Singer Linda Lewis: The night I asked my boyfriend 'Do you mind if I sleep with Cat Stevens?'

From a singer who knew EVERYONE (and we mean REALLY knew), an uproariously scandalous - yet irresistibly funny - pop memoir

Taking LSD the night before the first Glastonbury festival wasn't a sensible move. It was 1971 and, in my trance-like state, I was convinced I had returned to the court of King Arthur. I danced with a tree.
The next day, one of the festival organisers ran up to me. 'You're on in 10 minutes,' he said. 'On where?' I asked, still dazed from the effects of the acid.
'On stage. It's your spot.' I'd forgotten. In blind panic, I walked through the small audience. A large man was sitting in the crowd with a pair of bongos.

An eventful life: Singer Linda Lewis reveals all about her wild exploits in the Seventies but insists she has now settled down

Can you play percussion?' I jabbered. He said he could, so I grabbed a guitar and stumbled on stage with him.
After that, I decided to start rehearsing and stick to tea before going on. My wild days, however, were only just getting going.
I was always a performer. In 1953, when I was just three years old, my mum Lily sent me to Peggy O'Farrell's School Of One Hundred Wonderful Children, a stage school just behind West Ham Football Club's ground.
Aged eight, I won a part in a film with the legendary Hollywood star Gary Cooper. My role required me to do hopscotch, which I diligently rehearsed.
Cooper wandered along, asking what I was doing. 'Hopscotch,' I said.
He drawled: 'Well, I can see the hop, but I can't see the scotch.' For me, this was the height of showbusiness wit. I was enthralled.
My mother always had ambitions for me  -  as shown on a fateful day trip to Southend, where John Lee Hooker was playing.
Aged 15 and a mad Beatles fan, I'd never heard of the great blues guitarist, but that didn't hold Mum back. We got ourselves into the nightclub and she introduced herself to Hooker.
He indulged Mum by allowing me to sing Dancing In The Street with his band. I'd developed a good voice - it runs over about five octaves - and did enough to impress one man in the club.
Ian 'Sammy' Samwell was a record producer who'd written songs for Cliff Richard and the Small Faces. Sammy took me under his wing.

'Exotic creatures': Rod Stewart and Elton John were regulars at Linda's Hampstead commune

It was my break. One minute I was in the East End, the next I was strolling down Carnaby Street with Sammy. I couldn't believe my luck.
I left home at 17 after Mum discovered I'd started sleeping with Sammy. I moved into a commune in Hampstead, London, with my lover.
I was now wearing hippie clothes: see-through dresses and men's frilly shirts with no skirt.
I'd already released one single - a flop which had only succeeded in getting me better party invitations.
Our commune was made up of three girls and a number of men, including Sammy.
Over the next few years, exotic creatures like Marc Bolan, Cat Stevens, David Bowie, Rod Stewart and Elton John dropped by.
Marc was still in his hippie phase - he was yet to metamorphose into the glam rocker beloved of screaming teenage girls - and would affect a posh, superior voice.
I later found out he was from Hackney, but that didn't stop me being besotted.
However, in the early Seventies he became involved with American singer Gloria Jone, who later gave him a son, Rolan.
Gloria played the lioness, guarding her man from adoring women.
As Marc became more famous, his ego swelled and he took too many drugs. Drugs and fame were a destructive combination.

Linda with Albert O'Sullivan, Suzi Quatro, David Essex and Alvin Stardust on TV show Supersonic in 1975

When he died in 1977 after his purple Mini smashed into a tree, we were distraught.
Gloria had been driving and was seriously injured herself, with a broken arm and jaw.
When I visited her in hospital, she couldn't speak. She had her mouth wired together and was frantically handwriting notes to visitors. She handed one to me. What I read horrified me.
She had written: 'Did you sleep with Marc?' I said: 'No.' It was the only thing I could say. Gloria could have died herself - she was still very ill.
So I told her what she wanted to hear. If she had asked me the same question 10 years later, I might have replied differently. Perhaps one day we will be able to talk about it.
In those days everyone slept with everyone. If you said no, you were considered uptight.
But I always felt guilty afterwards and I continued to go to confession. Puzzlingly, the priest was always keen to hear all the details of my partying life.
It was late at night and Sammy was in a deep sleep beside me. 'Sammy, is it OK if I sleep with Cat Stevens?'
There was no reply, so I took his silence as approval and went ahead. Cat Stevens wasn't his real name, of course - we all knew him as Steve Georgiou.
He lived with his parents in a flat above their restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue. Cat used to sit in our front room playing the guitar. That's where he wrote his beautiful song Moonshadow.
Cat, a sensitive and caring man, used to be fun. He always liked to have a muse. His first inspiration was his girlfriend Patti D'Arbanville, for whom he wrote Lady D'Arbanville.
His second was me. We'd talk about our childhood and he wrote Old School Yard for me.
I continued with my music, too, sitting in the kitchen in Hampstead strumming my songs.

