Random Rock N' Roll Groupies Reveal What Lifestyle Is Really Lik (14 items)

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  (#1) Groupies Considered Themselves Muses To Rockstars

  Groupies played many roles. Some were sexual partners, others tended to rock stars' health, some took care of clothes and other needs. But some were muses. Chris O'Dell was the subject of multiple songs, and the presence of other women helped stoke the creativity of some of rock 'n' roll's most famous musicians. In an interview with The Guardian, Pamela Des Barres described how she served as a muse to musicians like Keith Moon: 

  I was Keith’s LA girl, and there was no doubt about it. I knew that whenever he came to town, he’d call no one but me. He was such a needy soul… I was a stabilizing thing for him. When he’d wake up screaming... I could calm him. It was my duty as a muse to take care of this brilliant genius who inspired so many.

   While she doesn't shy away from the groupie label, Des Barres feels the stereotypes don't capture the real role that women like her played in rock history. As she told Salon:

  I’m still trying to set that word [groupie] straight because all it means is just a music lover who wants to be near the band. Period. That’s all it means, in whatever capacity. Sexual? Sometimes yes, but also friends, helpers, assistants, guides… we wanted to uplift and enhance these people who moved us so much. That’s all that a groupie is. They are music-loving muses.
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  (#12) Misogyny And Double-Standards Ruled The Music Scene

  The word groupie itself is a loaded term; it implies that women who hung around bands were doing it for sexual attention and proximity to fame rather than for love of the music. Women like Chris O'Dell and Pamela Des Barres participated in the same activities as the men hailed as musical heroes, but were dismissed as hangers-on rather than peers.

  O'Dell believes that some of it stemmed from innate misogyny:

  There was definitely a misogynistic attitude. Look at their women - so afraid of other women because they thought they were going to take their man away. The feminist movement hadn't hit then. I don't think that women today would put up with it.

  Many women from the music scene object to that label because of the baggage it carries. As Bebe Buell said in an interview:

  I get really angry at people who just dismiss these girls as whores or groupies or crappy labels they want to throw at them. They were more than that. They were darling, sweet girls that would greet you at the airport with flowers and invite you to all of these wonderful things... Forget it, you would have a blast. They were just really nice girls. They were not mean girls. I've had anger toward some of the things they've done when they were kids, but I was a kid, too, so I can't judge people.
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  (#10) Groupies Did A Lot Of Different Odd Jobs While On Tour

  Being a tour manager for big bands was part party, but also part work. Though Chris O'Dell enjoyed partying during her time as a manager for the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, she was also an employee and part of the tour crew. That meant she needed to be on hand for anything from sewing buttons onto Bob Dylan's shirt to returning harmonicas via helicopter. According to O'Dell:

  Bob Dylan forgot his harmonicas, and so we kind of went oh, 'OK.' We got his harmonicas, and then George called back, who was staying with Bob at the Isle of Wight, and said, "Well, just take a helicopter down." So we went from going to catch the train like regular people to flying in a helicopter with Bob Dylan's harmonicas to a farmhouse. And landing basically in the backyard. And as we were coming down in the helicopter, there's Bob sticking his head out the bedroom window upstairs kind of watching us, and I thought, this is a reverse.
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  (#2) Drug And Alcohol Abuse Was Pervasive

  Drugs and alcohol were inescapable in the music scene of the '70s, particularly around the Rolling Stones. Chris O'Dell's ability and willingness to take drugs impressed Keith Richards, who said she could keep up "just like a guy." Her drug use reached such a point that it became a serious problem and led to a "rock bottom" moment after touring with the Stones. As she told ABC News:

  It started with the Stones tour and then it just kind of kept on going. The tour was over, but I kept on going, and I kept on going by basically trying to find the perfect high, trying to find the perfect balance. So it would be, you know, do a line of coke or a couple lines of coke, and then that would be too edgy so it would be OK have a Quaalude or a Seconal, something that kind of pulled me down or pushed me down. Then I'd get too down so I'd have to do something more and then by the evening I was using alcohol to also take the edge off.

  So it was always looking for that perfect balance, but never finding it.

  She said that substance abuse was so extreme and normalized that "we just thought that was getting high and people who died died because they just didn't know how to stop."
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  (#14) Some Groupies See Modern Celebrity Culture As An Evolution Of The Groupie Lifestyle

  Lori Mattix was considered a "baby groupie," one of the younger girls in the music scene of the '60s and '70s. Even though she was still in high school at the time, she slept with rock stars like Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger, and lost her virginity to David Bowie at 14.

  She told Thrillist that even though those relationships are considered profoundly problematic today, she sees them as a direct parallel to modern celebrity culture: 

  You need to understand that I didn’t think of myself as underage. I was a model. I was in love. That time of my life was so much fun. It was a period in which everything seemed possible. There was no AIDS, and the potential consequences seemed to be light. Nobody was afraid of winding up on YouTube or TMZ. Now people are terrified. You can’t even walk out your door without being photographed. It has become a different world.

  But, I should add, things haven’t really changed. Look at the Kylie and Kendall Jenners, the Gigi Hadids. They are the modern-day versions of teenage groupies. The only difference is that the Internet blows them up in a way that allows them to make a fortune. And then there’s Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, and all those kids who were f*cking partying at 15. It is just a different era. It has evolved into something else. 
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  (#5) Groupies Had Front Row Seats To Music History

  Chris O'Dell's role as both a personal assistant and a close friend of rock legends like The Beatles meant she was present for some of the most important moments in rock history. She witnessed the moment when George Harrison confessed to Ringo Starr that he was in love with Ringo's wife. As O'Dell tells it:

  When George finally told Ringo that he was in love with Maureen, Ringo's response was, "Well, better you than someone else." And you know, I think that sort of ... it's like OK at least it's not somebody that we don't know.[...] It's all in the family. And I think that's kind of the way it was at that point.

  She even got to see the Beatles' last performance together on the rooftop of Apple Records from a seat next to Yoko Ono and Maureen Starkey. As she described the legendary music moment:

  It was freezing cold. I mean that I remember more than anything - how cold it was up there. But also, it was just so exciting to think originally the idea was that they were doing it so that everybody in the whole West End of London could hear the music, and in fact, the amps weren't that big. So, the people on Saville Row could hear it, and it was fun to watch them looking up trying to figure out what was that?

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