AMANDA LEAR

'Amanda Lear' is a French model, adult model, polyglot, painter, novelist, actress, media personality, composer, lyricist, singer and gay icon who was a Disco Queen in Continental Europe, the Eastern Bloc and most other parts of the world in the mid 1970s to the early 1980s. She first came to the public's attention as the fetishistically clad model on the cover of Roxy Music's album ''For Your Pleasure'' in 1973.

Lear was allegedly born Amanda Tapp [1] [2], supposedly on November 18, 1946 (1936-45?), reputedly in Hong Kong (Saigon?, Hanoi?, Switzerland?) [3] [4] [5] [6] - see below.

Contents

Biography

Early life

Early career; modelling, meeting with Dalì and those 'rumours' (1965 - 1974)

International disco career (1976 - 1983)

'I Am A Photograph'

'Sweet Revenge'

'Never Trust A Pretty Face'

'Diamonds For Breakfast'

'Incognito'

'Tam-Tam'

Post-disco career; writing, art, television, movies, comeback attempts (1982 - 1999)

Recent career; musical comeback, disco revival and public recognition (2000 - 2007)

Summary

Discography

Filmography

Bibliography

References

Sources & external links

Biography

Early life

Amanda Lear was born to a British Naval officer on leave in Hong Kong, and a mother of Mongolian-Chinese origin. Soon after her birth her parents separated, and Lear was raised by her mother in Nice, in the south of France. In addition to having two mother tongues by birth, French and English, she showed an exceptional talent for languages at an early age and also learnt German, Spanish and Italian in her teens, which was to serve her very well later in her professional life. Her greatest passion was however art and at the age of sixteen she relocated to Paris to study at L'Academie Des Beaux Arts before joining St Martins School Of Art in London in 1964. (Confessions Orbitales, Radio Europe 1, 2003)

(''N.B. The truth about Lear's date of birth, the names and nationalities of her parents and the location of her upbringing has been a matter of speculation and debate in both France, Germany and Italy since the early 1980s. All through her career Lear has delibaretely made a point of providing the media with different, contradictory accounts of her early life, the statement above just one of them; her mother's origin has previously been English, French, Vietnamese, Mongolian, Russian and/or Chinese. Her father has been at times English, Russian, French and Indonesian, sometimes serving in the British Navy, other times the French. Her place of birth has ranged from Switzerland, Hanoi, Saigon to Hong Kong, and her date of birth from 1936 to 1946. See below. [7])''

Early career; modelling, meeting with Dalì and those 'rumours' (1965 - 1974)

In 1965 Lear was spotted by legendary French modelling agent Cathérine Harlé and eager to find a way to finance her studies she returned to Paris to catwalk for rising star Paco Rabanne. Soon thereafter she found herself being photographed for magazines like ELLE, Marie France and Vogue, and modelling for fashion designers like Mary Quant, Ossie Clark, Anthony Price, Yves Saint Laurent and Coco Chanel. After some time she dropped out of art school, began modelling full-time and went on to lead a bohemian and flamboyant life in the Swinging London of the sixties, hobnobbing with the rich and famous like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Brian Eno, Twiggy, Sacha Distel, David Bailey, Yul Brynner and Keith Moon.

