“Come on, America, take us in out of the cold. We’re trying to catch you, but you’re so ... big.”

Ian Hunter Diary of a Rock 'n’ Roll Star

This past February Maggie Bell took a plane to Los Angeles along with her managers Peter Grant and Mark London for the start of her first American tour. Along with them was Atlantic Records’ publicity chief Annie Ivil, and out of the four people in their patty, four of them don’t care much for flying. Midway through the flight they were informed that one of the engines had I gone, “But we’re gonna try and get you there, heh-heh,” and sometime during the stewardesses’ salespitch for turquoise jewelry, some idiot picked a fight. “YOU GUYS!,” screamed the man, approaching Maggie and Annie. “PUT OUT THOSE CIGARETTES, YOU GUYS!” Peter Grant awoke from deep sleep and said ominously, “I beg your pardon, these are young ladies, and they’re nervous flyers, and please leave us alone.” “YOU’RE A FAG!,” he shouted at Grant, Led Zeppelin’s impos-. ing manager, who most decidedly is not. “A FAG!,” he continued to scream-. “That doesn’t mean he’s not a nice person,” smiled Maggie.

Maggie’s been here three times in four months, was the recipient of perhaps more American press than anybody since Johnny Winter’s first goround, but she’s been earning it. When you see her onstage you see a gutsy woman, with visions of sweaty rock and roll life oozing from every pore. It’s sweaty all right, but onstage only. It’s vastly different touring with Maggie than .your average British rock and roll band; you would never be able to picture Maggie Bell sitting in the backroom of Max’s with a bread basket on her head singing rugby songs. Well. . . maybe a rugby song every so often, but she’s really more the dance hall type. Very show biz. Gobbles up movie magazines and loves Al Pacino and Mel Brooks. Saw Blazing Saddles three times. Has a Scottish accent that only adds to her charm as well as conveying the occasional tough cynicism. Together with maganer Mark London — who’s done everything in show business from working at the Concord to writing “To Sir With Love” — they are often like a vaudeville team; tossing lines back and forth, doing “shtick” for anyone who will listen.

Los Angeles: Following a boat ride given by Atlantic for Maggie to Meet The Press, Peter'Grant mumbled, “I thought that when they said a boat, they meant a BOAT — you know, like the South of France.” Lorraine Alterman christened it a garbage scow, and we were talking in the limousine back to the hotel about a certain star who had let success go to her head. “My mother always told me that you meet the same people down as you do on the way up,” Maggie said, seriously contemplating the cliche. “It’s true,” Mark said, “I’ve done it six times already.”

New York: Jimmy Page had flown in from London to see Maggie perform at the Academy of Music, and there was just a bit more than the usual excitement backstage. It did seem as though every Atlantic employee and anyone who had ever met Maggie was on hand to say hello; including Geraldo Rivera (interviewing Maggie for a Wide World of Entertainment segment) whom Maggie was to adore but to refer to forever after as Neraldo Nivera. Jerry Wexler looked around and commented, “This has all the ambience of stardom.”

Following the concert, Annie Ivil gave Maggie a splendid party in a Hotel Plaza suite. People kept coming up in a steady stream to say hello, many uninvited guests showed up. Groupies came to look at Jimmy Page, who for a change wasn’t having any, and Peter Grant was mumbling about how they all looked like Biba salesgirls. “It’s times like this when you really appreciate having Bonzo [John Bonham — Ed.] around,” Grant said, and proceeded to walk over to a tot leaning against the wall and present him with a floral tribute for the best pose of the evening. When we went into the bathroom Maggie said, “I keep telling you, don’t use "that seat, — don’t you see what’s out there?” Then, “Look at all those people hanging around,” Maggie mattered, “What were Deep P"

Miami: One month later. What a tacky town, surely right up there with Las Vegas for what Lenny Bruce called the tits and ass capital of the world. There are still serious Tammy Wynette hairdos, and I haven’t seen breasts like these since the 50s. In Maggie’s entourage alone there are several ladies with voluptuous frames — Maggie, one of the Thunder Thighs backup singers whose, name escapes .me (the first tour one of the three singers persisted in wearing a red dress when the others all wore black, vocally they never added much either. They weren’t asked back the second time around.) and Richard Cole’s amazing wife, Marilyn. Maggie, in a leopard print bikini, sipped a pina colada by the Newport Hotel pool while Foghat’s Tony Stevens (also in residence) chats with loving enthusiasm about his dildo collection. “You’re welcome to come and see it anytime you like,” he says graciously to Maggie. “No thanks honey, I don’t wanna. There’s nothing like the real thing,” she asserts. “Don’t be too sure,” quips Cole, “you haven’t seen his.”

