Manhattan nightlife had become what Minnelli describes in the interview as “a crazy-quilt group of New Yorkers,” who gathered regularly after the sun set. At its center stood the nightclub on Broadway and 8th Avenue where Minnelli held court, often clad in Halston.

“People think it was just a wild party,” Minnelli says today. “Yes, there was plenty of that. But what they sometimes forget is how creative that time was. Artists, designers, musicians, actors —everyone was mixing together. You might walk in and see Bianca Jagger, Halston, Elizabeth Taylor, Andy Warhol, and Frank Sinatra all in the same room. It felt like a collision of different worlds. It was chaotic, yes. But it was also incredibly alive.”

But as the club “burned baby burned,” something insidious was creeping further into Minnelli’s life: “Alcohol, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, amphetamines, and cocaine,” she writes.

“Overnight, it seemed, I’d gone from being an original ‘nepo baby’ to Sally Bowles—a hot mess of ambition, lovable quirks, crazy sex, and selfish manipulation,” she writes. “I had ‘trouble’ stamped all over me, because of the intensity I brought to everything. Somewhere, underneath all that, was the real me. But who was I now? I didn’t know. It was a hard question to answer when the spotlight was much brighter and more unforgiving than I ever expected.”

The same nightlife that produced legendary collaborations also provided a ready pipeline of pills, powders, and cocktails strong enough to flatten the horse Bianca Jagger famously mounted when celebrating her 30th birthday.

One oft-repeated story involves Minnelli showing up at Warhol’s doorstep. “‘Give me every drug you’ve got,’ I said, and he handed over some cocaine, marijuana, Valium, and quaaludes,” she writes. She did multiple rehabilitation programs, writing in the book’s prologue, “I’ve been sober for eleven years. It’s the greatest personal victory of my life.”

When asked whether revisiting those years felt painful or liberating, Minnelli answers, “It was both… Some of those years were chaotic and painful… But there’s also something very freeing about saying, yes, that happened—and I survived it.”

Maybe This Time

Minnelli’s love life often played more like grand opera: dramatic entrances, explosive duets, and the occasional spectacular collapse. “But you know that nothing is ever simple with me,” she writes. She goes on to recall her “passionate romance” with Martin Scorsese while starring in his film New York, New York in 1977, which became fodder for Andy Warhol’s famous diaries.