While clubbing with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and her then boyfriend, the Guinness heir Tara Browne, in a Parisian nightspot named Le Castel in 1965, she was introduced to a man that was to change her life - on many levels according to some - none other than Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dalì (1904-1989) who instantly saw a kindred spirit in her. Lear's biography ''My Life With Dali'', which was first published in 1986 and had Dalí's approval, gives a detailed and intriguing insight into the lives of both the great genius and his muse. She accompanied him and his wife on trips to Barcelona, Madrid, New York and Paris and spent every summer with Dali at his home in Cadaqués in Catalonia. Dali served as a mentor to her; travelling with him, Lear discovered the great museums of Europe, Parisian salons and restaurants, New York bohemia and his homeland, Spain, while she in return introduced him to the younger generation of counterculture in art, fashion, photography and music in London. Like so many other things regarding Lear, the factual accuracy of ''My Life With Dalì'' is however disputed by many researchers of Dalì's life and work.
Although she remained Dali's confidante, protegé and mistress all through the sixties and seventies, Lear was also romantically linked to Brian Jones, had a year-long affair with the married David Bowie, and was briefly engaged to Bryan Ferry of Roxy Music, but in 1979 she married French aristocrat Alain-Philippe Malagnac d'Argens de Villele, who in fact was the former lover turned adopted son of controversial gay novelist Roger Peyrefitte.
Despite modelling nude for Playboy Magazine in 1977 and the photos very effectively proving that Lear was all woman, she was and still is widely rumoured to be either a transsexual or an intersexual because of her height (6ft/183 cm), her masculine facial features and most of all her exceptionally low baritone-like vocal timbre. The fact that Lear is a naturally-born man is today considered an open secret in Continental Europe although Amanda has since the early 1980s insisted that these rumours are the result of a planned succès de scandale, a clever publicity stunt thought up by herself and Salvador Dalí to get her career in music started, just like her contradicting statements about her childhood. " - Everything Dali said, I just listened to. He was the genius, who was I? When it came to launching my career, he told me I was a lousy singer and if I wanted to sell records, I'd have to find something other than the music to attract people to buy them. So we built the Amanda Lear persona into something very intriguing and very ambiguous and it worked." (The Telegraph, UK 2001 ^[1])

However, Britain's first publicly confessed transsexual April Ashley has since gone on record in her autobiography ''April Ashley's Odyssey'' [8] to say that she worked with Amanda in legendary Parisian drag show Carrousel Club in the late 1950's. According to Ashley, Lear was then a man in his early twenties, called Alain Tapp, performing in drag shows using the stage name ''Peki d'Oslo'', and a regular member of the Carrousel ensemble as they toured Germany, Scandinavia, Italy and South America. This early alter ego could in fact be a reference to her Eurasian origin; Oslo/Peking.

These claims were later confirmed by famous German transsexual singer, actress and nightclub owner Romy Haag [9] [10] in her 1999 autobiography ''Eine Frau Und Mehr'' (translated as ''A Woman And Then Some''). Just like Ashley, Haag describes that she first got to know Lear under the name Peki d'Oslo at the Carrousel and that the two also worked together at Romy's famous nightclub ''Chez Romy Haag'' in Berlin in the early seventies.

In March 2007 renowned British music manager Simon Napier-Bell (Dusty Springfield, The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan, Japan, Wham!) was the next eye witness to come forward, saying that "...my publishers sent me off to Paris to make a record with Amanda Lear, someone I’d known years before as a young Asian-looking guy called Peki who hung out in the Gigolo, a gay bar in London in the 60s. Now that Peki had become Amanda, I wasn't interested anymore, but other people were - Amanda's new companion was Salvador Dali." (simonnapierbell.com, 2007-03-12 [11])
The name Amanda Lear is also generally believed to be an alias, a drag queen name and a conjunction of the English words 'A man' and the last name of her mentor and father figure Salvador 'Dalì', while others believe it to be the French 'L'amant Dalì', the lover of Dalì. April Ashley has presented a slightly different and much simpler explanation; Peki D'Oslo had already changed her stage name to Amanda when she persuaded an elderly Scottish gentleman to marry her for 50 pounds in order for her to obtain British citizenship, the gentleman in question just happened to be called Mr. Lear. Ashley also insists that Lear and Dalì met long before 1965, probably in 1958 or 1959 while Lear was still working at the Carrousel as a female impersonator. Some sources go even further, saying that Lear was Dalì's greatest - or possibly the most bizarre - artistic creation of his whole career, suggesting that he was the one who paid for a sex reassignment operation that was to have taken place in Casablanca, Morocco in 1963. (see Georges Burou)

