The Boy Who Should Be  A Pop-Star.  Tarka Cordell interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2004

Tarka Cordell is not a pop-star yet.  But if ever there was a boy who was born to be one, it is Tarka.  All the ingredients are present.  A memorable name.  A famous father.   Head-turning looks.  An accomplished musical talent, and a deeply sexy voice.  And if that wasn’t enough, a string of supermodel ex-girlfriends, (which includes Kate Moss). 
I have never met Tarka, but I’ve been warned about him.  He’s one of those people who know they’re gorgeous.  And play with it.  Before I prepare myself to fall for him, I call his stepmother Marina Guinness for advice.
          ‘I have a story,’ she tells me.  ‘When he was about eighteen,  I took him to the Blarney Stone.  We were just standing by the road, when a coach load of school girls pulled up.  The driver told us the girls had insisted he stop the bus, just so they could get a better look at Tarka.  That’s the kind of thing to expect.’
          When I google his name on the internet, one of the first stories that comes up is one about Kate Moss.  It suggests that at the time Kate was dating Johnny Depp, Tarka was already a rival for the supermodel’s affections.  Sure enough, he and Kate became an item when she and Johnny split. 
          Other mentions on the web include one about Vogue model Alicia Rountree who poses for his latest CD ‘Bimbo in a Limo’, photographed by Mary Mc Cartney, (daughter of Paul).  A few months ago, Vogue did a ten page spread with Sophie Dahl in Notting Hill, styled by Bay Garnett and featuring…. Tarka, in his sometime sideline as a male model.
          Maybe it’s inherited, maybe it’s Maybelline. I spot him immediately, as he wanders in.  It’s the silver hair, which he wears in a tousled just-got-out-of-the-scratcher style and the fact that he’s taller than most, and has a very cute face.  If Tarka were a horse, he would have been favoured odds-on. But despite all his obvious advantages, there has been no commercial success, to date.  And time is pushing on.  He’s already thirty eight.
His dad was legendary in the music business.  The late Denny Cordell produced Procol Harum’s ‘Whiter Shade of Pale’, The Move and the Moody Blues.  He also produced and signed Joe Cocker, Tom Petty and JJ Cale for his Shelter Record’s label. There is a photograph of Denny, at about the age that Tarka is now, taken in his studio.  He’s wearing a cream leather jacket, holding a cigarette.  He has the same smile, the same eyes, the same expression of good-natured charm.  According to Tony Visconti, Bowie’s producer, Denny was able to charm the birds off the trees, as well as being a bit of a genius.
Having just driven all the way from Cornwall, after staying up all night, the night before, Tarka is tired.  But no trace of that is apparent in his smooth, sunny countenance nor in his louche, laid back drawl. There is a gap between his front teeth which is irresistible, it shows when he smiles.  He smiles a lot.  And giggles.  And gives me rapt, undivided attention.
‘Commercially, you should be a great prospect’, I say.
‘Yeah,’ he agrees, settling into the sofa.  Utterly at ease.
‘So what went wrong?’
‘Maybe I’ll catch on in the next month or two!’ he giggles.  ‘I’ve always been a bit flaky. When you get into having a lot of fun, you don’t really work that much!’
  There has been a great deal of fun.  At the age of four, he was living in the Chateau Marmont, with his dad and a bunch of rock stars.  It was a Hollywood fantasy, but it was his reality.
‘It was a lovely way to grow up,’ he says, lighting his first fag.  ‘They were all really cool. And they treated me as if I was an adult.’
Denny and Tarka’s mother Mia split when he was four. Theodora, the woman who was to become Denny’s second wife, was giving birth to her son Tarquin on the same day, in the same hospital, where Mia was giving birth to Tarka. Later on, Denny married Theodora and Tarka and Tarquin became step-brothers.  And best friends.
‘We have never had an argument in our lives,’ Tarka says, proudly.  ‘Well no, that’s not true, we had one when he sold my Dr John record without asking me!’
After their parents split up, Tarka and his older brother Barney spent time in London, with Mia and time with Denny, on the road with bands, or at his home in Malibu, where life was one long party.
‘He was absolutely fucking loaded,’  Tarka tells me, gleefully.  ‘He was making more money than he knew what to do with!’
Denny was a rock and roller, with long silver hair, and leather jackets, and he wore an earring.  But he had some very old fashioned ideas.  He had been born in Argentina, but he was educated at an English public school and he wanted to give his sons a proper education.
‘I was sent off to school in England,’  Tarka says.  ‘To Harrow.  It was hell! But I think Dad didn’t want me to be a musician.  He wanted me to be a judge!  He had some grandiose ideas.’
          Spending time at boarding school meant having a dual life.  In Malibu, the kids surfed and skateboarded and ate hamburgers.  London was different.
‘London was very hard in the seventies, with punks and skins and stuff.  And then you would go to Malibu and it would be all sunny and people saying ‘Hey man?’ and seventeen year old girls coming on to you.  In England, it was always raining and everyone was trying to beat you up.’
Having finally escaped from school, he moved to LA.
‘I wrote a screenplay about a surfer who moved to London, and it was bought by United Artists.  They signed me up to do three screenplays when I was only eighteen.  They bought me a house up in the Hollywood Hills and a BMW and told me they were going to give me loads of money.’
Doors had opened, he admits, just because he was cute.
 ‘I was  seduced by the wife of a famous Hollywood producer who read my screenplay and showed it to Rob Reiner, who said it was the ‘Easy Rider’ of it’s day. That’s LA, man.’
For three years, Tarka wrote screenplays.  None of them were ever made.
