Let's pause for a minute before you judge. You or someone you know probably spent real money today on something virtual to use on Farmville, Mafia Wars, or Sorority Row on Facebook. And it was probably nowhere near as cute as the outfit I bought to visit virtual Casablanca in Second Life. Exploring SL was fun but lonely, because most of the places I visited were empty. In the hunt for actual life forms, I found that the most popular activities seemed to be role-playing (steampunk, vampires, and urban death matches in the spirit of Fight Club were the most popular), shopping hunts where you went to a series of stores to get the next free item and ended up with a lot of ugly free stuff, and dance parties at European-style techno clubs.
I started visiting virtual music clubs to see what people listened to and got deep into research for my job. Based on the number of times I heard them played in SL, Buckcherry's "Crazy Bitch" and Hinder's "Lips of an Angel" were the two biggest songs of the year. This, coupled with the crazy European techno I stumbled upon at every turn, disappointed me. This place seemed full of people who liked music I wasn't interested in. But then someone told me about a place called Umbra Penumbra.
Umbra was the first indie rock—themed place in SL that I came across. Umbra was known for its re-creation of the famous mural from the cover of Elliott Smith's Figure 8, surrounded by a decor of urban grime and graffiti. The main attraction was the dance club, where DJs played every night. The avatars who DJed there played some really great indie rock. Everyone dressed like a hipster, some with more than just a nod to goth, but all with sophisticated avatars decked out in studded leather bracelets, hoodies, and skinny jeans. I started spending most of my time there, and soon I found a whole world of indie clubs, including the Doublewide (a white-trash trailer park for rockabilly and alt-country fans) and the Velvet (for snobs who liked indie rock and rarely acknowledged n00bs). Once I discovered these places, the whole secret kingdom of indie rock in Second Life threw open its doors for me. It reminded me of late-night underground clubs in New York, where you have to be pretty damn in-the-know to figure out they exist and then you have to become a regular to find out when something new is happening. The indie kids in Second Life really make you work for it, which is so indie rock of them.
Some would characterize Second Life as a place for losers who spend all their time online and can't get laid. However, a 2009 Harris Poll found that adults aged twenty-five to forty-nine are spending seventeen to eighteen hours a week on the Internet, so let's not pretend we aren't all spending a large portion of our time at home in front of the computer not getting laid. Sure, there are a lot of stereotypical gamers in the SL community, but it's great for record collectors, too.
I read music blogs to stay current and download the free tracks that sound interesting. I do this alone in front of my laptop. Finding new music these days can be a very lonely endeavor, but this wasn't always the case. Just look at the popular representation of teenagers and music over the last half century. Back in the (allegedly) good old days, The Honeymooners would gather around their radio to listen to the new Elvis Presley song or around their TVs to watch the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. By the '70s, teenagers were inviting their friends over to listen to the new Bay City Rollers vinyl (or Kiss, depending on how you rolled) and smoke pot. In movies in the '80s and '90s you could find kids hanging out in record stores, * but there were also plenty of kids sitting at home alone, calling in requests and dedications to their local radio DJs.† By the time Napster came along in the late '90s, the image of a teenager finding music was best represented by a lone figure sitting in her dorm room in front of a computer screen with university broadband.
Digital availability has turned many of us into gluttonous collectors with no discretion, so actually listening to and curating all the music we find is a time-consuming affair. I often find myself with a boatload of new music and nothing to do with it. At this point it should be apparent to you that I didn't quit Second Life when my research was complete. No, I am only marginally embarrassed to admit that Astrud Sands got totally sucked in and stayed. I stayed long enough to become an indie-rock DJ in SL. Suddenly I had somewhere to play all this music I'd been collecting for no reason. I stayed long enough to start several fights about Beatles vs. Stones during the course of conducting research for this book. At one point if my avatar walked into an indie club, the DJ would immediately put on a Beatles or Stones song, and the debate would commence. I earned the nickname the Professor, due to the little lectures and random nuggets of information I couldn't help dropping during my DJ sets. The best part has been having a place to talk to other people about music. For me, SL is like a music blog and social-networking site all mushed together with the option for totally cute digital outfits.
