Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies

by Pamela Des Barres

  When I ask Cherry if she misses her former life and time spent with all those rowdy rock and rollers, she runs her hands through her tousled turquoise hair and grins, "I still love musicians, and always will. Rufus Wainwright is the love of my life now. Not that I date him, but if I were younger, he'd have been attacked already. He certainly wouldn't be a virgin for girls anymore, believe me!"

  A Groupie Lament

  By Cherry Vanilla

  Love at First Sight

  enny Bruce, the poster punk for fearless rule-breakers, C succumbed to heroin addiction exacerbated by much courtappointed ballbusting in August 1966. I was almost seventeen when I threw on Grandma's velvet finery and headed to Lenny's final resting place to pay my fledgling respects. After joining the colorful fray traipsing 'round the cemetery, I found myself at a tragically cool eulogy held in some hipster's backyard in Woodland Hills. I sat cross-legged on the ground along with many somber-faced groovers, while Lenny's peers paid him furious homage. I listened intently to Phil Spector, who insisted that Lenny had died "from an overdose of police." I tried to focus on the proceedings, but bright colorful splotches from another corner of the yard kept commandeering my attention.

  Quietly frolicking on the kiddie swing set was the rock master of unrepentant irony, Frank Zappa, wearing outlandish flowered bell-bottoms, accompanied by a lissome, wide-eyed doll. She was model-pretty, and obviously entranced with him, but plainly holding her own. Although it was a thrill to see the leader of the Mothers of Invention, live, in person, and on a swing, I was curious about the girl perched on his knee.

  The wives and girlfriends of my musical heroes were my heroines. I was too young to have appreciated Paul McCartney's freckle-faced actress lovebird, Jane Asher, and unsecretly hoped she would drown in the Thames, but I later revered the Rolling Stones' muses: Mick's cherubic Marianne Faithfull and Keith's wicked Anita Pallenberg, a disheveled dame who had settled on the guitar player after dallying with Mick and Brian Jones. Those cheeky dolly birds were in the center of all that mad music, proudly floating beside their satin-clad counterparts, privy to succulent secrets locked behind hotel room doors all over the world. I envied them ferociously.

  It was a couple months after Lenny's eulogy that I laid my Twiggified eyes on Frank Zappa once again. My childhood best friend Iva Turner and I were among the hippies and freaks milling around the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights, protesting the closing of our beloved club, Pandora's Box. Imminent danger wafted through the incensed air, but just before a hundred batonwielding cops trooped in formation toward us, I spied Frank Zappa in the kaleidoscopic throng. Instinctively, I reached out and touched his rowdy mop of hair, then turned to Iva and marveled, "It's soft . . ." My next Zappa sighting happened at the Cheetah Club, and I actually rolled around on the floor with Frank before being formally introduced to the glorious rock icon.

  I frequently danced at various Hollywood functions with an assortment of rambunctious girls called the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company. One of the dolls, Christine, worked as "governess" for Frank and his wife, Gail, taking care of their six-month-old daughter, Moon Unit. When she told Frank about her gaggle of newfound cronies, the ever-curious Mr. Zappa invited the five of us over for tea.

  Decked out to impress the maestro, we arrived en masse at the infamous log cabin in Laurel Canyon, which was once owned by 1920s Hollywood cowboy Tom Mix. His beloved four-legged costar Tony the Wonder Horse was supposedly buried under the bowling alley in the basement. Upstairs, there was a fireplace the size of a movie star's closet, and Frank sat nearby at his piano, creating works of cryptic splendor.

  We giggled and danced and showed off shamelessly for Mr. Zappa, but I kept sneaking peeks at Gail, who was busy making tea and snacks for her goofy guests, while Christine bounced baby Moon on her scrawny hip. Even when pie-eyed Miss Mercy stamped into the kitchen and gobbled up a stick of butter, Gail was gracious about the peculiar intrusion. She's got it all, I thought dreamily: a genius rock star husband, a house full of wild musicians, and her own little bundle of baby-joy cooing along with Daddy's brilliant jingles. How had she done it? With all the femmes on the prowl, how had she captured this coveted rock god?

