THE COMMERICIAL APPEAL
Memphis, TN
September 22, 2002

TESTING FATE: BAND OF HIS DREAMS

Posters of the heavy-lidded, shaggy-haired teen idol Leif Garrett hung on many a teenage girl's wall back in the 1970s.

"I had the second-largest poster outside of the Farrah (Fawcett) poster," Garrett recently recalled. "Just this one shot of me standing with this great sunset behind me. A satin shirt,long hair with the total pose and smirk. Totally full of attitude."

Legions of Leif Garrett's fans bought tickets to his pop concerts and movies, his record albums and copies of teen magazines that plastered his photos on the covers. They were the ones who knew his first name was pronounced "Lafe," not "Leaf."

"He was cute," recalled Wendy Sullivan, 37, a Memphis fan who used to write "Wendy & Leif 4-Ever" on her notebooks as a teenager. "He wore the tightest pants in America. I was a young teenager, honey. That was all that mattered. He had his baby face and this blond curly hair and tight leather pants."

People still have fond memories of Garrett, ranging from his role as Zack in the Family TV series to his innocent pop music concerts, where he wang his hits, including Surfin' USA and I Was Made for Dancin'.

But what many fans didn't know during his superstardom was that offstage Garrett lived a wild life filled with sex and drugs, a lifestyle that led to addiction, a tragic car accident and arrests.

At 40, after treatment for heroin addiction, Garrett, who lives in Los Angeles, is still making music and movies - more than 30 movies between 1969 and 1999.

He's touring with his new band, F8, playing rock and roll the way he's always wanted to. He and his band will perform at 9p.m. Wednesday at The Lounge at Gibson Beale Street Showcase at 145 Lt. George W. Lee.

And he is excited about a new movie with David Spade. It's called Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star. He plays Dickie Roberts, and Adam Sandler is producing it.

"I play his best friend. I play myself. It gives legitimacy to his character."

Looking over his life and career, Garrett said, "There's a few things, obviously, I wish I hadn't done, but having regrets and things, it just takes your time away.

"Listen, if everything is a lesson and you repeat those mistakes, then that's stupidity. But everything, whether it's good or bad, should (have) a positive outcome, ultimately."

Garrett does have regrets about his childhood. "I wish I didn't come from a dysfunctional family, and I wish I had a dad. He just took off when I was 5, and that was it."

Garrett's mother, Carolyn Underwood, who was his "mother and father," and his little sister, Dawn Lyn, were "the only people around. There were no male figures around."

He believes because of that he became more aware of women and a more sensitive person.

A California native, Garrett began acting when he was 5 years old. His mother instigated it. "She always wanted to be an actress. So, she got an agent and she said, 'Oh, by the way, I've got some great kids.' And he's like, 'We gotta meet them.' And singed us,too."

His sister got the role of Dodie Douglas on My Three Sons.

Garrett's first role was in the 1969 movie Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. "I was Elliott Gould's and Dyan Cannon's son. But, literally, if you blink, you'd miss me."

Garrett was always into music. "I listened to music all the time, more so than watch TV. Like I'd always fall asleep to music. I was listening to the Stones, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Yes, all of those bands. The British invasion for huge for me."

He was spotted by representatives of the Scotti Brothers record label while making the TV series Three for the Road. "The Scotti Brothers came up and saw that I was getting a lot of mail and said, 'Hey, kid, you want to make a record?' Not, 'Hey, kid, can you sing?"

Working in the studio wasn't easy at first. "That was tough 'cause I wasn't a trained singer. And I wasn't trained in the art of laying down tracks and recording.

"Hitting perfect pitch and staying on pitch was a problem for me when I was younger. I hit the hotes, but I'd slide around."

Despite that, Garrett became a huge concert draw. "I think a lot of that had to do with the pinup look. The talent wasn't as important as the look, let's say."

His stage persona wasn't fake. "That was always me. That's the way I always looked. I don't brush my hair or use a comb. My hair is naturally curly, so I just let it be.

"They didn't even try to dress me differently. I was always into wearing collared shirts and button-up shirts with jeans. I always liked that with rolled up sleeves and unbuttoned down to the navel. I was doing that at like 14,13."

He also wore the rock clothing of the era. "I was the Spandex king," he said, adding his most outlandish outfit was "black Spandex pants with the white Capezios and a very feminine, blousy, pink top with poofy sleeves."

The music he performed was "the California Beach Boy stuff, the Runaround Sue, Dion and stuff that was all West Coast surfer boy skateboarder. I was a surfer and a skateboarder."

Life in the fast lane

Garrett lived in the life of the teen idol to the hilt. "The craziest thing was landing in Australia. And before the plane could even get up to the gate, it was rushed by thousands of girls."

Everybody had to get off the plane away from the gate, and then Garrett was put in a limousine. "We get into the car and they almost rolled it. They were just going nuts.

"My manager at the time came up with this brilliant idea: 'OK, we'll put you in an armored car.' So, publicity-wise it was great. There's this crazy photo of me sitting in this armored car with these little tiny super-thick glass windows and thousands of faces."

Garrett said he lost his virginity at 14 to the daughter of the director of a movie he was making at the time. "He walked in in the middle of it. I couldn't face him for the rest of the movie. It was awful. The only thing he had to say was, 'Next time, lock the door.'"

It's true teen idols can sleep with hundreds of women, Garrett said. "I was into older women, too. I liked the 30-year-old mothers of the 13-year-olds..."

