The SECRET LIFE of Amanda Lear

The SECRET LIFE of Amanda Lear

by

Jeffrey Morgan

She's been called everything from the Renee Richards of Rock to Miss Before and After Science of 1984. And although she's sold millions of albums in Europe and is that country's reigning white disco queen, North Americans probably know Amanda Lear best as the cover girl on Roxy Music's For Your Pleasure album or as the is-she-or-isn't-she host (ess) of David Bowie's 1973 Nineteen-Eighty Floor Show television special.

In the interim between then and now, she's recorded two albums (/ Am A Photograph and Sweet Revenge), the second of which has recently been released domestically. A third, Never Trust A Pretty Face, can be expected shortly.

Still, it's always been Amanda's dubious sexual history which has captured the imagination of most people so, when the man herself came to town as part of a promotional tour, I decided to clear up the mystery once and for all.

The reader is invited to draw his or her own conclusions.

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Amanda: What would you like to know about myself? Who I am, for a start, and how I came to this lousy profession? I was a late 60's child wearing mini skirts, smoking dope like everybody else.

CREEM: How did you get involved with David Bowie?

Amanda: One day, I went on my own to see David Bowie and I offered him my lyrics, my songs. And I said, "Would you like to sing my songs?" And he said, "No, but I'm doing a show for NBC, would you like to be in it?" And I said, "But doing what?" And he said, "I like the stuff you write, you write funny things. Why don't you write my dialogue? Because I'm Ziggy Stardust, therefore I don't talk to the audience. So what you do is write my dialogue and we'll talk together."

But I wanted him to sing my songs and he said, "Why don't you sing them yourself?" And that's how it started. From then on he sent me to singing classes for about six months and by the end of 1974 I was signed up by his record company—MainMan—and I was ready to record, with him to produce my first record.

And that's when I left.

CREEM: Why?

Amanda: They said, "You're going to be our next big star if you'll just wait. We'll pay your rent, you just sit around while we train you. You'll go to dance class and everything. This year we're going to concentrate on Mick Ronson and then we're going to concentrate on Dana Gillespie."

Where are they now? Whatever happened to Mick Ronson and Dana Gillespie? Nothing. In the meantime, I've sold three million records. So, in fact, the best move I ever made was to leave his bloody company.

CREEM: Speaking of good moves, Lou Reed once described you as "a fabulous sex change ... a real piece." Amanda: All this publicity is my own doing, as you know very well. I'm the first one to publicize myself and those things.

CREEM: Are they true?

Amanda: I'm the one who started the rumor, darling. Not them. I mean, I'm the one who made Lou Reed— CREEM: But when people read what Lou Reed says, or what some hack in Swank—

Amanda: I'm the one who tells Swaqk. I'm the one who tells those people. I'm the one who knows Amanda Lear better than anyone else in the whole world.

CREEM: But Amanda Lear is never quoted in these magazines. It's always second-hand writers who end up giving their own opinions . .

Amanda: That is because Amanda Lear has got a good P.R. You see, when Amanda Lear became a product we decided we had to sell Amanda Lear, right? Now, how are we going to sell her? This is Amanda Lear. It is not a terribly attractive product. So we've got to make it attractive, we've got to make it commercial, we've got to make it so people will die to buy it.

She's a blond model who sings? Nobody's interested.

She's a new disco singer? Who cares?

Now, if you're going to say about Amanda Lear that she is a transsexual . . . that might get some response, you see.

And if we're going to say that Amanda Lear was a girlfriend of David Bowie, Lou Reed, Tom Jones, I don't know, whatever—all made up stories —'cause the only things that sell are made up stories, as you know since you're a writer.

CREEM: So they're all made up stories?

Amanda: Absolutely. But they sold. We got an instant response. As Amanda Lear, a singer, nobody was interested. Now, as Amanda Lear, a personality ... strange woman, it created an image. It created an impact. People love the story. It got me onto TV talk shows and everything. I did a nude centerfold for Playboy; everybody saw the whole thing was not true. I mean, Playboy doesn't usually have naked gentlemen in their pages. I've been in thousands and thousands of magazines in the nude or clothed. The whole of Europe and the world knows that all those stories were gimmicks.

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So what happens to me, as a disco singer especially, is that I have to make Amanda Lear really interesting so that when Amanda Lear will not be a disco singer anymore but will sing Godspell, or whatever, then the people will still buy her records. So what happens is that all those kids in Germany, or wherever, are in love with Amanda Lear. Not with "Follow Me," "The Queen of Chinatown," all my hits— they're in love with Amanda. It's Amanda's poster that's on the wall.

Even now that all those kids are masturbating, saying, "Yeah, she's a woman; there is a picture, naked," it doesn't matter. Still, you. have to maintain some kind of arrogance because it's part of my image. CREEM: What about all those nude photos?

Amanda: I must never, ever again—it was a big mistake, in fact. Take all my clothes off in magazines—that's wrong. Because, in fact, people don't want that from me. They do not want to be confronted with a close-up of my pussy. They want to dream. Amanda Lear is a fantasy for those people. On this record sleeve, why am I dressed like that? It's not that in real life I walk around in black leather and whips— thank God, for my neighbors . . .

NEXT MONTH: The truth about Jeri Hall.