‘Groupie’ is a painfully misunderstood term. Too often thought of as nothing more than someone chasing an obsessive fantasy or a girl in the crowd throwing herself at the band, the idea of a groupie has always been more than that. To be a groupie is a time-honoured tradition.
“People don’t understand the term. They think of it as a slutty term, and it’s so not that all, it’s the opposite of that. It’s just love,” Des Barres tells. “It’s really another word for love and the love of the music and the people who make it.”
But some of them were a lot more than just one-night stands. Some of them got close enough to the musicians that they changed their lives. Some inspired song lyrics, some birthed their children—and every one of them got their stars in a whole heap of trouble.
Sable Starr was their pioneer. She was known as the “big groupie in LA.”Sable, it’s said, didn’t have to go out looking for rock stars. They came hunting for her.Sable was only 12 years old when she lost her virginity By the time she was 14, she’d been with every star from Iggy Pop to David Bowie.
Another famous one was Bebe Buell, better known today as Liv Tyler’s mother.
Before Buell became pregnant with Steven Tyler’s child, she was one of the most notorious groupies in the US. She got her start when ?” From there, she moved through Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, and more.
She was in an on-again, off-again relationship with Todd Rundgren when she got pregnant with Steven Tyler’s baby. For the first 11 years of her life, Liv Tyler even believed that Rundgren was her father—until she met Steven Tyler and realized how much they were alike. Buell didn’t tell her daughter who her real father was until Liv made her admit it.
David Bowie had strong links to the Baby Groupies of Los Angeles, and famous groupie Lori Maddox has repeatedly told the story of how she lost her virginity to Bowie when she was just 14. (Bowie was in his mid-20s.) Maddox doesn't have any regrets about her experience with Bowie, noting that she would continue to see him on and off for 10 years after their first sexual encounter.
Pamela Des Barres made a name for herself, working her way from Mick Jagger to Keith Moon. She became enough of a legend on the scene that her life ended up inspiring the movie Almost Famous.
She coined the phrase “band-aid,” after telling a reporter that groupies did more than just sleep with band members. They would “take care” of them while they were in town, she said, by taking them out shopping, stitching their shirts, and watching TV with them—and, of course, also by sleeping with them.
Pamela's book. was first published in 1987, I’m With The Band is the groupie bible. Growing up in California, she graduated from her teenage Beatlemania years into the realm of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa and The Doors. Brushing shoulders and locking lips with the artists we’ve come to herald as music’s greatest, lucky for us, she kept a diary.
“I’d always kept my diaries since being a girl,” she says of her writing, “but when I got involved with the people and was hanging out with them in these incredibly rare experiences I was having, I knew that people would be interested.” (excerpts from Faroutmag. - VMZ)
