Random Rock N' Roll Groupies Reveal What Lifestyle Is Really Lik (14 items)

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  (#1) Groupies Considered Themselves Muses To Rockstars

  Groupies played many roles. Some were sexual partners, others tended to rock stars' health, some took care of clothes and other needs. But some were muses. Chris O'Dell was the subject of multiple songs, and the presence of other women helped stoke the creativity of some of rock 'n' roll's most famous musicians. In an interview with The Guardian, Pamela Des Barres described how she served as a muse to musicians like Keith Moon: 

  I was Keith’s LA girl, and there was no doubt about it. I knew that whenever he came to town, he’d call no one but me. He was such a needy soul… I was a stabilizing thing for him. When he’d wake up screaming... I could calm him. It was my duty as a muse to take care of this brilliant genius who inspired so many.

   While she doesn't shy away from the groupie label, Des Barres feels the stereotypes don't capture the real role that women like her played in rock history. As she told Salon:

  I’m still trying to set that word [groupie] straight because all it means is just a music lover who wants to be near the band. Period. That’s all it means, in whatever capacity. Sexual? Sometimes yes, but also friends, helpers, assistants, guides… we wanted to uplift and enhance these people who moved us so much. That’s all that a groupie is. They are music-loving muses.
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  (#2) Drug And Alcohol Abuse Was Pervasive

  Drugs and alcohol were inescapable in the music scene of the '70s, particularly around the Rolling Stones. Chris O'Dell's ability and willingness to take drugs impressed Keith Richards, who said she could keep up "just like a guy." Her drug use reached such a point that it became a serious problem and led to a "rock bottom" moment after touring with the Stones. As she told ABC News:

  It started with the Stones tour and then it just kind of kept on going. The tour was over, but I kept on going, and I kept on going by basically trying to find the perfect high, trying to find the perfect balance. So it would be, you know, do a line of coke or a couple lines of coke, and then that would be too edgy so it would be OK have a Quaalude or a Seconal, something that kind of pulled me down or pushed me down. Then I'd get too down so I'd have to do something more and then by the evening I was using alcohol to also take the edge off.

  So it was always looking for that perfect balance, but never finding it.

  She said that substance abuse was so extreme and normalized that "we just thought that was getting high and people who died died because they just didn't know how to stop."
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  (#3) The Line Between Employee And Groupie Was Hazy

  Even though some point to her as the epitome of a groupie, Chris O'Dell doesn't like to call herself one. She considered herself an integral part of the music business. In 1968, the Beatles' press agent Derek Taylor invited her to move from Los Angeles to London for a job working at the Apple headquarters. She told ABC News in 2009:

  I needed to do something different, and I loved music. But it was totally by accident that I ended up working at a record company and met Derek Taylor, who was The Beatles' press agent. [He] was going back to London at Apple, and we became friends, and he said "Why don't you come over?"[...] Paul came in, and I could hear his voice through a wall, and it was like "Oh my gosh." I walked out of the door, and there were John and Yoko sitting there, and it was the most fabulous day because they went from being like these magazine photos and these people I'd seen on TV to being real live people.

  She quickly moved up the ranks at Apple from cutting out newspaper clippings about the band every morning to becoming George Harrison's personal assistant. From there, she became a confidant, manager, and sometimes sexual partner to some of the biggest names in rock music. And while she might not think of herself as a groupie, that's not meant to disrespect others.

  She told ABC News, "I don't want to use [groupie] in a derogatory way because I think those girls, the majority of them, were really very strong fans, which I was, but also I worked, and I worked really hard, and I became a friend."
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  (#4) Many Former Groupies View Their Relationships As Consensual

  When asked about the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, Pamela Des Barres told WWD that she thinks there is a big difference between the power imbalance in Hollywood and the atmosphere of the music scene she participated in:

  You could name many, many people who you could wonder, “Wow, what did they get up to?” but you know, the girls, a whole lot of the women, most of them, who were involved in rock ’n’ roll and considered groupies, put themselves there. They wanted to be with these guys. These guys, unlike these directors or producers, even actors coming under scrutiny now, these girls wanted to, they tried to meet [the musicians], wanted to be with them, wanted to be backstage. They didn’t have to fight anyone off; it was quite the opposite! So, it’s quite different. And yes, there have been younger girls [who were groupies], a long time ago, not so much now at all, but way back when, when things like that were seen as permissible in a certain part of society. But these girls were very happy about the fun they had with these guys. It’s very memorable. It’s a very wild and extreme experience. It’s very unforgettable when you hang out with these people, especially when it’s the way I did, a very high level - on stage with the band, traveling with them, things like that.
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  (#5) Groupies Had Front Row Seats To Music History

  Chris O'Dell's role as both a personal assistant and a close friend of rock legends like The Beatles meant she was present for some of the most important moments in rock history. She witnessed the moment when George Harrison confessed to Ringo Starr that he was in love with Ringo's wife. As O'Dell tells it:

  When George finally told Ringo that he was in love with Maureen, Ringo's response was, "Well, better you than someone else." And you know, I think that sort of ... it's like OK at least it's not somebody that we don't know.[...] It's all in the family. And I think that's kind of the way it was at that point.