  I have been friends with Gail Zappa for thirty-eight years now and have long known the answer to my ardent teenage question. She quickly became my confidant, guidance counselor, and mentor as I went through my endless groupie travails. Her distinctly droll point of view helped me to deal with my lamentable romantic foibles, and I still go to her for advice of all kinds. She's somehow able to cut through the dross and get right to the heartbeat of the matter. She has raised four superb people, Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet, and Diva, and is now Grandma Gail to Moon's baby daughter Mathilda. She also adored, protected, and tended to one of our most prolific, awe-inspiring musical masterminds, until his untimely death in 1993. I truly believe that Frank Zappa should, and will be, revered in the same way that Beethoven and Mozart are one day. Not only did Mr. Zappa compose astonishing music, he also wrote hysterically astute lyrics!

  Betwixt and between our endless pressing engagements, Gail and I somehow find the time to drink several cups of tea in her overstuffed kitchen. Gail has remodeled, but I remember exactly where the intercom was back in my governess days; when the sound of four-year-old Moon's sweet voice would wake me up, asking me to come in and make "breaktess," while Keith Moon waited impatiently in my little guest house, wearing my leopardprint spike heels.

  Gail has always laughingly referred to herself as a groupie, although her rock star dalliances ended when she met Mr. Zappa. "Being a groupie is a state of mind," she insists. "There was the negative side of groupies who only wanted to be with groups for the lifestyle. I remember going to a party and there were all these girls designed to find the pop star of their dreams, and hopefully get a castle in England in the bargain. They took groupiedom to a whole other level that you might call `professional: Groupies who just got lucky-girls servicing the bands. Then there were the desperate ones servicing the crew or anyone near the bandcousins, road managers, whatever."

  I mention that I recently spoke with the infamous Sweet Connie from Little Rock, a proudly unrepentant groupie with no qualms about tending to any and all backstage personnel. I think it's pretty cool that she makes no apologies for her behavior. "And why would she?" Gail wonders. "There are some people who might be outwardly remarkable for something they're known for, but someone else might recognize them as being so special that they take it to a higher level. They have much more humanity than most people would ever recognize-more than the average person could dream of."

  After we nosh on piles of spicy Indian food, Gail and I cover many topics while the family dogs snurfle for attention, and cats languidly meander across the tabletop. Even after decades of late-night chatathons with Gail, I discover loads of fascinating new info about her during the next few hours.

  Gail's nuclear physicist father, Jack, was a captain in the U.S. Navy, and the Sloatman family traveled hither and all over yon while she grew up. He ran the Office of Naval Research in London, and while living there in the mid-1960s, teenage Gail encountered profound new possibilities when she attended a shindig for an up-and-coming rock group.

  "I went to a party for the Rolling Stones and they were all in jeans-a very raw band. I remember thinking, `Oh, this is interesting.' Not knowing anything about their music, I definitely saw something different going on. They were young people who were making up their own lives, and that's what got me interested. I didn't know what I wanted to do; I thought I had some idea but figured my options were extremely limited considering I had no money. But here were these people with nothing-you could see they weren't making a fashion statement-jeans were what they legitimately found to wear. I thought the Beatles were new and fantastic and different; they didn't sound like anything else I'd ever heard, but it was slick and polished and commercial. The Rolling Stones didn't seem to be like that, and yet they figured they had a shot as well."

