Parties With Mick and Marianne, Late-Night Adventures With Marlon: Andee Nathanson’s New Photo Book Is a Revelation

I was sitting outside after class when David wandered by and asked what I was doing. I told him what the teacher said, and then David gave me the advice that changed everything: “Never, ever listen to anybody else,” he said. “Follow your instincts.” I just had to learn to trust myself—in photography and in life. Once I had that camera, everything was okay; I was able to shape my world.

Shooting pictures literally changed your life?

Absolutely. I don’t think I was happy before—I wasn’t me yet. There were people around me who wanted me to model. I remember one afternoon with a photographer in a studio—he told me to work it, and I told him to work it himself, in a way. I was a bit like Twiggy, before Twiggy. But even before I was shooting pictures, I was an artist in the way that I dressed and the way that I looked at life. While some of my pictures might not be the “perfect” shot, I felt they had the emotion that I wanted to get across.

I would work with a roll of film for weeks. Film was expensive—and in those days, no one had any money, which was something else that brought everyone together. Even the Stones were broke. Honestly, when I look back on it now, I just think, What. On. Earth? The light meter in my camera often didn't work. I never knew when I picked up my negatives and slides whether the images would be there. The guys at the lab would duck behind the counter when they’d see me coming if they knew the roll was overexposed—and if they were good, they'd be all smiles.

Part of what makes Andee Eye so rich, I think, are the stories in it—these atmospheric vignettes staggered throughout the book, which exist as these wonderful signposts of your life and the culture you’re immersed in. Did you always conceive of this book as filled with both photos and stories?

Honestly, at one point we tried taking the stories out—but the book just didn’t work that way. The worst thing in the world is when you go to somebody’s house and they want to show you all of their pictures from their vacation, right? I didn’t want that to be me. I’m just a tour guide.

A spread from Andee Eye.Photo: Courtesy of Artifacto

Point taken—but most tour guides don’t have stories about driving around in a car with Mick Jagger en route to picking up a very drunk Jim Morrison for dinner; they don’t hang out with Sharon Tate and Marlon Brando and Paul and Talitha Getty! But let’s keep it simple: Tell me about meeting Mick for the first time.

James had asked me to come with him to [actor] Dirk Bogarde's party at the Connaught in London. It was all theatre people and shop-talk, and I got bored and was wandering around looking at books. Then at some point Mick and Marianne must have arrived, and after a while they came over to where I was sitting and we started having an interesting conversation about author John Michel, who had done a lot of in-depth study on Stonehenge and on energy lines, ley lines, they’re called. But I can be loud, and Mick can be loud, and someone shushed us! And when you’re told to be quiet? I mean: Babe. It just became hilarious, and we all started laughing. And then the popper thing happened.

As in amyl nitrate poppers?

It was a souvenir from a party at Dado Ruspoli's house in Rome—the guy who was the inspiration for La Dolce Vita. He had a basket full of these long, thin poppers at his home, and I took one just as a party favor—this beautiful glass vial with some liquid in it. That’s why I had it in my purse. I never intended to use it—in fact, I hated those things; they were super weird. But Mick, I soon learned, was a wonderful (or terrible) tease. He was trying to get me going—just being funny and teasing me—he took my purse and I was trying to get my purse back without making too much of a scene. Evidently all this came to Dirk's attention, and he sent James over, first to ask us to keep it down and then again to ask us—or me—to leave. So the three of us—Mick, Marianne, and I sweetly exited the party. James ran after us and apologized profusely, and the whole thing was super funny and outrageous. What a way to meet new friends.

Soon after that, we got an invitation to Mick and Marianne's apartment. There was a whole thing that Marianne put in her book about us having an affair, which I didn’t write about, because it’s nobody’s business. But James would go away for weekends to work, and I’d go hang out with them. They had central heating! And in those days, people jumped in and out of each other's beds with hardly a thought. It wasn't that big of a deal.

Mick was definitely my first DJ—they were getting things in London that I had never heard on pop radio in the States. He was my first teacher about R&B and the blues. He and Marianne had their own stuff going on—it was close to when that big Stones drug bust had happened.

