Ally Sheedy on dating Richie Sambora
There´s been other threads about Ally & Richie, but thought I´d start another one. Three sides to every story, this is hers. I guess it was late ´88/early ´89 they were dating since she mentioned doing a show in Japan with Ratt.
http://www.amysohn.com/?page_id=129
You met your husband, actor David Lansbury, doing an off-Broadway play. When was the first moment you realized you were attracted to each other?
I knew the minute I saw him I was in love… It was the first read-through. I went in and I thought, “Oh my God. Oh no. I’m in trouble now.”
And then it developed?
It developed for a while because he was actually still in a relationship with someone. So we were platonic until his other relationship ended. I had gone out with someone who cheated on me, and I didn’t want to go through something like that again.
Who was that?
Richie Sambora… He was clueless. Because he was just stoned all the time. He was a raging drug addict. I don’t know if he is any more or not, but he was then… He once accused me of having left the bathroom window open so that my secret lover could meet me in his New Jersey house. This rampage went on all night about who left the bathroom window open, and who was I meeting in his bathroom? Because he had done so much cocaine that this was a reality to him. And it ended with him taking out a baseball bat and waving it in my face. What a dick.
How old were you when this happened?
27.
Something must have drawn you to him initially.
When I first met him, when he’s not drunk, he’s kind of charming. He’s got this other personality that comes out. But when he starts drinking, his personality changes, so I didn’t get the “privilege” of seeing that dark personality until we had been dating a little while. And then he would get drunk and turn into this monster and not only not remember it the next day, the things he had said, but he would cop to it by telling me that it was my fault, that because I had done this, and I had done that, and I had done the other thing, and so he had to drink to deal with me. And somehow I ended up saying, “Oh I’m so sorry.” I was apologizing… I went on tour with him, and it was this strange, dreamy, whirlwind kind of thing, where everybody is there because of this band, so if you’re having a problem with someone in the band, you’re the problem. Japan was the lowest point for me. There was another band called Ratt and they were playing first, and then Bon Jovi was playing. And two of the wives of members of Ratt were walking around backstage, and a couple of the guys who were working on the tour started to make comments about them, all sorts of really disgusting statements, sexual innuendo, calling them hookers or something like that. There was some big problem that happened, and they were really angry and talked to their husbands… And Richie comes slamming into the hotel room completely ****ed up, “They shouldn’t have opened their ****ing mouths. These guys are on tour with us. We’re the big band. Ratt, their wives should just keep their ****ing mouths shut.” And basically that they’re all sluts, and deserve whatever treatment they got, and it’s Bon Jovi’s tour, and they didn’t have a right to complain that they were being treated that way. And I thought, “What am I doing here?” So that, and one other incident, and I got the next plane out…
****ing musicians, man. But they have an appeal.
Well he did, he had an appeal for 9 months, about as long as a pregnancy.
And then he came out.
Yeah. But I still hate him. I loathe and despise him…
I guess we should talk about the movie.
I want to tell you one more dishy thing that I would never tell anybody else. I just love dishing with you! This is another “Can you believe this happened to me?” story. “Why did this happen?” When I was going through all that shit about Richie, the person who took me to Al-Anon meetings so I could deal with Richie’s problems was Heather Locklear… She was having problems with her husband at the time, who was Tommy Lee, and he was clean at that point. She took me to these Al-Anon meetings because she recognized how much pain I was going through over Richie…and I cried on her shoulder when he was dating Cher after me… As soon as I was out of the picture, and in rehab, safely locked up in rehab somewhere, he moved right on to Cher…
What were you in rehab for?
[Addiction to] Halcyon. It’s a sleeping pill. I first got it from Richie because he was on them. I very quickly became addicted to them… They had a bad effect on me because they leave your body really fast so you fall asleep really fast but then the next morning, you get very anxious, or at least I did. It wreaked havoc on me. I was on them for 4 months, 4 or 5 months, and I had to go to rehab to get off them. I couldn’t get off them without a doctor. Halcyon’s been banned in Europe. It’s a really dangerous drug. One of my other great legacies from Richie Sambora. Really wonderful. What am I doing in the rehab? Why am I in the rehab?
You needed rehab from Richie Sambora.
That was part of it. I thought, “I’m going to go somewhere where he will never be able to reach me even though he’s too chickenshit to talk to me, and I’ll break myself of this habit of Richie Sambora.” That was what I was in rehab for. It really is odd, though, to have taken Halcyon for 4 months and end up in Hazelden, and see all these people who do massive amounts of drugs every day, walking around, and having people just supplying them with drugs, and functioning…
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Once there was this rock n' roll band rollin' on the streets
Time went by and it became a joke
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