“It will be fabulous,” said author Cherry Vanilla of her upcoming interview with Eduardo Santiago. She will be talking about her life with rock and roll royalty as recounted in her memoir, “Lick Me, How I Became Cherry Vanilla (by way of the Copacabana, Madison Avenue, the Fillmore East, Andy Warhol, David Bowie and the Police).”
Santiago chose Vanilla because of the scope and honesty of her personal journey from the heyday of rock to the birth of punk during one of the most electrifying and transformational eras in music and in the country.
“I don’t think people who weren’t there can grasp what it was like, the electricity everyone was giving off,” said Vanilla. Born Kathleen Dorritie in Queens in 1943, Vanilla grew up loving show business. “I used to go to the Copacabana with my parents, starting when I was 6 years old,” she remembered. “My mom was a telephone operator at Hotel 14 on East 60th. The Copa was in the basement of the hotel. My dad would hold me up to see the shows. My sister was a governess for Don Ameche [actor and comedian] and I used to stay with them as well. My fascination with show business started early.”
That fascination evolved into an extraordinary career, with incredible highs and sobering lows, recounted by Vanilla with fierce honesty, humor and sassy innocence.
After graduating from high school, Vanilla (still Dorritie) went to work on Madison Avenue in advertising. She also began to DJ on the French Riviera and in a Manhattan club scene fueled by acid and pot. “It was an amazing time, a little bit of everything,” she said, “the Kennedys, birth control, women’s lib, LSD and marijuana, the Vietnam War and protests. There were so many elements.” Then, even with a successful career in advertising and as a radio and TV producer, Dorritie had an epiphany at age 26 after seeing a documentary about rock and roll groupies. She decided to become one and changed her name to Cherry Vanilla. “There was such an energetic vortex then,” she said. “We were so much freer and lived with an abandon our parents never had.”
Soon parties and trysts led to meeting David Bowie, then just beginning his career. Vanilla became Bowie’s personal PR person and helped introduce him to U.S. audiences. She slept with soon-to-be-famous people, including Bowie, Leon Russell and Kris Kristofferson, but all the while grew her own substantial career as a singer, actress, songwriter and publicist. She starred in Andy Warhol’s play “Pork” in London at age 27 and recorded for RCA Records in Europe with the Police as her backup band. Post punk, she shaped a successful career as a West Coast publicist, establishing Europa Entertainment Inc. as the U.S. office for Academy Award-winning composer Vangelis.
Vanilla said she lived it all and loved it all. And yet, looking back, Vanilla said there was an innocence about the era and that time in her life. “We were a lot more innocent then,” she said. “We trusted people more. Now children are exposed to so much fear at such an early age. It’s part of marketing — be afraid, be very afraid.”
Asked if sex is different now from how it was then, she said, “In the ’50s, America was still sort of Victorian and as a result, sex was naughty and because it was naughty it was more exciting, sexier. It’s what we did to rebel. Now, if I were young and wanted to rebel, I would probably go against the grain and not have sex, certainly not at as young an age as girls are having it now. It is so different now from then and not nearly as much fun.”
And if fun and nostalgia for the rock and roll era are part of your makeup, Vanilla’s honest and touchingly sweet account of her fame-fueled life is a “must” experience.
Vanilla and Santiago talk at 4 p.m. Sunday, May 31, on the deck of Cafe Aroma.