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

by Pamela Des Barres

  Even though she professes to understand on-the-road rocker mentality, it wasn't too long ago that Sarah's heart got crushed by one of those tantalizing, careless boys. "It happened in December. I had already thought about talking to you, but didn't want to name names. After that experience, I changed my mind. I realized that these people don't give a damn about me. So why am I giving a damn about protecting their reputations?"

  How did the ravishing daughter of a "big-shot lawyer," who graduated top of her class, wind up backstage? "For my sixteenth birthday, I got Vault: Greatest Hits 1980-1995 and Adrenalize by Def Leppard, and boom! I never turned back. My first real concert was Def Leppard. After the show I told my girlfriend, `Oh my God, during this one part in this one song, Joe Elliott totally looked right at me!' It's funny to think that was such a big deal back then."

  Although Sarah didn't meet her heroes that night, she was bewitched by real live rock and roll. "When I started going to concerts I couldn't help but notice the chick on the side of the stage. She looks great, she's drinking her beer, she's just happy to be there. I thought it would be so cool to be that girl. My roommate and I went to see Almost Famous, and there's this scene at the Hyatt House, Penny Lane is walking around and everybody knows her. I thought, `God, that's cool.' In the rock world, or in any world, it feels good to be the person that people want to talk to. We met the band Oleander when they played in Madison. They were in Milwaukee the next night and invited us down. We were in the back drinking with them until the moment they went on. They were on stage before we were even out of the dressing room. We came out and three girls were looking at us like, `You lucky bitches,' and I thought, `Wow, I've made it. I'm the chick I used to be jealous of."

  Sarah's sexy wholesomeness often attracted the attention of roadies scanning for tasty morsels. "We were still in high school. I never walked up to roadies, going, `Hey, can I flash you for a pass?' But, remember, I was at heavy metal shows. First of all, it's 75 percent men. Secondly, 90 percent of the girls weigh three hundred pounds and wear Korn T-shirts from 1995. It was by default that we stood out. I always wanted to be up front. There's kind of a rush about making eye contact. You listen to this music every single day, nonstop, in your bedroom, and the people who made that music are looking right at you. It's not so much them as people, it's what they've created. After that, I was trying to be the cool rocker chick. The first time I got my confidence, I was in the front row at a Slipknot concert because I've got to be there. A roadie came over and said, `You, come back here.' So I watched from the side of the stage. If I wanted to meet or hang out with somebody, I wouldn't go up and start gushing about how great they were. I'd say, `I really liked the show. Can I buy you a drink?' If they were talking to somebody, I'd say, `I'll be over there. Come on over when you want that drink.' They love that."

  Sarah had an adoring high school boyfriend but says she was afraid to get close to him. "I think that's what I liked about musicians-you're able to have great closeness for, like, a day. It's perfect. You're boyfriend and girlfriend, completely in love, for a day. Then they leave. You have all the good stuff and none of the bad. It's fun and games until you try to get serious. That's when you get hurt."

  I remark that most of the groupies I know feel differently. A night or two with their idols simply isn't enough. "I've always been pretty realistic about it. Early on there were a few people who fooled me. I thought, `Oh, he really likes me!' But I knew deep down exactly what was going on. Still, sometimes I'd lie in bed thinking, `Wouldn't it be cool if this would happen?' But most of these guys have wives or girlfriends at home. Why would I want to be attached to a guy who's cheating on his girlfriend?"

  Didn't she have pangs of guilt? "It's not like they're going to fall in love and not want to be with their wives anymore. I'm not going to hurt their relationships."

