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

by Pamela Des Barres

  To raise money to print Lobotomy, my dear friend Michele Myer, who booked the Whisky, suggested Pleasant hold benefit concerts. On one of these nights, Billy was the guest of honor.

  "It was just our friends helping out, but the bills were crazy-the Go-Gos, the Weirdos, the Germs. Joan Jett lived right across the street, so whenever we went to the Whisky, especially for Lobotomy nights, we'd prime the pump at her house. Gil Turner's Liquor delivered booze, even though no one was even close to twenty-one, because we'd answer the door in black underwear with handcuff belts and high heels. We'd start the order with a gallon of vodka and get blitzed. On this night Billy came over to Joan's, and we fucking outdid ourselves. We had this girl, Nancy, tied to the bed with socks and sheets and clotheslines. There were three or four different kinds of whips. We were all on Quaaludes, and the Sex Pistols were blasting. The front door was open and the coffee table was covered in beer bottles. The show must have been really late: we heard this yelling, and Michele Myer came from the Whisky and burst into Joan's apartment. She saw all the beer bottles, the trail of clothes, and Nancy spread-eagle bare on the bed. Billy was holding a gallon of vodka and a cat o' nine tails in mid-swing. She yells, `You-the show producer-get to the fucking Whisky. You-the stage manager-get to the fucking Whisky. And you-the fucking guest of honor ..: she screams at Billy, shaking her finger. And he says, `Sorry, madam."'

  Pleasant spent some sincere quality time with Billy. Then his acclaimed gal pal Peri Lister came to town. "I was totally crushed out, but she was so beautiful. I pretty much wanted to sleep with both of them, but didn't know how you went about doing that. I had slept with my girlfriends and a guy, but never a guy I had a crush on and a girl I didn't know who was his girlfriend. He said he had to spend time with her and that was fine. I mean, I had no claim on him. I'm not like a guy, where the conquest is all, but that was a great, crazy conquest."

  All the while Pleasant romped with Billy Idol, Levi Dexter was conveniently on tour. "Oh, he was in England fucking someone else, or actually he might have been in New York at that point with Belinda from the Go-Gos. I told her to fuck him so he wouldn't fuck some stupid girl. I mean, we totally switched, and I took care of her boyfriend, Bill Bateman from the Blasters. This was the way you kept people true in the '80s, right? Have them fuck your best friend. I think Jane also fucked Levi, but in the late '70s/early'80s, 'cause of Quaaludes and coke. It was like free love in leather. We shared boyfriends and crushes, it was no biggie. It was just a crazy pass-around. I either had sex with or made out with most of the girls I knew, like Belinda and Jane. I actually had a little affair with Jane that started one night when we locked ourselves in a bedroom at somebody's parents' house. While Levi and the Rockats jammed with the Rockabilly Rebels, Jane and I had a long make-out lesbo session, and it went on for a while after that."

  High jinks aside, when the long arm of the law threatened to deport Levi, extreme measures were called for. "We decided to get married because he had been coming in and out of the country so much and they weren't gonna let him back in. I was almost twenty and I couldn't imagine not seeing him anymore. We had a huge ceremony at Cathay de Grande, the punk club, when I was booking it. The wedding was at a Unitarian Church. Bill Bateman of the Blasters was one of the best men, Belinda was the maid of honor, and all the bridesmaids were in leather. Our wedding was mistakenly scheduled at the same time as a low-rider wedding that had powder blue tuxedos and matching carnations. We tossed a coin and our wedding came up first. I thought, `Cool, we get the blue flowers!'-Levi had blue hair at that point. My wedding dress was a Salvation Army white prom dress, my hair was white, and I had a big white veil. The wedding was just insane and the reception was even crazier-a total who's who of the punk scene." Someone special was on hand to lend a yowl to the festivities. "Billy Idol was there, screaming `White Wedding.' And he's the one who caught the garter!"

  The Dexters moved into a cockroach- and pop-star-infested apartment house that Pleasant called "Disgraceland." Unfortunately, the powder blue wedding turned out to be the best part of the turbulent two-year punkified marriage.

