Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. These groupies found fame in the sheets,
but the life of a rock star hanger-on wasn't exactly glamorous.
Every touring musician who passed through Los Angeles in the 1970s knew who Sable Starr was.
According to Far Out Magazine, Starr — born Sabel Hay Shields — hailed from a rich family, had her
first sexual encounter at age 12, and started hanging around the Sunset Strip bars when she was
14. In an interview for the book "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk," Starr said:
"My friend called me up one day and said, 'Do you wanna go to the Whiskey-A-Go-Go?
And I was nuts to begin with, I always liked getting in trouble, so I said sure."
Starr was quickly hooked. She got a nose job at 15, cultivated her flamboyant fashion sense, and
became the reigning queen of L.A.'s baby groupies, so-named for their young ages. When asked to
define the term groupie in a 1973 interview with the teen magazine Star, Starr explained:
"It's someone that meets the groups, goes to concerts with them and takes them around town,
and just has a good time with them being their friend."
At age 15, she ran away with The New York Dolls' guitarist Johnny Thunders. The
two had a whirlwind romance that ultimately became abusive. In her interview for "Please
Kill Me," Starr explained that she left the groupie scene after the toxic relationship:
"Johnny tried to destroy my personality. [...] After I
was with him, I just wasn't Sable Starr anymore."
Lori Mattix — also known as Lori Lightning — was another baby groupie who frequented Los Angeles'
music scene in the 1970s. Mattix was enthralled by her classmate Sable Starr, and the two hit the
Sunset Strip nightclubs every weekend. As Mattix told Thrillist in 2015, David Bowie invited her
and Starr to his hotel room when she was only 15. There, she claimed, he took her virginity.
That same year, Mattix met Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page at a hotel party. He was immediately
smitten with her. The band's manager later picked her up in a limousine. It was a situation
Mattix likened to being kidnapped, though she relaxed once she saw Page. She told Thrillist:
"He mesmerized me. I fell in love instantly."
The two dated for some time, and according to Mattix, Page even asked her mother for
permission to date her. She still considers Page to be one of her greatest loves.
Speaking about her groupie days, Mattix told Thrillist:
"That time of my life was so much fun. It was a period in which everything seemed
possible. [...] I feel like I was very present. [...] I got to hang out with some
of the most amazing, most beautiful, most charismatic men in the world.
I went to concerts in limos with police escorts. Am I going to regret this? No."
Bebe Buell told Cameron Crowe in a 2001 interview with Talk Magazine
that she was not a groupie but rather, quote, "a patron of the arts." Indeed,
Crowe's "Almost Famous" character Penny Lane was partially inspired by her.
"We are not groupies."
"This is Penny Lane, man, show some respect."
According to Buell's autobiography "Rebel Heart: An American Rock 'n' Roll Journey," she grew up in
Virginia, dated Paul Cowsill of The Cowsills, and declined a limousine ride with Jimi Hendrix at 15.
After high school, she moved to New York and became a model who
dabbled in the city's nightlife. Buell wrote:
"I always had fantasies of being some kind of artist. A performer, a 'somebody.' But I was
afraid that people would laugh at me because I wanted to be famous. [...] People always wanted
to have sex with me, instead of wondering what I thought or felt. That was painful."
But sparks flew in 1972 when she met rocker Todd Rundgren. The two had an on-again-off-again
relationship for years, and, when not together, Buell posed for Playboy and had dalliances with
some of the biggest names in rock, including Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Jimmy Page.
She had a brief relationship with Steven Tyler,
which resulted in the birth of their daughter, actor Liv Tyler. Buell is
now a musician herself, writing songs about female empowerment. She told Talk Magazine:
"It was the guys that made the fuss. They wanted to have the relationships. I would
have been perfectly happy just loving the music."
From an early age, Pamela Des Barres lived and breathed rock 'n' roll. According to
her now-legendary 1987 memoir, "I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie," she grew up
in the heart of Los Angeles, where she became infatuated with artists like Elvis Presley,
Paul McCartney, and Mick Jagger. This fascination
soon led her to the Sunset Strip, a hangout for famous musicians traveling through L.A.
Her groupie life began when she met Frank Zappa, who convinced her to join an all-girl
band called The GTOs. The group released just one album in 1969, but it thrust Des
Barres into the limelight. Over the years, she spent time with rock's biggest stars,
including Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Waylon Jennings, and Jim Morrison.
When asked about her former lifestyle, Des Barres
asserts that it was liberating. She told Get Me Giddy in 2021:
"I was a girl, I loved being a girl. And I was a proud girl."
"I took my birth control pill out of my purse and
took it in front of people on the Sunset Strip, which is feminism."
She also never found being a groupie demeaning. She told The Guardian in 2018:
"A groupie is someone who loves the music so much she wants to be around the people
who make it. [...] I hope that people will see my life as the choice for freedom."
Even in the groupie world, Cynthia Albritton is considered something of an enigma. In a
1969 interview with Rolling Stone, the Chicago native explained that her fascination with rock
music — and the groupie scene — began at a young age, when she skipped school to meet
The Rolling Stones at their hotel. When she was 19, her mother discovered her diary and
threatened religious and psychiatric intervention. So Albritton moved out.