  No matter how much I plead, Sarah won't divulge the name of her first rock amour. "I'll tell you the second one I hooked up with: John 5, the guitar player from Marilyn Manson. It was a tour bus experience, quite the experience, too. It wasn't like we had this big thing going on, but he's an awesome guy. To this day, I have a lot of love for him. But I was actually at the show to see Buckcherry that night. I worked my way up to the front, and some guy on the other side of the barricade had a video camera. I smiled at him, and he said, `I don't want you to flash or anything, just say hi to the camera.' An hour later he saw me and said, `I showed Manson and John your tape. They really want to meet you.' I thought, `How brilliant! They sent a guy out with a video camera.' That is so rock and roll. I was new to the rock world and kind of scared of Manson, but I went to the meeting place along with thirty other girls. They took us to this room, and all these girls were saying, `Do you have any beer? God, why is there no beer?' I'm not high maintenance, and I think John liked that about me. Finally they pointed at me, and three girls in bikinis. We got to the bus and I didn't know what to do. I was friggin' nineteen years old! Manson was sitting there with Twiggy and John, and I was just awed. But I took a deep breath and thought, `These people are no better than me. We're all human.' I walked up and said, `What's up? I'm Sarah,' and he said, `I'm Manson.' I said hi to Twiggy and sat down and started talking to John. I wasn't flirting; we were just laughing at the bikini chicks because Manson was saying, `Why don't you do this to him, and that to him.' And they were like, 'OK!' After that display, the girls were kicked off the bus, and I was thinking, `Wow, it really is like VH1!' John and I were attracted to each other, and it was just that simple. We had a great time. I saw him a couple weeks later at Ozzfest. In the meantime I'd started dating this other guy, Glen Sobel, who was also on the tour. He played drums for Beautiful Creatures."

  Aha. Rock star number three appears. "I saw him as much as you see somebody who's on the road with Ozzfest. We did the whole talk-on-the-phone thing. Glen was a great guy and we were legitimately seeing each other-but the tour ended, and due to sheer geography, we didn't see each other for years. But we're still good friends. Then it was the beginning of the end." Sarah sighs dramatically. "Lajon Witherspoon of Sevendust, the first one to completely fool me. Until then, I'd had great experiences. But I know Lajon now, and he's probably the biggest player in the game. The girls enabled him to be that way. The first time we met at a concert, I knew who he was because he's the only black man in hard rock. He was signing autographs, so I handed him my ticket stub to sign. He said, `You've got to hang out with me tonight. Do you have a pass? Come with me right now,' and he whisked me backstage. God, he plays the game so well. We got to the bus and he introduced me to his band. A security guard brought me to the side of the stage and put me right by the speaker. When you're not used to this, you're thinking, `Oh my God, I'm loving life!' The singer in the band was saying, `I want her right here-close to me.' He was getting ready to go on and the tour manager said, `You can't wear those pants without a belt; hop up and down three times.' He did, and half his ass was hanging out. I was wearing this shiny, sparkly belt, so I gave it to him and he wore it onstage. I was thinking, `That's my belt!' He said, `I'm glad I've got this because now you have to see me afterward.' He kept coming over to me during the show, and my heart was all aflutter."

  Sarah got tipsy, but only made out with Lajon that night, and he promised to invite her to the next local gig. "The day comes around, and I don't seem to have a phone call. But I still went to see what was going on. We were hanging out after the show and my best friend said, `Turn around.' I said, `No, I'm not going to,' and she said, `Just turn around.' So I swung around and there's Lajon, turning on the charm again: `Come here, I'm so sorry.' His excuse was that 9/11 happened, and everybody's head was in a different place. That was the first night we hooked up. It was quick tour bus lovin', and he was going to call me again, right? Nothing. We go to Chicago to see them, and I'm so angry, thinking, `God, I hate him, I hate him,' but of course there I am at the show."

  Lajon apologized again, telling Sarah he had tried to reach her at Hooters. "We're not supposed to
get personal calls, so the girl just hung up on him and I never got the message. That was the only time Lajon and I spent the whole night together because they had a hotel. It was absolutely perfect. That night he was extraordinary."

  In my groupie prime, not many bands used tour buses, and I comment that intimacy on the road must be much more difficult these days. "Yeah, but most musicians are used to getting it all the time. I should cut Lajon some slack because a lot of the time we hooked up, the bus was full, so we were in the bathroom. There really isn't good lovin' to be had in the friggin' tour bus bathroom. But that night in the hotel was very good. It was December and he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. At least I had one night that made me very happy. Of course, the next night they played Milwaukee, and after our great night, did he even call me to put me on the list? No. We got on the list through somebody else. I went up to Morgan Rose, the drummer, and said, `Where the fuck's Lajon?' and he said, `Oh, he went to bed already.' I said, `Sure he did.' The next time I saw him, I said, `Fuck you, Lajon. How dare you send your drummer to do your dirty work!' I walked into the women's bathroom at the House of Blues and he was sitting there with four chicks. He said, `Hey everybody, this is Sarah. The one I've been talking about.' I'm like, `Yeah, right.' I wish I could say I didn't see him anymore after that. But I saw him tons more times. He even came to my place."

