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

by Pamela Des Barres

  Lucky Amanda and tireless Richie are now engaged and just got an apartment in Silver Lake that they share with the Siamese kitty he bought for her twenty-third birthday. Amanda had almost given up on getting involved with another musician who might be away on the road for months. "Luckily I met Richie, and he renewed my faith in being in love-regardless of the circumstances. But we do have a hard time. When he's away, he freaks out, imagining I'm hanging out with other guys, which I'm not. And I've gotten into my share of fights with his ex and other random girls. The band is his life, and I have my own life, and sometimes it's difficult to make them fit together. We love each other and don't want to lose what we have due to the circumstances of our lifestyle. I've never been with someone so intelligent, creative, and inspiring. He makes me want to do great things. He played me a song from the new record and I said, `Richie, you just made the most perfect song of the last thirty years. It's a good thing we're engaged, because if I didn't know you and heard this song, I'd have to go out and find the man who wrote it and marry him.'"

  Size Queen of the Stars

  s. Static Beth of Boston, Massachusetts, began her journey to infamy in July 2003, when she became Slud- gette of the Month at www.metalsludge.com. Fascinated by the penis chart, she began indulging her obsession by creating what she calls a "visual version" of the chart, by compiling naked photos of rock stars showing off their finest assets. If you want to take a gander at Beth's growing collection, go to www. staticbeth.com, click on "Photos," then "Naughty," and peruse the list. There's Asses ("There's so much ass on this website that the page had to be split in two"), Balls and Pubes (from Chris Cornell's "Ball Sack" to Slash's pubes), Famous Cocks, and Unsigned Cock.

  Beth has just announced that she is now accepting photos from unsigned bands. As she says on her Web site,

  I have decided to give some unsigned bands exposure (no pun intended) on my website. For those who have been living under a rock for the past few years, my website features cocks of famous musicians, actors, and athletes ... until now. I was inspired the other day when I was sent a cock from an aspiring musician that I talk to regularly. His picture was hotter than hell. So I thought to myself, there must be other hotties in unsigned bands looking for instant fame like this guy does. Metal Sludge exposes unsigned bands by giving them the opportunity to answer ten questions, and I will be just plain exposing them.

  I do have a criteria for submissions that must be followed in order to have a picture posted.

  Rules:

  1. You must be in a band. If you aren't a struggling musician, I don't want to look at your cock.

  2. Band members are the only people allowed to submit a picture. Pictures from disgruntled ex girlfriends, exwives, or fans are not allowed

  3. The band member has to be at least eighteen years of age.

  4. The band must have a Web site for verification and promotion.

  5. The band member must be considered nice looking by the general public. Just because your mom says you're cute doesn't mean you really are. Anyone that looks like George Costanza or former WWE wrestler King Kong Bundy need not apply.

  6. The penis must be erect in the picture. No one wants to look at your floppy dick.

  Pictures will be published under the discretion of Static- Beth.com. I have a keen eye for fakes, so Photoshopped penises are not accepted.

  Since my Web site (www.pameladesbarres.com) is listed among her links, I contact Static Beth to ask a few pertinent questions and thoroughly enjoy her sardonic sense of humor.

  Pamela: What made you decide to create this very informative chart?

  Beth: I used to have my own tiny Web page with pictures from Playgirl. I thought, "I'll just scan the pictures and put them up. It'll be cute." It started catching on. People began sending me random naked pictures of celebrities, so I bought my own domain.

  Pamela: Do you mind being called a groupie?

  Beth: I do have groupie boots in my closet. They haven't been out for a while.

  Pamela: How did groupiedom begin for you?

  Beth: Oh my God, anything for Guns N' Roses! I sent Axl a birthday card every year. I'm sick. I'm very sick. Every time I go out to L.A., I drive up his hill. I even stole his newspaper! It was in the driveway, and I thought, "I've got to grab something of his!"

  Pamela: Do you have flings and relationships with rock guys?

