lfcappuccino could talk it would sound like Marsha Hunt. Her voice was born for the telephone age and even though it informed me that she was sorry and that she had been delayed at Radio Forth I didn‘t mind. I nursed my Carlsberg and waited.
When she floated in twenty minutes later I didn’t have to recognise her. Her hair could understudy for Black Beauty‘s tail and when she smiles. which she does often, she reveals— in Philip Marlowe‘s argot — teeth as white as fresh orange pith and as shiny as porcelain. To cut a long drool short, she‘s a doll. She settled for wickedness and I fetched a by-product of apples from the bar. While she sipped I tried to convince myselfshe was of the age when life is supposed to begin again. Sol decided to go straight for the jugular. Did she think the Sixties were a waste of time. a black hole of happiness in our otherwise miserable existence? She did not. Ifshe had said ‘Je ne regrette rien' I wouldn’t have been surprised. There had been good music. love on tap, idealism, hope for the future. ‘Now everyone is out for what they can get. They’re looking out for number one.‘
Reading her autobiography (Real Life Chatto £9.95) — her reason for venturing north of Hadrian‘s— she comes across as a tough but sweet cookie. sympathetique but well able to fight for her corner. By her own definition she is ‘Me’langian’, a cute expression which covers folk of mixed origin. Her skin is ‘oak with a hint of maple‘ which. ifyou‘re thinking ofemulating her, is due to African. American Indian. German Jew and Irish genes. They have made her what she is: chuckley, humorous.
Marsha Hunt, sixties chanteuse and one-time consort of Mick Jagger, entrances Alan Taylor.
passionate, outspokenly anti-racist and a democrat. She can be very impolite about a former Hollywood actor and something called star wars, which has nothing to do with billing. So we put the world to rights, but I
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did not neglect to stop a rolling stone and see if it had gathered any moss. In a List exclusive I can reveal that ‘Tina Turner has better legs than Mick.‘ You better believe it. Jagger is responsible for Marsha's status as a single parent. a fact it took
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thumbscrews to make him acknowledge. He coughed up a £10,000 trust and £500 a year for their daughter Karis. ‘Thc payment (£41.67 monthly) by standing order was a regular reminder that there was no justice in the world.‘ wrote Marsha. She says she feels now no bitterness towards he who wrote ‘Brown Sugar‘ for her. She has moved on. After she stopped showing up in the charts — with
' records like ‘Keep the Customer
Satisfied‘ and ‘Walk on Gilded Splintcrs‘ — and when she finished her stint in the West End skin stunt Hair she began to branch out.
Now it was Marsha Hunt. chat show host and D]. But her job at Capital finished after an etymological discussion of the word ‘fuck‘ and she took to celluloid, appearing as a werewolfin The Howling [I though her talents were displayed more obviously in Emily and Britannia Hospital. She is currently appearing at the National Theatre in The/lmerican Clock. Would she have been a better actress ifshe’d started earlier? ‘Oh I‘m pretty good now' she said with an extravagant laugh.
The tape announced it had run out. I resorted to memory. Old ghosts were resurrected. Marc Bolan, Alexis Korner. Thom Gunn. John Mayall; some strum still. others play the great Fillmore in the sky. A survivor turned the tables and began to interview me. Had I seen Mona Lisa? Did I like the Police? Should she come to the Edinburgh Festival?
I made a bad interviewee. She made a last try. 'What is there to do here at six in the morning?‘
‘Deliver milk?‘
It was not the answer she wanted to hear. (Alan 'I‘aylor)
~ The original vegetarian and wholefoodself
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40 The List 14— 27 November