I understand that another one of the Stones had a great deal to do with changing your look.…

[Laughing] Yes—at the time, I had a tailored look, kind of a Rudi Gernreich style mixed with my own bohemian taste. I’d tell Marianne, “I like this lace; I love this cloak,” and she’d say, “You can borrow it—but do go to the Chelsea Antique Market,” which was in Soho. Eventually I did go, and downstairs was all vintage jewelry, and upstairs were the clothes. From downstairs you could hear this shouting and the quick steps of people running. As I made my way upstairs, girls were rushing with huge piles of clothing—it turned out that Brian Jones was putting together some outfits for Monterey Pop. They didn’t have dressing rooms—just those screens where you could see people’s heads over the top. Brian recognized me with raised eyebrow and a smile, and soon everything he wasn’t using he was throwing to me. It was all in pantomime—even our time in front of the huge gilded mirror leaning against the wall. He would simply give me a nod if he liked the way something looked on me. I walked out of there a completely different person: velvet Moroccan vests, lace shirts, and velvet trousers, big capes, crystal beads, hats, antique scarves. Poor James was confounded when he saw me!

A few months before this, we had all gone to a Stones concert in Rome at this huge sports stadium, and James and I were asked to be onstage—it was a wild night. One of our friends, Stash [Prince Stash Klossowski De Rola], was the son of the artist Balthus, who at the time was the director of the Villa Medici in Rome. Stash wanted to show everyone the Villa Medici, and all the boys ran out to the garden to see the view—but Brian stayed back in the grand salon and sat at the piano there and started playing the melody to "Ruby Tuesday," tinkering with the keys. He had just lost Anita [Pallenberg] to Keith [Richards] and was in a terrible state. It was very moving—I've never felt someone's personal pain in quite that way. Later that night, we all went to the Colosseum—you could just walk in. The boys found a big cross that they were carrying around, and they were playing Christians versus lions. Bill Wyman’s wife and I were just standing to the side, sighing. Eventually we went off to Jane [Fonda] and [her husband, producer and director Roger] Vadim’s house.

A spread from Andee Eye.Photo: Courtesy of Artifacto

Your book covers this amazing period in culture. And while it’s obvious that you were immersed in it, I’m wondering if you were able to see, at the time, the sort of myth and promise of the ’60s turn into the darker scene of the ’70s—or if that’s something that only becomes obvious in hindsight.

The revolution and renaissance that happened from, say, ’67 to ’73 or so.... There was such a flowering of creativity everywhere, on every level. And I was lucky—I was never into hard drugs. Most of the time, I didn’t even know when people were using them. At some point in the ’70s, cocaine took over, and everything changed—it became much more hard-core. I didn't like that scene—didn't want anything to do with it. It was too edgy for me. When I last saw Gram [Parsons] in 1973 at the Chateau, he looked so blown-up and puffy—it was super sad. No one knew about depression—or alcoholism—in those days. I feel that if they had, maybe Gram could have been saved.

One final question: How in the hell do you know Slash?

His mother, Ola Hudson, was a dear friend of mine—she saved my entire photo archive! Literally saved it, when something in my house caught fire when I wasn’t home. Later, she moved across the street from me on Rangely Avenue [in West Hollywood] when she was with David Bowie. Ola made the most beautiful clothes I’d ever seen—she cut on the bias and knew how to make a woman’s body look amazing. I had these velvet pantsuits from her, and I wore them until the threads dissolved. I loved her—she was a very high soul, very evolved. She made clothes for Diana Ross and Bowie and John Lennon, many other people. One day she called me and said, “Saul”—Slash’s real name—“Saul’s in a band.” I asked what kind of music and she said, “It’s rock.” And I said, “You mean loud rock?” And she said, “Yes—but why don’t you come and hear them?” I said, “I wish I could, but that's not my groove. Later she called and said, "Saul is playing the Universal Ampitheatre with his band." "Still loud?" I asked. "Yes," she laughed. "They are." "What's the name of the group?" I asked. "Guns n' Roses." I finally saw Slash again years later when he got married for the first time. I asked him move the hair out of his eyes so I could see his beautiful face and give him a congratulatory kiss. He was just as charismatic a young man as he had been as a kid.