ON THE ROAD WITH TODAY'S...
The 1970 s were a decade of sex, drugs and rock and roll, spawning countless books, movies and tales of excess. Catriona Innes tracks down groupies, old and new, to get the true stories behind the legends…
She was sipping a margarita, the salted rim coating her lips; the guitar solo vibrated through her body as she moved. The band were so close she could see their stubble aglow with the stage lights, and the crowd, vast and seemingly endless, were chanting, screaming his name – the name of the rock star this woman was going home with that night. Standing beside her at the side of the stage, Faye Moore could only look on in awe. She decided, there and then, what her own future could hold. ‘I just looked at her and knew. It was her style! She was everything I wanted to be.’
Now 21 and resplendent in vintage furs, a bleached blonde mullet and hands that are either rolling a cigarette or gesturing wildly as she tells her own stories of backstage passes and renowned lovers, Faye is living that dream. She is (alongside other things) a groupie. But the term has gone through so many iterations, from ‘music lover’ to ‘slut’ and even ‘victim’, so what does it mean to be a groupie today? Especially in a world in which we no longer follow the tour bus but, instead, the social media pages of our favourite stars and bands. I set out to meet self-proclaimed groupies, past and present, to find out.
‘If we tell you what a groupie is, will you really understand?’ It was the tagline used to describe a 1969 special issue of Rolling Stone magazine, which introduced the underground term and the counterculture of women who embodied it into national consciousness. The article described a groupie as a ‘chick who hangs out with bands’ and stated that ‘becoming a good one is not an entirely simple matter’. Since then, groupies have cropped up in movies (Almost Famous), been authors of bestselling memoirs (Pamela Des Barres’s I’m With The Band) and influenced everything from song lyrics to catwalks.
‘A groupie is a music-loving person,’ explains Lynx, one half of the podcast Muses, who – alongside her friend Chanty – has been, for the past five years, interviewing and delving into the lives of groupies. ‘I don’t think it just applies to women, it isn’t solely sexual. It’s someone who wants to be in the music scene, but maybe doesn’t have the talent of the musician. They might be the first person dancing, bringing the energy, spreading the word; they just want to see the bands they love succeed and be a part of that success. There’s fans, but groupies… they’re more elevated, they’re integral to the experience of the band.’
For Patti Johnsen, back in 1981, when she first became a groupie, it was the urge to be a part of the magic. ‘I wanted to be a part of the band, a part of the circus... but I didn’t
