Two “second generation groupies” are photographed with rock counterculture authority Rodney Bingenheimer.[1] Relationships between the second generation of “groupies” and male counterculture authorities were condemned in the 1970s.[2] Source: Getty Images via Pinterest, Credit: Karen and Nancy Tyndall.
At the turn of the 1970s Rolling Stone journalist Jerry Hopkins published the paperback Groupies and Other Girls consequent to the profound success external and internal the period’s rock counterculture of the February 1969 edition of Rolling Stone, “The Groupies and Other Girls”.[3] Examining the “Girls Together Outrageously” Hopkins writes, “What the GTOs have going for them is really a dream come true. Now they’re a group… Now they’re appearing in public. Now they’re being interviewed and photographed. It’s as if they’ve become the stars they have so long worshipped”.[4] The (mainstream) American public came away from the initial Hopkins, Burks and Nelson article learned about “groupies” – that they were “starfuckers” who commodified sexual acts in exchange for closeness to the bodies and fame of rock groups.[5]
By the early 1970s the “groupie” was understood by American mainstream society as a girl or (very young) woman who uses sex as a commodity to trade for closeness to rock groups,[6] as is represented in this photoshoot with the “groupie” Anna and the Rolling Stones. Source: Rolling Stone via Rolling Stone, Credit: Rolling Stone.
As “first generation groupies” like the GTOs disconnected from the “groupie” label and rising numbers of girls and women that linked artistic and sexual supports of rock groups entered the rock counterculture,[7] “groupie”, “sex” and “pathology”; as the product of anti-women’s right to sexual liberation ideology/politics of mainstream society,[8] and the general anti-women’s rights ideology of the rock counterculture, of the early 1970s;[9] were intertwined.[10]
Through the 1970s the art of translating material situations involving “groupie-starfuckers”, of which the term “groupie” and kin terms had collapsed to reference, became a systemic practice which various sorts of rock groups partook.[11] From the early 1970s well into the 1980s, the largest quantity of female sexual supporters were teenage girls and nascent young women;[12] resultingly, the “groupie” label adopted denotations of youth and connotations of childishness that have lasted to the contemporary period.[13]
Rita Rae Roxx, who was fourteen-years old when she began participating in “groupie” culture in the mid-1970s, discusses the dynamic between female sexual supporters and musicians in the 1970s.
If the GTOs were synecdochal of the “first generation” of “groupies”, the Los Angeleno “baby groupies”, entitled the “L.A. queens” by Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page,[14] were synecdochal of the “second generation groupies”.[15] Star Magazine, a popular (particularly amongst “groupies” and artists) internal counterculture publication, had as its objective empowering and providing sexual and similar taboo educations to girls/young women,[16] but worked in function, to connect young (many underage) females – the magazine’s models – to rock groups.[17] With the context of what the denotative state of the “groupie” term was in in the 1970s, I will now analyse two significant and influential songs about “groupies” from the mid-1970s, David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” (1974) and Led Zeppelin’s “Sick Again” (1975),[18] to determine the specificities and intricacies of the connotations of the identity from how it was conceived by authoritative rock countercultural members and therefore how it was presented to broader society.
The cover of the first issue of Star Magazine featuring teenage model Shray Mecham. Star employed as its models for its covers and its pages Los Angeleno adolescent girls and very young women.[19] Source: Star via Google Images, Credit: Star.
“Rebel Rebel” and “Sick Again” can be read as light and dark respectively, representations of 1970s “groupie” culture. In Bowie’s song the “groupie” is transgressive of sociopolitical, aesthetic and ethical codes ordering “acceptable” girlhood but the speaker/lyricist (Bowie himself) finds value in her transgressive sexual and bodily practices.[20] The “groupie” is presented as requiring pathologizing, engaging in “wrong”/excessive sexual practices – “You can't get enough, but enough ain't the test”, “What can I do for you? Looks like you've been there too” – but the speaker does not abide by the sociopolitical and countercultural narrative that that “wrong” is “bad” – “Hot tramp, I love you so!”[21]
David Bowie celebrates the transgressive sexual and bodily practices of “groupies” in the mid-1970s – a counter-hegemonic perspective that disrupts the dominant perspective on “groupies” internal and external the counterculture.[22] Source: Rebel Rebel via YouTube, Credit: RCA Records.
