It's no secret that David Cassidy is mighty well-endowed. He spells it out in his autobiography, C'Mon Get Happy: Fear and Loathing on the Partridge Family Bus, in no uncertain terms. "He's so big that when I was trying to give him head, I couldn't even do a quarter of it," Dee Dee says, wide-eyed, "and I have a huge mouth! We saw him a couple more times when Kay was out of town. He began to call me at the Whisky, but it was a dark time in his life when he was tragically depressed. I was married too, and I found out I was pregnant. David would kiss and hold my belly-he wanted a child so badly. I always wonder what would have happened with us had I not been married."
Dee Dee developed her own superpowers when she started booking bands at the Whiskey. "Whoever got in Dee Dee's pants got the best booking!" She hired the New York Dolls, and Elmer gave her a raise. Next it was Iggy Pop. After booking Van Halen, she went on to help them get a record deal. "I started having escapades with guys in the heavy metal bands. I groupied with all the members of Ratt except one. In fact, he and I were at a club one night and he got drunk and said, `When's it my turn?' I was like, `You are so wrong. It's never gonna be your turn. I'm not a horse and we're not taking rides! I booked Motely Crue. We were all best buddies, and I partied with all of 'em except Nikki, who I did play with a bit. I can still walk in somewhere, see Vince and Nikki, and it's all hugs and kisses." When she booked Ratt, singer Stephen Pearcy temporarily drove her to distraction. "Warren DeMartini was the hottest, but Stephen was my favorite. He was the sexiest thing I'd ever laid eyes on. He was an odd one, though. He's the only guy I ever met with a tremendous mole on his dick. And he was darned proud of that dick. He used to call me on the road and say, `You gonna fuck me yet? You're fucking everybody, but not fucking me.' We did lots of stuff, but, uh-uh, I couldn't get past the mole. I kept running back to him, though. I've been told that his song `Back for More' is about me because I'd dump him, then go back. It was always, `So, you're back for more?'"
As a result of her back and forth exploits with Stephen Pearcy, Dee Dee met the man she'd spend the next eighteen years with. She thought Stephen was using her to get to one of her pretty friends, and though she was crazy about him, she was starting to feel jerked around by the rocker with the fearsome mole. "One day he came upstairs and there was a picture of the Stealer Band on the wall, which Ron Keel was in. When Stephen asked me to meet him that night at the Whiskey, I said, `No, I have a datewith this guy,' and pointed to Ron. I didn't really and had to call their manager to say, `I need to meet with your singer-fast!" Talk about rock and roll clout. "That night, Stephen takes one look at me with the singer from Stealer, and says, `Well, steal her away.' Then he says to me, `If I walk out that door, I'm not coming back.'
"It was all game playing in the heavy metal days," she admits. "Total debauchery, partying, do it with anybody in the bathroom stall. I had finally had enough and was standing in the Whisky with Ron, and I said, `Go away, that's it!' I turned to leave and he yelled down the hall, `But I love you!' I said, `What?' He said it again, and from that minute on, we were together."
Dee Dee married Ron Keel, who later formed the hard rock band Keel, and they had two kids, Kelly and Ryan. In spite of going out on the road and all over the world with bands like Motley Crue, KISS, and Bon Jovi, Dee Dee considers her years with Ron to be "pretty normal, even though we were a rock and roll family. Having kids never hindered me from doing what I wanted to do. We toured with all our friends and I helped out other bands." Life was cram-packed, and Dee Dee felt it was finally time to call it quits at her feverish stomping grounds, the Whisky a Go Go. "I really loved Ron and was afraid to leave my rock guy home alone. I figured if I was gonna grab him, I'd better grab him now. It was '83, and the Whisky was on a downswing. Elmer said, `You know, I'm getting old and it's not happening anymore. We're gonna have to start renting out the club. But I want to keep you on . . .' So I continued to see Elmer. It seemed to never end." I ask if her boyfriends and husbands ever knew about the ongoing tryst with her longtime boss. "Hell, no!" she says. "That was my secret life."
