Cherry Vanilla - History

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Ok so we might have been a bit harsh in our initial description but one thing you can say about Cherry Vanilla is that she led an eventful life meeting people and being part of events that people can only dream about. By sheer luck rather than through astuteness she collided with the emerging punk scene in the UK finding an unlikely audience for her type of raunchy sex tinged rock'n'roll.

 Not only that she came with a certain kind of cachet from New York and associations with Bowie, Warhol, Max's and the US punk scene. She also came with Wayne County and between them put on in your face shows of heavy sexual undertones your average punk rocker was unlikely to come across!!

Born in New York, Djed there  and in South Of France as a teenager. Performed in Wayne Counties play World, Birth Of A Nation playing a nymphomaniac necrophiliac nurse.

Andy Warhol impressed by her ability to simulate sex with a dead puppy in that play cast as her as Amanda Pork in 'Pork' based on Warhol superstar Brigitte Polk. The play which centred around discussions about all kinds of 'shit' literally. The stars 'were nymphos, queens ands prostitutes running around the stage naked.'

Cherry's trademark then was usually to introduce herself by baring her breasts and saying, 'Hi - I'm the Pork from New York.' and as if their notoriety from Pork wasn't enough when the show transferred to the Roundhouse London she continued being outrageous outside of the show casually giving a blowjob to a stranger while being interviewed by a journalist from Rolling Stone.
One visitor to 'Pork' was a certain David and Angie Bowie who were captivated by what they saw and who returned again and again. It is suggested that Pork and its caravan of seamy underside characters was responsible fro transforming Bowie from long haired hippie to androgynous cross dressing superstar. Whether true or not Bowie loved it and especially the link to Warhol and took the unusual step of hiring Vanilla and others from the show to run his PR and signed Wayne County to Mainman his company.

"I screwed disc jockeys across America to get David Bowie's records played on the radio." Zigzag 71

Eventually though the bills the team ran up led them to be fired from Mainman.

 History  Part2 

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