From a hegemonic (external and internal the counterculture) perspective the “groupie’s” behaviour would be read as dishonourable,[23] that she is not behaving as a virtuous American young female and requires first consequences then treatment and rehabilitation,[24] but the speaker supports her choices: “They put you down, they say I'm wrong”.[25] In “Rebel Rebel”, significantly absent in mainstream and counterculture discourses on girls and young women’s sexual support of rock groups,[26] Bowie considers rock group’s participation in sexual acts with young, sometimes underage, females.[27] Though his is not a disruptive perspective – he does not problematize powerful, older men’s engaging in sexual acts with young fans – Bowie raises the bidirectional dynamic of the “groupie”/artist relationship as well as the culpability the rock group may have in the “groupie’s” sexual support.[28]
Fourteen-year-old Karen Umphrey as the “Star Girl” on the cover of the third issue of Star Magazine. While intended to empower teenage girls and young women in or interested in the rock counterculture, Star mainly functioned to introduce rock groups to its models.[29] Source: Star via Google Images, Credit: Star.
Sable Starr (left) and Lori Lightning (right), as has been historicized, the foremost “baby groupies” of the 1970s,[30] photographed in a suggestive pose with the band Slade’s Dave Hill. Source: Getty Images via Google Images, Credit: Getty Images.
“Sick Again” expresses an opposite perspective to Bowie’s in “Rebel Rebel”, which aligns with and reinforces hegemonic external and internal counterculture conceptions of and receptions to 1970s “groupie” culture. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page and Robert Plant wrote the song’s lyrics which chronicle vignettes of recollected encounters with “groupies”.[31] The dynamic between “groupies” and rock groups is firstly, documented as absent of “groupie’s” support of the group’s music and parallel, the group’s respect for the person and recognition of the humanity of the “groupie”.[32]
In Sick Again, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant communicate a lack of respect for the predominantly underage girls that offer and provide them sexual support. Source: Led Zeppelin: Live at Earl’s Court 1975 via YouTube, Credit: Warner Chappell Music.
The “groupie” is approaching the rock group and offering sexual support in order to be near and share intimacy with the celebrity dimension of the rock group.[33] “Sick Again” is explicitly extratextual as it constructs the “groupie” as a teenage girl and references the Los Angeleno “baby groupie” collective, the “L.A. queens”, comprised predominantly of the models of Star Magazine.[34], [35]
Model Bebe Buell was closely associated with the “L.A. queens” and a significant “second generation groupie”.[36] Buell was accused by authorities internal as well as external the counterculture of developing sexual relationships with artists to advantage her career.[37] Source: Creem via Pinterest, Credit: Creem.
Though the speaker frames the relationship between rock groups and the “second generation groupies” as natural and systemic; “You know I'm the one you want; …I got to be the one you need”; he frames the “groupies” themselves as “slutty”, weaponizing their sexuality for gain and unprincipled: “How fast you learn the downhill slide”, “Oh, how you, play the game”, “Painted lady in the city of lies”.[38]
Despite artists maintaining sexual relationships between girls and young women in the counterculture and themselves were natural, it was so common it was arguably systemic, that artists would criticize such girls/young women for pursuing them.[39] Source: people magazine via Google Images, Credit: people magazine.
In “Sick Again” Led Zeppelin make manifest Coates’ argument that in the rock counterculture of particularly the 1970s male rock groups’ identities were bonded to a hypersexual, hegemonic masculinity and consequently, female members of the counterculture were necessarily made into submissive sexual subjects.[40]
In the rock counterculture of the 1970s, male artists that embodied hypersexual, hegemonic masculinity were applauded for their promiscuity, while the girls and women they had sexual relations with were attacked for such.[41] Source: Foot Loose & Fancy Free via YouTube, Credit: Warner Bros.
While the latter were arraigned for their sexual and bodily practices, the former were worshipped for theirs;[42] Led Zeppelin testifying that the “groupie’s” identity matched the pejorative hegemonic characterization of her, provided rationality for a national campaign against real “groupies”.[43]
In the mid-1960s, the term “groupie” appeared in the Village Voice to describe a young female fan of the Beatles’ John Lennon that demonstrated her support of his music in bodily practices that transgressed the historical limitations confining “acceptable” girl/womanhood.[44] In the rock counterculture of the second half of the 1960s, as documented in the writing and interviewing of self-identifying “groupies”, Pamela Des Barres and Cynthia “Plaster Caster”, the term, primarily in regards to female rock group supporters, referenced one that was “with” a “group”,[45] as in provided the group “traditional”, sexual, “domestic” and any other form of support. The sexual support of “groupies” was understood as valuable connection and inspiration by and for, both the “groupie” and the artist.