As promised, when she next comes to visit, Dee Dee brings along her daughter Kelly, a sleek, canny twenty-one-yearold bass player that her mother calls "my groupie wild child." Kelly also arrives bearing photo albums teeming with snaps of her posing with various modern rockers-tattooed, made-up fellows from bands such as Sinnistar, the Toilet Boys, and StaticX. Dee Dee is obviously proud that her backstage wiles have been passed along to her music-loving daughter. "The very first time I got backstage, I had to admit Mom was right about everything," Kelly says. "I was fifteen and wanted to go this concert festival because I was obsessed with Kitty. They were angry girls just like I was and they played guitar and rocked through their hearts. We were driving around the Palladium and my mom's like, `Well, just look for a Ryder truck. You can get in, and you won't have to pay.' We went to the back and the entire band was standing by the truck." Dee Dee chimes in, "They said, `You wanna go backstage with us?' and I said to Kelly, `I'll be back to pick you up at one.' After that it was great because she'd come home and say, `I went to a show and I totally pulled a Mom!"
I ask Kelly when it dawned on her that Mommy had such a vividly colored past. "Well, she would say stuff like, `When I turned twenty-one, I was hanging out with Led Zeppelin, and Axl Rose rubbed my leg ...' and I said, `Yeah, but you wound up with Ron Keel!"'
Kelly obviously has tangled emotions about her absent rocker dad, because after this blatant put-down, she reverses course. "Now, anytime I go to a concert I know just what to do. I saw Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl and went to the back where they were having a huge party. All I said to the door guy was, `Do you know who I am? I'm Ron Keel's daughter,' and they let me in. I love my dad. I get along with him, but not on a daughterfather level. He doesn't know how to be a parent, so I just hang out with him like he's another teenager." I comment that most rock stars never seem to grow all the way up. "It's true. He is really sixteen," Kelly sighs. "That's just the way it is."
As more of Dee Dee's tales tumble forth, it's obvious by Kelly's mixed reaction that some of the explicit details are more than she needs to know. When the topic turns to Zeppelin, she is perplexed about her mother's fling with the hefty Peter Grant. "How do you do it with somebody who weighs three hundred pounds?" she wonders. "They don't get on top of you," Dee Dee informs her curious daughter. "Have you ever seen those commercials where the girl is riding an electric bull doing this?" She demonstrates with one hand high in the air, bouncing around on the couch like she's competing at a raunchy rodeo. "That's what it's like."
When the subject of Elmer and the late Suzette comes up, Kelly raises her eyebrows in semi-mock shock, "Mom! I didn't know you swung both ways." But Dee Dee barely notices. "I dream about Elmer to this day," she confesses. "He wasn't very happy when I fell in love with Ron. He was jealous and angry because I was getting distracted and coming in a little late and wanting to leave a little early."
I know that Dee Dee has been on her own for several years, raising Kelly and younger son Ryan basically by herself. What happened to the romance with her beloved hard rock husband? "It got quite tough. The Jack Daniel's and the cigarettes came first. My family's big in real estate and I had a lot of property. Here's the kicker: I sold it off, piece by piece, band by band, record by record. It came to the big finale in Arizona-Ron wanted to do country-western. He was turning forty-the end of the world was coming! And that was the end; there was nothing more to sell. It's interesting because last week he came to town to see Ryan in a play, and he brought flowers for me. I looked in those eyes thinking, `You chose the wrong road. I would have stayed.'" So what finally made her call it quits? "His multi-daily cheating: the booze, the drugs. The real last straw was when I opened the car door to drive the kids to school and out rolled the straw and bindle of coke. I went upstairs and said, `Why would you do this?' And he looked me right in the face and said, `Why wouldn't I?'"
"He was hiding money from us," Kelly adds sadly. "And I saw
him snort stuff in front of me all the time."
"Yeah, that was the end," Dee Dee continues. "And the truth is, it's really hard for me now because I know he wants to get back together, but I've already rebuilt my life. Quite frankly, I discovered I can still get guys-young guys!"
How does Kelly feel about the resurfacing of her mother's rambunctious ways?
"I understand now, and more power to her-she can be with whoever she wants-but when I was sixteen, I was so pissed off when she flirted with the bands I hung out with. I was like, `Stop being a whore in front of me! I hate it!"