  "As soon as we got married he started with the domestic violence. He'd wake me up punching me. He stayed home smoking pot all day while I took a forty-five-minute bus to Century City with a huge hangover to work as a secretary in clothes I borrowed from my mother. Finally I said, `You have to get up.' He gave me a black eye and shoved me against a concrete wall, trying to rub off a tattoo I had just gotten. I said, `Get out of my fucking house!' but he wouldn't." To make sure Levi vacated the premises, Pleasant ran off with a gorgeous skateboard champion and had a ragingly naughty fling in San Francisco. "When I got back, Levi said, `Were you fucking him?' I said, `Yeah, of course-that was the whole point! We're over. You have to get out.' And he finally realized it."

  In the mid-'80s, Pleasant made one of her far-flung dreams come true by fronting the Screamin' Sirens, then the Ringling Sisters. "I decided I wanted to sing, because ever since high school I wrote poems and songs. I could make the noise of every guitar solo, but never learned how to play anything. But everyone said I was so flamboyant and outgoing, I thought, 'OK, I'll sing.' I totally sucked at first. I have the kind of voice that's popular now-a girly Phil Spector voice. But in those days you had to be a punk screamer or sing like Aretha Franklin. I wanted the band to be all girls because it was working out really well for my friends, the Runaways and the Go-Go's. I thought, `I'm gonna have an all-girl gang band and I want us to be a cross between Old West saloon girls and bikers. And we're gonna play country music!" The band toured a lot, and besides delighting fans with her trilling, Pleasant threw her entire body into the mix. "Through the whole set I was dancing and shaking, nonstop for forty-five minutes."

  Pleasant had long been fascinated with anything to do with the Middle East. So when a woman at Club Lingerie asked if she was a belly dancer, it was a serendipitous meeting. "Ever since I was little I was obsessed with the Crusades and those Sinbad movies. Playing hopscotch I'd say, `Please, merciful Allah, let it land on square eleven.' All my favorite rock songs sounded like Arabic music-`Venus in Furs' or `Paint It Black,' all the Jajouka Stones' music. I was wearing crazy Indian clothes, coin belts, and bindis before Gwen Stefani was even out of grade school!"

  The prescient girl who recognized Pleasant's inner sultanteaser was a belly dancer herself. "I started stalking her at parties. Everyone thought we were locked in the bedroom doing drugs, but she'd be showing me hip figure eights. People would bang on the door, `Can I have some?"

  I ask Pleasant if she felt belly dancing was her "calling," already knowing the answer because I've seen her dance. "Completely! I could do it immediately, and I looked like a belly dancer-I have dark eyes, I'm curvy. I started dancing at thirty-two just for fun, and within six months people were paying me, saying, `You're the best belly dancer I've ever seen!' Anytime I danced I had a huge smile on my face. I've been doing it for fourteen years now-I'm forty-six. Who starts a dance career at the age of thirty-two?"

  In 1997, one of Pleasant's writing assignments brought an old fair-haired boy into her workplace: she interviewed Iggy Pop for Request magazine. They were discussing a book project Iggy was considering when things got romantic.

  "I'm being Miss Professional, and since I had two books out he was asking me about publishers. He wanted to write a book called 52 Girls, because there are fifty-two weeks in a year and fifty-two cards in a deck. All of a sudden he starts kissing me. And we kissed for a pretty long time." Iggy wanted to take Pleasant to see Metallica that night, but she declined because she had to work. When he found out Pleasant was a belly dancer, Iggy flipped. "Arabic music has so much soul,' he said. `It has so much passion. I wanna come see you!"'

  Pleasant neglected to tell Iggy about the very strict dress code, so of course he arrived in classic shredded Iggy regalia. "I hear this commotion at the door but didn't see what it was because we were in the middle of a number." Balancing a sword on her head, Pleasant spotte
d Iggy's platinum locks. "He was the only person with white hair in the whole place. Later, the leader of the troupe screams, `Oh my fucking God, Pleasant. What is Iggy Pop doing in here? I know this has to be your fault!"

  Afterward, Pleasant had a glass of wine at Iggy's hotel, and he wanted her to spend the night. "I said no because I had a boyfriend. He was also living with someone so I just didn't feel right about it. He walked me to the car and kissed me goodbye. My thing with Iggy spanned, like, two decades."