She got the idea to make plaster casts of rock star genitalia in her college art
class when her teacher suggested making a mold of a solid object.
"One day the teacher said, 'You could plaster cast almost anything that's solid.'"
"'Tomorrow we'll make a cast of it.' And I thought…"
It provided the perfect in for Albritton, who desperately wanted to sleep with famous
musicians but was too timid to approach them. She told Rock Confidential in 2004:
"What I was looking for was an excuse to talk about it. [...] That would be
responsible for the seduction because I just wasn't capable of it. I was too shy and dorky."
Her plan worked. Operating alongside a second girl who assisted with the casting process,
Albritton's artistic endeavor set her apart from other groupies. She's produced around 50
such sculptures, with Jimi Hendrix being her first high-profile rock star cast.
According to her no-holds-barred memoir, "The Last Living S---: Born in Iran,
Bred Backstage," Roxana Shirazi was born in Iran during a time of political unrest,
spent time in prison with her mother at six months old, and moved to England to
start a new life in 1984. There, she endured racism, culture shock,
and physical abuse at the hand of her stepfather before finding solace in rock music at age 11.
A dancer, feminist, writer, actor, and intellectual,
Shirazi made a name for herself as both a journalist and groupie,
accompanying bands like Guns N' Roses and Mötley Crüe on tour. She thoroughly embraces
her sexuality and resents the sexist culture of slut-shaming, which celebrates male promiscuity
while punishing the same behavior in women. Shirazi wrote in the forward of her memoir:
"A female's pursuit of sexual pleasure and sexual adventure is still seen as a
negative characteristic, somehow making her a bad human being. A
female is not defined in terms of her humanity, but in terms of her sex life."
As she explained to hosts Chanty and Lynx on their podcast "Muses" in 2019,
she was drawn to the spirit of rock 'n' roll in her 20s but found
the fame-related power imbalances and misogyny disconcerting. She explained:
"I want to let go and be free and be wild. I want
to be rock 'n' roll. But sometimes I can't; I'm not allowed to be."
Morgana Welch embraced the more mystical aspects of 1970s groupiedom. She was born in Phoenix,
Arizona to a single mother who worked as a model. The family found their way to Los Angeles,
where 16-year-old Welch ditched high school to hang out with her best friend, Tyla,
on the Sunset Strip. As she explained in an interview with Punk Globe,
Tyla lived right down the street from the famous Hyatt House — also known as the
Riot House — where many popular musicians stayed when they traveled through town.
Both girls soon joined forces with the now-legendary pack of baby groupies known
as the L.A. Queens and spent many nights partying with the members of Led Zeppelin
and other bands. Welch was all about the music and claimed to connect with
the artists by dancing at their shows. In a 2018 interview with Please Kill Me, she said:
"They loved it when we would dance… It was that deep identification with their music."
Welch dabbled in astrology and spirituality, played guitar,
cooked for the bands, and cultivated her trademark earthy aesthetic. She
was a hippie spirit who enjoyed the free love aspect of mingling
with musicians. When asked to describe her life as an L.A. Queen, she told Please Kill Me:
"It was magical, like being on drugs… We just enveloped in this world,
it was their world, but you were part of it."
"She claims to have had sex with more rock stars than you can shake a drumstick at."
Also known as Sweet Connie, Connie Hamzy was an outgoing girl from Arkansas who dreamed
of becoming a famous groupie. She got her wish in 1973 when Grand Funk Railroad immortalized
her in their song "We're an American Band," which featured the line: "Last night in Little Rock put
me in a haze, Sweet, sweet Connie — doin' her act, she had the whole show and that's a natural fact."
In a 2019 interview with CBS THV11, Hamzy said her groupie adventures began when her mother
dropped her off early for a Steppenwolf show to avoid traffic and parking hassles. Bored,
15-year-old Hamzy found her way backstage.
"We'd wander around in the backstage area, and then one thing would lead to another."
In an interview with Joan Rivers 21 years into her groupie career, Hamzy claimed that
she had slept with around 500 rock musicians — all while working as a substitute teacher.
"Don't you think you could be doing something else?"
"This is what I want to do, this is what I've always wanted to do."
"Just sleep with rockstars?"
"And their crews."
Over the years, Hamzy spent time with many bands, including Queen,
KISS, and The Eagles. Van Halen even took her on tour in 1988.
Chris O'Dell's autobiography, "Miss O'Dell: My Hard Days and Long Nights with The Beatles,
The Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and the Women They Loved," opens with the words:
"I wasn't famous. I wasn't even almost famous. But I was there."
And indeed, she was. O'Dell's legendary rock 'n' roll journey began when she left her quiet
hometown of Tucson, Arizona for the excitement of Los Angeles in 1966. Two years into her new
California life, she was offered a job at Apple Records, The Beatles' record company.
