Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies

by Pamela Des Barres

  I try to imagine bespectacled folkie Roger McGuinn going at it atop the bathroom sink. "He was something else! I was loving it because he was all over me-and I knew who he was, unlike Mick Ronson. I walked around knock-kneed for the rest of the party."

  Margaret says that was when she "embraced groupiedom." But she also had a fledgling writing career and made an important decision that night. "I wondered how I was going to compromise the pussy and the brain, both of which were going full tilt, so I decided not to sleep with local musicians anymore-that was where I drew the line." Margaret laughs, "I just continued to sleep with national and touring musicians."

  Taking the advice of a music-savvy friend, Margaret decided to check out an Armadillo show by a former member of the Velvet Underground. "The moment I hit backstage, I was thrown into the dark, feeling my way around, and ran smack into this guy wearing a hard hat and camouflage. He looked down at me and I looked up at him. I gasped and could hardly breathe. I didn't know who he was, but he led this group of people onstage and I just went `Uh, uh, uh..: It was April 17, 1979. I fell in love with John Cale on the spot."

  John's set mesmerized Margaret, and pulling a poster off the wall, she asked him to sign it for her. "He smiled, and asked my name. When I told him, he gave me an odd look and wrote `Best Wishes, Margaret.' I reached for the poster and he pulled it back so I had to lean forward. He said, `What are you doing tonight?' and I said, `Anything you want.-

  John invited Margaret back to his hotel, but a dear friend came to her with his heart shattered. She felt she had to console him, so her rendezvous with John Cale had to wait. "John was playing an outdoor show two nights later in San Antonio. I showed up that afternoon wearing a strapless sundress and highheeled slides, and walked backstage, looking around for him. I heard `Pssst-hey! Pssst!' I looked up and he was leaning out the backstage window, so I dashed up the stairs. There were four lines of cocaine on the counter and we got right to it. My dress was in a circular heap thirty seconds later. Someone banged on the door, `John, you're onstage!' We had to finish quickly and he yanked his pants up. That night we stayed at the St. Anthony and I remember massaging him in the bathtub, ordering room service-I was falling in love." Margaret starts fanning herself. "My God, Pamela, my heart is racing so hard right now."

  Years ago, John Cale was married to one of the GTO's, Miss Cynderella, and I found out recently that the youngest member of our group had died mysteriously. It's hard to believe that there are only three Girls Together Outrageously left: Sparky, Mercy, and me. "We had our first Texas Blonde death four years ago, so I understand. It was heartbreaking," Margaret says sadly. "She was one of my best friends, and such a free spirit."

  It was shortly after her first shimmering experience with John Cale that Margaret gathered her own kindred clan. "I'd never forgotten the stories I read about the GTO's. At that time I was between newspapers and had just split up with my photographer husband. It all began the night John played the Armadillo. That show completely ripped the top of my skull off, and I wanted to do nothing but immerse myself in music. I was absolutely besotted. There was a burgeoning new wave scene, with bands like the Romantics and Psychedelic Furs coming through town. I kept running into the same group of girls, and we started hanging around together. Then in '81, John was at the Armadillo again, and I found out he was playing the Whisky in L.A. for three nights. I gathered up the girls and we rented a car and drove to Hollywood. We got a room at the Tropicana where John was staying. I got to be good friends with his band, and they'd come to our room after the show, because we were the party girls with all the drugs and alcohol. Their backup singer, deerfrance, had this cute little girl voice, and one night she said, `You're all blonde and you're from Texas. You're the Texas Blondes.' And I said, `Yes!' We showed up at the Whisky the next night, drunk with being the Texas Blondes. Suddenly we had an identity. And I knew exactly what we could do with it, because of the GTO's and the Plaster Casters, who were our role models, too. We were in the Whisky bathroom that night, with our glittery eye shadow, applying brilliant red lipstick, and this dark-haired girl walked in and said, `Who are you?' We looked at each other, and grinned back at her, `We're the Texas Blondes!' Saying it out loud affirmed it. We went to L.A. just a group of girls, and came back the Texas Blondes. Through the years we had Mexican girls and black girls, because it wasn't a color thing, it was a state of mind. And we got really famous for it. Guys loved having us on their arm. We were great eye candy, and lots of fun."