A sensitive and caring man: The singer once asked her boyfriend if minded is slept with cat Stevens, who is now known as Yusuf Islam

That's how a Warner Brothers executive, who was a dinner guest at the commune, discovered me in 1971.
My on-off romance with Cat lasted several years. I was still seeing Sammy at the time, too. It was the Seventies, after all.
But soon Cat began to change. To put it kindly, he was searching for greater meaning in life. To put it bluntly, he was becoming a pain.
We went to an Islamic wedding before he converted and adopted the name Yusuf Islam in 1977.
Cat was clearly impressed with the orderliness of the Muslim faith.
At the reception, I didn't like the way the women were sent to the kitchen, while the men smoked.
If he didn't exactly lose his sense of humour, Cat certainly mislaid it for a while.
He started laying down the law when we toured the U.S., instructing us not to smoke joints or drink.
He carried a small prayer mat with him, which we would mock lightheartedly.
Cat responded by saying: 'You are not here to have fun.'
Strange  -  that's exactly what we all thought we were there for.
When I met in 1968 there was a huge buzz about this otherworldly arrival from the U.S. Jimi came into the Bag O'Nails club in Soho, where I was playing, and sat at a table with half-a-dozen beautiful girls.
Later, he came backstage to tell me he thought the show was really cool. Jimi was small in the flesh and had no pretension about him. We had a joint together. He spoke in a whisper.
Fame didn't treat Jimi well. He had too many people giving him drugs and telling him he was brilliant.
He wanted to pretend he was a tough guy, but he wasn't. If someone took one tab of acid, he would take six.
The rock star image had become a monster, eating him up. He was like a little boy lost.
The last time I saw him was at Ronnie Scott's club in 1970. He looked really happy. A few days later he was dead.
The David Bowie I first met was not yet a glam-rock peacock, but a reserved young man who hid his shyness behind a veneer of mystery.
He loved camp imagery in those days  -  he famously posed in a dress on the cover of his album The Man Who Sold The World.
But if you see him these days, he's just a normal bloke. People have asked me whether he was actually ever gay.
Perhaps he probably tried it a few times. Everybody did in those days.
I sang background vocals on his album Aladdin Sane and attended the after-show party on his farewell tour as Ziggy Stardust in 1973.
Bianca Jagger and Bowie's wife Angie were there, snogging furiously. No one batted an eyelid.
I was more interested in helping myself to the buffet. From behind me, a gruff voice said: 'I wouldn't give up my lunch for nobody.' It was Mick Jagger, quoting a line from one of my songs, Rock A Doodle Do.
Another of our commune's visitors, the young Rod Stewart, was good fun on his own, but became pompous when he was in a group.
Rod was a bit like the Queen - he never carried money. This was understandable - in his early days as a budding singer, he'd been quite poor and had become used to cadging money for drinks.
Even after he was successful, however, he remained stingy. If you lent him cash, you rarely saw your money again.

Past lovers: Linda had a relationship with legendary guitar player and T-Rex frontman Marc Bolan (right)