ROCK 'N' ROLL CONSORTS
IF YOU CHOOSE to be with a rock star, you're either a groupie or a wife. "Wife" is a broad phrase that includes all forms of committed relationships, since rock stars are not necessarily inclined to do such pedestrian things as enter into a legal union with their partner. For this discussion, "girlfriend" and "wife" are interchangeable terms, though it should be noted that neither one implies monogamy unless this is specifically brokered when you set the terms of involvement. Even then, you're likely to be disappointed. "Groupie" is the random girl in Topeka or Columbus or L.A. that a rock star sleeps with on tour. It used to be that groupies were exalted figures, known for their sexual prowess. These days they're anyone who isn't the wife or girlfriend. If you live in his house and are typically not invited on tour: wife. If you only see him when he's on tour: groupie. If a rock star has his manager call you in case of an emergency: wife. If he makes you mix tapes that start with the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale": groupie.
It's probably your natural inclination to be one or the other. As is probably obvious, I'm not so supportive of the groupie scene. In fact, when I finished reading I'm with the Band, a memoir by the ultimate groupie, Pamela Des Barres, I felt as though I had just banged my head repeatedly against a brick wall. It's not because of all the shocking sex with all the outrageous rock stars. That was hardly surprising. It's the way she talks about the men she's chased. Every crush becomes an imagined fairy tale in which she is a princess in need of rescue at the hands of some big, rich guitar god. She details going out of her way to please them, as if their happiness is more important than her own. She worships the ground these rock stars drag their amps across and devalues herself so completely that she doesn't set any boundaries, emotional or physical. A series of men including Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Chris Hillman (bassist for the Flying Burrito Brothers), Noel Redding (bassist for Jimi Hendrix), and Waylon Jennings all screw Pamela. Physically and mentally. And she doesn't just let them, she chases them down and practically begs for it. After most of her encounters, Des Barres writes of feelings of loneliness, of being unable to pay her bills, of despondent crying, of promises of visits and plane tickets that are rarely kept. She starts chasing rock stars before she turns eighteen and by the time she reaches the ripe old age of twenty-five, a new pack of groupies are on the scene, stealing her men and calling her an old lady. While it's laughable to be called old at twenty-five, they're right. Once you hit twenty-five, you're too old to put up with the bullshit rock stars dish out.
I can't wrap my brain around why she spent so much time throwing herself at men who are clearly interested only in using her—for sex, for inspiration, for distraction, for sport. How is it possibly fulfilling to be the proverbial extra baggage and, even worse, to get into the middle of other people's relationships, playing the role of late-night entertainment when the wife isn't around? Most of the time she isn't even the mistress, just the sad little one-night stand with about as much meaning as a slice of cheesecake. I wanted better for Pamela Des Barres. I wanted to show the 1960s version of her how to take charge of these aimless relationships that break her heart. I've since learned that you should be careful what you wish for. Dating a rock star never turns out how you imagine it should because t
hey're one big ball of ego and unexpected secrets.
HOW IT STARTED
I met a guy who happened to be in a band. A mutual friend posted to our Facebook walls that we were soul mates. When I told our friend that I don't believe in soul mates, she replied, "Neither does he! See how perfect you are for each other?" This is the sort of infallible logic girls use on each other, and it almost always works. I tried to restrain myself from initiating contact, but that's an impossible task when someone has been deemed your soul mate. The curiosity absolutely ate at me. I caved and messaged this Soul Mate to find out what he was all about. We talked about our matchmaking friend and the books we liked. We spent a lot of time comparing what we wanted to read, whose writing we liked, and what each of us recommended for the other. We didn't overtly flirt. We twinkled at each other from behind our book stacks. We lived thousands of miles away from each other on opposite coasts, so we started making plans to hang out at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music conference in Austin that we would both be attending in a few months.