  A few months later, Margaret was hurled back down to earth when John brought Reza, the girl he would marry, to Austin with him. "I was trying to be brave," she says, "but my heart was bleeding all over the place."

  It was a festive whirlwind while it lasted, but by 1982, the Texas Blondes started winding down. "I was never the pretty one in the Blondes, I was the smart one and the leader. I knew who the pretty ones were-and they walked three feet in front of me and we all got in. But my heart just wasn't in it anymore." There was one last hurrah, however. "One night, a local promoter called and said, `Iggy Pop is in town, and we're bored. Why don't you rustle up some of your girlfriends and meet us at the hotel?' I called three of the girls and pulled on my old Velvet Underground T-shirt. We arrived at the hotel, and Iggy was standing there shirtless while all my girls flitted around him. I was sitting with the promoter, and all of a sudden Iggy stood up, yawned, looked at me and said, `I'm going back to my room. Do you wanna come with me?' I said, `Me?' and he said, `Yeah: I said goodbye to the promoter and shrugged at the girls and walked down the hall with Iggy. He pulled out the key to his room and I said, `Why did you pick me? My roots have grown out, I haven't shaved my legs, and I'm twenty-five pounds overweight.' He said, `I like you, you're smart.' I said, `And I've got big tits,' and he said, `That too!' We talked and talked, did coke, drank, and talked. Iggy was one of the most fun musicians I've ever been with because we went on tangents, chattering on about books and films. I think both of us were surprised to find this similarity in each other. And it added to the sex."

  Margaret had just gotten married for the second time when she saw John Cale again. "It was February of '85, five years since I'd seen him. I remember it well because it was two months to the day after I'd gotten married. Rollo was a tattoo artist and hated John Cale with a passion. John was now married and had a baby. When he asked me to come back to his hotel room, I thought, `Oh my God, what am I gonna do?' This was the moment I'd dreamed about for years. We kissed a little bit and I said, `I just got married and you've got a wife. I can't do this.' But I did stay out late with John that night, and when I got home there was hell to pay. When I got in the shower, Rollo thought I was washing away my guilt, and I said, `No, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't.' Now I wish I had."

  For the next few years, it was awkward when John came to town. "After that, he never tried again. I think I wounded his ego. But I'd see him whenever he came through, and I guess he realized that I was gonna be here every time he came to Austin. He'd arrive at the airport looking for somebody to pick him up, and there I'd be. In 1988, I picked him up and took him to the Driscoll. The doorman took us to the room, opened the door, and John walked in. Then the doorman held the door for me and said, `Here you go, Mrs. Cale: Just for a second, I had the luxury of being Mrs. John Cale." Margaret sighs. "When I read John's biography, I found out his mother's name was Margaret. Now I know why he gave me that look the first time I told him my name.

  Margaret was with Rollo for fourteen years, with the last few years of married chaos spent in Hawaii. "I was so devoted that I put my feelings for John on the back burner and tried to not acknowledge them. Everything I did was defined by Rollo, and when he got strung out on heroin, I felt alone and betrayed. I felt like a fish out of water surrounded by all that ocean and was anxious to come back to Austin. It was '93, and I hadn't been home very long when I read Ann Powers's review of your second book in the New York Times, and once again you inspired me from afar. Her article made groupies sound like t
he Florence Nightingales of rock and roll, trading gracious bedside manners for blow jobs. I sensed that all along, but had never been able to put it in words. Here was another woman saying it for me. And using my role model. I took it to SXSW and said, `There's a panel in this.'" Since then, Margaret has been avidly involved in the annual convention, hosting panels and directing the snazzy annual Austin Chronicle music awards.

  I was a presenter again in 2006, and while dashing off stage, Margaret introduced me to Dayna, one of the Texas Blondes. "Dayna's worked with me the longest," Margaret informs me. "And in every case, it was what we learned being groupies that's given us the ability to work with bands so well. We know all the tricks."