  Sin
ce I have known Gail, she's had an eerily prescient sense of the looming future, which apparently manifested early on. "I had psychic visions on an oddly consistent basis," she admits. "Because my family was on diplomatic passports when I was just barely eighteen, I got my first job in London working for the American Embassy. And I'll tell you this: on March 16, 1964, I was working away and this prophetic poem came to me straight out of nowhere. So I had to type it up, and the reason I know the date is because it was my father's birthday. I came to understand from this piece of poetry that I was somehow protected. All I had to do was wait and this important person was going to come along. I knew this so strongly: he was out there and he would show up. I didn't follow any particular passion because I knew I would meet this person, and my whole life would be unimaginable compared to what it was then."

  While she waited for a certain illustrious composer to happen along, Gail decided to experience the burgeoning free-love movement firsthand. "I said, `Fuck this, everything in the world's all about sex. Everyone I know has had sex and I can't allow this to continue. So I got on a train going to London one day and said, `I'm gonna sleep with the first guy I meet.' And I did."

  Gail was going to the movies with a girlfriend and her date brought a pal along, and it turned out to be his lucky day. After that initial encounter, Gail continued experimenting. "I had flings-I flung myself around quite a bit, actually. But I wasn't influenced by what other people did or what they thought. I kept to myself and my visions. I trusted my internal check and balance, and suspected from an early age that my personal experiences were different from everyone else's." She didn't feel she could discuss her unique gift with her folks, and Gail felt like an outsider. "I felt I was out of the time I was supposed to be in-actually a step ahead of it. In fact, when I first heard the Stones' song `Out of Time,' I thought it must have been written about my dilemma. I was seeing everything before it happened, waiting for it to catch up: silly stuff, like my father will come through the door and say `X,' then he comes in five hours later and says X: It finally got to the point where in some instances I had a choice in the matter: if it played out the way I had seen it, it was dependant on me responding in a particular way at a particular time. I would fall into trances in school and have visions of things that didn't have anything to do with me; I'd see major world events before they happened."

  Gail tells me that this unusual capability eventually waned, but seems to be back on the upswing. "Some things stay with you, events you know are going to happen, and every day, every hour, you know it's getting closer. I have my own way of dealing with that information. I've seen accidents before they happened and thought, `What's the point of seeing something like this if you can't prevent it?' You come to realize that sometimes these things are mere preparations: you can't speak about certain things because it's not for you to determine or attempt to interfere with another person's `other' experience. I know it may sound like complete hogwash or frogwash, as we used to say, but it's something that helped me through a lot of difficulties in my life, especially some of the issues that come up with an artist. You really can't be the person that exerts an undue influence on the decisions an artist would make, because you'd never want to interfere with their creative freedom. It's one thing to be an unwitting accomplice or influence because they choose to respect who you are, but it's another to say words in a certain way, which once they're said, you can't undo. You know they would have an effect, because everything does. So you learn to keep your mouth shut." I understand that she's talking about possibly influencing Frank, and I can only imagine the intriguing particulars. Does she consider this uncommon knack to be a liability, or a bonus feature? "I'd call it a gift. Some people have the ability to become fabulous musicians, singers, or writers, or an ability that can be put to some kind of service. This gift has assisted me in many ways in evaluating a situation rather than to just react to it; to be a little more thoughtful or considerate about what my actions would lead to."

  While flinging herself around London, did she get real crushes on anyone? "I had a'crunch' on Chris Stamp, one of the managers of the Who. It wasn't anything serious-there was a lot of sex-for-entertainment going on then."

  Gail met her first serious boyfriend, British fashion photographer Terence Donovan, on a modeling shoot. "He was the third person I slept with, and he completely seduced me-it was fabulous." She continued to see Terence even when she went to New York at nineteen, where she became friends with the notorious groupie/backup singer Emeretta Marks.

