The Current - The wild stories buried in Jeanne Beker’s closet

Episode Date: December 27, 2024

Fashion journalist Jeanne Beker pulls some wild stories out of her closet in her book Heart on My Sleeve, from chatting to famous musicians in the bathtub to walking out on an interview with Iggy Pop. In a conversation from October, she told Matt Galloway about the clothing items that tell the story of her life and career, from a yellow bikini top to a boxy Chanel dress.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway chances are this sound takes you back. It's the theme song for fashion television hosted by Jeannie Becker. Every week, she took viewers to the world's fashion runways to give us a glimpse into the lives of the designers and models behind all the glitz. Before that, she was one of the faces of the groundbreaking TV show, The New Music. Jeannie Becker has been in the public eye for decades, and she has the wardrobe to prove it. In her new memoir, she goes through that wardrobe piece by piece to tell the

story of her life, her career, and the people who've meant the most to her along the way. Jeannie Becker's book is called Heart on My Sleeve, Stories from a Life Well Worn. Matt Galloway spoke with her this fall and began by asking her why she wanted to tell her story through her clothes. Obviously, fashion is something that a lot of people associate me with. It's been something I've been having a love affair with since I was a little girl playing with my paper doll cutouts. And, you know, I had a knockoff Barbie doll called Mitzi. My mother made all her clothes. And my mother was always making clothes for my

sister and I growing up. And I just, fashion was just in my DNA. So I always held on to certain pieces that I wore to particular adventures, perhaps, or had fabulous encounters in. And I got very sentimentally attached to these pieces. In the book, you write that you were, from a young age, acutely aware of fashion's transformational powers. Yeah. What are those powers? What can fashion do?

Oh, come now. You must know that, Matt. You put on some fabulous thing and all of a sudden you're elevated. Listen, not to say that fashion can also victimize you in horrible ways, and it does oftentimes, and that's not nice. But when it can lift us up, I think it's just magical. You're not feeling that well about yourself, you put something on and you automatically feel better. I really noticed it even during my cancer journey when I wasn't feeling that great about the way I was looking physically because my hair was going. And I put the chic little newsboy cap on that Canadian milliner David Dunkley had sent me. And I

thought, okay, I can rock this. I feel pretty good. You mentioned your mom. The first item I wanted to start with, it's something of your mom's, this leather satchel. Tell me a little bit about that. So this is a leather satchel that my parents had brought over on the boat with them from Austria. They came to Canada in 1948. They immigrated. They were Holocaust survivors, so they had a few precious possessions that they accumulated when they'd been living in this DP camp in Austria. And one of the possessions was this worn brown leather satchel that was stuffed with old photographs that somehow people that they had met post-war had salvaged and gave them, photographs of our families, the grandparents that I never knew, the aunts and uncles and cousins. And as a little kid, I would go to my mother's closet and open that brown leather satchel. And it was like I was discovering my history and my roots. And it made me feel like,

hey, maybe I'm not so different than a lot of the other kids because I used to have grandparents and I used to have aunts and uncles and cousins. I just never got a chance to meet them. So that was the first real accessory, I think, that I became intrigued with. And it was important to start the book that way because I want people to understand where I'm coming from. How do you think your mom influenced who you became in the world of fashion? You say that in the book that she was superhuman. Well, I think most girls look up to their moms that way. I would think, you know, the moms that they have great relationships with.

Well, my mom was the kind of person that found light in the darkness. She was the sole survivor of her family. And, you know, the war broke out when she was like 18 years old and, you know, just lost absolutely everyone. But even though she had some certain mottos like expect the worst and you'll never be disappointed. And, you know, she never wanted us to be hurt. So she would try to, you know, protect us in a way. But she also really encouraged us to dream and believe. And my father's motto that got them through the war was,

don't be afraid and never give up. If you dream, if you believe, if you're fearless and you're tenacious and you work your butt off, I think you can accomplish just about anything. And that set the tone for me in my life and what I was going to do. Let's talk about fearlessness. Tell me the story of the yellow bikini. The yellow bikini top. It was only a bikini top. Only the top, which is a photo that was seen much wider than perhaps people expected. The year was 1969, and I was at the first Toronto

