Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (26 page)

Michele was busily painting a mural, listening to the radio, and heard that Aerosmith was playing the Coliseum that very night. "I got the backstage number, left a message, and Steven called me back and said, `Get down here right away!' The concert was great. I hadn't seen him in years and I couldn't believe how energetic he was. I mean, the guy had just turned fifty and he was doing backflips-it was amazing."

While a pack of teenage dolls gave Michele the evil eye, she was escorted backstage just like the good old days. "Steven was really happy to see me, and kept telling me how beautiful I looked. He said, `I can't get over you,' and held my face in his hands. He looked so good and was so sexy, hugging me-his skin was like velvet. We caught up on old times and it was really wonderful."

A few years ago, Masters Page and Plant graced Portland and Michele got up to some old-fashioned mischief. "I marched up to will call and said there were tickets waiting for me, because if Robert knew I was there, he would want to see me. She took my name and came back five minutes later with two tickets and two all-access passes! The band did a great set and Robert said somebody special was in the audience and it was bringing back incredible memories from long ago." Michele looks dreamy eyed. "To be spoken about from the stage was really a trip after so many years. I never thought I'd get that kind of high again, but it happened."

Before Michele left that night, Robert made sure she wouldn't forget their time together. "He said he couldn't understand why we had stopped seeing each other, the years we wasted, the fun we could have had. It was amazing how he remembered everything-how we met, that my mother was a Meher Baba lover, the Alice-in-Wonderland vest. He actually remembered the line he used to pick me up: `Come up to see my etchings.'"

The two passionflowers reignited their specialness again last autumn when Robert hit Portland with his groovy new band, Strange Sensation. "When I saw him backstage, we were totally focused on each other. He was holding me and said, `So this is what we felt like together.' I laughed and told him, `I've gotten a little shorter since then,' and he said, `I have too!' He told me he was talking with his assistant, and she asked if he'd ever been in love with no boundaries to his passion. He said, `Yes, one time-and that was with you.' I didn't know what to say. He told me he sang `Going to California' to me that night, that I was the epitome of that era for him, and represented the whole '60s hippie love thing. Then he said we never stop loving somebody, we just paint it a different color. I told him that if I didn't have a mirror or a memory I'd think I was fifteen, because I didn't feel any different. Losing a love relationship when you're that young forms a neural pathway in your brain that never goes away. That old love stays with you and will always be there." Michele smiles, "Especially if your old love happens to be Robert Plant."

As we get closer to Michele's pad I ask how she came to be such a music lover and eternal rock muse. "It couldn't have been a cultural influence, or peer pressure, because there was no peer pressure then; we were making it all up as we went along. We paved the way for a lot of freedom women take for granted and don't appreciate. We were the first generation of women openly expressing our love for music; and the music, obviously, was extremely sexual. But more than that, it was magical, and the magic was actually larger than the groups that played it."

I remind her that some people saw groupies as oppressed and exploited. "But we were doing exactly what we wanted to be doing! We were in love with the music-these guys were the answer to our prayers. They wanted us there, and they treated us like goddesses."

"Made up my mind, make a new start Goin' to California with an achin' in my heart Someone told me there's a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair. . .

The Virgin Groupie

knew my friend Cassandra Peterson for a decade before discovering we had such profoundly kindred rock and roll hearts. Not too many Elvira fans have a clue that the rib-tickling multimedia Mistress of the Dark was once an unabashed groupie maiden.

I met Cassandra at a swinging '80s soiree for Ringo Starr. Manic-eyed Phil Spector roamed the palatial grounds along with Roseanne Barr, my old label mate Alice Cooper, ubergroupie Britt Ekland, and the pouty-lipped dead ringer for her daddy Lisa Marie Presley. I recall that Cassandra was equally intrigued with the King's ravishing offspring and commented on her facial expressions and familiar half-lidded gaze as we gobbled down skewers of jumbo shrimp.