  She even got to see the Beatles' last performance together on the rooftop of Apple Records from a seat next to Yoko Ono and Maureen Starkey. As she described the legendary music moment:

  It was freezing cold. I mean that I remember more than anything - how cold it was up there. But also, it was just so exciting to think originally the idea was that they were doing it so that everybody in the whole West End of London could hear the music, and in fact, the amps weren't that big. So, the people on Saville Row could hear it, and it was fun to watch them looking up trying to figure out what was that?
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  (#6) Jimmy Page Asked One Groupie's Mom For Permission To Date Her

  Sex was a big part of the music scene, but some were seeking deeper relationships, too. According to Lori Mattix, her relationship with Led Zeppelin founder Jimmy Page was more than just a fling:

  I was underage and couldn’t travel with him. So I would stay in the room and wait for Jimmy. At that point, I was 15 and totally in love with this man. I put him on a pedestal. It became so serious that Jimmy asked my mom for permission to be with me. 

  Page and Mattix saw one another for some time until she caught him sleeping with Bebe Buell:

  I didn’t know [Buell] would steal my man. I had a key to Jimmy’s suite, walked in, and saw them in bed together. I looked at him and said, “What did you do to me?” I never trusted him again. He was like a god to me and instantly destroyed this whole image I had of him. [...] That was an awful night. I don’t even like thinking about it. My relationship with Jimmy ended, and my heart was shattered. It was hard for me to trust again. He will always be one of the great loves of my life.
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  (#7) On At Least One Occasion, A Groupie Got To Rescue A Rockstar

  Bebe Buell, Liv Tyler's mother, hooked up with Steven Tyler when he called her from a hotel, unable to get himself out. They were already friends, so Buell was happy to help him out. According to Buell:

  [Steven Tyler] was in New York for some basketball game, and I was at my friend Liz Derringer’s apartment. She was married to Rick Derringer, and I used to sleep there when Todd [Rundgren] was on the road. At 3 o’clock in the morning, Steven calls and says, “Bebe, come get me. I’m at the Pierre hotel, and I can’t walk. And I’m the only white person in the room.” I said, “You can handle that.” He said, “No, you don’t understand, they can do a lot more drugs than I can.” So I went up there, knocked on the door, and it was a room full of seven-foot-tall men. Steven really could not walk, and I had just taken this fireman training class, because Todd was worried if we ever had a fire how I would get out of our townhouse. I threw Steven over my shoulder and took him to Liz’s, and we threw him in the bathtub. Finally, he woke up and Liz said, 'go sleep in our room.' I always joke that I think my daughter was conceived in Liz and Rick’s bed.
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  (#8) It Wasn't Always A Party Around The Bands

  Being around famous rock stars wasn't always pleasant. According to Chris O'Dell, many of the musicians she knew during her time as a personal assistant and tour manager were less than kind to one another and the various people who hung around backstage.

  Eric Clapton, in particular, was a tough hang when sober, and O'Dell said he struck her as "very lonely and very empty." She had even more insight into the Fab Four: 

  I think there was [a nasty side] to all four of them. Some of it was that Liverpool way, that sarcasm, and part of it was that they discovered that they could say anything they damn well wanted and they could get away with it. And people didn't know how to respond.
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  (#9) Women Were Expected To Sleep With Rock Stars, Even If That Wasn't Their Job

  Whether employed or just a fan, groupies were expected to tend to the needs of the bands they followed. When working with the Rolling Stones, Chris O'Dell said the contract might as well "have included a [provision] that went something like this: 'Sleep with Mick whenever he asks.'"

  But O'Dell's relationship with Jagger didn't happen on his order, even if she described it as part of the job. In her words:

  It just seemed sort of natural to be honest. We were very close. We were together every day. I spent every day at his house, probably seven days a week, you know, into the evenings, into the studios. I was the person he turned to. I went to parties with him and everything.
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  (#10) Groupies Did A Lot Of Different Odd Jobs While On Tour

  Being a tour manager for big bands was part party, but also part work. Though Chris O'Dell enjoyed partying during her time as a manager for the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, she was also an employee and part of the tour crew. That meant she needed to be on hand for anything from sewing buttons onto Bob Dylan's shirt to returning harmonicas via helicopter. According to O'Dell:

