Leaning forward, P.P. Arnold stops talking and starts to sing. At 75, she has the same angular cheekbones and mesmerising voice as the elfin teenager who landed in swinging London in 1966.
Fresh from Los Angeles, she was scared, thrilled and entirely innocent as to what she would find.
“Why don’t they leave us alone, to live a life of our own,” she suddenly belts out.
As I am stunned into silence, she explains: “That song describes the situation of being in an interracial relationship at a time when it was a taboo, from a woman’s point of view.”
P.P., real name Patricia Cole, then tells me her lover at the time she wrote the track Though It Hurts Me Badly – her first white lover – was Mick Jagger.
Dubbed “London’s first lady of soul”, Pat made her name with hits The First Cut Is The Deepest in 1967, followed by Angel Of The Morning.
She had arrived in England after leaving LA’s tough Watts neighbourhood as an Ikette, one of the backing singers for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, who were then supporting The Rolling Stones on tour.
By the time she was 17, she had already had two children with an abusive husband she was desperate to escape.
She’d had to beg permission from him and her father to join The Ikettes in 1964, initially leaving the children with her mother before they later joined her in London. She knew nothing of the Stones.
She learnt fast.
In her new book, Soul Survivor: The Autobiography, she reveals for the first time how Mick became a friend and lover, and claims she became pregnant by him, making the devastating but mutual decision to have an abortion.
But although infatuated, she insists she knew their fling would never go further, not least because of their mixed-race relationship.
Mick also had plenty of lovers, plus a girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, who would on occasion join them in bed, Pat claims.
And Pat herself, keen for freedom and fun, also had her share, including Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart and Small Faces’ Steve Marriott.
She insists: “I was not a groupie, I was an artist, and I was picking and choosing who I wanted to sleep with.
“And I was crossing a very taboo line as a black woman.
“Mick Jagger was cool, he was a busy boy, he’s fun, and he was very kind to me.”
The Stones frontman, who she hasn’t seen since the mid-eighties, used to come and dance in The Ikettes’ dressing room where they giddily taught him moves like the Mashed Potato.
He took a shine to Pat.
She recalls being invited to his car, where she experienced the full force of chasing, screaming fans.
“He made me laugh, I made him laugh, he had a beautiful free spirit and opened the door to me experiencing life outside racist, segregated America,” she remembers fondly, laughing as she says it.
It was the first time, she admits, she had experienced loving sex, and assures me – more laughing – there was a lot that had to be cut from the book. “In that sort of gentle kind of… it was just different,” she says. “In a not-controlling kind of way.
“He brought me out for sure,” she says. “He was very adventurous. But he knew how shy I was. He knew I wasn’t going to go as far or whatever, but he respected that about me. He helped me in many ways.”
One way was to convince her to leave The Ikettes. They may have been an escape route, but Ike was abusive too, especially towards Tina. Mick convinced her to record with the Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham for Immediate Records.
Mick was never going to be “her man” though. She wasn’t jealous. She admits she wasn’t completely comfortable with the occasional threesomes, but Marianne was a friend, they went shopping together. So why not try?
But she explains: “I wasn’t really into women, it was a nice experience, it was cool and she was sweet, but I was into Mick.” She admits Stones guitarist Brian Jones was worried. “Brian was very kind because he thought Mick was a bit of a cad,” she says, raising an eyebrow.
Certainly the decision to terminate was devastating. Mick was on holiday with Marianne when Pat found out.
The singer strongly believes in a woman’s right to choose, but admits: “I am not proud of abortion on any level.
“If I’d had this consciousness when I was younger I probably wouldn’t…”
Pat trails off. She has struggled since with that and another abortion she had as a teenager with her ex husband. Painfully, she admits dreaming of the babies she lost.
But she adds: “I did not come to England to have a baby with Mick Jagger. I told Mick, ‘I’m really, really sorry to lay this on you but I’m pregnant, what are we going to do about it?’ We both decided the best thing was an abortion.
“Mick was upset – but he didn’t come back from his holiday,” she claims. “He sent me flowers, he called me every day.”
Although she says she and Mick remained lovers on and off for a while, she moved on.
“I wasn’t going to just be sitting about just being Mick and Marianne’s delight,” she explains.
She and Jimi Hendrix became close.
“We were both going through this experience of suddenly being in swinging London and integrating.”
Marriott was another lover, and she also duetted with Rod Stewart in more ways than one, she claims, but isn’t so complimentary of him.
“Me and Rod had a bit of a love-hate relationship,” she says, pulling faces.
Ultimately, Pat’s burgeoning career faltered within a male-dominated music industry in which she had little control over her material.
A second album with Bee Gee and friend Barry Gibb and Eric Clapton was shelved. Moving between the UK and US with her children, marrying again, then separating, Pat has overcome tragedy, including the death of her daughter in a car crash.
Her career returned to backing vocals, then musical theatre.
In 2017, she finally won permission to release material recorded with Gibb and Clapton. Last weekend, she performed at Glastonbury.
“I like to think of myself as a thriving soul survivor now. I do have control.”
On her sixties’ fun, she has no regrets, saying: “It was about me making sure I was doing what I wanted to do. We were all free spirits.”
Again, that infectious laugh of hers.
*Soul Survivor: The Autobiography by P.P. Arnold is out 7th July RRP £22 (Nine Eight Books)
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