  I ask Dayna for some memorable Texas Blonde tales. "I was with Iggy Pop for a while," she says, efficiently holding her clipboard. "He liked me from the jump. Sweetheart that he was, he'd say, `Aw, you're my little shithead, come here, darlin'.' I was very young when he took me on tour, and finally his manager said, `You cannot be dragging a fourteen-year-old girl across state lines. You're going to prison.' I said, `Well, I've got to go back to school anyway.' Shortly after that, Iggy decided he needed me with him to write. He came and stayed with me and my mom and dad while I went to school. That lasted a week or so, until my mom made him do dishes. Then he got a hotel and I stayed there with him. I look back and think, `What a pedophile!' I must have been a novelty to him. Sexually, I probably didn't please him like a grown woman could. He's got a massive cock-like the size of your right arm-and I couldn't take it all the way because I was so young." Dayna hands an award to the next rowdy presenter and quickly returns. "There was one person I stayed in touch with for years-Jerry Harrison from the Talking Heads. He was always there for me and I loved him dearly. Every time he came to town, we got together, and when I moved to New York, I stayed with him. He's one of the most stand-up guys I know. But I was never treated poorly by any of them. They gave me emotional strokes I never got in high school, which contributed to the self-esteem I developed later. People say, `Oh, poor thing, you were young and taken advantage of.' Yes and no. Logically, I can see it that way, but don't think I didn't get something out of it! Everybody knew how powerful Margaret was, and being under her wing, nobody fucked with me. I went where she went, and before you knew it, there were several of us. The publicists would have bands in town and say, `Can you get those blondes?' Suddenly we emerged and I thought, `I'm in this cool group that can go just about anywhere. I meet all the great guys, and I can tell those people who thought I was a loser in junior high to kiss my ass!"

  The next afternoon, I was hosting the annual Rajiword party, introducing cool acts like the Faces' Ian McLagan and sexy Steve Poltz, when I met Alice, an altogether different type of Texas Blonde. I snagged her between sets and she told me about the night U2 came to dinner. "It was 1982, and Margaret let me come with her to sound check when she interviewed U2. Since I'm the born-again Christian in the Blondes, I kept dropping hints that I was spiritually on the same page as they were. I had a long talk with Bono and asked if they'd like to come to church the next day, and three of them came with me. We went to lunch afterward, and I invited them to dinner at my mom's house in Houston the next night. They liked the idea of a home-cooked meal. This was only their second time in America. They were excited about everything they were into, and wanted to share it. So they came over for dinner. We were all really young at the time, just nineteen or twenty. They were young and fresh, very honest and likeable, with a sweet naivete. Even then, they very much cared about people and justice and mercy. Mom cooked some casserole, and it was a lovely dinner. We talked a bit about their church group back home. They belonged to a little church that met in a house. My mother loves Ireland, and they enjoyed talking about that as well. Had they not already been married, or with girlfriends, I'm sure I would've tossed my hat into the ring. I did get to give the drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., a back rub. He had a really painful shoulder, so I gave him an intense back massage. And it worked. I saved the show with my magic massage.

  Marriage must suit Margaret Moser, because she is engaged again, this time to guitarist Mike Vernon. "One of my favorite all-time posters was for 3 Balls of Fire. It was a picture of Mike playing guitar, wearing this big of cowboy hat. He's lit from below in a very striking way, with flames on either side of the guitar. It's really badass. Whenever they put out a CD, it got uniformly great reviews from me. I wrote a funny, prescient one just four years ago: `Mike Vernon plays with a lover's touch that leaves you breathless.' Who else am I going to fall in love with? I'm tired of artistic pussies. I've dated doctors and lawyers and married a tattoo artist and a photographer. I've been with artistic types and nonartistic types, and I ended up falling in love with a politically conservative guitarist. A friend of mine in her sixties said to me, `Conservative men make good husbands.' I'd never thought about that. But Mike's conservatism is very much a part of his commitment and willingness to stick with things. And I'm perfectly willing to let him have views that I don't agree with. I'm not a flaming liberal anyway." Her new beau accepts Margaret's heady past, and her long-term fascination with John Cale. "The very last time John was here, we had, hands down, the most uninhibited, friendly relationship we've ever had with each other. It couldn't have been better, and Mike was fine with it. Mike and I do think alike in a lot of ways. Last week we made one of our joint concepts come true. We invited thirteen of the best guitarists around town to get on stage and play Link Wray's `Rumble.' Mike came up with the idea of the Guitar Rumble, and we originally played around with the idea of fifty guitars. We were driving down the street, and I said, `Fifty guitars will never work.' I was thinking hard, and finally came out with, `Thirteen Guitar Rumble,' and he almost drove off the side of the road. He said, `Oh, that's brilliant! We'd only been going out ten days, and he was already saying, `I'm going to marry you.' I said, `Okay, bud, you're on."'