When people retrieved a banknote back from Rod's wallet, they'd frame it, such was its rarity.
After he'd had a few hits, I went out with him and some mates. He was buying a round and - guess what - he found himself suddenly short. I stumped up a fiver. Rod, you still owe me.
In an emergency, the girls in the commune were ready to help in any way. When one of the musicians in the house, Robert Wyatt, discovered his girlfriend in bed with another man, he tried unsuccessfully to slash his wrists.
A little later, we women drew straws to decide which of us was going to comfort him. I was chosen.
It was supposed to be a cuddle, a life-saving cuddle. One thing led to another and I can only say that if life-saving is always as good as that, I want to volunteer for the St John Ambulance.
Halfway through this 'emergency procedure', my boyfriend Sammy walked in. He was less than pleased.
We broke up, but got back together for a while. Robert later drunkenly threw himself out of a third-floor window, an accident which confined him to a wheelchair for life. He tells me he still remembers our night together.
In the late 1970s, I moved to Los Angeles, around the time Rod Stewart split up with his then-girlfriend, Britt Ekland.
She was upset and I did my best to comfort her. I always liked Britt; she was more fun than Rod's next blonde, Alana Hamilton.
By now, Rod was fabulously wealthy and I'd had my share of chart success with Rock A Doodle Do and the Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss).
Rod and Alana always invited me to massive dinner parties at their mansion, so I asked them round to my place in return.
Not being quite in Rod's tax bracket, I wondered how I would top their extravaganzas.
Then I came up with the answer: I served them beans on toast, washed down with a few bottles of Guinness. Rod liked it, but Alana, with her airs and graces, wasn't so sure.
Meanwhile, Britt Ekland's idea of getting over Rod wasn't perhaps what everyone would have done.
She had a wild party. As the evening wore on, mountains of cocaine were served. Naked people jumped into the pool and started pairing off.
I've always had a problem putting names to faces and was sitting in a crowded room next to a tall, dark-haired bloke who seemed familiar.
I racked my memory, which by now was suffering the effects of much cocaine.
'You're in a group, aren't you?' The man did not reply. I tried valiantly to guess. Then it came to me.
'I know  -  it's Wings, isn't it? Paul McCartney's group.' Silence fell among the assembled throng.
I was the woman who had failed to recognise Keith Richards. The Rolling Stones were probably the most famous rock and roll band on the planet - but Keith just laughed.
I had my share of comforting to do that evening. You could say that I helped Britt get over her break-up in a similar manner to that I had used on Robert Wyatt.
Britt was lovely. If one woman could persuade me to transfer to the other team, it would be her.
The next morning, however, I witnessed a terrible sight. Wandering among the naked bodies in the debris of the party was Victoria, Britt's 12-year-old daughter from her marriage to Peter Sellers.
Victoria looked lost. I knew I should try to talk to her, but I couldn't. I was too embarrassed.
There are always casualties from the excesses of fame. Usually, it's the children.
Phil Lynott, of Thin Lizzy, was charming, witty and very sexy. I met him at a wedding in the mid-1970s. He was giving me the eye and I went back to his hotel room with him.
It wasn't love. I knew I was another notch on his bedpost - a role I was happy to play. Phil seemed so together and cheerful. It's hard to believe the man I met would die from a drug overdose in 1986.
Adulation and drugs seem to go hand in hand. When you come off stage, it is hard to replicate the attention you get from fans.
There's no training for this stuff. Stage school teaches you to perform, but it cannot prepare you for the stress of fame. It's hardly surprising people like Britney Spears go off the rails.
You're surrounded by people saying yes - but no one saying no.
While walking on Hampstead Heath one day, I came across a guitarist called Jim Cregan. Jim was in Cockney Rebel with Steve Harley - with whom I had a short affair.
Much later, though, Jim became my first husband. We married in 1977, a union that was to last only three years.
We were apart too much - especially after Jim joined Rod Stewart's band - and we were both unfaithful.
Around 1979, Jim and I were staying at a hotel in New Zealand when Muhammad Ali walked in.
He was just so beautiful. It might have been near the end of his boxing career, but as he came through the lobby, everyone stared at this figure of power, authority and grace.
My evening went badly. I'd got into a row with Jim at the hotel bar and stormed off.
Feeling a bit tipsy, I staggered into what I wrongly thought was my suite. That's funny - the door's open, I thought. Inside was Ali, surrounded by an entourage of stunning girls.
'Come on in, honey,' Ali said to me. I wasn't going to argue with a world champion.
I sat next to him and he started chatting me up. Not thinking what I was saying, I said: 'Gosh, your hands are so big.' I think he got the implication.
After a while, Jim came to find me and walked into the room.
Ali said: 'Who's that?' I had to be honest. 'That's my husband.' Ali answered: 'What you doing with that white honkey?'
I guess it's every man's worst dilemma. What do you do when a world heavyweight champion is flirting with your wife and insulting you?
Jim is pale, ginger and skinny. It wouldn't have been much of a match. Jim left. I did the decent thing, made my excuses to Ali and went after my husband.
Ali expected me to stay. I wish I had. Our commune was full of exotic men, dressed in flamboyant clothes. But they were pretty much all heterosexual. Then there was Elton John.
Back then, he dressed in a completely straight manner, apart from the big glasses. Of course, we all knew he was gay, but he didn't talk about it.
Years later, I was partying with Rod and Elton in LA in the late 1970s. Elton used to call Rod 'Phyllis' and Rod in turn nicknamed Elton 'Sharon'.
This was before Elton met his current partner, David Furnish. Later that night, Elton was crying and saying: 'I wish I could have children.'
I offered to have his baby. 'No need to actually do it, just put it in a bottle,' I suggested helpfully.
Oddly, Elton never took me up on the offer.
When I look back, I realise I've lived an extraordinarily rich life. Would I do it all again, given a chance? No. Would I do some of it again? Certainly.
But I can't recommend that people try drugs. They make you feel good for a time, but the pendulum always swings back the other way. The good times get shorter and the paranoia grows stronger.
I abandoned cocaine in the 1980s. Drugs destroy careers and mess up families, just as adultery does.
I can understand why artistic people get involved with drugs. You need something to take you away from the intensity of creativity, but there are other ways to do it. I get the same buzz from reading a book cover to cover these days.
Five years ago, I married Neil Warnock, head of a worldwide booking agency that looks after Dolly Parton, Status Quo and David Gilmour among others. I'm now planning to write a longer version of my memoirs.
You could say I've settled; I'm certainly grounded. I see myself, fancifully, as a kite. Neil's got the string. And these days, I think I prefer someone holding on.

• Linda Lewis's solo UK tour begins on Tuesday  -  she will also perform at Glastonbury and Guilfest. Details at www.lindalewis.co.uk