Pop Festival, and Ronnie Hawkins hit the stage singing a really mean version of Hey Bo Diddley. And I just got up and started boogying my brains out, and I was close to the stage. There were 60,000 people at Forest City Stadium. But I was really close to the stage and Ronnie spotted

me. And he pointed to me. It was like, hey, you, come on up. And I was like, who, me? Before I knew it, I was being lifted up on the stage by a cop and dancing for Ronnie Hawkins. And it was just a magical, magical time. I mean, now, fast forward to the next day, and my picture appears on the front page of the Toronto Telegram's entertainment section. And the phone rings in your house. And the phone rings. And I got a call from Ronnie Hawkins' manager,

this guy named Heavy Andrews, who called everybody Baby Blue. And he said, hey, Baby Blue, we love all the publicity you gave us. You know, come on down to the Hawk's Nest, which was this place above the cock door nightclub on Yonge Street. Come on down here.

We want to meet you. I went, oh, okay. And I thought, that's it. My brush with greatness. My moment has arrived. I've been discovered. I was so excited. I put on a sexy little dress, went down to the hawk's nest and met Ronnie and Heavy. And Heavy started saying to me, you know, listen, we love what you did so much. It was so great, Baby Blue. We're doing a big rock festival in upstate New York at the end of the summer.

And we really want you to come to that and dance for Ronnie. And I went, okay, you know, this is my chance. I'll be a professional go-go dancer. And then there was a caveat though. He said, but you know, this time we want you to take off that bikini top and like dance topless. And we'll drop you out of a helicopter. And I thought, my mother will never be. My mother was totally outraged that all the women in her Hadassah chapter had seen me in the paper dancing in a bikini top anyway. So I knew that that would never go over with my mom. But anyway, Ronnie had promised me at the time, not if I danced for him at this pop festival, which ended up being Woodstock, that he would introduce me to his

friend, Elvis Presley. You know, that was like another thing to lure me down there. Anyway, all these years later, in the early days of the new music, we do interview Ronnie, and we interview him in Memphis. We went to the Sun Recording Studios, and I got to take him to Graceland. And he was in awe of being in Graceland. And I said, but I thought you were like really good buddies with Elvis. And he said, oh, we never really got along. And then I realized that was just all a ruse to get me to

go to Woodstock with him. Why did you wear that to that show? I mean, there has to be something in you that says, you know what, I'm going to wear this thing and something might happen and I might end up on stage. Darling, I'm going to wear this thing and something might happen and I might end up on stage. Darling, I just, oh, this sounds so shallow. You're getting to that, what a therapist you are, Matt. I guess I just wanted to be discovered. I wanted to be famous.

I was a performer. I wanted to, and I had been acting professionally since the age of 16. Every year on my birthday cake, when I was a little kid, all I wished for was my own TV show. Can we talk about the new music? How would you describe it at the time? Edgy, groundbreaking, in your face, smash and grab, rock and roll. And it really did define a whole style of TV that had not been seen before. And here was a show that really went on the road

with rock stars, rode around in their smoky tour buses, went backstage with them, hung out in their hotel rooms, hung out in a bathtub with one of them once. That's in the book. You know, and there had been nothing like that before. How did you end up in the bathtub with a member of the police? Oh, okay.

Well, what happened was when the police first came to Toronto, it must have been like 1981 or something, I wanted an interview with one of them, and I was given Andy Summers, a brilliant guitarist, and he was a very naughty boy, a really interesting cat. He's just a great guy. There's a lot that you're not saying in there, but continue on. Okay, anyway.

So he suggested that we do the interview, that he get into the bathtub to do this interview. And that guy just showed up at his hotel room. And I thought, really? You want to go in the bathtub? This is like a bathtub with water in it. A bathtub with water in it. And I'm going to take off my clothes and get in there. And he had, okay, he was wearing a t-shirt, a wet t-shirt, but he wasn't wearing anything

on the bottom. But he had this little bottle of bubble bath, you know, from the hotel that he sprinkled into the water, you know, thinking that was going to cover up everything. But, you know, a few minutes into the interview, you know, the bubbles dissipated and his junk was on view. And it was like, ah. But anyway, interviewed him. It was a memorable moment. It was fabulous. So then all these years later, maybe like 20 odd years later, I'm hosting fashion television.

