Model who inspired Bryan Ferry, bedded David Bowie and who can ‘die now, happy’ tells all in raunchy memoirs
WHEN Roxy Music released their second album it was not the black panther on the cover that caught the eye – it was the statuesque model holding its leash.
With her svelte body poured into a black leather dress, towering French model Amanda Lear made a big impression on everyone who saw the record sleeve.
She had been chosen for the 1973 For Your Pleasure album cover by singer Bryan Ferry, who was rumoured to be one of her many famous lovers, along with David Bowie.
Although Bowie was married to his first wife Angie at the time, he asked to meet the mysterious blonde model from the sleeve. Amanda later said: “It wasn’t me he fell in love with, it was the picture of me.
“And he was very weird, I must say — it was the first time I went out with a man who wore more make-up than I did.”
They ended up in a tempestuous, year-long affair during what Bowie had called his “promiscuous period”.
Amanda seemed well suited to the gender-fluid Bowie. For years there had been a rumour that she had been born male and that flamboyant Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali had paid for her sex change.
Bowie sought to spread the story as he helped Amanda start her own pop career, which led to several hit singles in Europe in the 1970s.
Due to her height — 5ft 10in — and manly cheekbones, those suggestions have never really gone away.
Now, with her second memoir Delusions about to be published, she claims the stories were made up by Dali as a “publicity campaign”.
At the book launch, she said: “I’m a coat rack, and people used me to hang up all of their fantasies.”
Given that when she posed naked for Playboy in 1978 she clearly had nothing to hide, Amanda’s version of events seems far more plausible.
She had also dated a string of famous men prior to meeting Dali in the late 1960s.
Amanda was going out with Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones when she first encountered the painter, and the band’s track Miss Amanda Jones on their 1967 album Between The Buttons was inspired by her.
Before Jones, she had fallen in love with married Guinness brewing heir Tara Browne, who died in a car crash in 1966 aged just 21.
Bryan Ferry, who denies rumours that he slept with Amanda, said: “She always seemed very womanly to me.
“She was very good company as one of the lads, but she always seemed very much a woman.”
Amanda insists she is a hot-blooded, heterosexual woman. In a recent interview she boasted about all the handsome men she had slept with.
She said: “I’ve sold records, I’ve made movies, I’ve made TV shows, I’ve been in the theatre. I’ve accomplished all of my dreams.
“I had sex with the most beautiful men in the world. I had wonderful boyfriends. I can die now, happy.”
Now single, Amanda has been married twice — first to Scottish student Paul Lear in 1965, then in 1979 to Frenchman Philippe Malagnac d’Argens de Villele, who died in a house fire in 2000.
She once said: “I have a very difficult relationship with men. Of course, I’m attracted to beautiful men — I’ve had many lovers, many boyfriends — but it’s very difficult.
“I’m extremely jealous, I’m extremely possessive, and most of all I’m very, very bossy. I want to show them the way. I want to tell them, ‘You’re doing it wrong, let me do it for you,’ like a control freak.
“In the end, that’s why I’m all alone. Sometimes I’ll have sex with somebody and then I’ll call them a cab. ‘Goodbye, thank you very much’.”
Having arrived in London in 1964 to study at Saint Martin’s School of Art, she experienced the height of Britain’s swinging Sixties.
Modelling for Paco Rabanne, Yves Saint Laurent and Coco Chanel, she went to star-studded parties and the coolest clubs.
She hung out with The Beatles and the Stones as well as other top models such as Twiggy, Anita Pallenberg and Pattie Boyd. It meant she was exposed to the pill-popping drug experimentation of the time.
She said: “I’m from this generation, so I had to try this.”
For that reason it is thought that Amanda was the inspiration for Joanna Lumley’s ageing stoner Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous.
But when Dali took her on as his “muse” he insisted she gave up illegal substances, and these days Amanda is teetotal.
Despite two autobiographies, her true origins remain unclear. She claims to have been born in November 1950 in Saigon, but she is known to have started university in London in September 1964 — which would suggest she is at least 72.
While she started out life in South East Asia, Amanda has given different stories about her parents, with her mother being either French, Russian or Asian.
According to her website her father was “an English naval officer” and she had “an Asian mother”.
She claims to have arrived in London as a shy, innocent girl who had to learn to gain the attention of famous men.
Amanda told the French press last week: “For a long time I didn’t have the confidence to date people like Dali or David Bowie, but I became more confident with age, while accepting that making fun of yourself is the rule.”
It is her long affair with oddball Dali that she is most known for. She said: “He wanted to meet Brian Jones. He invited us to lunch the next day. Brian being, as always, too f***ed up, I went alone.”
Dali, more than three decades her senior, was besotted with Amanda and asked her to live with him on the Costa Brava, despite the fact he had a wife, Gala.
For 16 years she spent every summer at his home in the coastal village of Port Lligat.
Amanda would pose naked for his paintings or be photographed next to him with a whip. But she claims Dali never had sex with her because he didn’t want to have children.
She said: “I must have been his mistress for almost 20 years, but never in his life has he penetrated a woman.”
She grew increasingly distant from Dali as she tried to become a painter in her own right, as well as pursuing her music career.
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Amanda claims to be pals with Donald Trump’s first wife Ivana — who she said told her that the US President used Amanda’s 1978 song Follow Me as mood music in the bedroom. She said: “Ivana told me he played it every time he was about to make love to her.”
These days Amanda is semi-retired. She lives with 12 cats in rural France and acknowledges that her days of sexual shenanigans are now over.
She said: “The next guy who will see me naked is my medical examiner.”
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