  Sarah was learning that you can't count on rock guys for the long haul, but decided she could still have some fun. "I think they look for confidence more than anything, and if you happen to have good facial features to back it up, so be it. But having some dude on the cover of Rolling Stone wanting to hang out with you doesn't hurt your confidence one little bit. My friend and I will be standing in a group of twenty girls, and they'll know. `These two? They'll be fine.' They like it if you've done it before, because you know what's appropriate and what isn't. Like not to take a crap on the bus, and not to put your toilet paper in the toilet." That's a frightening thought. Hmm. Where does one put their toilet paper on the tour bus? So, who came along to take Sarah's mind off Lajon?

  "There were a lot of couple-of-week flings. Jeff Labar, the guitarist from Cinderella. We hit it off within five seconds and had a blast. We always made each other laugh. We were perfectly compatible-as compatible as you're going to be on the Poison summer tour. Then there was Jason `Gong' Jones, lead singer from Drowning Pool-he was cool. He pursued me a little bit, but I said, `Honey, you've got an album coming out in a few months. You're about to go huge. I'm not even going to pretend we could have any sort of a relationship.'"

  Sarah was diligent, sticking to her keeping-it-fun rule until one of the rockers treated her a little too well. "I'd been seeing this guy from Dope, Sloane `Mosey' Jentry, just casually. When he quit the band, I remained friends with the rest of the guys, then they got Brix, his replacement. You're supposed to stick to one dude per band, but I made an exception because Brix was phenomenal. He treated me really well. He took me out to dinner, then we got to the show and he handed me, like, thirty dollars and said, `Here, this should buy you drinks until I'm ready to hang out.' We were seeing each other a lot and I started to feel guilty because he was married. As far as his wife knew, he was just `wham, bam, thank you, ma'am,' on the road. But if she'd known he was taking me out to dinner ..."

  Dope was playing Madison, and as far as Sarah knew, all was still groovy between her and Brix. "After the show, I'm waitin', waitin', waitin'. Finally, he came out and I said, `What the fuck is going on?' He said, `Let's go talk about it. I've been thinking, and I just don't think we're compatible anymore.' I said, `That's obviously a blatant lie.' If he'd said, `I think you have an ugly vagina and I never want to see it again,' I would've been way less offended than if he tried to BS me. Like, was he watching Sex and the City last night for bad breakup lines? We certainly didn't seem to be incompatible two weeks earlier when we were getting it on. So that was the end of that. I text messaged him a week later, `When you're ready to tell me the truth, I'm ready to listen.' He left me a voice mail, `I'm so glad you called. I really want to talk to you.' Then I saw their drum tech at Hooters and he said, `Hey, Brix wants your number. He wants to apologize,' but I haven't heard a word from him. But he made me realize they're all the same. Even when they give you the impression that they're good people, they're all the goddamn same. That's when I decided to do this interview."

  It sounds to me like Sarah may have finally had it with rock stars, especially married ones. "For right now I have," she agrees. "It was part of my life and I had a blast. But I'm just tired of it. I need something real, and you aren't going to find it there. But I know the second I say, `Oh no, I'll never date another musician,' some dude on a national tour will sweep me off my feet. I truly feel I've lived my life with no regrets. If ever I think, `Should I, or shouldn't I?' I always do. How many times have you looked back and thought, `God, if I had only done that.'"

  Yes, I recall the exact moment Jimi Hendrix beckoned to me, and I wimped out on him. Of course, I was a semi-inexperienced seventeen-year-old virgin at the time. Noel Redding, the adorable, scrawny, pale-faced bass player seemed like a safer bet.