Andy Summers comes up with, he was a great photographer with a photography book. And I thought, oh, we cover photography on fashion television. Let's get Andy back on my show with this book. So when we phoned his manager, the manager said, oh, yeah, Andy remembers Jeannie. So where do you want to do this interview? And I said, well, you know, what do you think? And he said, well, Andy's suggesting getting into the bathtub again. But this time he wants Jeannie to get into the bathtub with him.

Yes. And I'm like, ah, I'm like a 50-something-year-old mother of two at the time. Again, I had to, Ma, I'm going to maybe get into a bathtub with a rock star. On television. She was not happy to have, Ma, I'm going to maybe get into a bathtub with a rock star. On television. She was not happy. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I thought, you know what? I've got to get in touch with my inner teen and do this. It's just going to be great television. It's the kind of thing you could probably never do now. And I'm sure people think of that like, oh my God, how crass and how terrible. But I don't know. It was the zeitgeist. It was the

spirit of the times. It just made sense for me to do it. So I sucked in my gut, got into the bathtub with him wearing a little string bikini, of course. He also was wearing underpants or some kind of swimming trunks or something. We sat in the tub and he had put little votives all around the edge of the tub. And he ordered a couple of Cosmos from room service and lit up a big fat joint. And he's like sitting there waxing on about the meaning of life and art. And it was a brilliant interview, I thought. And then all of a sudden he throws his head back in laughter and his hair catches on fire. And I'm like, ah, I can't believe we didn't get electrocuted. Like, I dropped the microphone. Anyway, if you want to see it, it's on YouTube.

You just have to Google Andy Summers' hair on fire. It made for a great TV show. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. You know what else is on YouTube is an interview that did not go particularly well. This is one of your great interviews as a journalist because you stand up for yourself. This is you on the

new music with Iggy Pop. It's easier for me than for you because I have more talent. In certain areas. In any area than you could ever dream of. How the f*** do you know that? For the same reason that I have more talent than you could ever dream of. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, that's not much of an answer.

So I don't think that way like you do, best or worst. Oh, I see. I think what I want to do or what I don't want to do. Mm-hmm. Whereas, you know, someone with your limitations would stick to what they do best very carefully. Jeannie Becker, that's you interviewing Iggy Pop. And shortly thereafter, you say, that's a wrap. And that's the end of the interview.

I said, gee, Iggy, I'm out of here. And he was like, oh, well, what do you mean? What did I say? How did I offend you? Listen, a few months before that interview, he was coming on to me like gangbusters at a festival. I was wearing this tight pair of vinyl pants and I, you know, I was looking, you know, pretty hot. I thought, but what happened leading up to that interview was I was at my parents' house for Friday night dinner and I was dressed like in these boring, you know, olive green suede trousers

with a little red cashmere sweater. And I got a call from John Martin, you know, my new music producer saying, okay, Iggy's going to give you an interview, but you got to rush down to the Danforth Music Hall, be there by midnight, because he's just coming off the stage. So of course, duty called, drove down to the Danforth Music Hall and walked into a room that was just all filled with guys. And there was Iggy, you know, drinking his Jack Daniels out of a paper cup. He looked me up and down and I'm sure he thought, who's this bourgeoisie chick? You know, he certainly didn't recognize me. And I just launched into this interview with him and he had said that he had started writing a book. And I made the gross error

of saying to him, oh, was that your first attempt at writing? I just said, he said, attempt. And the interview really went downhill and he got really rude. I mean, it was really not nice. And I thought, you know, I'm not going to take this. I'm out of here. I said, okay, Iggy, that's a wrap. And looking back at that, I'm so proud of myself for doing that. Because at the time, you know, I was embarrassed. I felt bad about myself. I thought, oh, you know, this is awful. But you stood up for yourself. But I did stand up. And you know what? I got to say, I might've done some screwy things in my career and in life as most people do, but I always have stood up for myself. And I think that's one of the most important things you can do.