  Beth: Yes, I do. And most of my male friends are in bands. I love the lifestyle. I'm a normal girl. Only one boss knows what I do at night and a couple of coworkers. By day, I work for a news agency. Then I hang out with these guys by night. They go from city to city, they're on TV, they're in videos and all over the Internet. I try not to get too starstruck. It gives them big heads. Now it's weird because with me, they're like, "Ooh, it's Penis Girl! Static Beth!" Either they love me or they run away from me. "Oh no, you're the dick girl."

  Pamela: You're renowned. How do you feel about that?

  Beth: I'm not sure, but it's more amusing to me than anything.

  Pamela: Do you consider yourself a size queen?

  Beth: Yeah, I do. Although I think some men are intimidated by it: "If I have a small one, I sure don't want to go with her."

  Pamela: Many of the guys on your site aren't that huge.

  Beth: The huge ones are the exception. Not everybody looks like Tommy Lee. Phil Varone's is long, it has girth, and it's pierced. That bad boy would probably split me in half, but I enjoy looking at it. Some of them are really bad, like the Marilyn Manson ones. I'm like, "Poor guy. Poor Dita."

  Pamela: Well, he's not hard in the photo.

  Beth: I know people who've been with him, and it doesn't get much bigger than that.

  Pamela: There aren't that many famous groupies anymore, and that's sad. I love your Web site, and how you're carrying on the groupie tradition in such an interesting way.

  Beth: Thank you! Now with the Internet, everybody knows who's been with everybody. It was better when you were doing your thing. Now all the guys can trade stories. I'll tell you a quick one of mine. I used to hook up with the drummer from Slipknot, Joey Jordison. He's the most famous one I've been with ... a Grammy Award winner. It started out great, but this other groupie girl ran her mouth and said I talked about him on message boards, which I never did. She also told him that he was on my Web site, which he wasn't, and he completely turned on me.

  Pamela: Apparently he likes to dress up like a little girl with smeared lipstick and dresses.

  Beth: He also likes to wet the bed. I don't know if she told you that. He's a big bed wetter. He's so strange. He likes to throw up on stage. It makes him feel better. He wears a dress and looks just like a little boy, naked. I call him the Forehead because he has the biggest forehead I've ever seen in my entire life!

  Pamela: Do you have a happier groupie tale you could share?

  Beth: I have a better one. This is with Racci Shay who was in Dope. I went up to him at the show and handed him my business card. He looked at me and said, "You're Static Beth? Oh my God, I was just talking about you!" They were on tour with Mushroomhead, and he and Mushroomhead's guitar player, Bronson, were looking at their cocks on my site before the show. He said, "I am so excited to meet you. There's something I have to show you," and he whipped out his cock, put a match in the tip of it, lit it on fire, and said, "I've been dying to show you this!"

  Pamela: Please tell me you had a camera.

  Beth: Oh, the pictures are on my Web site! He said, "Blow out the candle." I blew it out, and we were inseparable for the rest of the night. He was my biggest fan and so proud to hang out with me. He introduced me to everybody, "This is Static Beth. My cock's on her Web site!"

  Pamela: Did most of them already know about Static Beth?