He wouldn't say how many women he slept with, but, as far as those notorious for their sexual conquests, Garrett said, "There's supposedly Wilt Chamberlain and Warren Beatty. I'm third."

While he and his women were making beautiful music together, Garrett was getting increasingly unhappy with the music he was making in the studio. "It took me up to the fourth album to really break away and do what I wanted to do. I got away and (recorded) a whole record with Rick Finch, the bass player from KC and the Sunshine Band. He produced it."

When he completed the album, Garrett felt this was where he would cross over from being teen idol to the singer who recorded an album "the boyfriend will like."

But the Scott Brothers added another Garrett song to the album. It was one their staff writers wrote. "It sounded nothing like the other stuff. And they released that one as the single. It was not representational of the other stuff on the record at all.

"It was all about control for them. They knew if they lost control with the iron fist they ruled everything with they weren't able to have the final say.

"I was 18. I was at the age of the people who were buying my records, man. People wanted to hear the newer stuff. You grow out of the teen idol stuff. Teen idols last five years max because the audience grows up. And so do you. And you want to change."

Garrett refused to work with the company after his contract ran out, he said. "I was like, 'OK, that's it. You know what? I'm gonna finish the contract and then I'm walking no matter what happens. I can't work with you people.' And it took all the guts I could muster to say that."

After that, things got rocky. He spent a lot of time "hanging out and actually being the teenager that I never was."

And there was the substance abuse. "I had a lot of free time and a lot of money."

His drug abuse was a result of his "addictive personality," he said. "Plus, when I was 16, I was hanging out with adults in an adult world around the world. Record label guys and musicians. And they'd (go), 'Here, kid. You want a line? You wanna smoke a joint?'"

Garrett was shy as a kid, so performing in concert was "the hardest thing in the world. That's probably what started me drinking. When I first started doing concerts, I'd drink a rum and Coke. Otherwise, I'd go out scared to death. I'd throw up."

In 1979, when he was in his late teens, Garrett and his friend Roland Winkler were in Garrett's Porsche 911 when it rear-ended another car and shot over a freeway embankment. "We were friends. And we were both really high. And for some reason we didn't take his car that night. We took my car and ended up getting in a crash and he ended up paralyzed. It's a horrible thing. It was three days before my 18th birthday."

Winkler won more than $3.1 million in a jury trial against one insurance company and was awarded about $1.1 million from three other companies in a pretrial settlement.

Garrett eventually was tried as a juvenile on drunken-driving charges. His driver's license was suspended for a year, and he was placed on a year's probation.

The tender, tearful reunion between Garrett and Winkler on VH1's Behind the Music episode about Garrett made the list of the show's Most Shocking Moments.

After superstardom, Garrett found it hard to manage his time or stick to any one thing. "There was a lot of staying up late, a lot of sleeping in."

He'd make movies when they came his way. One of his favorites was the 1983 film The Outsiders, in which he played the preppie bad guy, Bob Sheldon.

On June 29, 1999, Garrett was among a group of people arrested in a police narcotics sting in LA. He posted a $10,000 bond and was freed after he was booked for possession of heroin and cocaine. "It was a blessing in a weird way. It was a bad thing, and it was a good thing. Because no matter how many good intentions you have, quitting cold turkey is about the hardest thing in the world to do.

"I did the rapid detox program. What they do is they put you under and then they put a tube down your throat to your lungs, a tube down your throat to your stomach and then suck out all the opiates."

That was three years ago. Garrett said he now feels "better than ever."

From pop to rock

He was in another band, Godspeed, when an old friend of his, Chuck Billings, showed up at one of the shows. "Chuck was in a band that used to open for Shaun Cassidy, my arch rival. For some reason, Shaun didn't like me. I never ever met him. He (Billings) used to open in a band called Virgin for Shaun, the only band that wore tighter clothing than I. He and the rest of the his band wore these super-tight white pants."

He and Billings decided to form F8, "Real rock and roll, mainstream rock and roll, '70s, more like, if anything, the heyday of Zeppelin."

The band name came from the number theater seat Garrett was sitting in one day while taking notes for a play he was going to be in, Billings recalled. "He went, 'F8. Hey, wait a minute. That's cool. 'Fate.'"

F8 is the band of their dreams, Billings said. "This is what I've always wanted to do and what he's (Garrett) always wanted to, and we are now doing it. And there's no producers and record companies and managers. Nobody's telling us how they want it. We're doing it the way we want it. And you know what? It's working."

Garrett writes all of the vocal melodies and lyrics for F8. "We've got, I guess, 20 originals right now, and we've been together for about a year," he said.

IKnow is one of their originals. "Instead of people paying attention to their own problems, (they) tell you what to do and how to behave, trying to point out things you need to change in yourself as if you have no clue."

Darrell Arnold, F8's bass player said, "His music and lyrics are real soulful. His lyrics make you know that he's been there and done it."

Garrett's trademark hair now is shoulder length. "I shaved my head bald for about a year or two," he said. "I've shaved it really short like military short, just for a change. I dyed my hair. I had my hair black for a while. Just boredom. Whatever."

As for today's idols, including Memphis's own Justin Timberlake, Garrett said, "More power to them. I just want them to know, though, that you can't believe your own publicity. And the best thing in the world you can do is become an actual artist, not just be a marionette for the puppeteers. You need to actually write your own music, man. Have some say in it. Get respect as an artist and not just as a figurehead."

Garrett sounds happy. "It's funny 'cause I feel old in a lot of aspects, but mentally and physically in a lot of ways I still feel 18. It's a good thing. I think I've kept my youth or my childhood well within reach."

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