's the daughter of one of my friends, can you fit her, please?' The woman was very officious and middle-aged, grandmotherly. Here was this twenty-one-year-old Greek kid with this however-the-hell-old-I-looked young girl. I was really flat-chested and stick-straight, like a boy. I was supposed to be going into seventh or eighth grade, but must have looked about eleven. Every time the woman went to get another piece of the uniform, he'd say, `I can't wait to pull that skirt up and bend you over the car, maybe even before-in the elevator.' He got me a white blouse and a blue and grey plaid skirt with a little blue sweater, and blue knee socks. Then we got those snub-nosed Mary Jane shoes, a little hat, and a school