Week 16 - Andrew - Movies

This is an extract from an interview with Joey Ridge, during the press tour for the movie based on the unexplained death of Duane Richards.

Joey Ridge - Lead singer; Lightning

I have a lot of regrets about that time, you know? Things you won’t see in the movie. It was all so intense, I think i lost who i really was. And while the rest of the world saw this gypsy queen, in command of everything, I was just this lost little girl.

Duane was this dark genius prince. The first time I met him, he was so...quiet, and so centred. It was in the Gold Dust in San Francisco, we were both recording nearby at the time, and we both ended up there late in the night. I just wanted to dance, and allow myself to be free. Duane was at the bar with some of his buddies - that big guy, Alexei, and they were both throwing back whiskeys.

I knew the second I saw him that we would have an affair, we were both burning so brightly at the time. I was going through a really bad time with Rick, and I think it was obvious from the pain on our songs that our marriage was over.

I remember trying to get him to dance, and he wouldn’t. It got me so mad! But he must have seen something in me, because he invited me back to his hotel once the bar closed. We broke out onto the roof, and sat there staring at the skyscrapers around Union Square. Anyone else would have brought me straight to the room, but Duane wasn’t like that - it wasn’t his princely way.

He kept trying to talk about how this could all be wiped out tomorrow, that everything was hanging by a thin balance, but then I kissed him. That was a beautiful moment for me, kissing on that rooftop. I really felt like our two primal spirits were combining.

Of course a few months later, he called me up when we were mixing the album, and told me to drive out to this rinkydink airstrip, and he was going to fly me to Omaha. I couldn’t believe it. Of course we had our own tour plane, but this was different, this felt like love. It felt very significant, him sending the jet for me.

Then when I got to Omaha, he shut me out! I couldn’t believe it! He gave me a quick kiss in front of everyone, but then when we got back to his room, he wouldn’t even look at me. He just kept checking his watch, like he was bored of me.

Well I didn’t take that well! Like I said, I’m still a little girl inside, but sometimes, I need to be a princess, so I started screaming, and shouting, and throwing a little tantrum. That’s when he got so cold! He told me that I could sleep in the room, and he’d find somewhere else.

No one ever walked out on me like that before. He left me heartbroken and devastated. I wrote ‘Sleeping Alone’ that night, and that lyric - ‘staring at the stars, waiting for the world to end, in four walls, you aren’t a friend’ was about everything that happened.