WARNING SIGN: ROCK STARS WHO CARE ABOUT YOUR BRAINS
When Marianne Faithfull first slept with Mick Jagger, she was still married and had a very young son, but that situation didn't suit her at all. She'd been hanging out with the Stones because they shared a connection through manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and for over a year, she had been deflecting Jagger's advances. Oldham was the man who famously locked Jagger and Keith Richards in a room, refusing to let them out until they wrote a song. The result, "As Tears Go By," was too sappy for the Stones at the time, so Oldham gave it to Faithfull. It became her first hit single.
As the story goes, Faithfull went to watch the Stones at a show where Ike & Tina Turner opened. At the end of the night, a roadie drove off in her Mustang, so she, along with some others, stayed at the hotel. After an evening of drugs and a Roman Polanski film (a harrowing combination) people began leaving the room in pairs, until it came down to Jagger, Faithfull, and an Ikette (one of the Ike & Tina background singers) waiting it out to see who'd stay the night. It was like a game of sexual chicken. Faithfull claims she didn't give up and leave because she was too stoned to move, which is possible, but more likely it's just a coy retelling of events on her part. Eventually the Ikette realized it was not going to happen for her, and she took off. Jagger and Faithfull started chatting and went for a walk as the sun rose. Yes, this face-off took so long that by the time they were left alone, the sun was coming up. She tried to get to know him before they hooked up and asked him a series of questions about the King Arthur fable and where he thinks the Holy Grail is. According to her account, he gamely answered all the questions and then asked her, "Am I going to pass my A-levels, Marianne? What do you think?"
Charming, right? I am a sucker for verbal sparring. Faithfull tried the same thing with Keith Richards, with whom she later had an acid-trip sex romp after her adventure with Jagger. Richards asked her if she was still tripping on acid and then went right back to the seduction. He had sex with the girl his mate Jagger fancied, and at the end of their night together, he told Faithfull that she shouldn't pursue him because Jagger was into her. Straight and to the point. Faithfull wasn't up for chasing after Richards then, so instead she coupled with Jagger and began a four-year relationship that led her straight into the comforting arms of a heroin addiction for which no one ever suggested she seek help. Even the guy you don't know you want can win you over if he's got any sort of charisma, because by her own account Faithfull was madly in love with Jagger in no time flat.
Your average rock star is romantically hapless. He won't try to engage you with a conversation about your collection of books or the history of King Arthur. Not once did that happen backstage at a Mötley Crüe concert, as The Dirt (the legendary story of the disgusting and amazing inner workings of the Crüe) reveals. We certainly never hear Tommy Lee wax about being in love with Pamela Anderson's mind. In fact, other than Pamela, I don't think any of the women mentioned in The Dirt even have names, let alone brains. Most rock stars are about flat-out seduction via the music and then getting busy in a Burger King bathroom. Or at the local Hilton. Or in your roommate's bed. Rock stars like Jagger, who could pass the A-levels and literally charm the pants off you, are the guys who will do your head in. They make you feel special. But then, on tour, they're banging Pamela Des Barres. When you find out, they will write you an unbearably romantic song to suck you back in. The rock stars who are excited about your intellect are inevitably the ones who will turn up into down, confusing the issue until you don't know who you are or where you stand with them. At least Mötley Crüe was honest about why you got a backstage pass.
The Soul Mate and I met in person in Austin at the hedonist spring break for the music industry that is SXSW, where people party as if they were the rock stars they work with and stay drunk all day every day for a week. His band played an insane—but not out of the ordinary—ten shows in five days, so his free time was at a premium. After months of back-and-forth messages, we were both overflowing with excitement to meet one another, but we were also nervous and awkward. Our first night together was an intimate evening ... that we shared with fifteen other people, including his entire band. We all went to grab drinks and check out a weirdly awesome Asian pop band. We stared at each other from across the room for a while. I waited him out; my one truly girly move is to make the men come to me. It seemed fair that he should make the first move and start our awkward first-meeting conversation. As we chatted, we shifted back and forth on our toes and looked around the room—anywhere but at one another. Two drinks later we were in a knock-down, drag-out battle of wits over Gertrude Stein. I'm the kind of girl who usually gets bored with guys after six months, but he was the kind of guy I could imagine talking to forever.