British actress and comedienne Joanna Lumley, who not only bears an uncanny physical resemblance to Lear but also was a fashion model in London in the mid-sixties herself, has in several interviews confirmed that her glamourous but notoriously foul-mouthed Absolutely Fabulous character Patsy Stone was loosely based on the mysterious life story of a certain A. Lear. (see Absolutely Fabulous, Series 2, Episode 3: Morocco) [12]

International disco career (1976 - 1983)

'I Am A Photograph'

In 1975, disillusioned by the shallow fashion industry and encouraged by boyfriend Bowie, Amanda decided to launch a career in music. The debut single "La Bagarre'" released on Polydor was a French language cover of Elvis Presley's 1958 classic "Trouble" and became a minor disco hit in West Germany in 1976 - catching the attention of singer, composer and producer Anthony Monn (born March 17, 1944) and label Ariola-Eurodisc. Her first full-length release ''I Am A Photograph'' was recorded in Munich, with most songs composed by Monn and arranger Rainer Pietsch and Amanda herself providing the English lyrics. The title track was naturally a tongue in cheek reference to her previous profession, but Lear's selfpenned, witty, provocative and sometimes even disturbing lyrics made it perfectly clear that there's more to this glam model than meets the eye - much more. The album included her first paneuropean hit "Blood And Honey", lyrically paraphrasing Dalì's 1941 painting ''La Miel Es Más Dulce Que La Sangre (Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood)'', follow-up single "Tomorrow" as well as cover versions of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'" and Leroy Anderson's "Blue Tango'", all of which have become repertoire standards. ''I Am A Photograph's mixture of lush disco, schlager, kitsch and camp, topped with Amanda's deep half-spoken, half-sung vocals was a winning combination. The album spun off four Top 10 singles in Italy and stayed on the West German albums chart for thirty-three weeks alone. The second edition of ''I Am A Photograph'', which also contained German Top 5 hit "Queen Of Chinatown", sported a free fold-out poster picturing a topless Amanda smiling towards the camera.

'Sweet Revenge'

In 1978, Amanda continued her line of disco hits with ''Sweet Revenge'', an album that opens with a side-long concept medley retelling the story of a girl who sells her soul to The Devil to gain fame and fortune. The first single to be lifted off ''Sweet Revenge'', the dark and seductive "Follow Me", powered by Lear's characteristic deep and recitative voice, was an instant smash hit all over Europe, topped the West German singles chart and has since served as her signature tune. The album went on to sell in excess of four million copies and charted in forty-one countries, including Chile, South Africa, India and Thailand where it stayed on the charts for sixteen weeks, spawning further European hit singles like "Gold", "Run Baby Run" and "Enigma (Give A Bit Of Mmmmh To Me)". Again, all of these tracks were songwriting contributions by Lear herself and this in combination with a larger-than-life image very much the creation of herself made her one of the few artists of the Eurodisco era whose star power was far stronger than the music itself - all according to plan - and the Amanda Lear persona left an impact on European pop culture that has lasted for three decades.

" - Sweet Revenge is of course the album I'm most proud of. I put so much of myself into it. I wrote the lyrics, created the double cover, chose the pictures. I tried to tell a story. So, at least for me, it is the best one." (Acme Celeb Interview)

'Never Trust A Pretty Face'

