Manners And Morals: The Groupies

Stage-door Janies have always been more demonstrative than stage-door Johnnies. Juvenal railed bitterly against flirtatious Roman ladies in whose eyes any gladiator, however ugly, was “transformed into a Hyacinthus.” No Ziegfeld girl ever inspired a male reaction remotely comparable to the mass hysteria of Sinatra’s swooners in the 1940s or Elvis Presley’s frantic fanatics in the 1950s. Such adulatory demonstrations were mild, however, compared with those of a new and even more liberated breed of female hero-worshipers. They are the “groupies.” Their heroes are rock musicians—and their worship knows no bounds.

Frank Zappa, leader of a wel known rock group that calls itself the Mothers of Invention, defines a groupie simply as “a girl who goes to bed with members of rock-and-roll bands.” Zappa, a 28-year-old musician with a sociological bent, notes: “Every trade has its groupies. Some chicks dig truck drivers. Some go for men in uniform—the early camp followers. Ours go for rock musicians.”

And quite frequently get them. The basic distinction between yesterday’s hysterical fans and today’s groupies is that the groupies—also known as “rock geishas”—usually manage to fulfill their erotic fantasies. Says Anna (few groupies use last names, perhaps out of kindness to their families), a pretty, 25-year-old San Franciscan: “A girl is a groupie only if she has numerous relationships. A groupie will maybe sleep with three people all in one night from one group—from the equipment man to whoever is the most important.”

Class Strata. Though everyone on the rock scene is aware of the groupie phenomenon, it is next to impossible to know how many there are—mainly because rock stars, like most young men, tend to brag about their conquests. They come, says Zappa, “from any home that has contact with rock and roll and with radio and records. That’s everybody.” Zappa contends that there are thousands of them, ranging in age all the way from 50 (“Although they have to look damned good at that age to get any action”) down to ten.

Their appeal is obvious. Says “the Bear,” a 280-lb. singer and harmonica player for a Los Angeles group called the Canned Heat: “I’ve got an old lady now, so I don’t mess around when I’m in L. A. But when I’m on the road, it’s different. I mean, here are these chicks padding around the hotel corridors after you, and it’s great.” Some musicians, however, profess to find them a nuisance. Mothers Manager Dick Barber complains that groupies are in such ready supply that it is “pretty hard” to get rock bands to morning practices or recording sessions, “and sometimes hard to get them on the bandstand at night.” Josephine Mori, public relations girl for a rock record company called Elektra, calls groupies “piranhas” and says: “They have no appreciation of the person they go to bed with.” Marty Pichinson, a drummer with a rock band known as the Revelles, disputes that description—but he sometimes does find groupies too much of a good thing. “Going to bed with a girl is nice,” he says. “But sometimes you just want to have a pillow fight with the guys.”

Although sexual promiscuity is its membership fee, the groupie subsociety has its own curious moral code. It has even developed class strata of sorts. At the bottom are such aberrant types as “the Plaster Casters,” a pair of young Chicago fetishists who, as their name implies, have a peculiar hobby. They make plaster casts of rock stars’ anatomies-certain parts of their anatomies, that is. Only slightly higher on the social scale are the “kiss and tell” groupies, who collect and trade the names of their conquests—often falsely.

Crash Course. The great groupie middle class is composed of the “gate crashers.” Organized and persistent, they scour the newspapers for notice of a rock group’s arrival in their city, then post lookouts at transportation terminals and hotels. When they have their quarry pinned down, they move in—dolled up in wild outfits and weird hairdos, hoping desperately to attract attention and earn an invitation inside. If that fails, they resort to more direct tactic; fering performers dope in exchange their favors or bribing security guards to smuggle them into stars’ hotel rooms.

Harlan Ellison, a California freelance writer, recalls a harrowing night in San Diego three years ago when he was touring with the Rolling Stones. Spotting a young groupie crawling along the ledge outside his second-floor hotel room, he opened a sliding glass door to let her in, but she slipped, fell into the ocean-breaking her wrist—and had to be fished out by the Coast Guard. Ellison had barely recovered from that fright when another girl walked through his door and asked him if he was a friend of the Stones. When he said yes, she stripped and flopped onto his bed.

Super Status. Such crass approaches are unnecessary for the grandes dames of groupie society, the Super Groupies. Beautiful, usually intelligent, often well-heeled, they are welcome—in fact, sought-after—company.

“They live the life that every other so-called groupie aspires to—spending this week with one top group, next week with another, maybe traveling to London or Jamaica,” says Steve Paul, owner of The Scene, a Manhattan rock club.

Paul estimates that “no more than ten” groupies actually qualify for super status.

Like the women who gravitated to the 19th century British Romantic poets, they are artistic as well as physical helpmeets. Songs are written for them and about them; they act as critics and even co-composers. “It’s all one big ego trip,” gushes Super Groupie Cleo, a strawberry-blonde 18-year-old New Yorker who is a look-alike for Jane Fonda.

Undisputed queen of the class at the moment is a young Manhattanite whose carefully acquired talent as a photographer has gained her entree to several top rock bands.

For every such success story, groupie life has presented scores of tragedies—made worse by the preoccupation with sex and dope that is integral to rock culture. Typical enough is the bitter story of a Manhattan waitress: “I’m 33, and I’ve made it with all the early biggies, and more. You know what I’ve got to show for it? Three kids from three different guys—which three, I’m not sure. I’ve gone the dope route, been busted twice, and taken the cure at Lexington, Ky.”

Most groupies may be luckier. But it still is no easy life—and it now is becoming even more complicated because of the rise of a formidable counterforce, known as “the Super Fans” and evangelically dedicated to keeping rock musicians out of the groupies’ passionate clutches. Super Fans have been known to raid a performer’s hotel room in search of groupies to eject. “It’s a vocation,” explains one, “like being a nun.” The problem is that her protective efforts on behalf of her heroes do not often seem to be appreciated.