The humid summer air in Little Rock is as sticky as cotton candy as I climb out of my rental car in Connie's driveway. She is nervously waiting for me on the tiny screened-in front porch, scarily gaunt, wearing skinny, tight shorts and a Van Halen T-shirt. "You made it! Come on in," she shouts, before warning me again about the state of her house, which I discover isn't all that bad except for the pungent aroma of kitty cat. A bit tattered and funky around the edges, Connie's quaint little cottage is almost paid for, a fact she proudly announces, showing me her most recent mortgage bill as proof. She seems honestly thrilled that I've come to visit, and I'm struck by the dichotomy of her world-weary guilelessness. The walls overflow with photos of Connie on laps of rock stars, along with autographed pictures, backstage passes, posters, laminates, and concert tickets. She grabs the remote, hoping to surprise me with a video of our long-ago MTV groupie interviews, and when I decline she's disappointed. "I'd rather go to your local haunts," I tell her, and after musing that she might miss an important call from "Edward Van Halen," we head to Bennigan's, not too far from her pad on Green Meadow Drive.
We climb onto the barstools and, bubbling over, she pulls my first book out of her bag, introducing me to the owner, the bartender, and a couple of patrons as a "famous writer" in town just to interview her. Connie's enthusiasm is infectious. Even when locals look at her disdainfully, she's happy to get the attention, and cackles, "We were on Jenny Jones together!" Here, she orders her first white wine of the day and doesn't stop imbibing until well after midnight.
As she sips her chardonnay, I ask how she became music obsessed. "I was an only child, and I think that's one reason I became a groupie. I always wished for an older brother and becoming a groupie, I got a lot of 'em! Even before I hit puberty-in the fifth and sixth grades-I went to see the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Yardbirds played. I always saw these good-looking gals backstage and thought, `I don't want to be out here with all these people. When I get older I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna be back there."' In the ninth grade, Connie was invited backstage at the fateful Steppenwolf gig, where her controversial future was secured. Her friend hooked up with singer John Kay, and Connie wound up with drummer Jerry Edmonton. "I was a virgin then, but he did get me out of my shirt. I said, `I'm on my period, and I can't do anything anyway because I'm a virgin,' and he said, `Have you ever heard of oral sex?' I said, `What does that mean? Talking about it?" She later found out that her rock conquest wasn't referring to public speaking and quickly set about learning the delicate art of giving head.
Following Steppenwolf's anti-cock-teasing lyrics to the letter, Connie was determined to "put out" for the next band to come through town. The drummer for Detroit's Frijid Pink happily removed the obstacle of Connie's virginity and was also the lucky recipient of her newfound oral knowledge. The soon-to-be Sweet Connie was on her merry way.
She's world infamous for her blow jobs, so I ask how and why that practice began. "Because you can't get pregnant doing it! And I was desperate for a backstage pass to Three Dog Night. I went to one of the roadies and said, `I don't care what it takes. I'll blow everybody on your crew to get me back there.' And I did." Did she get to the band? "Yeah, the drummer and Chuck Negron. I blew him during the drum solo in the backstage restroom, sitting on the toilet while he stood in front of me." Was giving head an enjoyable experience? "Yeah, definitely. For one thing, it doesn't take very long and it isn't really messy." Did she swallow? Dumb question. "Hell yeah!" When I mention that a lot of girls don't swallow, Connie shrieks, "Then a lot of girls are sitting out there in the fucking crowd, aren't they? I don't know what I enjoyed more: the blow jobs or standing on stage waving at all those people from North Little Rock Old Main High School."
After knocking back her glass of wine, Connie wants to take me to the Canyon Grill, a favorite haunt. Obviously warmly familiar with her, the bartender pours wine while Connie introduces herself and flirts with a pair of young cops. Then we pick up where we left off. "After Three Dog Night it began to get around, because I had to blow and fuck promoters to get to roadies and past the security of the building. I started on the ground level and worked my way up."
Spotting backstage stickers on guitar and amp cases gave her a brilliant idea. "I went to a printer in Little Rock and got five hudnred paper stickers made that said `Connie in Little Rock - 501.753.1005' and you know what happened? The very first batch got ripped off and some asshole plastered 'em around town and people called myparents asking, `What's this?'" How did her folks deal with her blossoming popularity? "They did not have a clue for a long time-until the song came out, and then they began to get wind of it." What did they think all the guys were calling about? "Selling cookies for the Girl Scouts, I guess-and I sold candy for the Future Teachers of America."
