TMS Muse of the Week: Anya Butler

(Express / Getty Images)

Sometimes you come across the life story of a real person and think, “How is this not the basis of a movie?” One of the instances were this happened to me was when I discovered an English heiress named Anya Butler. A brunette socialite no one knows about unless you have dug as deep into classic rock history and gossip as I have. No memoir, no documentary as a subject or commentator, and only one source with direct quotes [Andrew Motion’s 1986 biography The Lamberts, featuring Anya’s old boss Kit Lambert]. Fascinating for someone who was a second tier heiress to Cadbury Chocolate [the biggest chocolate chain in the UK], and muse/significant other to at least three legendary musicians [Pete Townshend, Brian Wilson and Chris Hillman], making her one of the most elusive ladies in the rockstar relationship realm. There is so little info out there on Anya that you have to go on family history tree websites to find anything on her background; such as thepeerage.com, which is a website that seemingly contains all the public records of every posh family that’s ever existed in Great Britain. Supposedly she was born Anya Beatrice Butler in 1942 and is a part of the Cadbury lineage through her father’s side of the family. There is almost as little information online about Anya’s parents, but if you Google her father, Richard Cadbury-Butler, you’ll find a slightly embarrassing Daily Mail article revealing he was once arrested for smuggling cocaine into London through chocolate delivery packages.

As for her connection to classic rock, Anya was a figure in the histories of the Who, the Byrds, and to a lesser extent the Beach Boys. While Anya herself wasn’t interested in being interviewed or selling her stories [probably because she already had her own money], there is a handful of people in the music industry who have spoken about her; primarily Pete, former Who producer Shel Talmy, rock historian Johnny Rogan, and Anya’s old best friend Gail Zappa. It’s funny to think Shel producing the Who’s mega influential single ‘My Generation’ in 1965, as well as their whole debut album of the same name, was because of Anya, since she was doing some part time secretary work at Shel’s local record label, Orbit-Universal. The young lady recommended the up-and-coming band through her friendship with Who band manager Kit Lambert, whom she initially met through Kit’s managing partner, Chris Stamp, coincidentally also her childhood neighbor. In no time, the Who broke through internationally and Anya left OU to be Kit’s fulltime PA which also included some PR work of the mod/hard rock band. In Pete’s 2012 autobiography, Who I Am, the songwriter revealed he and Anya had a fling during the production of the ‘My Generation’ LP that left a big impression on him. The tracks ‘A Legal Matter,’ ‘Much Too Much’ and ‘The Good’s Gone’ are supposedly inspired by Anya. Though Pete refers to Anya as “much older” than him in his book, if she was born in 1942 [the year on her gravestone], then she would have amusingly been born only three years before Pete. Later in the memoir, the guitarist also credits the assistant for saving his life in 1970, when he was considering jumping out of a hotel window during a depressive episode.

While mingling within the British Invasion scene, Anya also befriended an American model-turned-groupie named Gail Sloatman whose family lived in England when her father was stationed on behalf of the US Navy. Gail was also interested in modern rockstars by the time she was a young adult and tagged along with Anya to New York and eventually California where the latter was traveling to plug the Who’s latest singles. While in Los Angeles, the gals discovered Hollywood and the growing Laurel Canyon community, and decided to stay in SoCal rather than return to London. In Victoria Balfour’s 1986 book Rock Wives and in Pamela Des Barres’ 2007 groupie chronicle, Let’s Spend the Night Together, Gail mentions Anya had a thing with Brian Wilson after the Beach Boys met the girls while appearing on the same radio program in early 1966. This is just a little awkward since Brian was actually married to first wife Marilyn Rovell at the time. And speaking of Pamela, Anya’s also referred to numerous times throughout I’m with the Band (1987) as one of the wives Pam was jealous of her during her groupie years. Not long into her affair with Brian, Anya and Gail met Chris Hillman and David Crosby of the folk-rock group the Byrds while strolling the Sunset Strip in summer of ’66. Anya would eventually marry Chris in autumn 1967 until September 1968. The first song Chris ever wrote and composed by himself, ‘Time Between’ on the Byrds’ 1967 LP ‘Younger Than Yesterday,’ was about the bassist struggling to be away from his future wife while the band was on the road. During their relationship, Anya attended the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967 where the Byrds performed; was present during sessions of the group’s albums ‘The Notorious Byrds Bros’ (1968) and ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo’ (1968); and was with Chris on the band’s ’68 summer tour when they controversially performed in South Africa while apartheid was still legal. Despite being such a huge part of his life and career, Anya isn’t mentioned at all in Chris’ own 2020 memoir ironically titled Time Between.

(via twitter.com)

This might not be a surprise to fans of Chris and the Byrds. The couple’s marriage abruptly ended at the same time the curly haired musician left the band in Sep. ’68 when he learned Anya was fooling around with the band’s main roadie Carlos Bernal, which is just so cringe worthy [and probably another reason the heiress didn’t sit for interviews]. By 1969, Anya was back in the UK working for Kit again and Chris formed a country-rock group called the Flying Burrito Brothers with old bandmate Gram Parsons. Anya might have been still inspiring music following the separation too, since the opening verse of the song ‘Juanita’ on FBB’s first LP ‘The Gilded Palace of Sin’ (1969) sounds a lot like the context behind Chris & Anya’s divorce. As for Anya’s life after the ‘60s, she helped run The Palazzo Dario in Venice, Italy when Kit owned it in the 1970s until his death in 1981, then married fellow scion, artist Rupert Forbes-Adam, that same year until her death in September 2004. Beyond that, there really isn’t much on what Anya did in her later years other than returning to England permanently after marrying Rupert and completely abandoning the music community.

Besides her semi-messy love life, Anya didn’t seem to have any vices regarding drugs. Gail even shared an amusing story where the Englishwoman once ‘freaked out’ when she was near weed and LSD at a party in the Canyons. You might naturally assume Chris holds a grudge against his ex-wife for her betrayal, but in John Einarson’s 2008 book Hot Burritos, Chris actually made a rare comment on Anya, referring to her as a “wonderful woman.” So go figure. Will Anya ever be properly profiled in classic rock history? It’s hard to tell since it feels like the Brit made an effort to be discreet. I personally would love if people from her circle continued to come forward with more stories [and especially more photos], as she seems so genuinely interesting. It would be a shame for her presence to be lost to time.