"But I wasn't," Dee Dee insists coquettishly. "They were flirting with me!"
The comfort level between these two dolls makes it clear that Kelly seems at peace with her offbeat rock and roll upbringing. "What bothered me then doesn't bother me now. I know that my mom and dad aren't like everybody else's mom and dad, but she's a good mom. I'm proud of her because I grew up more and I realize she's had a hard life, and she should do whatever she wants. She doesn't have to listen to anybody."
"Yeah, I suppose I have had a hard life," Dee Dee concedes, "but I don't regret any of it. Had I been a groupie with talent, perhaps I would have been able to record an album like Kelly's done, but my talents weren't in the musical sense."
"I'm sure you had talents, but they just weren't indulged the way you encouraged mine. Like, you bought me a guitar and gave me all the CDs I wanted and told me to do whatever I wanted to do creatively."
"I had to do what I had to do to hang out because I loved the music so much," says Dee Dee. "I was at the Tubes' show recently, and Fee Waybill, who I'd loved for so many years, tried to get me to come backstage. I know I could have had him that night, but I've matured enough that I thought, `Nah, it's better in my memory, better you want me next time around,' and I was able to walk away. The old me would have gone for it, but I started to realize that the chase was sometimes more fun."
Now that Dee Dee is making her way backstage again, I wonder if she's planning on embracing the music scene the way she once did. "Used to be I wouldn't sleep very much because I was afraid I was gonna miss out on something. It was like that one night I didn't go to the Whisky, that one guy was gonna be there-so I had to go. I'm not like that anymore, but sometimes I still feel like I'm gonna miss out on something. I love a good time, I love a good rock show, and I love a good musician."
Shock Treatment
t was the mind-blowing, heady summer of 1968, and I was happily floating around in my own private Laurel Canyon bliss-out with my wacky Hollywood girlfriends. Frank Zappa was fiddling about on the piano while his lovely wife Gail fetched tea for a kaleidoscopic assortment of humanity. Miss Christine, dressed in her outlandish Dr. Seuss garb, balanced baby Moon Unit on her scrawny hip, as Misses Lucy, Cynder- ella, Sandra, and Sparky pranced around the room showing off their infinitely small mini-mama getups. Alice Cooper was on hand, making goo-goo eyes at Christine, a few of the Mothers of Invention decorated the premises, along with Captain Beefheart and a couple Magic Band members, who were avidly listening to Frank's stellar composition.
Ahead of his time, as usual, Mr. Zappa had already decided that the teeming cadre of flagrant, dancing groupie girls should become a rock group and cut a record of our very own. He had already christened us the GTO's-Girls Together Outrageously-and the six of us were in the process of writing tunes for our stimulating upcoming stint in the studio.
Yes, we were in the midst of a rosy, harmonious joyfest when Mercy Fontenot plowed through the Zappa's open double doors like a carnival in progress. Her panache momentarily blotted out the sun, and a woozy cloud of patchouli oil wafted through the layers and layers of scarves, belts, skirts, vests, necklaces, and jangling bracelets that reached all the way to her elbows. She haughtily surveyed the scene in the log cabin, and with a sweep of her kohl-smudged, raccoon-painted Theda Bara eyelids, boldly entered the fray. I knew there had to be a pair of eyes in there somewhere-what were they seeing? Behind the zaftig gypsy girl loomed the caped Carl Franzoni, aka Captain Fuck, who loudly introduced her to all and sundry. "Hey, everybody, this is MERCY. She's from San Francisco."
Miss Christine, a true speedfreak of manners and grace, was the first to introduce herself to the audacious newcomer. And despite my trepidation, I, too, stuck out my hand to make her acquaintance. As Mercy from San Francisco slowly scanned my girly, pink chiffon presence, I noticed that both her earlobes had been split down the middle, still managing to accommodate loads of spangly coin earrings that drooped down to her shoulders. Her mouth was a brazen crimson slash, and her fierce eyes poked me like a pointy red fingernail to the solar plexus. Then Mercy briefly touched my hand, and merged into the commotion.