  Beth: Oh, they knew. It was funny. Racci said, "Bronson wants to see you." We were going to get on Mushroomhead's bus, but got stopped by their roadie, who said, "You can't go on there. Bronson's girlfriend is on the bus, and she doesn't like the pictures on your site
." I thought, "I've been cock blocked!" I wasn't allowed on Mushroomhead's bus. It sucks because she should be proud of him! Anyway, Racci and I were hanging out, drinkin', and he said, "Do you wanna go to the bathroom? I've gotta pee." So I went with him, and he said, "Will you hold it?" I aimed his cock for him, so he could pee in the urinal, and he said, "Hey, you're pretty good." Later on, we were hanging out, taking regular stupid band pictures. All of a sudden, Racci pulled down my shirt-in the middle of the venue with everybody standing around-and started kissing my boobs. Then he asked if I wanted to go to the back room, and I said, 'OK.' He showed me the trick with the match again and asked, "Do you want to blow me?" and I said, "Why not?" So we went into the boiler room. It was dusty, stinky, and disgusting. So I went down and did my stuff, and in the middle of it, he said, "Do you want to fuck?" Very casual, like "Do you want a piece of gum?" And I said, "All right. Do you have a condom?" and he said, "Oh, sure. I'm a Boy Scout," and I said, "Excellent!" We were having sex in the boiler room, and the floor was made out of bricks. All of a sudden he started laughing. I said, "What?" and he said, "My foot's stuck in the bricks! Give me one second," and he finally got his foot untangled. I grabbed onto something, and my hand was all covered in soot. When it was all over, we came out of there, completely covered in dirt. It was so funny. And so strange. The whole night was very random.

  Pamela: Would he have been your first choice in the band?

  Beth: Yeah, because he did that flaming thing with his penis. I thought, "I love this guy. He's so cute." It was a very good time. I didn't expect anything. Sometimes I think, "Oh, I like you so much," but it was none of that. It was just, "OK, we're done." He got his drink and left, and I went home happy.

  Pamela: So oftentimes, like many groupies, your feelings get tangled up?

  Beth: Oh, yeah. I've been hurt many, many times. So that was a good experience for me because there were, like, no strings attached. Actually, I think it was exciting for him-he was with Static Beth.

  Pamela: He was your groupie.

  Beth: He was! He was my little fan.

  Pamela: Have you been compared to Cynthia Plaster Caster?

  Beth: Yes. I love her Web site. I'm sure you've seen it, with the sperm squirting?

  Pamela: It's incredible. I think you're performing a service with your Web site too. People are so uptight, and what you're doing is refreshing. You're reminding people that it's just a dick, for God's sake!

  Beth: There isn't any other site like it, unless you want to look at gay porn. There really isn't anything out there for women who are into the music scene.

  Pamela: And it's obvious the rock guys like to be seen on your Web site. That's why it's so successful!

  Cameron Crowe

  Almost Famous

  "The chicks are great. But what it all comes down to is that thing. The indefinable thing when people catch something from your music."

  -JEFF BEBE

  "I'm not a ... groupie. Groupies sleep with rock stars 'cause they wanna be near someone famous. We're here because of the music. We are Band Aids. We inspire the music."

  -PENNY LANE

  hen you spend intimate time with a band, especially on the road, there's an uncommon camaraderie and trust that develops. So even though my romance with Jimmy Page was history, I was still quite warm with the rest of Zeppelin and saw them whenever they careened into Hollywood and took the town hostage. It was 1973 and Robert Plant had invited me to visit him at the Riot House on the Strip. We had always been flirty but never quite got romantic and maintained (still do) an invaluable connection and a uniquely similar point of view.

  When I flounced into his suite, Robert was winding up a rare interview with a sweet-faced kid who seemed particularly thrilled to meet me. Actually, Cameron Crowe has much better recall about that afternoon than I do. Perhaps because it was his first gig writing for Rolling Stone, and he was interviewing Led Zeppelin. Apparently Robert had been enlightening Cameron about the significance of the GTO's and other girls on the scene. Here's what actually made it into the article that day:

  "It's a shame to see these young chicks bungle their lives away in a flurry and rush to compete with what was in the old days the good-time relationships we had with the GTO's and people like that. When it came to looning, they could give us as much of a looning as we could give them."

  Decades later, Cameron Crowe created the silver screen groupie Penny Lane and her group of rock-loving Band Aids for his 2000 film, Almost Famous. I was invited to a preview when it was released and saw many similarities between the shimmering blonde sweetheart portrayed by Kate Hudson and the devoted Miss Pamela. There was one glaring exception: although I agonized and mourned lost rock love on occasion, I wouldn't have tried to off myself over any rock star.