Later in 1978 Lear and Monn teamed up for ''Never Trust A Pretty Face'', an album that includes a discofied reimagining of "Lili Marleen'", a wartime classic that Lear managed to make her own and has since re-recorded in 1993 and 2001. " - In Germany I succeeded because they'd been waiting for someone like Marlene Dietrich to come along ever since the war. They obviously needed a drunken, nightclubbing vamp so that's what I gave them." While Amanda herself may consider the best-selling '' Sweet Revenge'' her proudest moment, fans and critics alike usually rate ''Never Trust A Pretty Face'' as the artistic highpoint of her international career. It is often cited as a landmark in the history of "The sound of Munich" - groundbreaking Giorgio Moroder/Donna Summer collaborations included. ''Never Trust A Pretty Face'' was in fact recorded in Moroder's legendary Musicland Studios with the assistance of British arranger Keith Forsey. The album features a variety of genre exercises like the clever title track ballad (''A pretty face/a rotten heart/I warned you from the start''), "Forget It" (''He doesn't like art/he doesn't like gays - forget it''), the cabaret-esque "Miroirs", futuristic electro disco like "Black Holes" and "Intellectually" - but most importantly hit single "Fashion Pack (Studio 54)". The lyrics of this Eurodisco classic actually ridicule the decadent behaviour of the rich and famous and especially New York's disco glitterati at the time, offering some serious namedropping in the process; Liza (Minnelli), Francesco (Scavullo), (John) Travolta, Andy (Warhol), Margaux (Hemingway), Bianca (Jagger), Paloma (Picasso) etc. - most likely all of them friends or acquaintances of Lear's, but she had obviously already 'been there and done that'. Another hit and standout track is the suggestive "The Sphinx" which Amanda has since named as her personal favourite among her own recordings. She also very effectively continued to play on her 'devil in disguise' persona with the ''Never Trust A Pretty Face'' album sleeve portraying her as a mythological creature in the Egyptian desert, smiling broadly, with beautiful angel's wings - but also with a snake's tail...

'Diamonds For Breakfast'

In late 1979, Lear recorded ''Diamonds For Breakfast'' which became her commercial breakthrough on the Scandinavian market (#4 Sweden, April '80), producing hits like "Fabulous Lover Love Me", "Diamonds", "When" and the autoerotic "Ho Fatto L'Amore Con Me" (translated as "I Made Love To Myself"). The album abandoned the Munich disco sound with its lush strings and brass arrangements in favour of an electronic new-wave rock style, most likely in accordance with Amanda's own taste in music. She may very well be the reigning White Queen of Disco but personally she didn't care all that much for the genre. " - I really wanted to be the new Tina Turner, a rough rock singer, she's still my all-time favourite rockstar" (Confessions Orbitales, Radio Europe 1, 2003), and ''Diamonds For Breakfast'' was a step in that direction. Lear spent most of 1980 on promotional tours for the album and its many accompanying single releases all over Europe, from Greece in the south to Finland in the north. Lead single "Fabulous Lover, Lover Me" famously includes the lines ''"The surgeons built me so well/that nobody could tell/that I once was somebody else"'' which is as close to a confession of a former identity as Lear has come - before or since.

'Incognito'

The Lear/Monn success saga neared its end with 1981's ''Incognito'', at which point Amanda herself had become increasingly uncomfortable with the expectations and pressures of the music business in general - and her own record label in particular. " - The Germans told me 'We're going to conquer the world!' and I don't regret working with a German record company at all, because for my career it was great, but they wanted to control me, direct me and restrict me. They wanted absolute discipline and that's not the life for me, so after a few years of that I wanted out." (Confessions Orbitales, Radio Europe 1, 2003) In 1980, at the artistic and commercial peak of her career, but with the disco backlash taking its toll, she had also tentatively started recording tracks for a forthcoming album with producer Trevor Horn (The Buggles, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Grace Jones, Seal etc.) in London. Ariola did not approve of this and in no uncertain terms made it clear that Lear was to return to Munich and provide the company and the market with another Monn product. The result of these sessions was ''Incognito'' which included minor European hits like "Nymphomania", "Égal" and "New York" but paradoxally turned out to be her breakthrough album in South America, with three tracks especially recorded in Spanish.

'Tam-Tam'

Lear's international career momentum was however slowing and came to an end in 1983 as she delivered her final album to the Ariola label - under contractual obligation. Unlike previous efforts, ''Tam-Tam'' was recorded with Italian collaborators and neither the songs nor the production were anywhere near the high standards of the Munich recordings with Monn in charge. ''Tam-Tam'' subsequently passed unnoticed by both the European and the international record buying public - which may very well have been a blessing in disguise for Lear, considering her frosty relationship with Ariola and changing music style. Around the same time, she publicly began denouncing her earlier musical output, and as usual she didn't mince her words: " - The music was crap - but at least I tried to write some clever lyrics." Instead she went on to launch a very successful and lucrative career as a TV presenter with the aid of media mogul and future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, soon becoming something of household name in what has since turned out to be her second home country, Italy.