The “Girls Together Outrageously” building their bond with The Alice Cooper Band in 1969 as they share a meal. Source: SickThingsUK via Lethal Amounts, Credit: Ed Caraeff.
Following February 1969, the foremost informant on what the “groupie” identity was, was Hopkins, Burks and Nelson’s “The Groupies and Other Girls” article in that month’s issue of Rolling Stone – both of which were extremely popular and presented the “groupie” to a national audience.[46]
In the article, which featured the testimony of “groupie” communities across America, opinions on “groupies” from artists and those that work with artists, and analyses from scholastic sources, all female self-identified “groupies” are presented as engaged in sexual or erotic relationships with artists, and artists as disparaging of them.[47] Though all “groupies” are framed as requiring pathologizing, “groupie-starfuckers”,[48] fans that provide exclusively or predominantly sexual support, are recorded as ethically inferior to “groupie-muse/wives”, fans that also offer domestic or social reproductive support. “Groupie-starfuckers”, the journalists conclude, use sexual acts with rock groups for personal advantage;[49] in Grand Funk Railroad’s very successful “We’re an American Band”, all girl/women’s support of rock groups is determinately intertwined with sexual support, which is defined as the trading of sexual acts for intimacy and closeness.[50]
Following “We’re an American Band”, in the mid-1970s and spanning past the 1970s, the practice of writing songs about “groupie” culture and its centrality to the rock counterculture was ubiquitous, with intercontinentally celebrated counterculture authorities David Bowie and Led Zeppelin participating.[51]
The “L.A. queens” celebrating Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham’s birthday with the band’s tour crew in 1973. Source: Michael Ochs Archive via Vintage Everyday, Credit: Getty Images.
In “Rebel Rebel”, Bowie’s speaker offers a counter-hegemonic perspective on the errant sexual and bodily practices of “groupies” by placing value in their transgression, and holding similarly culpable “groupies” and artists in their sexual relationships.[52] Inversely, Led Zeppelin reinforce the now external and internal conception of the “groupie” in “Sick Again”: that she is undeserving of respect and her humanity’s recognition, as she uses her sexuality to gain association with the celebrity of rock groups.[53]
It is significant to recognize that over the period I have examined, the willingness to allow identified “groupies” to define the identity themselves decreases from the second half of the 1960s, where they played a prominent role in developing the label, to the 1970s, when the authorities trusted and consulted by America to inform knowledges of “groupies” were at first, journalists and then, musicians. The reduction of the “groupie” identity, what was initially a position of empowerment, inspiration and creation connected to but not enmeshed with men and sex, into an object for male sexual consumption, is but one occurrence of women’s disempowerment and objectification in the rock counterculture.
Janis Joplin confronted male countercultural authorities and members’ attempts to discourage and discount her artistry. She challenged the thinking that the only appropriate space for a woman in rock was as a “groupie”.[54] Source: Janis Joplin - Live In Frankfurt, Germany April 12, 1969 via YouTube, Credit: Aviator Management.
Over the temporal course examined across my blog posts all women in the counterculture, from female musicians to women that worked in the production and business sectors of rock music, were struggling against attempts by male countercultural members to collapse their identities into that of the “groupie” - in the reductive and misogynistic meaning.[55] In my examination of both primary and secondary sources however, women involved in all dimensions of rock music fought to define their own identities, resisted internal and external counterculture initiatives to evacuate them from their positions of employment or places in the countercultural space, discursively and/or materially, and disrupted or subverted perceptions of weakness, dependence, stupidity and inability.[56], [57]
In the late 1970s, The Runaways, comprised of teenage girls and very young women, subverted the characterization of young females in rock as dependant and incapable (of anything other than sexual support).[58] Source: The Runaways via YouTube, Credit: UMG Recordings, Inc.
Many girls and women in rock, from “groupies”, wives and models, to artists, to songwriters, journalists, photographers, assistants and engineers, denied predominantly male authorities in the counterculture and in mainstream America, as well as both men and women spectators from across the nation, the opportunity to silence and rid them.[59] And to this day, as rights have been won, battles have been lost and the world of rock has changed considerably,[60] the fight continues.[61]
Endnotes
1. Pamela Des Barres, I’m With the Band, read by the author (Newark: Audible Studios, 2011), Audible audio ed., 11 hr., 9 min.
2. Norma Coates, “From the Vaults: Teenyboppers, Groupies, and Other Grotesques: Girls and Women and Rock Culture in the 1960s and early 1970s,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 31, no. 3 (2019): 43-45, https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2019.313005.