  Princess Farhana got another kind of satisfaction when one of her long-ago rock gods came to see her dance not once, but twice. "It was slow that night-only one party with a reservation and they kept calling, saying they were gonna be late. My boss knew I had a lot of friends in bands and he said, `Chili Pepper Red Hot came here!' We were talking about music, and because he's Tunisian, I told him about how the Stones were into the whole Marrakesh Jajouka thing; expounding on it." After waiting another twenty minutes, Pleasant's boss told her she might as well go to her next dance job. "I was backstage getting ready and got a phone call from my boss. `Oh, my God, I cannot believe it. Michael Jagger, he is at the restaurant right now!' and I say, `Shut up! Oh, my God, you're serious!' I was going to dance for the man I'd been crazy about since I was four. Mick Jagger has been a constant in my life, like the Empire State Building. I thought `What could I possibly give back to someone who has given me so many hours of pleasure?'"

  Even though she was quaking inside, Pleasant must have pleased Sir Jagger, because he beamed, his dimples prominently on display, then politely tipped her a hundred dollars. She admits saving the bill for six months, until she "was pretty sure the DNA had worn off."

  Pleasant Gehman, aka Princess Farhana, "Flower of the Desert," is at the tip-top of her field, delighting rapt audiences with her dancing almost every night of the week. She's currently happily ensconced in a long-term relationship with a talented artist, James Packard. Walking back to our cars in the baking SoCal sunbeams, Pleasant is indignant when I mention that despite its seven letters, groupie is still considered a four-letter word.

  "I've always loved behind-the-scenes people, but groupies were the most glamorous. I compared them to artists' models in the '20s because I knew about Man Ray and Kiki, his muse. Groupies were the complement to rock stars. When they walked into a room, everyone would gasp. They were beautiful, smart, well versed, and could handle any situation. They were the seventeenth-century definition of a courtesan: intelligent, wellspoken, worldly women who were looked up to-and just let everybody eat cake. My mother said, `Why do you wanna be a groupie and not the star?' A groupie is a star! There were groupies who were film stars and music stars. Marianne Faithfull was a groupie. Pat Smear was a groupie for Queen, Darby Crash was a boy groupie, and they went on to become stars. Angie Bowie was every goddamned bit as important as David Bowie. She was the person who had songs written about her. Angle's art was just to exist. Her husband wrote great songs, but Angie was the belle of the ball. And that's a huge talent in itself. Being a groupie doesn't mean you're backstage doing something sleazy. Being a groupie is like worshipping at the church of rock and roll-and you're the high priestess."

  C~~ pe- C~4)odp

  A Chat Regarding the Infamous G Word

  here have been a scant handful of groupie books published by the muses of rock. The first, I believe, was jenny Fabian's Groupie, in 1969, which lightly disguises flings she had all over London with Pink Floyd, the Nice, and the Animals. In 1993 Angela Bowie told tales on the Thin White Duke with bitter aplomb in Backstage Passes, and the same year the late Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler alternately savaged and adored her rock hubby in Dream On: Livin' on the Edge with Steven Tyler and Aerosmith. Marianne Faithfull bravely showed how low she could go and still be the coolest chick who ever held a ciggie or a Stone in 1994's Faithfull. Cynthia Plaster Caster is currently working on her spectacular art-cum-sex memoir, Catherine James has just sold her bio to St. Martin's Press, and my own rollicking contribution, I'm with the Band, has been republished and is selling briskly, I'm delighted to say.

  The most recently published fresh groupie tome was 2001's Rebel Heart by Bebe Buell. Our books are frequently referred to in the same hot breath, and if you take a look at Amazon's listing for Band, you may find a suggestion that you purchase Rebel Heart as well. It's a small groupie world, after all!

  Bebe has had issues with the G word for years, so I felt it was appropriate to include her highly educated opinion on the subject.

  Pamela: I want to get a few words from you about the word "groupie." I know you prefer "muse."

  Bebe: But if you say that, you get misunderstood. Because the word muse immediately sounds narcissistic if you use it about yourself. But I think it's OK to acknowledge that there's a difference.

  Pamela: It all depends on who is using the word.