  "I still dream, because I have more in common with musicians than with accountants," Sarah continues. "It's really the look more than anything else. I like the piercings and the tattoos. I like the funky hair. Everybody's got their top five guys they'd like to sleep with. It's not a pipe dream to me. I think, `This could maybe happen: Joe Perry is my number one. Then Lenny Kravitz was my number two until I heard he doesn't smell that good. But I'm like, `I'll plug my nose, just bring me that man and his PA!"

  Does Sarah ever imagine herself twenty years from now, all cozy with her funky, tattooed rock guy? "You've got to look at the facial features," she says with a knowing smile. "Because he may look pretty hot now with all that hair, but you have to imagine that schnoz on your kid!"

  After dinner, we cruise over to Sarah's condo, an immaculate, airy place, to look through her copious rock scrapbooks. She opens a chilled bottle of white wine and pours us a glass. "This is me with Jeff from Cinderella, thirty seconds after we met ... here's Jason from Drowning Pool ... these are the feathers from Ozzfest that Ozzy blew up at the end ... here's Glen from Beautiful Creatures ... ahh, look at Tommy Lee! I have never been so starstruck in my life. He was trying to talk to us and we just kept stuttering. He finally said, `All right, nice meeting you guys' and started to walk away. My friend was going, `P-p-picture!' If Tommy Lee wanted to have some kids, I'd be more than happy to oblige. Oh, these are the guys from Nickelback. I didn't hook up with any of them. But I did kiss Nick. Oh, this is a great shot, because right when I moved to Madison, we went to see Tantric and took a picture with the singer, Hugo Ferreira. We walked back saying, `Oh, he's so dreamy.' Then two years later I hooked up with him. I'd been hanging out with their drummer, Matt Taul, the night before. We were chillin', and he got me into the show. I was looking for him and I asked Hugo, `Where's Matt?' and he said, `Just go on the bus.' I refused, because you look like an idiot when you do that. So he said, `Come with me.' It was Matt and Hugo and me, and they were watching porn. I said, sarcastically, `Dude. This is really fun.' I had a fling with Hugo on the bus that night, and the next day we went to Chicago. We had a blast because we actually got a hotel that night. Hugo is phenomenal, and he smells good in the morning. He's that guy right there," she says, pointing to another shot of the haughty bad boy. "If I was going to be unrealistic and wanted one of them to change and be the guy, it'd definitely be him."

  I've noticed that all the younger groupies call sleeping together "hooking up." "Right," Sarah says. "To me, the term `hooking up' puts less weight, less pressure on it. It goes in order as it gets more relationship-y. You've got `hooking up,' then `sleeping together,' `having sex,' then `making love."'

  Where do blow jobs come in, I wonder? "I'm not sure. I guess that could be called hooking up. But I very rarely do that. I'm like, `Uh-uh, dude!"' I'm astounded. Not even when she's crazy ab
out someone? "No, at that point, I've already got 'em," Sarah declares, "so why do I need to impress them anymore? I see no pleasure in that whatsoever."

  I ask Sarah if she scans groupie message boards on the Internet. "I'm not going to post anything, but you bet your ass I read the message boards, especially Metal Sludge. I'm sure you've heard of this girl who goes by Rikki Sixx? Let's just say that when she got to be `Sludgette of the Month,' she probably pissed herself from excitement. She's talked about how she's in love with Taime Downe and had hung out with him, like, thirty times. Then suddenly she announced on the message board, `I BLEW TAIME.' I was thinking, `Taime does not want people to know that.' Have you seen the sex tape of Kid Rock and Scott Stapp? As if you couldn't hate Scott Stapp any more. They show him sitting back, saying stuff like, `It's good to be the king . . . this is my third one today.' Where was that girl's self-respect? I mean, go ahead, sleep with him. But to allow herself to be filmed sucking him off while he says such degrading things. Like I said, I don't really do that a whole lot."

  I tell Sarah that Miss Tina, the other girl I'm meeting here in Minneapolis, is proud of her oral abilities and loves to climb aboard the bus to show her appreciation. "But when she leaves, they're probably going to talk a lot of shit about her," Sarah says, sipping her wine. "When I leave, at best, they'll say nice things, and at worst, they'll say nothing."