brightstar

At first glance, it appears Lilith has just stepped out of a romantic comedy. Her white and gray hair is tied in a fluffy bun, sticking straight out from the top of her head. She's curled up in a tight ball on a green velvet couch, sporting a flowy white gauze top and distressed jeans. She's balancing a book on one knee and a cup of mysterious green juice in one hand. A beam of light hits her from behind, making her silhouette glow. This is a startling departure from the woman I grew up listening to and watching on the biggest stages in the world, and not because she isn't beautiful without the touch of her glamor team. My teenage heart wondered where the coal eyeliner that faded into a cloud of eyeshadow had gone. Where are those fluffy lash extensions? What about the slicked-back, pin-straight hair? 

She clocks my confusion and says, "I don't know who I am more nervous for – you or me. Either way, one of us must start asking questions, huh?" I didn't know it yet, but Lilith would not be making an appearance at this interview. Lily Moon was ready to make her debut.

I first met Lilith when she was 63, freshly off her Legacy Tour, where she partied with the likes of Sting, Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart, and Stevie Nicks. At the time, I was a fresh-faced 20-something entertainment reporter for Rolling Stone and had been sent to New York to get an exclusive about the closing of her tour. I was giddy to have the chance to be in the same room as one of my idols. Fifteen of us crowded around a table in a standing-room-only bar called The Lounge, adorned with green velvet curtains, glass tables sporting ring stains from sweating liquor glasses, and shaggy carpet. Lilith was smoking, tapping the end of her cigarette butt on the tip of the microphone. An ash cloud ricocheted off the mic, landing on the white tablecloth. I raised my hand, and her press manager, who looked vaguely annoyed by nothing in particular, nodded at me as if to say, "On with it." 

I knew what I wanted to ask, but I choked spectacularly under the weight of inexperience. "Can you just tell me something real?" The room erupted in thunderous laughter. Deflated, I sat back and prayed I didn't lose my job. My chance to have that question answered wouldn't come for another 20 years. In this interview.

Summer 1938. Carl and Mickey Moon welcome their first and only child into the world. They fight about what her name should be. Something epic, her mother said. Something easy to pronounce, her father countered. Then, as their new baby girl was napping in the incubator, the Moons received an anonymous bouquet of flowers: lilies. 

"It's pretty silly," Lily says, "Can you imagine if someone had sent my parents a sneezewort?" She takes three heaping gulps of the green goo.

She sees my confusion.

"It's a white flower. Looks like mini daisies. The name doesn't fit the damn thing at all." She raises her hand to get the attention of the bartender. She holds up two fingers. 

"I can't imagine your parents would have named you sneezewort," I laugh.

She lets out a wheezy, endearing laugh. "You didn't know my parents."

Lily describes her parents as controlled chaos – always one wrong decision away from complete ruin or winning the lottery. But you wouldn't know it by looking at them. Both were raised in a small town in Cincinnati. Carl was a clean-shaven mechanic at the auto shop, a job he fell into at 17 because he couldn't pass his high school exams.

Carl liked his job at the shop. He enjoyed working with his hands. He also liked that it gave him street cred with the ladies. But he wasn't prepared for Mickey, who rolled into his shop with a bumper holding on for dear life. When he asked her what happened, she leaned down, yanked the bumper off, and handed it to him. Paying no mind to the muck that covered her once immaculate white gloves.

A few years older, Mickey worked as a secretary for the state. She was a fast typer and quick on her feet, always thinking one step ahead. The perfect match for Carl, who was used to winning every conversation. Watching them was like watching a race – each stumbling over their words to stay ahead of the other's argument. They were passionate. But even more so, they were keen on taking life by the balls. They weren't afraid to try something new. One of their favorite things was trying quirky foods at a hole-in-the-wall diner. And because they were poor, they never wasted that food. Even if it was particularly foul.

"That's probably why I eat just about anything." She's not kidding. She's eaten everything from bull testicles to worms. But that's another story.

The bartender arrives with two tall glasses of green liquid. She gives a smile and slips him a $100 bill.

I take the glass and stare down at what appears to be, at a closer glance, baby food.

"It's juice, I promise." She laughs.

"What's in it?" I give it a sniff.

"A cacophony of things. I don't eat many vegetables, so this is how I do something good for my body." I ask her if she still smokes. She doesn't. Kicked the habit about five years ago at the urging of one of her friends who developed lung cancer.

I take a big swig.

"They've been serving this drink here for over sixty years."

"How did you discover it?" I place it as far away from me as I can.