  Bebe: I suppose if Picasso said, "She's my muse," it would have a lot more impact. Perhaps one of his many mistresses, whose initials he had to hide in his paintings so he could pay tribute to her without his wife finding out. If she said, "I was the muse for that painting," society would immediately ostracize her.

  Pamela: But you have publicly said that you prefer that word to the G word.

  Bebe: Muse is a much more beautiful word. It just sounds nicer. It's a lot more romantic. I'm going to read you something I wrote. It's one paragraph, and it kind of sums it up.

  "As far as the groupie tag, I don't believe the word means now what it did in the '60s and '70s. Much like other misused terms, such as punk and grunge, the term groupie is used to describe almost anyone associated with musicians today. Because of that, I have disassociated myself with the label. The innocence that once surrounded the word has been replaced by an almost "anything goes" mentality. I'm sure it is an insult to girls like Pamela Des Barres, Cynthia Plaster Caster, and the GTO's-who coined it-to be lumped in the same category as women who sleep with anyone associated with a band or crew. That is not what a groupie is, in the old-fashioned sense.... The music was, and is, the most important thing to a true groupie of days gone past. The modern sense of the term, I find degrading and false. It gets my back up."

  Pamela: I suppose a lot of people perceive the word as a slur.

  Bebe: Or a mud wrestling harpie on meth!

  Pamela: But I met these girls called the Beatle BandAides and the Rock N' Dolls. They go around in troupes and are claiming the word again.

  Bebe: If they can clean it up and get people appreciating real art again, I would love that. I'm sick and tired of it being associated with scantily clad girls with no eyebrows and silicone breasts.

  Pamela: The first time I heard the word, it must've been about 1968, and it wasn't negative. It was just a word.

  Bebe: It was cool! I remember seeing you in Rolling Stone when I was in high school. The photographs seemed very glamorous. You didn't look at them and go, "Eeewww, those whores!" It was very rock and roll. And there was the importance of being "eye candy." But also the social scene that girls could bring to a band. You took them shopping, introduced them to people that had power-much like Mick Jagger was introduced to English society by Marianne Faithfull. There was a certain aura about what girls like you did. And then it just went a little cuckoo.

  Pamela: I'm very friendly with Lori Mattix now, but it happened right around the early '70s, when the baby girls started putting on those tiny little hot pants ...

  Bebe:... and started having sex when they were fourteen! To me, that was weird, because I didn't have sex until I was eighteen.

  Pamela: Yeah, I was nineteen.

  Bebe: We were positively prehistoric! I can't even imagine having sex at fourteen.

  Pamela: I had my Barbie dolls all in a row.

  Bebe: Going out with Todd [Rundgren], I got introduced to the whole scene very quickly. Of course, if you have the chance to live that rock and roll lifestyle, it's wonderful.

  Pamela: My friend, Cassandra Peterson-Elvira-was a big groupie! She loves what she did and
happily claims it.

  Bebe: I heard that she and Todd had a [conspiratorial whisper] "sexual romp." I think it's fabulous. Everyone should fuck Todd.

  Pamela: She said that when she was backstage, the word groupie was like "roadie" or "road manager." She would proudly say, "I'm a groupie," and people would say, "Ooooooh..."

  Bebe: I'm not upset about the actual word. I would be an idiot to say that I never hung around a rock band, didn't date a rock star, or marry one, or see a lot of music in my life. Because it's who I am, that's part of me. But I'm not going to let somebody call me stupid, judgmental names for it either. What's the equivalent today? "I'm a stripper!" "I'm a porn star!" Aaahhh! Everybody's a little bit of a groupie anyway. We're all fans of something. The musicians don't get any credit for choosing us, wanting to be with us. Doesn't that mean we have to be pretty damn fucking special and smart? That we weren't throwaways, one-night stands, discards? We were girls they sought out and wanted to be around and whose energy they needed. Everybody sitting in the audience, appreciating a band, should thank the girls backstage! The real heart and soul of a moving concert is like an organism. Certain flowers aren't going to grow if they don't have their shit in place.

  Pamela: You're saying almost the same thing that Lexa Vonn from the Plastics said. She's a Marilyn Manson groupie.