Pinning the hardworking mistress down has been quite a challenge, since we're both such busy little beavers. She fits our interview in between a personal appearance at a comic book convention and an Elvira calendar shoot. I've seen the vivacious redhead in action several times, wriggling around in her sultry Elvira drag, captivating crowds with her combo of crass sass and clever quips. Above all, Cassandra is a quintessential comedienne, and I'm jazzed at the prospect of capturing her droll, knowing nuances on paper. As we enjoy a meat-free, dairy-free lunch at the scrumptious nouvelle Real Food Daily on La Cienega, we hearken back and wax nostalgic.

Like so many of my devoted groupie comrades, Elvis was numero uno, but Cassandra's second boi-oi-oing moment came when she heard the Beatles. "My parents were huge fans of Elvis, so I grew up loving him. The first present I remember getting was `(You Ain't Nothin' but a) Hound Dog,' and at three years old, I made up the kookiest dance for it you've ever seen. Then the Beatles came along and boom, I was a Beatle freak. I first saw them at eleven or twelve and went out of my mind. I switched all my girlfriends at school because they didn't like the Beatles, and held Beatle birthday parties with all my new Beatle pals. First I liked Ringo, then switched to George, then Paul. By the time I was thirteen, I loved John and stuck with him. He was my only rock idol I didn't meet. And my favorite. I've met all the other Beatles. I guess it wasn't meant to be," she sighs. "Besides, I'm not Asian. And it's too late now."

There was nothing stopping the perky high schooler and her like-minded girlfriends from meeting any musician that came through Colorado Springs. "Back then you could just go backstage and knock on the door. Me and Kathy and Eileen would knock, and they'd literally say, `Come on in!' We were pretty much into making out with every boy we met. I'd be flirting, pretty soon we'd be kissing. They'd ask me back to the hotel and I'd say, `Oh, no I can't. I have to get home.' I made out with the Young Rascals' drummer, Dino Danelli, and Buffalo Springfield's drummer-I always had a thing for drummers."

The keyboard player for Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels must have had the grooviest gift of gab because he was the first rocker to talk Cassandra into his motel room. "I got in bed and took off all my clothes except my bra and panties and made out with him, but wouldn't let him touch me. He called me for months, wanting to marry me because I was the only groupie who wouldn't actually have sex with him. Being Italian, he thought the only way to screw a nice Italian girl was to marry her, but I wasn't Italian!"

One of Cassandra's early cohorts was her sister Melody. "Here's the difference between my younger sister and me: she was screwing everybody and I wasn't. I remember her standing on my shoulders to get into Buffalo Springfield's room, and she ended up screwing Stephen Stills and I made out with the drummer, Dewey Martin. I liked Stephen but my sister immediately went off with him and I was pissed! My parents had drilled into me that if I ever had sex they would kill themselves, so I was worried they would think I was a slut. If I came home late my mother called me a whore and I said, `I'm a virgin!' But I might as well have been boppin' everybody, because I had the baddest reputation. Kids at school called me a big slut because I was hanging out with bands, I was a go-go dancer, and I had big boobs. If you had big boobs back then, you were automatically a big tramp in school."

I understand the process of protecting the precious pussy, because I had done the same thing by perfecting the fine art of giving head. But somehow Cassandra managed to keep even her mouth virginal while spending many hours in the sack with rock greats. "Yeah, but I'd get myself in situations. At sixteen I had a terrible experience with Eric Burdon when he was touring with War. I drove him back to the Holiday Inn, we were making out, and he said, `Come upstairs to my room.' So like a doofus, I did. We played around in bed and when it started getting serious, I said, `No, I don't do that, I'm a virgin. Leave me alone.' He said, `You're kidding!' So he took my car keys, dropped them down his pants into his underwear, and said, 'OK, if you want your keys, come and get 'em.' I chased him around the bed but he wouldn't give them back, so I ran out the door and he said, `Where are you going?' I said, `I'm going to call the police because you stole my car keys!' So he threw them and hit me really hard in the back with that sharp set of keys." Alas, there's nothing like a rocker scorned.