3. Des Barres, I’m With the Band.
4. Des Barres, I’m With the Band.
5. Gretchen Larsen, “‘It’s a man’s man’s man’s world’: Music groupies and the othering of women in the world of rock,” Organization 24, no. 3 (2017): 412-413, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1350508416689095.
6. Jerry Hopkins, John Burks, and Paul Nelson, “The Groupies and Other Girls,” Rolling Stone, February 15, 1969, https://www.rollingstone.com/feature/groupies-gtos-miss-mercy-plaster-caster-75990/.
7. Des Barres, I’m With the Band.
8. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 43-46.
9. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 42.
10. Lisa L. Rhodes, “Groupies,” in American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Ideas in U.S. History, ed. Gina Misiroglu (Milton Park, UK: Taylor & Francis, 2015), 342.
11. Karolina Karbownik, “Speculation Over the Love for Rock Music: Media Constructions of Groupies Between the 1960s and 1970s,” Studia de Cultura 13, no. 2 (2017): 51-53, https://studiadecultura.up.krakow.pl/article/view/8875/8143.
12. McKenzie K. Hartmann, “Did I Want to Be with the Band? A Study of Feminism and Consent in the Time of Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll,” (BA thes., The University of Texas at Austin, 2019), 49-51.
13. Larsen, “It’s a man’s world,” 409-411.
14. Led Zeppelin, Sick Again, Apple Music track, on Physical Graffiti (Remastered), 1975, streaming audio, 4:42, https://music.apple.com/ca/album/physical-graffiti-remastered/580707980.
15. Lisa L. Rhodes, Electric Ladyland: Women and Rock Culture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 227-231.
16. Karbownik, “Media Constructions of Groupies,” 51-52.
17. Des Barres, I’m With the Band.
18. Hartmann, “Consent in Rock,” 51.
19. Karbownik, “Media Constructions of Groupies,” 51-52.
20. David Bowie, Rebel Rebel, Apple Music track, on Best of Bowie, 2002, streaming audio, 4:29, https://music.apple.com/ca/album/best-of-bowie/697650603.
21. Bowie, Rebel Rebel.
22. Karbownik, “Media Constructions of Groupies,” 51-53.
23. Karbownik, “Media Constructions of Groupies,” 51-53.
24. Larsen, “It’s a man’s world,” 409-411.
25. Bowie, Rebel Rebel.
26. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 45.
27. Bowie, Rebel Rebel.
28. Bowie, Rebel Rebel.
29. Des Barres, I’m With the Band.
30. Hartmann, “Consent in Rock,” 49-51.
31. Hartmann, “Consent in Rock,” 49-51.
32. Led Zeppelin, Sick Again.
33. Led Zeppelin, Sick Again.
34. Led Zeppelin, Sick Again.
35. Karbownik, “Media Constructions of Groupies,” 51-52.
36. Rhodes, Electric Ladyland, 216-218.
37. Rhodes, Electric Ladyland, 217-218.
38. Led Zeppelin, Sick Again.
39. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 44-45.
40. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 43-45.
41. Larsen, “It’s a man’s world,” 400-401.
42. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 44-45.
43. Rhodes, Electric Ladyland, 249
44. Rhodes, Electric Ladyland, 141.
45. Hartmann, “Consent in Rock,” 14-15.
46. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 43-44.
47. Hopkins, Burks, and Nelson, “Groupies and Other Girls.”
48. Hopkins, Burks, and Nelson, “Groupies and Other Girls.”
49. Hopkins, Burks, and Nelson, “Groupies and Other Girls.”
50. Grand Funk Railroad, We're an American Band, Apple Music track, on Greatest Hits, 2006, streaming audio, 3:27, https://music.apple.com/ca/album/greatest-hits/715534629.
51. Hartmann, “Consent in Rock,” 49.
52. Karbownik, “Media Constructions of Groupies,” 52-53.
53. Led Zeppelin, Sick Again.
54. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 42-43.
55. Larsen, “It’s a man’s world,” 398-403.
56. Coates, “Teenyboppers, Groupies, Other Grotesques,” 45-47.
57. Karbownik, “Media Constructions of Groupies,” 54.
58. Hartmann, “Consent in Rock,” 25.
59. Hartmann, “Consent in Rock,” 21-45.
60. Hartmann, “Consent in Rock,” 72-82.
61. Rhodes, “Groupies,” 342.
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