‘  There are a million screen-writers that happens to, but at least I got some money. I knew it was all bullshit, eventually, but people were giving me houses and cars and stuff.  And lots of drugs.’
Eventually he got bored of sitting in a room, writing screenplays.  ‘I thought there must be more to life.  I was very pure and innocent back then, I was into purity and love and stuff.  So I just left and went to India for a year.’
Not to be spiritual and meditate.
‘No I rode a motorbike and took loads of drugs!  I had a great time. When I went back to Los Angeles, I made a few calls and everyone was like ‘Who?’’
Down and out in Beverly Hills, in a moment of synchronicity, our by then twenty two year old (and still cute) hero bumped into his destiny. 
‘ I met a musician called Johnny Perez and JP invited me to his studio in Culver City. I stayed there for eight months, slept on the floor, got fed, and did the sound.’
 In time, he learned to play guitar and they liked the way he played.
‘So someone asked me to join a band.  I produced them and they got signed.’
As a young man, he was also quite romantic. 
‘I just wanted to fall in love, that’s what I really wanted to do.  My heart was so crushed when I was in school.  And I was really into girls and I really wanted to be rich and fall in love.  Get married.’
I can feel myself falling.  I steady myself.
‘Did that not happen?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well then I got into rock and roll.  And moved to Texas and I  got into the darker side of life.  It isn’t all cherries and cream!  Heh heh heh.’
Denny, meanwhile, had moved to Ireland, where he established himself as a race-horse trainer with some success and produced the Cranberries first album.  He had two children with Theodora and having split from her was now having a relationship with Marina Guinness, with whom he also had a child, Finbar.  Tarka adored his little brother and bought him a jukebox. He visited whenever he could afford the air fare. 
‘ Ireland, at that time was probably the most civilised place in the world, because it was so pure and untouched. ‘It was heaven, absolute heaven.  And Denny was the greatest guy and I loved hanging out with him.’
Then, quite unexpectedly, Denny was diagnosed with cancer. Within two weeks, he was dead.  Tarka’s other great friend and role model was Denny’s old partner, Tony Secunda.
‘Three days before Denny died, I phoned Tony for my nightly chat and he had died.  Those were the two people that I had based my character on, so for two or three years after they died, I didn’t know who the fuck I was.’ 
The death of his father inspired him to seek out Evan Dando, the Lemonheads lead singer who was to become his next mentor.
‘I realised that what I  wanted to do was write songs.  I heard that Lemonheads record, ‘Shame about Ray’.  It made me decide to go and live in New York and write songs.  And the first night I arrived, I went out to dinner and Evan was sitting next to me. So we hung out for about two years, and I learned to pen a song.’
Evan Dando was also a close friend of Kate Moss. A good-looking, good-natured guy, in no real hurry to go anywhere, he and Tarka had a lot in common. 
‘He’s the most talented guy I have ever met,’ Tarka insists. 
‘He could sit down at a party, with his guitar and the whole room would come to a hush.’ 
Apart from effortless talent, the two boys had something else in common.  A way with the ladies.
‘When I was about twenty two, I started realising that girls liked me,’ Tarka admits. 
‘Has it warped your way of looking at the world?’ I ask.  ‘Do you use and abuse it?’
‘There was definitely a period in my life, right after my dad died that there were loads of girls.  But I’ve always been into girls.’
He met Liv Tyler, when he was twenty five.
‘Yeah, that was good!  But she realised that I was older than her step-dad and she dumped me.  That’s what she told me, anyway.  She was sixteen and I was twenty five, it was never gonna last.  God I wish it had!  Heh heh.’
And then there was Kate.
‘Yeah, I went out with Kate, fell very in love with Kate.  And that was nice too!  Heh heh heh.’
Despite the beautiful girls, Tarka wasn’t always lucky in love.
‘I was with a girl for five years and I was very in love and we broke up a few months ago.  Which has made me very sad, actually. I was just about to have a family with her and she left me, man!’
She is now seeing a close friend of his.  He swears he’s not bitter.
‘She was a complex creature but she was definitely the only person I have ever met that I have wanted to have kids with or settle down with.’
‘Not Liv Tyler or Kate Moss?’
‘No way!  Those girls are crazy!  They are beautiful and I love them very much, but no.  Maybe all girls are crazy,’ he adds, philosophically.
He’s slightly more bothered that no-one has released his record.  He and Barney have released ‘Bimbo in a Limo’ themselves.  But in order to record more material, Tarka wants a record deal.
‘I want some money! I would like a family one day. I’ve gotta make some money or I’ll be eating beans in a bedsit in Kilburn!’
Besides, he points out, he really does have something to say.
‘ I’ve lived a life that’s very true to my heart and that’s what’s in my songs. It’s about following your heart and believing in that.’
So what’s gone wrong?  Why is he not yet successful?  He ponders.
‘ I take things quite slowly.  I stop to smell the flowers and maybe I stopped to smell the flowers for a bit too long!’
This would appear to be true.  The next time we speak, it’s five thirty in the afternoon and Tarka’s just woken up.  I’ve called to ask him if he’s going to play a gig in Dublin, to promote the single. He says he’s thinking about taking the rest of the month off.  He reminds me of Linda Evangelista who wouldn’t get out of bed unless someone paid her ten thousand pounds. 
‘If someone gave me enough bread to make another record, I would be as happy as pie!’ he says.
‘How long are you going to wait for that?’ I enquire.
‘I’ll wait forever!’
‘Bimbo in a Limo’ is available from www.tarkamusic.com, as is the t-shirt.  The Denny Cordell Memorial Stakes is at Gowran Park, August 29.