"Stumbled in here in my early twenties with a friend. She wasn't adventurous with food. But I said I would give her fifty bucks if she tried it with me." Fifty dollars in the late fifties has about $500 purchasing power today. In other words, it was a good deal.

Did she like it?

Lily stares off into the distance as if she is somewhere else. Slowly, a big smile creeps into the corner of her lips. "She hated it."

Lily never intended on becoming Lilith. In fact, she never expected fame to become a permanent fixture in her life. A girl from a small town, she was raised by parents with "minimal means" and "abysmal access" to the arts (the exception being the records her father bought at second-hand stores). That was until one night when she stumbled upon a flier advertising a free art festival in the city. She used her savings from that summer to buy a seat on a bus into New York City. She had no plans. She just wanted to see something different. That, and she loved music.

"Your parents let you go into the city unattended?"

"Crazy, right? Can't do that now with children. I believe I grew up in a special era with especially free-thinking parents. They let me do whatever I wanted." This isn't an exaggeration. Lily never had a curfew. Could watch anything she wanted on TV. Had her first drink at 10 (beer, which she still hates to this day). Was able to dress in what some might call "skimpy" clothes (a pink tube top and short jean skirt, for example). The only rule in her home was to remain respectful, considerate, and kind.

Fifteen-year-old Lily stumbled into the Washington Square Music festival with ten dollars and a coca cola that August. It was a night of firsts: live music, bright lights, people wearing very little, tasting wine from a plastic cup. But nothing held her attention more than the young man who played the keys with such passion that his body shook. It was Jerry Lee Lewis.

"Say what you want about him, but that man was gifted." She's referring to Lewis' spotty, sometimes horrific, history. The rock n' roll hellraiser was especially good at bucking the expectations of the time and never shied away from a bit of rebellion, even if it cost others greatly. He had seven wives (one of which was his 13-year-old cousin), a drinking problem, and allegations of abuse and thievery tied to his name.

Lily makes it clear to me she is not justifying the way Lewis behaved. In fact, she finds his history deplorable. But Lily can separate the art from the artist, unlike so many. Though, she admits it took work.

Lewis is why she fell in love with the piano, and the day after the music festival, she went to her local music shop and started playing on their public piano. She's self-taught – since her parents couldn't afford lessons- and practiced daily for the rest of the summer. When school was back in session, she joined the choir.

"I didn't just want to be someone that played the piano."

Carl saved for two years to buy her a piano. It's the same piano that sits in her apartment at the Bramble. And she never intends on getting rid of it, no matter how ugly or out of tune it gets. "It's not about the fact that it's my first piano. It's from my dad. And it's a reminder of the sacrifice he made for me. And you don't just toss something out because it no longer looks pretty."

"Is it true that you adopted Lilith because of your dad?" I ask. Word around the music industry is that Lilith was written in her father's handwriting on the bottom of her first piano. Lilith is a nickname he gave her in her tween years -- though Lily is unsure of its origins.

She nods. When she was home, around people she loved, she was just bright-eyed Lily. Hair in knots and splayed in every direction. Usually, wearing pajamas or overalls. A reader, a conversationalist. She became the edgy, coal-liner-loving rock n' roll Lilith whenever she performed. But she insists it wasn't armor. It was just another expression of who she was. Her parents got both parts of her. The world only saw one. When she tells me this, her eyes sink.

"What are you thinking?"

She lays a seismic question on my question: "Are you going to ask me about my love life?"

I'm stunned.

"I don't think you'll like the question I'm going to ask."

She leans forward. "Ask it. I'm not here to pussyfoot. Let's start asking the questions that matter."

I shake off that girl who failed to ask so many decades ago. "Are you a lesbian?"

She sits back, her shoulders falling. "It's about time somebody asked."

Lily realized she liked girls when she was in her early teens. While her friends had pictures of Elvis on their walls, she had pictures of Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. She wrote in her diary about meeting them, their taste in clothes, and how they articulated their bodies when they sang. It wasn't sexual, Lily insists; it was a fascination with the female form. She thought the female body was indescribably beautiful. And when Lily imagined kissing and how it felt, she always pictured women. And she admitted as much to her father, who took it quite well.

"He agreed with me, of course, because he was madly in love with my mother. But it was earth-shaking. Not just because he was bucking social norms of the times, but because he made me feel so seen." A few years later, when Lily turned 21, she told her mother. When I ask her why it took longer to tell her mother, she says, "I think I could have handled a rejection from my father. But my mother – the person who brought me into this world – if she couldn't love me, no one could." 

