I got a pension statement last week and it looks like I could retire in August 2024.
That’s just a mildly arthritic hop, skip and a jump from now – especially with the benefit of support stockings.
I honestly can’t believe my working life in the music industry might come to an end when I’m still trying to figure out what it is I actually do.
You see, in my head I’m still 16 and clocking in at the surgical gloves factory to earn enough money to go underage drinking, before attempting to lose my virginity after the art college disco.
How did I even get to be contemplating being an OAP when I’ve just bought a neon pink penis brooch from Vivienne Westwood’s original punk shop in London?
And is there an unwritten rule that we oldies can’t wear lurid genitalia as jewelry whilst queuing to use our free bus pass?
Retiring will mean I’ve spent exactly 40 years in the music industry, which hasn’t really felt like a proper job at all.
You’ve got the job, now sort out Mick Jagger
I got my big break as a junior PR in EMI Records in 1985 but I was an intern in a smaller PR company before that.
Within a week I had to ring Mick Jagger at home and persuade him to do a new TV show, which you might think would be a daunting task for someone still living in a squat and signing on the dole.
Yet I had no fear because all I felt at that age was an innate appreciation of cool, and Mick Jagger just wasn’t cool then.
I was much more impressed when Ava Cherry walked into the office because she’d had an affair with David Bowie and he’d written Lady Grinning Soul about her.
Seeing her so close made it feel almost inevitable that I’d meet the Thin White Duke himself before too long.
I had to wait a few years for that, but it happened.
From fan to fixer – my music industry journey
Before I got my job in the music industry my only encounter with pop stars had been when I’d chased them from the stage door to their hotel.
Or, more thrillingly, when the Banshees gave me a lift in their van in 1978.
Even then I had to load their equipment as a punk trade-off for the ride home.
So, calling Mick Jagger and asking him to appear on TV seemed an absolute breeze.
Because all I really wanted to know from him was whether Andy Warhol had a boyfriend and if Jerry Hall really drank vodka on the rocks.
Even then I think I intrinsically knew what people really want to know from popstars.
Me and the music industry – 40 years of PR and partying
Public relations in the music industry has given me many things. And I’m amazed to say that one of them isn’t liver disease.
Instead, my job has allowed me to meet countless people I admire and go to places in the world I had only ever heard of in geography lessons.
Over the years I became familiar with private planes, suites at the Ritz and bungalows at the Chateau Marmont in LA, where our neighbour Kylie would pop in when her internet wasn’t working.
I ran around London like a dervish, juggling so many plates I could have spun myself into outer space.
And after 40 years of partying, I’m still not convinced I fell back to earth with everything intact.
If fame and celebrity were new worlds to me, I learned very quickly that all my favourite people in the music industry either wore their fame as an invisible cloak or celebrated it with complete joy.
And Grace Jones was a beautiful peacock perched on six feet of obtuse angles and a No 1 crop.
Bathing in the glory of Grace the Face
I first met Grace when she was accompanied by an assistant who’d been in the US marines but was dressed like Busby Berkeley was about to cast him on Broadway.
Inevitably Grace was late.
Very late.
The later she got the more nervous I became.
But when her bathroom door opened and she finally strode towards me I realised she was completely naked except for a white face pack.
Her private parts were suddenly in line with my face as she stretched out her hand and drawled “Hello. I’m Grace”.
This was my introduction to a music industry legend who taught me to party like no one else.
She was Grace – in my face, in my life, and I loved it.
Grace was wilder than anyone I’d ever met.
And being with her taught me there is always more fun to be had if you’re strikingly beautiful or if you’re on the arm of that beauty.
She was naked so often I stopped noticing.
She would even do interviews in the bath. My job was to top the bubbles up.
As I look back on 40 years of joy I realise topping up the bubbles has maybe been my career.
It might even make a good book title.
I think Grace – now 73 and still raising hell – would approve.
