STORMY FOSTER RETURNS: Chapter Three
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CONCEPT AND TEXT BY HAMPTON JACOBS, inspired by the music of THE WALKER BROTHERS. ILLUSTRATIONS BY STUFFED ANIMAL, inspired by the artwork of TRINA ROBBINS. COSTUMES BY HENRIETTA LA DEL BARRIO, inspired by BOYD CLOPTON.
CHAPTER THREE: “STAY WITH ME, BABY!” TIME + PLACE: THE YEAR 1988 @ ANTICA OSTERIA DA TONINO, NAPLES, ITALY.
“Josie James is leaving The Pussy Cats!”
Even now, I’m gobsmacked by that headline. For thirty years I , Albert Fox, was the manager of Josie + The Pussy Cats. I could not have asked for a better, stronger or more savvy business partner than Josie de Carlo James. She'd always been steady as Gibraltar! I never imagined that she'd quit her own group; but since the traumatic experience we suffered back in 1961, life has been nothing if not full of surprises.
It started out with such promise. In the late 1950s The Pussy Cats featured Josie’s son Gregory, and his time with them launched him on a trailblazing career: Greg James was the biggest of the few Black teen idols in Great Britain at that time. His success set The Pussy Cats up for their own stellar launch. Working with the likes of Quincy Jones, Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich and Jean-Emanuel de Luxe, Josie, Valerie and Melody drew a huge cult following in Europe during the Sixties - but that was after we'd weathered a huge scandal: involvement with a female serial killer!
We got involved with her unwittingly. Sabrina "Bree" Spellman was a music arranger that we briefly worked with. She herself got killed in late '61 under mysterious circumstances, after which the tabloid press saw fit to implicate us in her “London Lizzie” crimes! Of course, we knew nothing of what she did outside the recording studio, and Scotland Yard found no evidence to the contrary; even so, unsavory speculation prompted us to move our base from London to Paris.
JOSIE + THE PUSSY CATS IN THE SIXTIES + SEVENTIES.
It was the best move we could've made! In France, from 1963 to 1968 Josie + The Pussy Cats tasted runaway success, and it lay a strong foundation for their début in the United States. Several years late to the British Invasion, The Pussy Cats made up for lost time by starring in their own animated/live-action TV series! It scored a ratings blockbuster in the year 1970.
From that triumph on the Children's Pop scene, they pivoted to a much edgier image: The indie film Pussy Riot featured them in leading roles. They roared across the big screen astride motorcycles, swearing a blue streak and kicking the shit out of male chauvinists - all the while swathed in tiger print bondage gear! Critical reviews were scathing, but that film did bang-up box office and cemented a cult following that has lasted to this day. It was the vehicle that steered the band toward Punk Rock, the sound for which The Pussy Cats became known into the early Eighties.
The wealthy Cabot Twins, Lex and Alexandra, were the first producers that The Pussy Cats worked with. They switched their focus to Greg James when he left the group, but by then Lex had married Valerie. Also, both Cabots are dear friends of mine, so naturally we kept in close contact over the years.
In the early Seventies, Xandie began dating an avant-garde movie director named Posner “Lucky” Diamond. She introduced us to Lucky at a party, and he's the one who hit upon the idea of starring The Pussy Cats in their own movie. In the wake of Pussy Riot’s success, Lucky and Alexandra got married.
Shortly before they wed, the director revealed a secret to his bride-to-be. He was transsexual - a man born in the body of a woman! Not even his closest friends were privy to this information at the time.
Xandie must have known something was wrong straightaway; she'd been frustrated by his refusal to engage in pre-marital sex. Surely that was a red flag? But now Lucky wanted to know if she could accept him as female in private life. Xandie's answer was blunt: She would not! She wouldn't even go forward with wedding plans unless he'd commit to having extensive corrective surgery and hormone treatments.
It was a harsh stance to take, but Alexandra has always been painfully straightforward; and to her credit, she offered to fully pay for the procedures. She did keep that promise! At her expense, Lucky Diamond put himself through all manner of sex change manipulations, some of them experimental. The last one was so risky that he ended by dying from it! This happened in 1975, just two years after the marriage.
It was at Lucky’s memorial service that she revealed the harrowing ordeal he’d undergone at her insistence. On the spot, she vowed to devote herself to improving procedures for “gender affirmation” - a phrase that I credit her with coining.