Post-disco career; writing, art, television, movies, comeback attempts (1982 - 1999)

After having worked four years as a prime-time TV entertainer for Italian RAI Lear returned to music. ''Secret Passion'' was an album made in Los Angeles and Rome for French label Carrere, a post-disco High Energy - New Wave affair, ready to be launched in January of 1987 (see 1987 in music). It featured a cover of the Troggs' "Wild Thing" and was not only intended to be her comeback in Europe, South America and Japan, this time on her own terms, but also hopefully her breakthrough in English speaking territories like the States, Canada and the United Kingdom, which were more or less the only markets that hadn't succombed to her charms during the Ariola years. However disaster struck; just as Amanda was getting ready to start promoting the album she was seriously injured in a near fatal car accident and had to spend months in convalescence. The album subsequently went nowhere on either side of the Atlantic or anywhere else but this incident became the starting point of another phase in her career, this time as a writer. While in hospital, Amanda had begun writing her first novel called ''The Immortal'', a slightly surrealistic tale describing the torments of a woman doomed to eternal youth and beauty, watching everyone else growing older and eventually losing all her loved ones, while being unable to stop the merciless passing of time....
Lear sporadically returned to recording in the late eighties and nineties and released singles and albums in Italy, France and Germany, none of them producing that elusive international comeback hit. Instead she focussed on her career in television and movies, also mainly in these countries, as well as pursuing what she still describes as her greatest passion: art. From the mid eighties, she has exhibited in major galleries all over Europe and also in the United States and during the last ten years her time has been largely spent painting, exhibiting and lecturing on Dalì.

Recent career; musical comeback, disco revival and public recognition (2000 - 2007)

In 2001, a year after having tragically lost her husband of twenty-one years in a much publicised accident, she threw herself back into work and released the aptly titled album ''Heart''. While most of her recordings during the eighties and nineties, with a few exceptions, may have been perceived as somewhat uninspired, all too often suffering from low-budget production and primarily catering to her ever loyal cult following, ''Heart'' was a major change and progression. It was obvious that this was a serious effort with Lear's own heart and soul involved and both time and money invested in the project by record company Le Marais Prod. The album offered club-friendly tracks like "I Just Wanna Dance Again", remixed by the likes of French electro-house DJ Laurent Wolf [13], Pumpin' Dolls [14] and Junior Vasquez, and cult seventies TV theme song "The Love Boat", both issued as singles. As a contrast, ''Heart'' also contained intimate and gently orchestrated interpretations of personal favourites like Charles Aznavour/Dusty Springfield's bittersweet ballad "Hier Encore (Yesterday When I Was Young)" as well as Springfield/Burt Bacharach's 1967 classic "The Look Of Love", along with a political reading of "Lili Marleen", provided with updated lyrics by original composer Norbert Schultze. Phoenix Lear had risen from the ashes yet again, ''Heart'' was a return to form and turned out to be her best-selling album since the late seventies in both France and Germany and has been re-released under the titles ''Tendance'' and ''Love Boat''.
In 2002 Amanda met Italian actor and model Manuel Casella, thirty (thirty-five? forty?) years her junior. He has been her 'longtime companion' ever since and the couple have been featured prominently in the pages of the tabloid press in both France and Italy.
Lear is renowned as much for her scathing wit as her reputation as a man magnet, which has made her a regular and appreciated guest on various French talkshows for the past fifteen years. She is well-spoken, opinionated, provocative - 'drôlissime'. She has her very own take on concepts like 'truth' and 'reality'. She is equipped with a razorsharp tongue but luckily also with a disarmingly charming smile. She occasionally embarrassess or upsets other guests but rarely fails to entertain the audiences. For example, in 2002 Lear told New York's Paper Magazine about a run-in she had with German supermodel Claudia Schiffer a few years before. A Hollywood movie producer had optioned Lear's book ''My Life With Dali'' and wanted Schiffer to play Lear. "I ran into Claudia at a restaurant," Lear recalls. "She said, 'I love your book! Who wrote it for you?' I said, 'I did, darling. Who read it to you?' So that was the end of that. They never made the movie."