  "This is what happens when you don't wanna be the groupie you thought you should have been if you were really a groupie. Oh, how many groupies would have been jealous of my situation, and all I wanted was out. I was at a record company party for Tom Jones with Emeretta at the Carlyle, but it kept getting later and later, and pretty soon the trains stopped running to Long Island and she disappeared on me. Suddenly it's down to the last few people, and I don't have a ride or any place to stay and I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna do. Apparently Tom thinks I'm a little morsel and says, `How would you like to spend the night with me?' I thought, `Well, I wouldn't! How am I gonna get out of this?' It was the usual unspoken conversation you have with yourself: you're in a guy's room, they really do expect it; they think you're there by design, that it's your intention. I was so not interested in him because he represented everything I did not like about the pop world-he was totally commercial, totally serious about taking himself seriously, and I couldn't understand what his thousands of fans saw in him. Anyway, I was stuck in this hotel room thinking, `What the hell am I gonna do?"

  Gail dashed to the bathroom with the bright idea to stuff towels down the toilet so a plumber would have to be called. "The best news of all was the bathroom telephone. I called my mother and told her I was desperate, stuck in a hotel room, and wanted her to know I was safe, and she said, `Well, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and by the way, Lou called and he's looking for you.'" Music producer Lou Adler was another of Gail's groovy boyfriends, and after a call from her mom, he saved the night by sending a car to the Carlyle, whisking the mortified young damsel away from certain distress. "He saved my rock and roll ass," she laughs.

  And how did Tom feel about her skedaddling? "He was a gentleman, and absolutely charming about it, but he was agitated."

  She was only in New York for six months, but managed to perk up a young blues man. "In 1965 New York was full of Jewish guys playing the blues. Emeretta sang with the Blues Project. One day their leader, Al Kooper, decided that I was his girlfriend. He made this decision without letting me in on it; I had no sexual relationship with Mr. Kooper. I've heard that in his book he says something about sending me screaming into the arms of Frank Zappa, which is not true."

  That summer she hitched to Los Angeles with her British friend Anya Butler, and their mission was to get the Who played on the radio. "Actually, I was just along for the ride; it was officially Anya's job, but between the two of us, we broke that record-My Generation. We took it to every single radio station from Barstow to San Diego and parlayed it into an opportunity for Anya to do station IDs with her English accent. Everybody in Southern California wanted something to do with real Englishness at that time. We didn't have to participate in any nefarious activities either, it was all innocent fun. Anya met her fave-rave, Brian Wilson-we ended up at a studio where he was making a Beach Boys record. It was my first time in a recording studio and that's when I probably got the bug because I thought, `Oh, my God, they are making that stuff here!"

  Gail and Anya got a Hollywood apartment on the Strip, and Gail started working at the Trip, a very chic club down the street. I remember spending many nights at that club, gazing through the giant picture window at Mike Clarke's back because I was too young to get in to see the Byrds. "Anya was totally fascinated with him, so as you came through the door of our apartment you saw this big honkin' picture of Mike Clarke. I remember the moment we met two of the Byrds. Anya and I were crossing the street and
a cop whipped around the corner and gave us tickets-it was so rude! We got busted for jaywalking-can you fucking believe it? These two guys saw what was happening and pulled up on their motorcycles-David Crosby and Chris Hillman. They offered us a ride and we ended up riding around Laurel Canyon with them. Anya later told me, `I'm gonna marry that guy." That guy was Chris Hillman, and Anya soon became his second wife. So much for Mike Clarke, eh?

  I can tell Gail enjoys reminiscing when she describes her neighborhood coffee house. "If you go into Book Soup now, there's a closed door at an angle to the main store. That door was always open, and there was a stairway that led up to our apartment. Find that door and imagine there's a table right next to it, then imagine Jim Morrison sitting there every day. The Doors were the house band at the Whisky and I would meet him there for coffee almost daily. Not planned though. I looked at him and he looked at me and he suggested I sit down, and we had this conversation, `You feel so familiar, look so familiar, I feel like I know you ... " How did she resist the obvious charms of the Lizard King? "Let's just say that he had an interesting relationship with every girl that crossed my threshold, but not with me. Later it turned out that we had known each other when we were five years old. His father was in the navy too."