Greg James’ music career was all but over by then, and Alexandra needed a new passion; she was nothing if not passionate about her pursuits! This new one would consume her utterly. The following year, she used her share of the Cabot fortune to found the Diamond Trust, a think tank that grew into a political action committee.
While Alexandra was transforming herself into a powerful influencer, Josie + The Pussy Cats were scuffling. Not only had their music changed radically, so had Pop music in general. Back in the early days, they were Calypso performers; then they went Latin; they embraced Pop/Rock soon after that, and in France they pivoted to Pop/Soul. They found a degree of success in all of those genres, but when they embraced Punk Rock their fortunes took a nose dive!
People forget that Punk was not universally popular in the 1970s; a sizable number of music buyers hated it, while others considered it just a fad. Disco was starting to hot up, and while I felt strongly that The Pussy Cats could adapt, they were unwilling to do so. Melody complained that Disco rhythms were formulaic, and Valerie thought the club scene was too decadent. By the late 1970s, their career in the States had come to a full stop! We returned to Europe where I attempted to launch them in the new Ska movement, but that effort never quite got off the ground.
In 1981, Josie and I repositioned The Pussy Cats as a Rock ‘n’ Roll bar band by means of a sold-out gig in New York at Max’s Kansas City. It resulted in a Top Ten live recording (their first!) but somehow that wasn’t enough for them to regain their foothold in the industry. Just five years later, bookings had become all but impossible to get - something that would’ve been unthinkable even in the ‘50s before they began pulling hits.
JOSIE SAYS GOODBYE TO WOMANHOOD!
So Josie decided to step away, as shocking as that was; but we were in for an even greater shock. The band’s misfortunes were not the reason she left. Josie told us that she’d become an acolyte of Alexandra! What’s more, she no longer identified as a woman. “My new pronouns are they/them,” she informed us. “For now, you can still call me ‘Josie’ but very soon I will be taking a gender-neutral name.”
Xandie had become a gender-transition guru, laser-focused on spreading her increasingly radical beliefs. That focus alienated friends and family; our relations with her became strained. Her brother Lex got to the point where he refused to even speak to her anymore!
He also blocked her access to his wife. Val is the most suggestible one among us, and he feared that she might become indoctrinated. However, the lady is also quite conservative and she strongly disapproves of gender ideology. “It’s wrong,” she insists. “Trying to second-guess nature? That will lead to no good outcome.”
As for Melly, she found wrong-body talk risible; she infuriated Josie by referring to gender reassignment as "Frankenstein surgery." It's something I once might've imagined Josie herself saying; none of us would have picked her as the one most vulnerable to cult recruitment.
And by the late 1980s, gender affirmation had indeed become a cult. Its theorists were now so daft as to tell their followers that they need not identify with any gender. This was the “non-binary” belief system that captured Josie! When we struggled to understand the change in her, she’d fly into a screaming rage - even with her son Greg, who watched their once close relationship grow hopelessly distant.
It aggrieved him terribly, but Alexandra was absolutely delighted. She declared Josie “a true believer,” renamed her “Jody James” and recruited “them” to spearhead a new Diamond Trust initiative.
JULIE B, THE PUSSY CATS’ NEW LEAD GUITARIST.
“Jody’s” departure forced me to come to a wrenching decision: I had to admit that I was no longer the best manager for The Pussy Cats! It was time for me to move on, too. Lex stepped into the breach, taking over their management and hiring a new girl to take Josie’s place. I moved to Rome to take stock of my own career and chart my next move.
I wasn’t at all sure that I’d remain an artist manager, but that's where my heart is; I'm a talent spotter right down to me bones! So I couldn't help but notice that Hip-Hop and Rap music had begun to take off big in Italy.
I started patronizing the Rap clubs that had sprung up in Rome, Milan and Naples. At a popular rapper’s hub called the Electric Booty, I encountered an immigrant MC and deejay who could rhyme fluently in every major European language: English, German, French, Italian or Spanish. He called himself Don Señorito, and his uniquely provocative Rap lyrics set him apart. They roundly took the piss out of “gender-affirming care” - that load of bullocks which Alexandra's Diamond Trust promoted!
On top of it all, would you believe he danced the Hawaiian hula to Hip-Hop rhythms ? Minus a grass skirt, I hasten to add. Somehow, he made it work! When I saw his swiveling hips, heard his rapid-fire rhymes and delighted in his cheeky subject matter, I felt the same excitement I felt when I first laid eyes on The Pussy Cats thirty years earlier. I simply had to manage him!