Mickey gave Lily a big hug and took her out for ice cream.

Her number one hit, Nights in July, was based on this day with her mother. "Ironically, people thought I was talking about love for a man," she laughs.

"Did you have relationships with women early in your career or even during it? It just seems like an impossibility, given the times." The sexual revolution didn't hit until the 1960s. And discussion of the LGBTQ community? It wouldn't come to the forefront of society until 1970.

Lily recounts her relationship with a woman -- we will call her Jane for this article -- that loved to wear flowers in her hair, chains around her waist, and her heart on her sleeve. She describes Jane as a character from a romance novel. A good girl with a sprinkle of spice – almost too good to be true. One of the most significant differences between them? She didn't have parents like Lily did.

Jane was painfully private about their relationship, always fearful that her parents would find out before she was ready to tell them. But she was present for the majority of Lily's career. She would meet Lily after an audition or right before a gig. Sometimes sneak in the back door of the recording studio. There was a time when they shared a townhome together, just as Lily's career was taking off. It was a brownstone walk-up with three levels. There was an American Redbud tree out front. Jane didn't want to live there – but not because she didn't want to be seen with Lily.

"Her parents were rich. And she hated being perceived as someone who could have whatever she wanted. She would rather work for it."

Then Lily drops a bomb on me – what every journalist would call a golden nugget for a piece on a high-profile celebrity: they had been engaged. And even though they knew it wouldn't be recognized as a legal marriage, they set the wedding date. But one week before the wedding, something horrible happened to Jane. When I press Lily about what happened, she insists that is as far as she is willing to elaborate.

Despite her best efforts, Lily couldn't escape the horrors of working in the music industry as a strong, conventionally attractive woman. And not having Jane around made it easier for money-hungry, self-entitled men to take their stab at her and her body. She admits to me that there were far too many instances where Lily was forced into a room she never wanted to go into, held too close for comfort, and touched when she never gave anyone permission. To be violated by a man was one thing. To be infringed by a man when she held an attraction for women? That was another trauma entirely. 

I asked her why she had never mentioned it earlier in her career when she was gracing the cover of every mainstream magazine. She had a reputation for being outspoken, so a calculated silence on such a vital topic seemed "off-brand." "My manager at the time was part of the problem. That's all I'm going to say on that."

Worth noting: Lily cannot speak to the specifics of this statement because she is currently on trial. She's suing her first manager, Michael Stockard, for abuse of power, garnished wages, and contract violations.

"If there was one thing I could fix right now – it would be to get rid of this fucking duality attached to being a victim."

I ask her to clarify.

"It's awful to be both the person that survived something horrific and then the person that stands up and says something, ripping everyone's world apart."

Lily looks down at her hand, staring intently at a faded tattoo. "I've never told anyone about this tattoo. But I want someone to know." 

It's a feather drawn by Jane. According to Lily, Jane was an incredible artist, unaware of her budding talent. The day her parents called and said they weren't attending their wedding, they went to a parlor shop to get tattoos. Jane got one inside her arm. As a surprise, Lily got the same one on her hand.

"I suppose you could say it was my way of conveying that I had her back no matter what."

Lily reveals to me that Jane died ten years ago. She saw an article in the paper saying she passed away surrounded by her family in her home. She was happy that Jane could still build a life, even after all that had happened to her.

"Are you curious as to why she chose to get married to a man?"

She ponders this momentarily: "I used to think about it a lot. But I've accepted that sometimes, in this life, we just aren't meant to get answers to the questions we have."

Now 83, Lily Moon is still the brightest light in rock n' roll music. She is a living tapestry of everyone that came before her – representing the best and worst of those in her line of work – and she is damn proud of it. When stripped to her bare bones, this iconic, edgy rockstar is no different than your next-door neighbor. But she has been living a life with extraordinary circumstances. And while retiring from the industry later this year after a successful sixty-year career, she's still excited for what comes next.

"I still have many questions, which is pretty amazing at my age, given all that I've seen and experienced. But there's plenty of mystery left in the world to discover."

She notices I've only taken a few sips of the juice.

"Don't like it?"

"I hate it."

She laughs, the crinkles around her eyes deepening. "Music to my ears, kiddo."

I thank her one last time, turning to leave. She clears her throat to signal my stop, so I do. "Yes?"

"You don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?"

"This room. It looks a little different now. Bigger. Nicer things to dress it up. But it's still here, all that history."

For the first time since the start of the interview, I realized the Bramble used to be The Lounge.