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 espite the derision heaped upon them, groupies have been rock's pilot light since the '60s, faithfully keeping the drummers and bassists and guitar gods turned on between sets. Without groupies, there would be no Elvis pelvis swivel (taught to him by his groupie Tura Satana, a.k.a. Miss Japan Beautiful) or permanent genital molds of the most important musicians of the day, courtesy of Cynthia Plaster Caster. My god, there would be no Elvira! Her television persona was played by Cassandra Peterson, who no doubt drew on her days as a rock-and-roll groupie when she created the punk-gothic character.Pamela des Barres, a member of the '60s "groupie group" the GTOs, chronicled her
Why was being a groupie considered a status symbol in the '60s and '70s, when today the word is often used as a pejorative? Well, it was new. I mean, groupies had always been around, but they were more like bobby soxers — fans clamoring outside the backstage doors, but they didn't really get in. As soon as we actually started making contact with these guys and hanging out with them and becoming part of the scene, we had status. Robert Plant was always saying how important girls like the GTOs were because we created a vibe for them. Cassandra points out that for bands on the road, groupies were like their home away from home. Exactly. They would see the same girls in the same towns over and over again. It made them feel comfortable. She talks about taking Steve Miller and his band to the zoo in Colorado Springs. She took Queen antique shopping. I used to take Zeppelin shopping! So how did that work? You'd just take these guys to the mall and it was totally normal? Kind of. We'd get some stares, but in those days people just did not come up to people and bug them. And I took them to cool vintage stores and Nudies Rodeo Clothing. We did not go to the mall. It doesn't sound at all the way some people make it out to be, as if groupies are just naïve little girls being exploited and corrupted by these rock gods. Did it ever seem that way? Maybe on occasion they might have been, but for the most part the girls are exactly where they want to be. What do people think? That these guys go out and hunt the groupies down? Right. It's not the rock stars who are hunting the groupies. Well, I was hunted. Many of these groupies had strikingly normal long-term relationships with these rock stars. It wasn't just about fucking them on the tour bus between shows. Yeah, they'd end up marrying them and everything. Unfortunately, it's the modern girls who end up on the buses. Now there's a lot of tour-bus activity. That probably started in the last ten years or so. Back then, there were no buses. Led Zeppelin would not sit on a bus, let me tell you that right now. They had their own jet. So there was a real sense of hope that, as a groupie, you could actually end up marrying a rock star. Oh yeah. These girls want a relationship with these guys. They want to be near the inspiration that makes them feel like that.
But still, sex was definitely a part of the groupie experience. I love the story Patti D'Arbanville tells about Cat Stevens buying her a full schoolgirl uniform and having her put it on right there and then fucking her in the alley right next to the clothing store. Do rock stars tend to have more eccentric sexual predilections than most people? I think they're more creative in every way. They're more open. It's just their nature. I think their sexual freedom of expression is similar to what they're doing creatively. But Yusuf Islam is probably not going to run out and buy this book. Mercy Fontenot describes defecating in a bucket while Chuck Berry took pictures of her. Well, there are those fetishists out there. You know, [Chuck Berry] was sued for having cameras in the toilets of his restaurant. People have these fetishes, and Mercy complied. I mean, it was Chuck Berry. She wanted to carry his guitar. Are you not truly a musician's groupie until you've had sex with him? The connotation is that you have to have sex with the rock god to be a groupie, but it doesn't always have to be that. A lot of girls just like to hang with them backstage. It's a meaningful exchange, whether they have sex or not. But I think the goal is to get intimate with them, yeah. And hopefully that leads to something else. I mean, people like [modern groupie] Tina King for instance. Maybe she thought she was going to end up with Kid Rock — she probably would have liked that, but I don't know that she expected it. Dee Dee Keel was nuts. She had sex with everyone. Jeff Beck, Cozy Powell, Van Halen, Motley Crue, the entire Hollies band . . . just to name a very few. Yeah, she was pretty wild doing all the Hollies like that. She's totally proud of it,
But Cassandra is actually kind of virginal. She doesn't have sex with any of the guys. Yeah. I mean, I held onto my virginity till I was nineteen and a half. That's pretty amazing considering my history. People probably think I had crazy amounts of sex with these guys, but I wanted to fall in love, and Cassandra felt the same way. How did you manage to be a groupie without having sex? I was an oral-sex specialist. I'm like President Clinton: that doesn't count. One interesting thing that Dee Dee says in the book is that she didn't just want to hang out with the Rolling Stones, she wanted to be the Rolling Stones. Yeah, a lot of these earlier girls, they didn't have the option of being in a rock band, so the next closest thing was being a groupie. And Dee Dee stayed with them and everything. It was almost like being a part of the band. You could actually feel from the audience what the band felt — that's always a real important goal of the groupie, is to get on stage. There's one point in Dee Dee's interview where she talks about wanting to blow David Cassidy, who was infamous for his huge penis. So she invites David's wife out for a friendly lunch, gets their home phone number from her, waits till she goes out of town and then calls David at home and ends up going over and giving him the blowjob. Are sexual ethics different for groupies? I know that was pretty underhanded. But you know what? She doesn't seem ashamed of any of it. It's life. People do all that stuff in life too. It's not just in the music world. Is there an understanding between rock stars and their wives that while touring, the guy is going to be having sex with groupies? They don't like to admit it, but I think anyone who marries a musician knows that that's a possibility, for sure. But more and more lately, [rock stars] are getting involved with actresses and models, and I don't think those women are as accepting of the old rules that the groupies used to go by. Aspiring groupies write to you asking for advice. What do you tell them? I just tell these girls to go have a good time and try not to get their hearts broken. A lot of the girls who can't get in to meet [the musicians], I tell them to get into the industry somehow. You've got to become a DJ, a journalist, a photographer, intern at a record company, something like that, because it's much harder to meet these people now. Yeah, now rock stars are surrounded by handlers whose job it is to keep them from embarrassing themselves and ending up in the tabloids. It's not like a groupie can just pass them a note like they could back then. It's possible to still pass notes. It depends on the level of success of the band. If you can get with a young band on the ground level, a band that you're crazy about, you can continue that relationship whether it's romantic or friendly or whatever. I was always able to know who was going to be big. I had good taste. n° 
©2007 Nerve.com and Will Doig |
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