  ~E~q~a6 ~e~i`ns~r

  Flesh for Fantasy

  y goddaughter, Polly Parsons, recently had her splashy nighttime wedding shower at a venerated Moroccan restaurant on Sunset Boulevard, where patrons gleefully dig into mounds of spicy chow with their bare hands. Polly's hungry guests were halfway through the tabbouleh and shawerma when mysterious, sensual music wafted through the mirrored curtains, and Princess Farhana undulated to the center of the room. I've always known this vibrant scenester as Miss Pleasant Gehman, infamous punk/singer/writer/hipper-than-hip journalist, and here she was in yet another incarnation, wriggling and shimmying to beat the band, decked out in sheer, sequined, coin-laden odalisque garb. Her curvy midriff bare, Pleasant began her dervish whirls, clanging her finger cymbals, seducing us one by one. Our jaws dropped as she performed outrageous belly rolls and provocative bumps, her exultant dark eyes sparkling like desert moondust.

  Thanks to the musical savvy of various teenage babysitters, at the age of four and a half, precocious Pleasant Gehman was already obsessed with the Beatles. Pleasant and her baby brother performed "I Want to Hold Your Hand" for their parents while strumming badminton rackets and wearing fuzzy lamb hats as Beatle wigs. She remembers meticulously studying the black and white photo on the cover of Meet the Beatles. "One of the first things I said to my mom was `Where are their penises?' You can tell I was doomed from birth!"

  After I enjoyed another evening of her dazzling hip swaying, the vivacious, va-va-voom Pleasant takes me into a velvetcurtained hideaway and regales me with tales of her tender years. "I had a thing with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. I grew up with them, watching them on Ed Sullivan. I was obsessed with Ringo because of the way he dressed. I thought George was the cutest, but anytime I had the chance, I'd get these rings out of gumball machines, and my brother and I would put them all on. My father yelled at him, `You look like a fag!' which we misinterpreted as `tag: Obviously if Ringo was a `tag,' it had to be a great thing. So we put on every fucking piece of jewelry we could find, and in the middle of this big dinner party we came downstairs and said, `Look everybody! W
e're tags!"

  Pleasant's mom taught theater at Wesleyan College and her dad was a jazz critic for Down Beat magazine. And although there was always music playing at their house in Middletown, Connecticut, a lot of Pleasant's basic training came from a glamobsessed babysitter, who just happened to be a "tag." "Gary Morris, who runs one of the most noted film Web sites, Bright Lights, and lectures all over the world, introduced me to `Liar, Liar' by the Castaways. I'd paint his toenails blue while we listened to all this crazy'60s pop. My mother's sheets became Grecian gowns and we acted out Supremes songs. When I was eleven he gave me my first copy of Andy Warhol's Interview: `Here's Candy Darling, she's fabulous, and this is Mamie Van Doren, she's amazing, look at Mick Jagger, look at Rudolph Nureyev.' I quickly started catching on to this insane outre aesthetic, and right about that same time I discovered Creem magazine. By age twelve I was getting stoned, but it was the '60s and early '70s. My mother screamed at Gary about statutory rape, and we both laughed because he was such an obvious `tag'!"