The woman who became a rock legend to the stars
Roger Daltrey sobbed on her shoulder, Keith Richards asked her if he should leap off the top of Niagara Falls and she took revenge on music writers who let down Madonna... the incredible life of Barbara Charone
BARBARA Charone is a rock ’n’ roll legend. True, she’s not a household name and her musical prowess never progressed beyond playing the clarinet and saxophone in school. She’s the first to admit: “I can’t sing a note.” But Charone, 70, is the doyen of music publicists, responsible for launching Madonna and James Blunt in Britain, friend and biographer of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and a veteran foot soldier in the pop music trenches, finally telling her story in her star-studded new memoir, Access All Areas.
She has partied with everyone from The Who to Elton John, REM to Rod Stewart and lived to tell the tale in a book steeped in crazed musicians, Olympics-level boozing and drugs.
It features the Eagles sniffing cocaine off the toilet in their hotel suite, Charone feeling “shell-shocked” after smoking pot with reggae pioneers Toots and the Maytals and partying hard with rockers Little Feat and synth-pop stars Pet Shop Boys.
There are many alcohol-lubricated late nights and some surprisingly early mornings – guitar legend Eric Clapton drinking Carlsberg Special Brew at 10am, heavy metal heroes Motley Crue and Charone downing tequila shots at 11am in Covent Garden and Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie demanding vodka after apparently being up all night. Not all on the same day, of course.
Charone recalls knocking back booze with the Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age, and shots of 50-year-old tequila with Stella McCartney.
There’s a “long, boozy dinner” with REM’s Michael Stipe and a £1,000 bottle of wine ordered by Lou Reed over lunch in New York at an outrageously expensive Japanese restaurant – which he then left to buy a cheap hot dog at a street stand.
By the late Seventies, when Charone started out as a music writer, the wheels of the music industry were oiled with drugs. It was almost obligatory to join in.
“I had developed quite a fondness for cocaine,” she writes. “It was everywhere… and it certainly aided communication between us scribes and rock stars. It helped break down invisible walls.”
Even without drugs, Charone could disarm the most guarded of stars.
The Who frontman Roger Daltrey broke down in sobs while confessing his battles with bandmate Pete Townshend, as both vied to launch competing solo careers.
CHARONE admits she was “unprepared when he burst into tears when discussing his struggles with Pete… the intensity of the rivalry between band members – and The Who were hardly the exception – was extraordinary”.
She spent weeks with Keith Richards as he awaited trial and possible imprisonment after being charged with trafficking and possessing heroin in Canada in 1977.
Charone joined him visiting Niagara Falls before the hearing and as they watched the torrent of water crashing down, a despondent Richards asked: “Shall I jump?”
Charone had initially dismissed Richards as merely the guitarist behind the genius of Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger. “I was a massive Stones fan and thought the Stones
‘I went to Canada to write the book and by the time I got off the plane Keith had been arrested’
was Mick Jagger like everyone else did,” she explains. “But meeting Keith, he was the living persona of what the Stones’ music sounds like.” After becoming friends Richards asked Charone to pen his authorised biography, only days before his heroin arrest in a Toronto hotel room.
“I went to Canada to start the book and by the time I got off the plane Keith had been arrested for drug possession,” she says. They spent a month together awaiting his trial which she describes as “an incredible bonding experience”. In the event, he was cleared of trafficking, avoided jail for possession and was sentenced to perform a free concert in aid of a charity for the blind.
When Charone later launched her public relations company MBC with friend and colleague Moira Bellas, Richards signed up as a client.
One of her biggest jobs was launching a young American singer unknown in Britain who was making her debut at London’s modest Camden Palace in 1983 in front of a few hundred people.
Charone had to beg the music press to attend and quite a few didn’t bother to turn up.
When Madonna returned to England four years later it was to play to a 72,000-strong crowd at Wembley stadium.
“Just that fact is insane,” says Charone. “It will never happen again. It was incredibly exciting.”
But Charone took her revenge on every rock writer who failed to attend Madonna’s show in Camden. They were all crossed off the invitation list when she played Wembley.
Madonna was always destined for greatness, says the publicist: “She was whip
smart… outspoken, opinionated and outwardly very self-confident. She had an aura about her from the very beginning.”
Not everyone was as impressive. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young rocker Stephen Stills was aggressively unfriendly, prompting Charone to realise: “These people might be good artists but they’re not necessarily good people. And they’re also not necessarily happy,” Mark Ronson, who produced Amy Winehouse before becoming a star in his own right, was little known when he met with Charone, who admits: “Expectations were not high”.
But Charone could also be an alchemist bringing together disparate talent, as when she linked up Madness frontman Suggs with songwriter Mike Connaris and her beloved Chelsea Football Club to record the 1997 single Blue Day that became the team’s unofficial anthem and a chart hit.
She is such a fan, she is part of the consortium that recently bought the club.
But Charone admits to a few mistakes, or failures in confidence, when choosing her clients.
She turned her back on punk rock, and also on Sarah Ferguson, who wanted PR help with various projects.
Charone decided not to take on the Duchess of York because she felt that entering the royal world “was one step beyond”. She laments declining to work with singer Lana Del Rey but after listening to the singer’s demo tapes said: “I just didn’t get it so I passed on the project… obviously, I regret that .”
Charone was born in Michigan in 1952, growing up on the music of The Beatles, Stones and The Who, falling in love with Britain on a family trip in 1971: “I practically cried when walking over Waterloo Bridge,” she says, reminded of the Kinks’ hit Waterloo Sunset. After university in America, she moved to Britain and wrote for rock magazines before becoming a PR at WEA and Warner Records and ultimately launching her own publicity agency.
She partied for decades with rock’s finest, shopped at Harrods’ sale with Cher, viewed Elton John’s collection of bobble-head dolls, received flowers from Guns N’ Roses, had Rufus Wainwright pen the song Barbara for her and was crank-called by Rod Stewart after Nottingham Forest trounced Chelsea – “seven-nil” he laughed before hanging up.
YET Charone keeps in mind the words of wisdom delivered to an aspiring music journalist in the 2000 film Almost Famous: “These people aren’t your friends.”
Sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll are synonymous, yet Charone’s memoir is surprisingly devoid of sex.
If she ever kissed she’s not telling and she’s the model of discretion.
Despite their drug arrests, you’d think the Rolling Stones were choirboys, as Charone avoids mention of their recreational drug use.
The closest she comes is admitting that after visiting Keith Richards at London’s Savoy, “there were many nights over the years where I left the hotel in something of a fuzzy state of mind”.
Madonna’s private party to celebrate her birthday at the Groucho Club is discreetly described as “quite a night”.
Still working in PR, Charone retains her youthful enthusiasm: “There’s no doubt that I’m incredibly lucky to get paid to listen to music for a living. That has to be the best job in the world.”
●Access All Areas: A Backstage Pass Through 50 Years of Music And Culture by Barbara Charone (White Rabbit, £20) is out now. To order for £18 with free UK P&P, visit expressbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3832