The 20-year-old O'Dell sold everything she owned to buy a plane ticket to England for
what would become the adventure of a lifetime. She spent two years at Apple Records and became
familiar with all the members of The Beatles, sitting in on many key moments of the band's
now-iconic career. She sang in the chorus of "Hey Jude" and was even commemorated in
George Harrison's song "Miss O'Dell." She then worked as a tour manager for
groups including The Grateful Dead, The Rolling Stones, Queen, and Led Zeppelin.
O'Dell maintains that she was not a true groupie as she always had a job to do while on the road.
But history remembers it differently. She told The Daily Mail in 2009:
"Where there is rock music and drugs the sex just follows automatically."
Over the years, she slept with Ringo Starr, Bob Dylan, and Mick Jagger among others. Regarding
her dalliances with Jagger while serving as The Rolling Stones' tour manager, she explained:
"I guess it was part of the job."
Uschi Obermaier was a free spirit with her own agenda. She grew up in Munich,
Germany. Her beauty was discovered at a young age and she became a famous model
practically overnight. This was good news for Obermaier. As she told The Independent in 2007,
she was bored with her sleepy hometown and mundane childhood and craved excitement,
usually finding it through drugs and rock music. Her good looks and love of partying soon won her
favor with famous musicians, and she became one of Germany's most in-demand groupies.
One of Obermaier's most memorable suitors was legendary guitarist
Jimi Hendrix. She told The Independent:
"He was the most beautiful of all my men. Making love with Jimi was
one of the most profound experiences for me."
Obermaier also joined The Rolling Stones on
their 1975 tour and bedded both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Oddly enough, Obermaier is most famous for her later relationship with political
activist Rainer Langhans, who convinced her to join him at a minimalist leftist
free-sex youth collective called Commune 1. The political group later disbanded
following a fatal shooting at another group's demonstration.
Cherry Vanilla spent so much time with rock stars that she decided she wanted to be one. She was
born Kathleen Anne Dorritie in New York City. As she explained in a 2018 interview with Please
Kill Me, her mother worked at several Manhattan hotels — including the one that housed the famous
Copacabana Nightclub — and young Dorritie became entranced by all the glitz and glam of showbiz.
Soon, she sought her own way into the business. She worked as a DJ,
invented her Cherry Vanilla alias, became David Bowie's publicist, and starred in an Andy Warhol
play. A true feminist at heart, Cherry Vanilla saw no problem with being sexually liberated,
even if it meant people called her a groupie. She told Please Kill Me:
"I didn't even know what a feminist was when I started living my life the way I lived it.
I didn't see the barriers. I didn't mind using my sexuality, my looks, or even sex, sometimes."
In a 1983 interview with Rian Keating, Cherry Vanilla stated that she loved every aspect of
show business. Naturally, this eventually extended to becoming a performer herself.
"I just had to get close and touch and be there,
you know, and eventually go out on the stage and do it myself."
Cherry Vanilla fronted her own punk band alongside Sting and Stuart Copeland,
who would go on to form The Police. She told Please Kill Me:
"Sex is something everybody can have. But having your own band, and standing up there
in front of those giant speakers… a live drummer beating out a beat, not many people can do that."
According to All That's Interesting, Cathy Smith became the designated
groupie of The Band in the 1960s and toured Canada with them. By age 17,
she was pregnant. Unsure which group member was the father, she referred to her unborn child,
which she later gave up for adoption, as "the Band baby."
When Smith met singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot,
the two had an on-again-off-again relationship for years that involved cheating, jealousy,
and at least one instance of physical abuse. It's rumored that Lightfoot's big
hit "Sundown" was inspired by his time with her. In 2020, he told The Globe and Mail:
"Cathy was a great lady. Men were drawn to her,
and she used to make me jealous. But I don't have a bad thing to say about her."
Things took a dark turn when Smith got into drugs. She worked as both a groupie and drug
dealer for The Rolling Stones in the 1970s. She then started dealing — and using — drugs
full-time. One of her clients was comedian John Belushi. In 1982,
Smith sold him a speedball — a dangerous mix of cocaine and heroin — and injected it for him as
he was too afraid to do it himself. Belushi overdosed and she was blamed for his death.
"Smith admitted she gave Belushi the drugs. But
she said she was not morally responsible for his death."
Smith served 15 months in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
According to Nancy Spungen's mother, Deborah Spungen, in her memoir "And I Don't Want to Live
This Life," Nancy was always a handful. Deborah claims her daughter was volatile and impossible to
control, once attacked her with a hammer, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia at age 11. She sent
Nancy to both a mental facility and a boarding school, but neither seemed to help. Deborah wrote:
"It seemed as if every week she got wilder. [...] She would simply step over the line,
draw a new one, and then step over that. [...] It was ugly and distasteful and we hated to see
such a bright child throw her life away — trash it, really. But we were powerless to stop her."
According to New York Magazine, Nancy left home at 17 and made her way to New York City
where she found a place in the 1970s punk scene. She befriended musicians through drug
dealing and sex work. Before long, she began dating the Sex Pistols' bassist Sid Vicious.
The two were deeply in love, but both were misusing drugs. Shortly after moving in together,
20-year-old Nancy was found stabbed to death. Vicious was blamed, but,
as he soon died of a heroin overdose, the exact circumstances of her death remain a mystery.