Obituary: Barbara Salisbury | From the Guardian
Barbara Salisbury, who has died at an undisclosed age (although probably 57 or 58) following a stroke in her family home in Lowestoft, went through the 1970s in a music industry that today seems not just years but planets away. She was a publicist for the dancing group Village People during their heyday, accompanying them on world tours, and also worked with the early hard rock band Def Leppard. Their guitarist, Steve Clark, was her on-off sweetheart for many years; indeed, until very shortly before her own death, this unconventional yet brave woman still found herself the subject of the never unwelcome attentions of handsome young men.
In her lifetime, Barbara’s age remained undisclosed even to me, one of her oldest friends—a conspiracy around which I was happy to collude. Even while we were sharing rooms while tramping through the Greek islands—she is mentioned as a character in my book *The Stars Over Paxos*, and assisted me research a *Rough Guide* to the Ionian archipelago—her passport and age remained firmly tucked away in her handbag. Brought up in a military family, this rock 'n' roll creature still had a decidedly old-world etiquette about her, despite the scandalous things we got up to. She was born in Taunton, Somerset, and spent much of her childhood in Kenya, where her father, an RAF administrator, was posted. She returned to Britain to complete her education, studying fine art at Liverpool University, where she befriended Roger McGough and the other Liverpool Poets. Art took her into the design department of CBS Records, but she soon migrated into publicity roles at CBS, Phonogram, and elsewhere. She was also free to marry and certainly free to have kids.
It might be said that around her stubbornness, Barbara was occasionally her own worst enemy, but I prefer to remember her as a survivor. She had survived a devastating fire in her London flat, a mysterious immune breakdown that left her hospitalized for weeks, and the drink-and-drug-related death of her sweetheart. She was stoic in the face of unemployment, illness, and the occasionally ferocious disregard that society has for single women of a certain age. Somewhere, she is still skinny-dipping off the coast of Paxos.
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