Cyndi Lauper, 70, is by her own admission “a grafter, a show-upper”. That imperial run of early hits – among them– for which she wrote the music and lyrics – means that her stock is high. She’s “very, very close” to completing work on a second musical, a long-awaited adaptation ofHer hair, a candyfloss swirl that sits above her shoulders, is a world away from the hot-orange hairdo she wore whenvaulted her to superstardom.
She briefly moved in with her big sister Ellen in Long Island and learnt that if you helped clean the local Hare Krishna temple, you were fed in return. They offered to find a husband for her, but as a woman she’d have to eat in the kitchen with the children after she served the men. Her response? “Listen, I’m Italian and I already know this story about women as chattels. I don’t do that shit any more.
She joined her first group, singing backing vocals in a covers band, with modest aspirations. But when their manager suggested a reshuffle that resulted in Lauper taking the lead vocal, what ensued was an unspeakably awful “punishment” meted out at a band member’s house following a show. Leaving a box of vibrators out on display, the group’s bassist and his girlfriend told her to pick one at random, before grabbing her, forcibly pulling her underwear off and assaulting her with it.
Lauper certainly realised that a decade later, on the January evening a limo took her straight from the American Music Awards to the all-night recording of USA for Africa’s star-studded famine-relief song, which chronicles the events of that evening, she wished her youngest self could have realised how pretty she looked.