The rock star Dave Davies wanted to have a “ménage à trois” with
In the anything-goes free-for-all rife among Swinging London’s 1960s heyday, Kinks guitarist Dave Davies was more than happy to share his girlfriend with one of the most cult figures of the UK counterculture.
Once The Kinks began playing shows in Europe, Davies would hook up with French actress and model Zouzou – real name Danièle Ciarlet, afforded her nickname due to the lisped pronunciation of ‘S’, ‘J’, and ‘Z’ – smoke weed and sleep with her whenever he was in town in Paris. How the news revealed itself is contested with contrary anecdotes, but it turned out Zouzou was also enjoying the company of another figure of the London rock world whenever he was passing through ‘gay Paris’.
As is cemented in rock lore, The Rolling Stones weren’t one to remain faithful. Aside from drummer Charlie Watts’ loyal marriage to Shirley Ann Shephard for nearly 60 years, The Stones camp seemed to forever hanker for each other’s partners.
Most famous was Anita Pallenberg, the Italian-German model and ‘It Girl’ who was with band founder Brian Jones before shacking up with guitarist Keith Richards while he was away in Morocco, to then reportedly nab a quick affair with Mick Jagger during the production of 1968’s Performance, the crime drama they both featured in.
It turns out Zouzou was also romantically orbiting The Stones. According to a 2010 Classic Rock interview, Davies was in Mason Yard’s Scotch of St James nightclub with Jones when he was speaking of his Parisian girlfriend. “He looked shocked: ‘What? You mean Zouzou?’” he recalled. “It turned out that he was seeing her too. So unbeknownst to both of us, we were involved in a strange kind of ménage à trois.”
However, his 1996 Kink autobiography tells a different story. In this version, a drunken evening between Davies and Zouzou led to his hotel room near the city’s famous Moulin Rouge and allegedly had repeated sex til the sun came up. During a period of pillow talk, Zouzou mentioned that she often enjoyed the company of Jones whenever he happened to be passing through Paris.
“To my surprise, I was actually turned on by this news,” Davies frankly confessed. “We half-joked about what would happen if both Brian and I happened to be in Paris at the same time… although there always seemed to be plenty of women to choose from, I said to her that I had always kind of fancied Brian and that it would be fun for the three of us to get together, ménage à trois. She then added that she had recently told Brian of our affair and that Brian had expressed similar feelings to her about me.”
Davies speaks candidly in Kink regarding his bisexuality, openly touching on brief flings with blues singer Long John Baldry and Ready Steady Go! presenter Michael Aldred. But the equally sexually libertine and fluid Jones just eluded the Kinks guitarist, never in the French capital at the same time and subsequently kept their fleeting fantasy exactly that.
Whatever potential there was for a Parisian threesome was dashed when Jones died not long after, found dead in his East Sussex swimming pool mere weeks after leaving The Stones in 1969.
