Lick Me: How I Became Cherry Vanilla »

Cherry Vanilla oversees Europa Entertainment, Inc., the U.S. office for composer Vangelis, from her home in Hollywood.

Steeped in sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, Lick Me takes the reader on a juicy journey through the life and times of the infamous Cherry Vanilla. A wunderkind on Madison Avenue in the swinging sixties, Cherry soon found fame as a DJ in clubs in Manhattan and on the French Riviera. She starred in Andy Warhol’s play Pork in London while gaining notoriety as a groupie, sleeping with musicians ranging from Leon Russell to Kris Kristofferson. Working as David Bowie’s PR lady (and occasional lover), she played a major part in introducing him to the U.S. market. She was on the front lines when punk broke, one of the few successful women in the genre; her backing band was the Police, and she released two insouciant albums on RCA.

Cherry’s memoir takes us on a journey from the birth of rock to the explosion of punk, exploring every aspect of the music industry during its most electrifying era, with memorable detours through the sexual revolution, the women’s liberation movement, and the theater of the ridiculous. But Cherry’s life wasn’t all excitement and high times. From unwanted pregnancies to poverty and public ridicule, Lick Me also takes us through Cherry’s own problems, including sex addiction and OCD, and reveals how she dealt with them. Lick Me reveals the thrilling life of a woman who pulled herself up from humble beginnings and fearlessly lived her dreams.

Publishers Weekly

A fixture in the music and club scenes since the 1960s, musician, groupie, and PR woman extraordinaire Vanilla takes readers on a wild romp through her drug- and sex-filled life. Born Kathleen Dorritie in Queens in 1943, Vanilla loved music from an early age and would often accompany her parents to the Copacabana in Manhattan, where she once met Dean Martin. Raucous parties--often fueled by acid and pot--were a fixture of her life in the '60s, as she dabbled in DJing in clubs and built an advertising career on Madison Avenue. In 1970, Vanilla had "a rock and roll revelation": she wanted to become a groupie, even though she was "already a twenty-six-year-old businesswoman of sorts." This led to trysts with musicians like Kris Kristofferson and David Bowie, whom she helped introduce to American audiences. As punk music began to overtake glam rock, Vanilla launched her own music career and briefly toured in the U.K., with the Police as her backup band, and later in the U.S. Vanilla's voice is distinctively sassy, despite her conventional storytelling methods, and her memoir is an entertaining peek into music's backstage world. (Nov.)