Lost Notes: Groupies

As the first wave of LA punk started to take hold in Hollywood, both on and off the Sunset Strip, the girls of the rock n roll underground flattened scene hierarchy by carrying the torch of the sexually charged, “I do what I want” spirit exemplified by the most notorious Hollywood groupies–in creative and unexpected ways. Then, Lori, Morgana, Dee Dee, and Pamela look back on their rock'n'roll lives, and consider their own personal mythologies. 

In the mid 1970s, as glam rock fizzled out, new kids began to trickle in on the block–kids who looked up to the groupies as party girl icons, as rock’n’roll legends, who went out there and got what they wanted…come hell or high platforms. Kid Congo Powers, Alice Bag, Pleasant Gehman, and Theresa Kereakas all were pulled towards the glitter and guitars and debauchery, and give their first-hand teenage accounts of those crucial years where glam burnt out and in its embers, early LA punk started cooking.

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Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. The Continental Hyatt House. The Rainbow Bar & Grill. Glam rock was the genre du jour and there was no more convenient or welcoming a circuit for an intrepid teenage groupie to land in than the Strip in the early 1970s. As for Led Zeppelin, LA became their spiritual home-away-from-home (read: wives). From flying in on their private jet, the Starship, to cruising down Sunset picking up groupies in their white stretch limo, the Slutmobile, Led Zeppelin’s superstardom marked a new era, and level, to groupiedom.

A teen magazine so daring, so outrageous, so scandalizing and sexually suggestive that it only lasted…five issues. Star Magazine: from the publishing empire that brought you Hot Rod, Motor Trend, Guns & Ammo, and later in the 90s, Sassy, there was, in 1973, a red-hot new music rag that glamorized the teenage groupie lifestyle rampant on the Sunset Strip. Or did it? We asked the original staff who made the magazine: who, exactly, was a Star girl?

As a girl, Dee Dee Keel ditched the doldrums of Venice for the thrills of Hollywood. Just a few years later, she would soon become the woman behind the world-famous Whisky A Go-Go... as well as an infamously active groupie. Meanwhile, Morgana Welch, a scene-savvy Beverly Hills High Schooler, gets in with Rodney Bingenheimer, Led Zeppelin, and other powerful party boys and scene insiders, as she tries to chart her own path into the rock n roll lifestyle—Hollywood encounter by Hollywood encounter.

Venice Beach teen Dee Dee Keel was desperate to find out what was happening behind the scenes, in the clubs and hotel rooms of Hollywood: so she tracked an intriguing local rocker, Jim Morrison, on his way to the Strip. That’s where she first saw Miss Pamela in all her groupie glamour.

By 1969, Pamela Des Barres was no longer a Valley teenybopper; she had transformed into a rock icon-in-the-making. Her freaky clique of Laurel Canyon sprites were ordained by Frank Zappa to become the world’s first all-girl band of all-girl groupies, the GTOs. Soon, they had the likes of the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Who, and Led Zeppelin taking notice, just as Rolling Stone dedicated an entire issue to the groupie phenomenon and made the GTOs its centerfold.

The origin story of Miss Pamela Des Barres, the original queen of the groupies, author of the iconic memoir, I’m With the Band. From her mid-Sixties teenage bop room Beatlemania, to in a few short and sexy years, having Mick Jagger on the prowl looking for her – Pamela learned quickly, through friendships with Captain Beefhart and Frank Zappa, that she was something special.

In 1973, the Sunset Strip was the epicenter of the rock n roll universe, where rockstar mythology was being built in real time. This is where fourteen-year old Valley girl Lori Lightning found herself, along with her clique of Sable Starr and Queenie Glam, known as the Baby Groupies, as they became the teenage rulers of the Hollywood music scene.

In the early 1970s, LA’s Sunset Strip was the epicenter of the rock'n'roll universe. Drugs, sex, private planes, limos, destroying hotel rooms –   it wasn’t a myth. At at the center of it all, were groupies. It’s a story we all know – but it’s never been told from this perspective. This season, on Lost Notes, we bring you GROUPIES: The Women of Sunset Strip, from the Pill to Punk. The real, riotous, rock'n'roll stories of the girls who lived it all, hosted by Dylan Tupper Rupert, from KCRW and Golden Teapot.