best of Get Tusked

[bombaysaffires]

Part 2

The day after Stevie and Hernan hooked up, Stevie told her girlfriends and Christine all about it. For the next couple weeks he and Stevie spent days in the studio then nights at her house. Soon Mick found out and said, “What have you gotten yourself into? Stevie is a wild woman”. There was a fair amount of making out in the studio and sneaking around finding places to meet up. She wrote him a love letter saying it was all happening so fast and when they were together nothing else mattered to her. After a couple weeks of this he finally fessed up to his live-in GF and moved out. He found a place to crash until Stevie invited him to move into her Tudor house on Doheny.

Lindsey still didn’t know about the affair and Stevie feared his reaction would be “fury and rage”. Hernan told her that he would step up and take the brunt of it if Lindsey reacted badly. Eventually one day Lindsey came into the studio after some serious imbibing and asked Hernan to talk to him in another room. He said he knew Hernan had been seeing Stevie (Christine had told him) and wanted to know why they had told everyone but him. Lindsey said that he cared for Stevie and didn’t want her to get hurt. They passed a bottle of Chivas back and forth and Hernan apologized for not telling him but said he and Stevie wanted to give it some time before putting the word out. Lindsey said he considered H. a good person and that “I'd rather she goes out with you than those other guys she sees.” H and Stevie were relieved at his reaction but still tried to not act out their romance too much in the studio.

A month or so into the relationship it was Stevie’s 31st birthday. She and Hernan went out to celebrate at Le Dome. He brought his sister, and she and Stevie hit it off quickly. During the dinner a waiter brought over a bottle of Dom Perignon and said it was from Sean Connery who was at a table across the room singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Stevie. They all went over to say hello.

Over the summer he and Stevie went out to lots of restaurants and shows. She also managed to do a live show with Kenny Loggins, record backing vocals on John Stewart’s album, and then sang with John at one of his shows in Phoenix. It was at the Compton Terrace, owned by her father. She and Hernan flew down to Phoenix after an all-nighter in the studio working on Tusk. They arrived, did a sound check at which John and Stevie hit Hernan with the idea he should mix their live sound for the show, which caught him off guard and made him nervous. They then spent the rest of the day partying with Stevie’s friends, before eventually doing the show in the evening, still not having slept. She sang on Gold and during the show a storm started blowing over stage equipment and then lights and rigging. They went back to the hotel and partied all night and then flew back to LA.

At this point he starts to notice that there is never a quiet moment at her house. They would get home in the morning after nights in the studio and the house was full of people waiting for her to come party and she couldn’t say no. Other suitors would also show up at the house. One night JD Souther showed up with a gift of a fancy guitar. Hernan was at the studio working, but said JD had been after her for years and it made him realize he was not the only man after her. Finally Stevie suggested to Hernan that they should leave her house. She packed up her dog Branwen and her wardrobe and they moved into a suite at the L’Ermitage hotel in Beverly Hills where she draped scarves on all the lamps.

At this point Stevie did not have her own manager. Paul Fishkin and Danny Goldberg were desperately wanting her to sign with Modern Records. They wanted her to come to NYC to discuss it. Instead she sent Hernan and her brother, who were given the full star treament. They got seats at shows at the Palladium and CBGBs and hung out with Bruce Springsteen. At one point they were riding around in a limo driven by Gene Simmons.

Back in LA the non-stop running around between the studio and partying with Stevie took a toll. One day as Hernan and Stevie were rushing trying not to be late to the studio, they got in a car crash in Beverly Hills. Stevie was shaken up, and people started to gather around and recognize her. Hernan got a taxi to come and take her to the studio while he dealt with things. When John Courage found out he gave Hernan a talking-to about the responsibility of driving around their queen.