Connie says she got along fine with her mom until she hit puberty. "Then she turned into a bitch. I think she was just afraid and insecure, even though my father was a good man. My mother had an agenda-she was a cunt and is to this day. She thought if she gave me enough rope, I'd hang myself. When they found out I'd lost my virginity and was fucking around, all hell broke loose. And that came about because I got the clap. I tell you what: when I lost my virginity, they couldn't have been any more hurt than if I had lost a limb."
Her home life was hellish, but even though she spent many nights at concerts, in tour buses, and in hotel rooms, Connie somehow kept her priorities straight. "It was never a question that I'd graduate high school and go to college because I knew the bands and crews wouldn't respect me if I was just some dropout loser."
Her parents couldn't keep her at home, and conquests came fast and furious. She had a grand of time with Grand Funk Railroad, she "got it on" with all the members of Chicago while everyone watched the proceedings. The same happened with the Allman Brothers. A trip out of town with her mom backfired when Connie discovered they were staying in the same hotel. "The Allmans were there for a couple of days. I did the roadies. I did everybody. They all got a kick out of it-knowing my mother was right upstairs. It was a real picnic when we got back to Little Rock and she told my dad. `You mean all she did when you all got there was chase them bands? I sent you all over there to get her away from them! I can't do anything with her! We might as well put her in a juvenile home or send her to the nuthouse!' They threatened that repeatedly."
Concert promoters took advantage of Connie's oral largesse and began inviting her to gigs in nearby cities. "They flew me to Oklahoma City to see KISS and to St. Louis to see the Who, which was where I wound up with Keith Moon the first time. I got flown to Shreveport to see Alice Cooper. I started fucking him way early in the ball game because I would drive to Memphis to meet him."
Gene Simmons, the monster bassist for KISS, is a longtime friend of mine, and I'm curious about his bedside manner. "He was pretty good. He's well-endowed, but you know what? The time I got it on with him, I had bad anorexia and he spent a lot of time chewing me out for being underweight. I was never with Ace Frehley. He got drunk and threw a roomful of furniture out of the hotel room next to me. I fucked Peter Criss, I fucked Paul, and he was wonderful! He told me that I've got a clit like a little dick. But when I hooked up with Peter, it was usually Peter from then on."
While her parents were on vacation in Vegas, Connie took the family car to a concert in Memphis and spent more time with Three Dog Night and their opening act, Black Oak Arkansas. One upstanding quality Connie got from her folks was honesty, and when they got back to town they confronted her. "They said, `When we called from Vegas, you sounded like you had something you wanted to tell us,' and I said, `Well, you always told me to tell you the truth and while you all were gone, I drove to Memphis to see Three Dog Night.' Man, I really got an ass whipping that night. My father had a horrible temper, but then he was apologetic."
Connie and I have more in common than we realized: Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Page, and Keith Moon. She met the brilliant, manic dru
mmer for the Who when a promoter took her backstage in St. Louis. "I was in the dressing room after the show-security wasn't the way it is nowadays-and Keith and Roger were not getting along. For some reason, Roger decided to upend a whole table full of food, then he started crying. Keith and I started fooling around, and before I knew it he had my jeans off and was fucking me with a banana to ease the mood and break the tension. Keith was that kind of guy. After you see somebody get fucked with a piece of fruit, you forget what happened five minutes earlier! Then he said, `Come back with me to the hotel,' and I spent the night with him at the Chase Park Plaza. The whole time I was with Keith I thought, `This is that guy I used to see on Where the Action Is! He had the most beautiful facial features when he played the drums. When we weren't making love, he had a little 45-rpm record player and played a stack of records and sang along to 'em. He'd go down to the bar for booze and bring it back up to the suite and we'd sit there and drink and sing and fuck. We sang `This Diamond Ring' and `Love Potion Number Nine' at the top of our lungs. He invited me to go to with him to Detroit and I said, `I can't go. I live with my parents and I ain't got any clothes.'"