  When I met Kate, she threw her arms around me and told me she read I'm with the Band for inspiration and that old photos of me had adorned her dressing room walls during filming. It seemed like art imitating life imitating art imitating life, watching her cuddle and coo with her rock husband, Chris Robinson from the Black Crowes.

  Several of the girls I interviewed have told me how deeply Penny Lane and her band of merry Band Aids inspired and validated them, so I've decided to ask my friend Cameron just how he developed this consummate character. He's invited me to have lunch with him at Paramount Studios, where he's working on a new script.

  I love going to movie studios. As I parade through the old lot on my way to Cameron's office, I'm sure I can feel showbiz ghosts tugging on my velvet Betsey Johnson minidress. Vinyl Films is in the Bob Hope building, where black-and-white classic rock photos line every wall. I spot one of Jimmy Page that looks eerily familiar. I'm sure the same one hung on my wall over thirty years ago.

  Cameron is a heavyweight director nowadays, but his first love is rock and roll. He even snagged his own rock goddess when he married Heart's Nancy Wilson ten years ago. Friendly and boyish, Cameron greets me with a big hug. Our sumptuous lunch has been delivered and we retire to his private office, where I ask my first question: who is Penny Lane?

  "I saw the Penny Lane character more as a group of people," Cameron says. "More than anything else, she represented a feeling. Penny Lane was the person who hosted the arrival of that great indefinable it, asking, `Do you have everything you need?' I auditioned actresses by saying, `Don't do the dialogue. I'm going to play some music, `People's Parties' by Joni Mitchell or Zeppelin's `That's the Way,' and this is the music you hear in your head as you go around this imaginary dressing room, making sure everybody has what they need.' There were a few actresses who got it and many who didn't.

  "When I first met you at the Continental Hyatt, Robert and Jimmy had been talking about you and how important the GTO's were. So when you showed up and were so nice and appreciative of the same things I loved as a fan, it was like, `Here's royalty.' You were a rock star in your own way, but so approachable and so much about loving the music. And you cannot discount the fact that they set the tone about how to view you. Pennie Lane in Portland was another person who treated me like a mascot and had a group of girls around her she called Band Aids. She had a blow job club, which was, `We don't sleep with the guys. We only give 'em blow jobs. That way we have mystery, yet we're still serving the cause.'"

  It sounds as if Cameron had respect for the dolls he met while interviewing musicians on the road. "I did admire groupies. Some of the guys mistreated them and that always hurt to watch. I dug them because they were friendly to me. My mom skipped me grades, and the girls at school were very cruel about me being younger. Later on, when I met musicians I'd written about over the years, the coin of the currency seemed to be, `Have you spoken to so-and-so? How's Michelle?' They wouldn't even ask about the guys in their own band. They'd ask, `Have you spoken to her?' It would be the girl who'd been there when I was interviewing them."

  He had long wanted to tell his tale of traveling with the bands, but it took the massive success of Jerry Maguire to convince the moguls to le
t Cameron make his very personal movie. "I think they assumed that the next thing I did might be more overtly commercial, but I truly believed that the story could be universal-because it was about a family."

  For some people, the term "groupie" has become synonymous with "whore" or "gold digger." The girls I've met love the Penny Lane character because she expresses the qualities of groupiedom they relate to-purity and love of music. They see her as the real thing. Almost Famous has certainly struck a major chord with groupies, and it's done well on DVD, but it flopped at the box office. "That's OK," Cameron insists. "When you tell me how it's captured a feeling for real people-the groupies and rockers-that's why I did it. To capture that amazing feeling."

  Cameron seems surprised when I tell him that many modern groupies call themselves Band Aids. "If that term empow ers someone, whether she calls herself a groupie-which to me doesn't have a stigma-or a Band Aid, then fire any arrow you want at the movie, and I'll regard it with amusement. I love that the opportunity wasn't missed to create a hero of the muse."