A few moments later, Frank made a stunning announcement. He declared that Mercy Fontenot would become the seventh GTO, proclaiming that she added "an imperative bizarre element" to the proceedings. Our hero had spoken. Mercy looked around at our thunderstruck faces and said, "Don't worry. I'm not a dancer. I'm not a singer. I'm a gypsy. I come from a long line of Fontenots out of New Orleans." Then she yanked a small shimmering bag from within her copious bosom and shook it at us. "And this is John the Conqueror root."
It took a little time, and some turbulent convincing from Mr. Zappa, but it wasn't long before the nomad neophyte became Miss Mercy, a proud member of the GTO's. If one of my many psychic soothsayers had taken me aside that day and told me that Mercy would become one of my closest, dearest, forever girlfriends, I would have checked her forehead for a fever.
Mercy Fontenot, aka Judith Peters, grew up all around the greater U.S. of A., carted hither and yon in finned American cars by her bigger-than-life gambling daddy. She remembers always seeing a racetrack from her bedroom window. "My dad was a car salesman, mother was a nurse, and they both gambled. We picked up and moved over and over because he was always in loads of trouble-they were gonna put cement shoes on him." Since she lived all around the country, Judy was treated to a wide variety of music. "I would hear all this stuff on the radio. Even as a little kid. Rhythm and blues, country and western, all the roots music. It shook me up. My mother listened to Jerry Lee Lewis, my dad played Sinatra." Little Judy lived in Seattle, Dallas, Oklahoma City, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota, but the family kept returning to San Mateo, California-situated near the handy-dandy Bay Meadows racetrack.
Judy's pop, Donald W. Peters, a flamboyant, swarthy dreamer with a penchant for crooners and cocktails, often disappeared, once returning home with an angular Vogue model. "I was about twelve when my dad brought the model home," Mercy recalls, raspy words spewing out of her mouth like chewed-up Red Hots. "Her name was Janis and she was a very famous Vogue cover girl. My dad started taking speed with her because she was desperate to stay thin. Dad and the model took me for a ride in the car, while Mom waited in the house." This troubling incident, and too many more like it, shredded the already troubled marriage, so Susan Fontenot Peters finally snatched Judy and hightailed it to another part of town. For a while, her bickering parents tried to make the shaky marriage work. "I didn't see my parents fight. But they did argue a lot about the pope. Dad was Protestant and Mom was Catholic. I've always had a crush on my dad, but I didn't know him very well. He was a gambling cowboy groupie drug-taking guy."
Since Judy's mom was a nurse, Judy had no problem getting fistfuls of diet pills, but still couldn't seem to lose weight. She didn't have many friends in junior high, so music became her saving grace. "I was a pudgy girl and I think fatness made me feel like an outsider, but I did win a twist contest in eighth grade with One-Eyed Jack 0' Rourke!" Mercy suddenly recalls. "But mostly I had to live outside my realm. The uppers helped intensify the radio waves that called me, so I started chasing bands. It just fell into place, you know? I came alive in '65. The first group I met was the Beau Brummels. I saw them on Ed Sullivan and thought they were cute. Then it was the Stones. We followed their car to the hotel and Mick was pacing, you could see his shadow. We listened to him scream about Kei
th, who had just gotten arrested. The door was open and Brian was sitting there with his suitcase, and Charlie Watts-or maybe Bill Wyman, they seemed the same to me-had been locked out of his room, and Brian was showing us his psychedelic shirts. I was attracted to the powerful fame frequency early."
What made little Judy Peters from San Mateo think she could meet the Rolling Stones? "Well, first of all, at fifteen I changed my name to Mercy, so Judy Peters wasn't about to do anything! And how can you answer why? I wanted to know the people who made the music," she says simply. "For some odd reason, music was the most important thing to me. You have to meditate on what you want. That's the main thing."
Luckily, San Mateo is very close to the show-stopping heart of San Francisco, where a vivid music scene was burgeoning. "From where I was living near North Beach, I started getting into the blues. The beatniks were blasting Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters in the local record shops." She was barely in her teens and getting into big trouble at school, but Mercy's musical taste was coming together beautifully.
Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies Page 13