Connie and I also have my early mentor, Frank Zappa, in common, but in a decidedly different way. He was always captivated by out-of-the-ordinary individuals, so their encounter doesn't surprise me. "Gosh, I was only with Frank one time and he was such a dear-and he was so apologetic. When I first met him during the sound check, I was fooling around with the crew because they had taken care of me all day and given me a pass. I was walking with his roadie into a little tuning room, and Frank got on the microphone and said, `Okay, Connie, I guess that makes number ten.' He turned out to be a great lover, and that night when we were in his hotel room, he said, `I wanna apologize to you for saying that.'"
When she was almost nineteen, two things happened that finally got Connie booted out of her childhood home. "Not much had happened with Grand Funk other than me blowing Don Brewer and Mel Schacher, and if memory serves, I took care of the keyboard player a time or two. In June of '73, I was sitting on a towel at the beach with my transistor radio on. Most of my girlfriends were out on rafts in the lake when the disc jockey said, `Ladies and gentlemen, we just got the new song by Grand Funk Railroad, and you all are not gonna believe this-you know that dark-haired girl you always see backstage at concerts? Listen to the first few lyrics of this song,' and I started jumping up and down, screaming for my friends to come listen!"
Not long after "We're an American Band" blasted the airwaves, Connie's startling tell-all article shook up the community. "I got out of the house because of the interview in Cosmopolitan. When that hit the stands my mother said, 'OK, enough's enough. You're talking in this national publication about sucking dick and swallowing. You're outta here!"
We say our good-byes to the rookie cops at Canyon Grill and on our way out, I spy a colorful store across the street offering vintage frocks. Whenever I travel I have to check out the native collectibles, and as I inspect a black velvet tunic, the salesgirl recognizes Connie and she gets a hoot out of it. She is a wellknown local character of indeterminate infamy around town. For several years she was a substitute teacher, and complains she was canned due to her off-color notoriety. Nobody will give her a decent job, she claims, but Connie refuses to live anywhere but right here because Little Rock is where she is so well-known. And of course, she's listed in the phone book just in case rock stars want to look her up.
On the way back to Green Meadow Drive, Connie surprises me by suggesting we drop by the Little Rock Zoo. It seems she has to tend a small vegetable garden she has growing on zoo grounds. "I was a wonderful teacher," she says as we peer into cages at the small animal sanctuary. "They stopped me from doin' it because of who I am, and I got press to prove it. The kids loved me but they don't want me teaching school 'cause I'm so controversial. I am who I am and that ain't goin' away." I get another shock when she tells me about her part-time job. "Well, Pamela, I rent wagons and baby strollers here." In fact, her little veggie patch is situated behind rows of gleaming rental buggies. She ambles over to a leafy plant and, beaming, reveals a fat, red tomato.
Back home, Connie shows me her favorite picture of brighteyed grade-schoolers and tells me how "precious" they had been to her. "But I have dedicated my life to being a groupie!" she shrieks, as wine gurgles from the spigot attached to a Gallo box in the fridge. "Thanks to you! You started me. It's your fault!" I remind her that she was stalking Dick Clark's fresh-faced caravan before I wrote a single word of I'm with the Band. "I know one damned thing: that's when I realized that them broads backstage looked a lot more comfortable than I did out there in a pile of people."
Sweet Connie got out from under what was left of her parents' control just in time to meet up with Led Zeppelin. "I got my own apartment in the cool part of town called the Quarter, and was doin' fine when the Concerts West promoter flew me to Dallas to see Led Zeppelin. That was such a special evening. It's been chronicled in all the Zeppelin books because the tour was based in New Orleans and they were hanging with a lot of drag queens. Everybody flew the coop that night-Jimmy, Robert, and John Paul Jones went back to New Orleans; Bonham was gonna stay in Dallas because from the balcony of the hotel he saw a Corvette in the parking lot that he liked. Bonham was take no prisoners-`if I want it, I want it!' Well, he went down there and sat on the hood of the car until the owner came out. He said, `Man, I'm John Bonham, the drummer of Led Zeppelin, and I wanna buy your 'Vetter The guy said, `I like y'all a lot, but don't ask me to sell my car.' So John decided to stay in Dallas until this guy sold him his car.