  Bob Dylan forgot his harmonicas, and so we kind of went oh, 'OK.' We got his harmonicas, and then George called back, who was staying with Bob at the Isle of Wight, and said, "Well, just take a helicopter down." So we went from going to catch the train like regular people to flying in a helicopter with Bob Dylan's harmonicas to a farmhouse. And landing basically in the backyard. And as we were coming down in the helicopter, there's Bob sticking his head out the bedroom window upstairs kind of watching us, and I thought, this is a reverse.
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  (#11) It Was Hard To Break Free From The Cycle Of Drug Abuse

  According to Chris O'Dell, chasing the "perfect high" trapped her in a vicious cycle. O'Dell barely remembers 1979 through 1983, as these years were when she was deepest into drugs. She documented these fragmented memories in her memoir, where she refers to this time as her "lost years." She described her lowest point in an interview with ABC News:

  I was supposed to go see my hypnotherapist, who I was seeing for who knows what actually. It should have been drugs, but it wasn't. And I couldn't get to the car. I couldn't get down the stairs of my apartment. I had taken enough Quaaludes that, well, I couldn't manage the stairs.

  Though O'Dell realized she needed to quit, her friends in the industry weren't supportive.

  I did try to stop, and the people around me were like saying, "Oh, come on, you're so boring" or "Come on, O'Dell. Let's, you know, have a little." A lot of that. So the pressure was definitely there.
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  (#12) Misogyny And Double-Standards Ruled The Music Scene

  The word groupie itself is a loaded term; it implies that women who hung around bands were doing it for sexual attention and proximity to fame rather than for love of the music. Women like Chris O'Dell and Pamela Des Barres participated in the same activities as the men hailed as musical heroes, but were dismissed as hangers-on rather than peers.

  O'Dell believes that some of it stemmed from innate misogyny:

  There was definitely a misogynistic attitude. Look at their women - so afraid of other women because they thought they were going to take their man away. The feminist movement hadn't hit then. I don't think that women today would put up with it.

  Many women from the music scene object to that label because of the baggage it carries. As Bebe Buell said in an interview:

  I get really angry at people who just dismiss these girls as whores or groupies or crappy labels they want to throw at them. They were more than that. They were darling, sweet girls that would greet you at the airport with flowers and invite you to all of these wonderful things... Forget it, you would have a blast. They were just really nice girls. They were not mean girls. I've had anger toward some of the things they've done when they were kids, but I was a kid, too, so I can't judge people.
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  (#13) Some Groupies Went On To Become Successful Musicians

  Though not every groupie had aspirations of being a musician, many did. Pamela Des Barres and six other women known in the LA rock scene formed The GTOs (short for Girls Together Outrageously), and Bebe Buell became a successful singer and model in addition to her relationship with Steven Tyler. She had a child (Liv Tyler) with the Aerosmith frontman and also crossed paths with Todd Rundgren and Hugh Hefner in her heyday. Buell told Rolling Stone how she got into songwriting after forming a friendship with Patti Smith:

  I wrote poems a lot and instantly became friends with Patti Smith, who had dated Todd. She and I hit it off like a house on fire. We’d show each other our poems. She wasn’t a singer yet, but I’d go over to her loft on 23rd Street, and she had this big mirror, and together we’d put on Raw Power and pretend to be rock stars. She was super smart. She took one hit of pot and what would come out of her mouth was like heaven drenched in chocolate. The chick was brilliant. She was my first strong female influence.

  Buell also described how she has dealt with the groupie label for most of her career, saying:

  I’ve been battling labels and name-calling and shaming for a long time. When you’re a successful model and then you do Playboy, and then turn around and say you’re more of a singer than a model, people roll their eyes.
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  (#14) Some Groupies See Modern Celebrity Culture As An Evolution Of The Groupie Lifestyle

  Lori Mattix was considered a "baby groupie," one of the younger girls in the music scene of the '60s and '70s. Even though she was still in high school at the time, she slept with rock stars like Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger, and lost her virginity to David Bowie at 14.

  She told Thrillist that even though those relationships are considered profoundly problematic today, she sees them as a direct parallel to modern celebrity culture: 

  You need to understand that I didn’t think of myself as underage. I was a model. I was in love. That time of my life was so much fun. It was a period in which everything seemed possible. There was no AIDS, and the potential consequences seemed to be light. Nobody was afraid of winding up on YouTube or TMZ. Now people are terrified. You can’t even walk out your door without being photographed. It has become a different world.

  But, I should add, things haven’t really changed. Look at the Kylie and Kendall Jenners, the Gigi Hadids. They are the modern-day versions of teenage groupies. The only difference is that the Internet blows them up in a way that allows them to make a fortune. And then there’s Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and all those kids who were f*cking partying at 15. It is just a different era. It has evolved into something else. 

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