In 2005 Italian dance act The Housekeepers scored a European club hit with "Go Down", a reworking of Amanda's 1977 hit "Queen Of Chinatown". The original recording was also sampled and remixed that year by Hungarian DJ Sterbinzsky featuring Zola and the track, and most often its driving bassline, is now regularly being re-sampled in various dance, house and techno remixes. In 2004 another seventies recording, "Enigma (Give A Bit Of Mmmh To Me)", had been used in TV ads for chocolate bar Kinder Bueno in Eastern Europe, which resulted in it becoming something of a cult hit again, and appearing on a number of European singles chart compilations, nearly three decades after its original release. Later Spanish actor and singer Pedro Marín had a hit with a rock version of Lear's 1978 single "Run Baby Run" which became the inspiration for a full-length tribute album entitled ''Diamonds - Pedro Marín Canta Amanda Lear''.

With the disco revival obviously still going strong and Lear celebrating thirty years in the music business, November 2005 saw the release of the first CD compilation to be both authorized and promoted by Lear herself; ''Forever Glam! - The Best Of 1976-2005''. In 2006 German Sony BMG followed suit with their comprehensive three disc box set ''The Sphinx - Das Beste Aus Den Jahren 1976-1983''. This digitally remastered forty-two track collection was eagerly awaited by many fans since the original Ariola albums, with the exception of ''Sweet Revenge'', never have been re-released in their entirety on compact disc - at least not officially. In the liner note interview of the latter Lear expresses a new-found acceptance and appreciation of her disco past. " - It surprises me that the younger generations keep re-discovering this type of music, over and over again. They really seem to like these old recordings, still after such a long time. Perhaps they weren't so bad after all."
In July 2006 Amanda Lear received the prestigious award ''Chevalier Dans L'ordre National Des Arts Et Des Lettres'' by the French Ministre Of Culture Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres in recognition of her contributions to French arts and sciences - the name appearing on the honour's list was 'Mme Amanda TAPP dite Amanda LEAR'. [15])
On 30th October 2006 the album ''With Love'' was released in France by label Dance Street. This tribute is an extension of the ballads included on 2001's ''Heart'' as it exclusively covers evergreens and jazz standards by the diva's own favourite divas, among them "C'est Magnifique" (Eartha Kitt), "Is That All There Is?" (Peggy Lee), "Whatever Lola Wants" (Sarah Vaughan), "Love For Sale" (Hildegard Knef) and "My Baby Just Cares For Me" (Nina Simone). ''With Love'' received favourable reviews by French music critics and was released in the rest of Europe by label ZYX Music in early 2007 .

Summary

Amanda Lear is an icon, a cult figure and a living legend who lives a myth, a mystery. To this day no-one knows with absolute certainty where or when she was born or where or how she spent her childhood. Or if they do, they're not telling. Queen Lear herself may very well tell you, but by now most people believe whatever she says - at least in public - to be either half-truths, total fabrications or possibly another cunning media provocation. But the highly intelligent Lear is aware of what most people believe and sticks by her story because it has served her well for four decades and she likes the mystery, the ambiguity and the enigma - and so do her legions of fans in Continental and Eastern Europe and throughout the world. Fifteen years living with Salvador Dali and his wife Gala have left her with a beautiful sense of the surreal.
Amanda Lear has recorded 13 studio albums to date and has also released more than 50 singles. She has sold approximately 15 million albums and 25-30 million singles worldwide.
Amanda Lear currently resides in Saint-Etienne-du-Grès near Avignon in the south of France.

Discography

Main articles: Amanda Lear discography

Filmography

★ 1967: ''Ne Jouez Pas Avec Les Martiens'' by Henri Lanoë.

★ 1969: ''Der Kommissar - Keiner hörte den Schuß'' (model).

★ 1978: ''Follie Di Notte'' by Joe D'Amato (host & performer).