"That was the first time I ever had caviar-with Led Zeppelin when I was nineteen. I'll never forget that big tuna-salad fish mold covered with black caviar. And you know, I don't even like caviar! Sex with Bonham was real good and he just kept saying, `I'm not leaving Dallas until I get that 'Vette. I'm gonna have 'em put it on the back of a truck. I'm gonna take it to California and drive it around.' And he got what he wanted." Did she ever spend time with Bonham again? "No, I didn't, but I did see Keith Moon after that and told him I'd been with Bonham and he said, `We're gonna do something together eventually." Sadly, that meeting of remarkable minds never manifested.
Connie splashes more wine into her glass, then leads me into a dusty room crammed with photo albums and starts yanking out pictures of her with Rick Springfield, Ginger Baker, Ronnie Lane, Dr. John, et al. But when I ask about the picture on the living room wall of her sitting cozily with Eddie Van Halen, she's briefly at a loss for words. "It's hard to explain my relationship with Van Halen. It goes back to 1979." Questions about the virtuoso guitar player are verboten, but when I ask if I might allude to her relationship with Edward, Connie smiles slyly, "You can allude to it." And what about David Lee Roth? Was she ever with the last great front man? "Oh, yes, David and I were very intimate in an oral sense. We were together with another girl in the production office. We were fooling around, getting ready to blow him, and the promoter came in to watch. Then they called in David's bodyguard to watch ... everybody had a good laugh and then he had to go onstage. By the next time they came around, David was history." I assume she then went on to Sammy Hagar. "Yeah, Sam was a lot of fun, but I believe he's mad at me. I don't think he wants me talking about it, but that's too bad. He never said don't."
She's been telling me all day about Doe's, the laid-back neighborhood hot spot and well-known Clinton hangout where the owner is treating us to dinner. "Who knows," she sneers. "Clinton's in town; he might even be there." Connie promises she'll divulge the details of her encounter with our former charismatic president of the United States over a colossal plate of garlicky shrimp.
After taking a gander at the shots of the handsome prez with local celebs that line the restaurant walls, I toast Connie with a glass of wine, and soon we are gaily gabbing with a table full of traveling salesmen sitting next to us. She, of course, tells them all about what brought me to town, and it turns out that one of them had read
my books. We both sign autographs and pose for snapshots, feeling like the divas of the diner. Crustaceans are served and while we dig in, Connie launches into her antiClinton tirade. I soon discover that she doesn't share my admiration for William Jefferson Clinton.
"I sometimes went to the bar at the Riverfront Hilton for happy hour and the manager said, `If you're a regular here, you're more than welcome to use the pool!' Rush had stayed there a few days earlier and we all partied at the pool. Anyway, I was the only person out there that day. No bands, everybody was gone. I was in my bathing suit, writing in my diary, minding my own business until two guys came up to me. One of 'em used to live near me, and he said, `Connie? I thought that was you. It's Mike Gaines. I used to be your neighbor. I'm working for the governor's office now.' Then he said, `The governor wants to say hello to you.' I said, `Well, Mike, I met him before, at an Olivia NewtonJohn concert.' He said, `He wants to say hello to you again,' and I said, `I don't have any clothes on.' He said, `That's exactly why he wants to talk to you.'" Connie threw a towel around her shoulders and followed Mike inside. "Clinton's standing there saying, `I just want you to know you made my day, laying out there in that little purple bikini. Do you have a room here?' I said, `No, Governor, I don't.' He said, `You sure you don't have a room?' I said, `No, Governor, I just snuck in to use the pool, sorry.' He said, `Well, where can we go? Looks like we can't go in there,' he opened another door and said, `We can't go in there,' then he opened the doors to the laundry room and we go in there and proceed to start groping and fondling. I stroked his cock-he's very well endowed-and right when we were about to get to it, he moaned and somebody popped her head up from behind the washing machine. He said, `I guess we'd better get out of here: We stepped back into the hall and he said, `You gonna be here later?' and I said, `I'm gonna be here all afternoon, Governor.' He said, `I'll call you or come back. I gotta be up at the Capitol to direct the legislature.' I swear to God, I never addressed that cocksucker any way other than `Governor: Afterward, I go in the bar and tell the manager about it and he says, `Yeah, I know, the governor is a whore dog."
Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies Page 20