Lone Star Queen

Cyrinda Foxe was born Kathleen Hetzekian on February 22, 1952, a Pisces, in Santa Monica, California (the same birthplace as your blog writer!).  She always wanted to be a star, dreaming as a little girl from an army family of the bright lights and big city - THE city, New York City.  After dropping out of highschool and effectually running away from home, she migrated to Texas and worked briefly in a university there (which is why I titled the blog Lone Star Queen after a Dolls' tune).  And then she went off to New York, where her life really began.  I haven't read her autobiography, Dream On: Living On The Edge With Steven Tyler and Aerosmith, in quite a while, which I should probably do so that I can recall specific facts rather than just make general comments from what I can remember.  But anyway.  Cyrinda changed her name and ingratiated herself with the hip crowd of NYC - the Warhol crowd - who held court in the sacred Back Room at Max's Kansas City.  Andy love her, as did Candy Darling the notorious drag queen, and they sort of adopted her, looked after her. When stars came to town, they came to Max's, and therefore met Cyrinda.  One of them was David Bowie.  She started working for MainMan as a model, and hit it off with David and his wife Angie, and Cyrinda eventually appeared in the music video for "The Jean Genie".  People often say that this song was written about Cyrinda, but that's not exactly true; Cyrinda and David were hanging out, and he told her he would write a song for her, and asked her what she liked.  She said she liked the stuff that she grew up listening to, stuff like the Yardbirds.  So he wrote "The Jean Genie", with that middle section that sounds just like the Yardbirds.  The song itself, however, is about Iggy Pop (and this is coming from her book).  People also say that Cyrinda was a Marilyn Monroe lookalike, but I don't particularly think she looks exactly like Marilyn - of course, the blonde bob was modeled right after Marilyn, but Marilyn had a much better, curvier figure (and a prettier face, at least in my opinion!).  Now, the hottest band in New York at this time - 1972 - was The New York Dolls, who played Max's often.  David Johansen and Cyrinda were of course introduced and began dating, a relationship that would last nearly 6 years.  They were the indisputed King & Queen of Max's, real Rock Scene royalty (most of the above photos from my collection are of Cyrinda with David taken from the music mag).  If you own an issue of Rock Scene from 1975-1977, chances are, there's at least one photo of David & Cyn.  The Dolls were a band on their way up, and Cyrinda was happy to be along for the ride, thinking that she would finally have a career as an actress and a star like she'd always envisioned.  She was featured in the 1972 Christmas issue of Andy Warhol's iconic Interview magazine (I was fortunate enough to win that issue on eBay recently, so the photos from it are above).  The Dolls put out their first, self-titled album in 1973, and all the critics loved it.  Regular old mid-western teenagers, however, did not, and it failed to sell and turn the Dolls into the huge act that many thought they would be.  The same happened with their sophomore album, 1974's Too Much Too Soon.  But in New York, you wouldn't know it.  Other bands loved the Dolls, especially up and comers, Aerosmith, who were also managed by Leber/Krebs.  Cyrinda met Steven Tyler in these early days, but thought he looked like a freak, and SO not hip and cool like David J.  However, she eventually became friendly with Joe and Elyssa Perry, and spent a lot of time hanging out with them.  She claims that she and Joe had an unspoken, un-acted upon love affair.  Despite her affiliations with the Aersomith camp and her growing frustrations with David and the Dolls going no where, she married him in 1977, the same year she appeared in Andy Warhol's movie, Bad.  They lived in a grungy little apartment, certainly not the accomodations she was looking forward to, and when things got rough, she flew out to visit Joe and Elyssa on tour with Aerosmith, and finally started to warm up to the idea of Steven.  David and Cyrinda's marriage lasted less than a year, and when it did, she was already pregnant with Mia, her daughter by Steven.  She and Steven got married, but that wasn't the bed of roses she had predicted either, for by this time, as we all know, Steven was a heavy drug user and in no way capable of being a husband or father.  Their relationship lasted until 1987, when the divorce was finalized, but I don't think they had many happy days.  Around the time of the divorce, Aerosmith had their huge come back with the album, Permanent Vacation, after all the band members had gotten clean.  They signed a huge multi-million dollar contract, and Cyrinda expected to see some of that money to take care of Mia and herself.  That was not so.  He gave her like $200 a month in child's support, but agreed to pay for Mia to go to a private school.  I'm sure it was a very hard time for Cyrinda. She probably looked back on her life and thought, "what did I do wrong?".  It must have been difficult going from Max's queen to living in shambles with two rock star husbands.  In 1997, in an obvious cash-grab, Cyrinda wrote her autobiography, detailing Steven's abuse towards her, his drug use, etc.  She threatened to publish private nude photos of him in the book, but he took out a lawsuit against her and won. In 2001, she had a stroke and had to live on food stamps.   There was a benefit organized for her that garnered some money, and Steven, no doubt embarrassed that his ex wife was living in such a horrible condition, did pay for some of her medical bills.  However, in September of 2002, she died from a brain tumor.  She is one of rock n' rolls sad stories. 

all photos = my scans