So, yeah. Can we talk about fashion television? I, in university, and I'm sure it was because we were very interested in fashion, first year university in residence, we would all gather in the room and the television would be on and we would watch fashion television. And maybe it had to do with the fact that there were models that were going down the runway in various states of undress. But it meant a lot. I mean, what did that show

mean to you? It was a huge, huge sensation, not just here, but all over the place. It was a time in fashion. It was the golden age of fashion. Those years that we did the show, It was the golden age of fashion. Those years that we did the show, we did that show for 27 years. So from 1985 to 2012, it was an extraordinary time. No one had covered fashion in that way before. I wasn't a fashion journalist. I wasn't asking questions like, why beige? Or, you know, what about that silhouette?

Or what was the inspiration? I mean, for me, it was just about the scene. I was an entertainment reporter. I just wanted to know, you know, who these people were as human beings. I wanted to expose the humanity behind the artistry. One of those larger than life people is Karl Lagerfeld. The garment that you talk about in the book is a black and white dress. Yeah. Another one of those designers I just felt I had such a bond with. He was so wonderful. And I know, he told me he always appreciated my enthusiasm. So that was nice. Back in 1989, when I was like seven and a half months pregnant, and just, you know, about to pop there. And I had gained a ton

of weight. And I was sitting in the corner of his couture atelier on the eve of his couture show. I mean, I had and it was a sweltering hot day in July in Paris. And there was all these chic little girls buzzing around dressed in their little black and white outfits. And there I was dressed in some drab, olive green maternity outfit, feeling just horrible like a beached whale. And his assistant felt bad because he, Carl had kept us waiting so long. He was invariably late for everything.

And he said, okay, would you like to borrow something from Chanel to wear for this interview? I went, borrow something from Chanel? I said, I'm never going to fit in anything from Chanel. Oh, no, no, no, no. Come with me. He took me into this back room that was just rife with these racks that were laden with couture creations, like dazzling. It's so much eye candy, you couldn't believe it. I was gobsmacked. And I said, oh my God, how ironic. I get to

try something on from Chanel, but I'm never going to be able to fit into any of this. And we were rifling through the stuff, and all of a sudden he pulled out this dress, and he goes, this could work, try this. And it was this very boxy cut, a black crepe, gorgeous dress with a white satin chevron running down the middle. So it would be very slimming with those signature pearl and gold Chanel buttons and a big black organza camellia at the neck. Anyway, I tried this dress on just hoping and praying that somehow I'd get the buttons done up. And voila, it fit perfectly. So I came out of the dressing room feeling, you know, talk about the transformational quality that clothing can have, like feeling like fabulous. Did the interview with Carl in that dress and got along so famously with Carl. At the end of it, Carl, you know, said,

ah, c'est fabuleuse, you know, that ce sera un cadeau. And you hear the word cadeau in the fashion world, and it's like, you get very excited, right? That's like a present. So he gifted me with that dress. It was an incredible moment, you know. And then fast forward again to around about 1995, and I was doing backstage color commentary for the VH1 Fashion Music Awards,

and Carl was there with Claudia Schiffer. And he couldn't find his fan. Always had a fan. And he was like, you know, I can't go on. I don't have the fan. So I saw some sheets of cardboard that were, I guess they were going to be used as little cue cards or something lying nearby. And I quickly ran over because I thought, I don't want to lose, we're going live on the national TV. And I took a piece of paper and started folding a fan like a little kid does, you know, and I handed it to him. And he was so delighted by that, that, you know, it had saved the day and went on and did the interview and everyone was happy.

You write about this in the book. How do you think about staying relevant after all this time? To me, that's very important. Yeah. And I met the love of my life because he used that pickup line on me. You know, listen, I was 63 years old by the time I met him and I'd been around and I'm at an age when I was concerned about being relevant. I mean, I think we all want to be relevant in some way and somehow.

What does it mean to you? To matter. And matter not to others, it's to myself. I want to be able to keep doing the work that I love because I so love doing it. And I want to be able to really find meaning in my life every day. So I don't want to waste time doing meaningless things. I got the Order of Canada, you know, way back in 2013, 2014. And I remember what was said to me at that ceremony. and it was like, you know, yes, you're getting this little pin, but it's because now it's the symbol that you have to keep reaching higher.