★ 1978: ''Zio Adolfo, In Arte Führer'' by Franco Castellano and Giuseppe Moccia (the singer).

★ 1985: ''Grottenolm'' (Dr. Ludmilla Nerovna).

★ 1993: ''Piazza Di Spagna'' by Florestano Vancini.

★ 1993: ''Une Femme Pour Moi'' (Françoise).

★ 1996: ''L'amour Est A Réinventer - Dix Histoires D'Amour Au Temps Du SIDA'' by Merzak Allouache, (segment "Dans La Décapotable").

★ 1998: ''Les Années Bleues'' by Jean-François Porry.

★ 1998: ''Bimboland'' by Ariel Zeitoun (Gina).

★ 2002: ''Le Défi'' a.k.a. ''Dance Challenge'' by Blanca Li (Birgit).

★ 2004: ''The Incredibles'' (voice of character 'Edna Mode' in French and Italian versions).

★ 2005: ''Gigolo'' by Bastian Schweitzer (the woman).

★ 2007: ''Oliviero Rising'' by Riki Roseo (Antonietta).

★ 2007: ''Un Amour De Fantôme''.

★ 2007: ''Starfuckers'' by Julien War (in production).

Bibliography

★ 1986: ''My Life With Dalì'' a.k.a.'' The Persistence Of Memory'' (original French title ''Dalì Et Moi'') (Biography) Beaufort Books, Inc. ISBN 0825303737.

★ 1987: ''The Immortal'' (original French title ''L'Immortel'') (Novel) Carrere France.

★ 2004: ''My Life With Dalì'' (updated and expanded re-issue). ISBN 0863690955.

★ 2006: ''Between Dream And Reality'' (Collected art) ISBN 978-3-8334-5185-0.

References

1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml;jsessionid=NH2QTOWUGLGE1QFIQMGSFGGAVCBQWIV0?xml=/health/2001/01/23/tldali23.xml&page=4

Sources & external links

★ Official Amanda Lear home page. [16]

★ Ian Gibson: Biography ''The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali'', W.W. Norton co., NY, 1997. ISBN 0393046249.

★ April Ashley: Autobiography ''April Ashley's Odyssey''. ISBN 0-224-01849-3.

★ April Ashley: Updated autobiography ''The First Lady'' John Blake Publishing Ltd, 2006, ISBN 1-84454-231-9.

★ Quotes from April Ashley's autobiography ''April Ashley's Odyssey'' [17]

★ Romy Haag: Autobiography ''Eine Frau Und Mehr''. Quadriga Germany, 1999, ISBN 3886793281.

★ All Music Guide. [18]

★ Discogs.com. [19]

★ Rate Your Music. [20]

★ Sony BMG Music Entertainment [21]

★ Ariola Germany [22]

★ ZYX Music Germany [23]

★ Dance Street Records Germany [24]

★ Bide Et Musique [25]

★ Joanna Lumley interview, Advocate 1996. [26]

★ The Internet Movie Database [27]

★ Gracenote CD Information Database [28]

★ Freedb CD Information Database [29]

★ Romy Haag official home page [30]

★ April Ashley official home page [31]

★ Simon Napier-Bell official home page [32]

★ Italian fan site [33]

★ Diaryscape biography & picture gallery. [34]

★ Rate Your Music biography & discography [35]

★ Spanish language article by Carla Antonelli on Amanda and Salvador Dalí, with rare photos. [36]

★ 2000 Biography, Umelec magazine. [37]

★ 2001 interview with The Telegraph, UK. [38]

★ 2002 interview with Night Magazine, US. [39]

★ 2002 interview with Zing Magazine, US. [40]

★ Great Celeb biography. [41]

★ Second Type Women, biography and photo gallery. Amanda Lear

★ Italian Dago Spia article on early career. [42]

★ Amanda Lear discussion group on Yahoo [43]

★ Amanda Lear discussion group on MSN [44]

★ Discography, site Eurodancehits. eurodancehits.com

★ Biography, site Eurodancehits. [45]