By the end of SXSW we still hadn't managed to spend time together without a cast of dozens getting in the way. Apparently even marginal rock stars can't travel without an entourage. We planned to have a coffee the last morning we were in town. I got up early—no small feat considering how late I had been out drinking the night before—to put on my game face, but then he texted me that he couldn't make it because his band wanted to go to Target. Seriously, Target. There isn't a proper response to that kind of mundane blow-off, so I went with the nuclear option. I texted him back that he was a sucky soul mate. I went home and told the boy I was dating that I was ready to get serious. I dropped my sucky soul mate and his band's EP out of rotation from my iTunes.
WARNING SIGN: BROS BEFORE HOS
This is a moment that occurs in nearly every wife-of-the-rock-star story. At some point, usually when the relationship first hits the rocks, girlfriends and wives are banned from joining the tour. Any variety of reasons might be given for this directive, but the reality is that it gives the musicians the opportunity to drink copious amounts of liquor, boink groupies, and act like bad little boys with no one keeping score. It is actually a pretty understandable phenomenon. The road is full of strange hotel rooms, permanent midnight, and groupies who will do anything for a piece of their favorite star. If every day brings offers of no-strings sex with someone who only wants to please you, it can be difficult to keep saying no.
That alone can become a pretty serious threat to your relationship, but what happens when you find it's not the groupies getting in the way, but the band? Or the business manager? Or the personal assistant? When a third party manages to wedge their way between you and your rock star, it's only a matter of time before you find yourself exiled. Your rock star knows it's happening. In fact, he's most likely using the interloper for cover to avoid whatever it is about your relationship that needs avoiding.
Angela Bowie should have seen her problems coming when she proposed to David, couching their union as a business venture so as not to give her heart away. His reply was, "Can you deal with the fact that I'm not in love with you?" She should have ended it right there by walking away. Instead, they got married. By the end of their eight-year marriage, Angela was una
ble to get past David's fanatical personal assistant to speak to him, at David's own direction. Divorce via personal assistant is on par with being dumped by text message. This had to have been an especially hard blow to a wife who purported to be as creatively invested in her rock-star husband's career as Angela did.
Deborah Curtis, widow of Joy Division's Ian Curtis, paints a similar picture in her memoir, Touching from a Distance. In the very short life of Joy Division, Ian banned all women from their practices and tours, and after Deborah gave birth to their child, he wouldn't allow her to come to any of the band's shows. He used the creative process of writing songs, which was sacred time with the band, as cover for an affair. The stress of juggling both relationships triggered an increase in epileptic episodes for Ian, and after months of leading a double life, he committed suicide at the age of twenty-three. We'll never know why he took his own life. His untimely death wasn't due to any one thing, but likely a combination of feeling torn by his adulterous affair, his lifelong struggle with epilepsy, and the pressures that came with the increasing attention for the band.
This sort of dramatic ending doesn't just happen to underground band wives. One of the most famous rock-star wives in history, Priscilla Presley, was barred from Elvis's tour after the King's 1968 Vegas comeback. The next thing she knew, they were living separate lives. In her memoir, Elvis and Me, Priscilla paints a picture of herself as a child bride who had been under her husband's thumb since she was fourteen. When he forced distance between them, she found a sense of independence by taking crazy new-age classes—the two of them were pretty divorced from reality by the time they split—and developing her own interests. Elvis's "no chicks on tour" mandate ended up working against him when Priscilla asked for a divorce.
Record Collecting for Girls: Unleashing Your Inner Music Nerd, One Album at a Time Page 15