Like, it's just not enough. Like, I never wanted to rest on my laurels, not ever. I never wanted to think that you've arrived, because once you've arrived, I think it's time to leave. So that's, I guess, what keeps me going still at this age, you know. And my wonderful partner, Ian McInnes, came up to me at a Moonlight Gala. We were at the McMichael Gallery. And I was there feeling very down about myself. My mom had just died and I didn't have a date. And there I was in a little black dress yet again by myself. And he walked up to me and said, Hi, my name's Ian McInnes, and I'm on the foundation board of the McMichael. And I just wanted to congratulate you on your career, because you've always kept yourself so relevant. And I thought, that's the sexiest thing any guy could say to a woman, especially of a certain age, to me anyway. And we've been together ever since. Do you think about aging in not just an industry,

but in a world where we spend so much time talking about youth and the power of youth? Listen, we all are presented with the opportunity to choose the way you want to perceive something. So if you want to perceive something, you know? So if, yeah, if you want to look at it that way, and if you want to think, oh, you know, my life's over at a certain age, and you know, I'm aging, and I look in the mirror, and what about these lines and wrinkles, and the body isn't feeling the way it used to feel? You know, if you want to dwell on that, you choose to think about that, you know, yeah, okay, good luck, that's fine. I choose not to, I choose to

look at the light and live in the light. And that's how I got through my cancer journey. Because when I was diagnosed a couple years ago, I had just turned 70. And I was feeling so empowered, okay, I'm gonna write a book about empowerment with age. And all of a sudden, I get this diagnosis that I've got breast cancer. And I was like, ah, and I thought, okay, I'm going to write a book about empowerment with age. And all of a sudden, I get this diagnosis that I've got breast cancer. And it was like, ah. And I thought, okay, am I going to go down those rabbit holes? Am I going to think the worst of it? And I just decided I'm going to leave fear on the table and live in the light, because that is how I will enjoy the rest of my life, even if I only had, God forbid, six months to live.

So aging, bring it on, you know? I mean, isn't that the goal? We want to age. Like, what about this, you know, anti-aging? Like, whoa, that's scary. The opposite is not particularly appealing. Exactly. Tell me about the Soliver bracelet.

And this is part of the cancer journey as well. Oh, yes. Well, so an ex-boyfriend who had very good taste had got me this fabulous Elsa Peretti silver cuff, like bone cuff, like the big one, and gave it to me shortly after we started going out, which was a year or so after my marriage had broken up. And I was just really not feeling great about myself. But he presented me with this gorgeous bracelet from Tiffany's, a Salsa Peretti cuff. And I put it on and it made me feel like Wonder Woman. I thought, wow, I guess I am lovable after all. And it made me feel really good. And I wore that

bracelet religiously for 25 years, almost every day for 25 years. That was my Wonder Woman cuff. years, almost every day for 25 years. That was my Wonder Woman cuff. So when I was going through my cancer journey at the fabulous Princess Margaret Cancer Center, which is my temple of healing, one chemo infusion, I was in one of the chemo pods and I took off my silver cuff and put it on the bed beside me. When I got home, I realized, oh, I forgot my silver Wonder Woman cuff. I said, I'm sure they're going to have it. I'll just phone the nursing station. And the nurses said, sorry, Jeannie, no, we didn't see anything like that. I went, what? And I'm like, oh, MG, this is like the worst news. How could that be? And then I said, no, I'm going to look at it a whole different way because I have the choice to do that.

And I'm going to see it as perhaps I didn't really need that bracelet anymore to empower me. I was empowered because I was being healed from this cancer. And I had found a new kind of power within myself. And maybe there's someone out there, because I'm sure the bracelet surfaced somewhere, even in some laundry bin somewhere. And I just hope that whoever found that bracelet is enjoying it and wearing it with power. You're a force of nature. It's amazing to talk to you. Thank you very much. Love talking to you, Matt, so much. Thank you. That force, Jeannie Becker's new memoir is called Heart on My Sleeves, Stories from a Life Well Worn. Matt Galloway spoke with her in October. so much. Thank you.