Over at the fancier Diplomat Hotel where Maggie’s lawyer Steve Weiss and Mark London are staying, Steve has a suite that to call garish would be a major understatement. Silver mylar and blue carpeting wall to wall. Mirrored cabinets and dressers and tables; you could have sex from any angle in any spot in this suite and you’d be reflected a dozen times over. It is in this Castro Convertible showroom setting that Maggie tells me, “You know, it took me over a year to do that album, it really was a lot of hard work. And I’m a working class person, I have to work to make a living. Just like somebody working in a five and ten cent store. I don’t think I’ll ever change, maybe if I made some more money I could buy some nice dresses. But I dig work, and I have to do it, and I’ll never become complicated. I’ve got a trunkload of dresses and shoes that I bought for stage but I’ve only worn three of them the whole tour — because I feel comfortable in them. I can work in them.”

That night we try to get down to some serious drinking at a grotesque place called the Wreck Bar in the Castaways Hotel on the beach. Go-go girls are dancing on top of tables, covered in ripped fishnet pantyhose and silver lame gloves up to their armpits. “Listen,” Maggie says to one of them who is dancing only inches from our noses. “Why don’t you just come down here and have a drink with us. You don’t have to dance up there.” “I have to,” she says, continuing to move listlessly, “I’ll get fired if I don’t.” We sit there, getting vaguely depressed. The woman from Time tries to be a good sport, but it is justifiably not her scene. Talk about war of the worlds: Maggie singing her guts out to those kids with upturned faces, and these ladies going through sexless gyrations at the “Funderful” Castaways.

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Buffalo: There was a buzz in the speakers, and Maggie apologized to the audience. Later in the set someone yelled out, “Fix the speakers!” and she yelled right back, “I already apologized, and I don’t think I have to again, SCHMUCK!!”

Some of the places Maggie’s been she’s had to change in a toilet. “But I’ve changed in a toilet before, and I’ll change in a toilet again,” she said. “Cleveland — the whole town was a toilet. .. I changed in a toilet there, it was so small you have no idea... you couldn’t swing a cat in there.”

Passaic, New Jersey: The second time around, Maggie introduced some new songs. “Tell The Truth” (the mention of Eric Clapton’s name still brings frenzy from the audience), and “I Saw Her Standing There.” Unlike Bryan Ferry, who kept the girl’s lyrics when he sang “It’s My Party,” Maggie changed it to “I Saw Him Standing There.” Somehow I would have preferred her doing it the original way, it would have been ballsier. But I guess with all those dreary Janis comparisons the media cops out with she would have been “accused” of being a dyke. And she’s not. When asked by a disc jockey whether or not she’d been laid on the road (a question no one asks male musicians, although I doubt politics has anything to do with it; people just assume boy rockstars get it every two minutes on the road, Maggie replied ruefully, “I don’t have time.”

“You know,” Maggie told me that first week in L.A., “When I go back to Scotland, they still make a fuss, but you know what my relations always say? They say, ‘We wish you’d give it all up... really, you’re a great window dresser.’ They do. Most of my relations have never been outside of Glasgow, my mother’s never been in an airplane. She’s never been to London, my mother. I’ve always wanted to bring her, and she’d love to come, but I’d like to be able to spend some time with her. I couldn’t take her around to interviews or to the Speakeasy, although she’d probably love that. . . meeting so and so. . .

“You know what happened? She works in a little coffeeshop in Glasgow (I had said to her give up work, you don’t have to work, so she did and she was bored, so she went back.) and Elton John came into her coffeeshop one day. He was doing a tour up there, and she told me, ‘Elton John came in and I gave him a cup of coffee and. . . he knows you!’ She was so pleased that he knew me, and I said, ‘yes Mommy, / know him as well.’

“It’s so sweet and straightforward. But if I got to be too big-headed, she would still give me a quick slap on the behind. ‘Smarten up!,’ she’d say.”