During a recent trip back to my hometown, my carry-on luggage brimmed with gifts including several bags of dried sardines for my dog that I half-expected to be questioned by airport security about (alas, any judgement on their behalf was reserved). For personal items, I always keep it strictly to the essentials of phone, wallet, keys and a book. A book for the wait. A book for the journey. Between this and a favourite playlist, any environment becomes instantly more enjoyable.
For this excursion, I wanted something light and a bit mindless as my energy and focus would be spent taking care of my mother and also at least three dozen sessions of fetch per day with my dog Monty. Taken from the shelves of my growing home library, I selected a book I acquired over a decade ago during a time when I was still enchanted by the mystique of the rock star and their extravagant lifestyle of excess. For those who watch the clock with a regular 9 to 5, reading about fame, wealth and unapologetic debauchery can allow our id to live vicariously through the antics of others. Also, as a woman, there is another psychological aspect to it; that innate attraction to a bad boy, of which I have been guilty. Whether sparked by Elvis’ gyrating hips or Michael Hutchence’s raw magnetism, there is something transfixing about a man on a stage singing a song potentially about you - at least in your own mind.
The book I selected though is one that now told a different story as I read it through the lens of maturity. ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies’ (2007) by iconic groupie Pamela des Barres is a book I expect will never be republished as the contents of which would destroy the canonization we have built up around some of our idols.
It’s an explicit read.
I originally bought it for insight into the other side of the story that was being told in music biographies popular at the time. These were mostly written by (or about) men and narrated from a position of influence and ego. ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ was a different take with stories told by those whose admitted purpose was to “service the craft” rather than directly evolve it. Sex is involved, as is the currency of this particular muse, but reading between the lines to understand the culture behind it offers greater perspective on the changing mores of society (before and after), as well as the complexity of appreciating an artist’s body of work while remaining objective over their choices in life.
There is a chapter on Cassandra Peterson who started out as a Vegas showgirl and parlayed her talent into a career better known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark. A section on the, erm, “art project” of Cynthia Plastercaster is particularly entertaining. As is the tale of Pleather, a rare male groupie. But other parts of the book spoke of lived experiences that weren’t as glamorous as they were illusory. In an era when women have opened up more about their experiences with men, of assault and abuse that are all too common, some of the stories shared in giddy detail are unintentionally depressing.
Lori Lightning—the most disturbing chapter of the book as she was known as a “baby groupie”—talks of having Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin make her smoke entire packs of cigarettes until she would gag and had his entire tour crew complicit in hiding his illegal relationship with the teenager after the FBI started investigating. The author glosses over this instead focusing on how hurt and jealous she was when Page left her for Lori (rather than calling him out for statutory rape): “I wanted to blame her, but she was only thirteen-years-old.”
It’s hard not to compare to my own life of suburbia on the Canadian prairies, where the driving force of my middle school existence was to level up on Super Mario World.
The aforementioned Cynthia Plastercaster was so distraught from her experience with other members of Led Zeppelin that she refused to talk about it, beyond describing feeling “used and abused”.
And there’s a lot of Iggy Pop, including this story from Dayna of the Texas Blondes contingent: “I was with Iggy Pop for awhile … I was very young when he took me on tour, and finally his manager said, ‘You cannot be dragging a fourteen-year-old girl across state lines’ … I look back and think ‘What a pedophile!’.
I haven’t bothered to comment on the antics of those no longer with us.
A once thought-to-be light read instead got me rethinking my relationship with music, with whom I appreciate and place on pedestal, with how different stories—and different perspectives—change the narrative and legend of any one person’s life. During the past five years, tales such as these would have have resulted in public shaming and the probable demise of career (in their time, they felt accepted … and even encouraged). But music seems somewhat untouchable for the cultural conversation. We do not reflect on these instances in the same light that we do, say, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen or Harvey Weinstein. Unlike a film, music weaves through our life on a much more personal level which might be the reason we don’t confront the concept of our idols in the same way. Even though we should.
When I was finished, I placed the book back on its shelf to wait and see how it would read in another decade.
