Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (31 page)

Her list of conquests is quite astonishing. Members of the Who, the Stones, Fleetwood Mac, ZZ Top, KISS. She made naughty videos with clean-cut Rick Springfield, and got it on with a willing girl in the tour bus while Huey Lewis and the News (and their entire crew) cheered. From all of the Allman Brothers and Van Halen, two of Led Zeppelin, and a threesome with two Eagles to heated cunnilingus with Johnny Carson's bandleader Doc Severinson (!) and a salacious encounter with then governor Bill Clinton, Connie's horny history is unequalled in the annals of groupiedom. She was eternally immortalized in 1973 when Grand Funk Railroad celebrated her expertise in the classic song "We're an American Band": "Out on the road for forty days/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." These four lines enhanced Connie's burgeoning reputation and made sure Little Rock was on tour itineraries. Notice that she "had the whole show" and not just the band. Most groupies believed it was beneath them to extend favors to the crew, but from the very beginning Connie spread the love to everyone involved in the creation of the rock and roll spectacle.

Back in swinging 1974, an intrepid journalist from Cosmopolitan magazine ventured into a broken-down part of Little Rock known as "Dogtown" to have a discussion with nineteen-year-old Connie at her parents' humble one-story house. As her weary mom, Joetta, hovered uncomfortably nearby, Connie happily admitted to already "taking care of two to three hundred people in the industry." This interview took place thirty-one years ago, and she still hasn't come up for air. The writer describes the shabbiness of Connie's teenage room, the rag dolls on the bed, the hamster rattling around in its cage. It all started when she was fifteen, Connie said, when she was invited backstage at a Steppenwolf concert. She made eyes with the band and paid strict attention to the lyrics of the song, "Hey, Lawdy Mama," all about "cock-teasing girls" who didn't "put out."

"I kept thinking, gee, they're probably on a plane somewhere thinking, `That Connie, she's just a C.T.' And I decided that I would put out to the next group that came to town."

I couldn't imagine writing this book without including the most notorious groupie of them all, and I've been looking forward to some hometown hang time with Connie. But I've had to change my Little Rock travel schedule a couple of times, and it's made Connie nervous. Her distinctive rasp has eaten up quite a chunk of my voice mail by the time I finalize the flight and wing my way south. Her house is a mess, she says, warning me about her four twitchy felines and less-than-stellar housekeeping skills. She isn't quite convinced I'm coming anyway, insisting, "I'll believe you when I see you, Paaamela." Up in the sky, I open a recent Spin magazine to peruse a story entitled "Oldest Living Confederate Groupie Tells All."

The second paragraph reveals an encounter Connie had with a certain American icon: "So I'm out on the tour bus, smokin' dope and blowing roadies ... and who comes into the back lounge? Neil fucking Diamond. Neil looks me up and down and nods his approval, then he gets high with us, and disappears backstage. A few minutes later, his manager says he wants to see me in his dressing room. So I knock on the door, and there's Neil waiting for me in a blue robe. And I didn't just suck him, there was fucking, too." I decide to stop here and get the whole story from the practiced mouth of the muse.

The humid summer air in Little Rock is as sticky as cotton candy as I climb out of my rental car in Connie's driveway. She is nervously waiting for me on the tiny screened-in front porch, scarily gaunt, wearing skinny, tight shorts and a Van Halen T-shirt. "You made it! Come on in," she shouts, before warning me again about the state of her house, which I discover isn't all that bad except for the pungent aroma of kitty cat. A bit tattered and funky around the edges, Connie's quaint little cottage is almost paid for, a fact she proudly announces, showing me her most recent mortgage bill as proof. She seems honestly thrilled that I've come to visit, and I'm struck by the dichotomy of her world-weary guilelessness. The walls overflow with photos of Connie on laps of rock stars, along with autographed pictures, backstage passes, posters, laminates, and concert tickets. She grabs the remote, hoping to surprise me with a video of our long-ago MTV groupie interviews, and when I decline she's disappointed. "I'd rather go to your local haunts," I tell her, and after musing that she might miss an important call from "Edward Van Halen," we head to Bennigan's, not too far from her pad on Green Meadow Drive.

We climb onto the barstools and, bubbling over, she pulls my first book out of her bag, introducing me to the owner, the bartender, and a couple of patrons as a "famous writer" in town just to interview her. Connie's enthusiasm is infectious. Even when locals look at her disdainfully, she's happy to get the attention, and cackles, "We were on Jenny Jones together!" Here, she orders her first white wine of the day and doesn't stop imbibing until well after midnight.

As she sips her chardonnay, I ask how she became music obsessed. "I was an only child, and I think that's one reason I became a groupie. I always wished for an older brother and becoming a groupie, I got a lot of 'em! Even before I hit puberty-in the fifth and sixth grades-I went to see the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Yardbirds played. I always saw these good-looking gals backstage and thought, `I don't want to be out here with all these people. When I get older I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna be back there."' In the ninth grade, Connie was invited backstage at the fateful Steppenwolf gig, where her controversial future was secured. Her friend hooked up with singer John Kay, and Connie wound up with drummer Jerry Edmonton. "I was a virgin then, but he did get me out of my shirt. I said, `I'm on my period, and I can't do anything anyway because I'm a virgin,' and he said, `Have you ever heard of oral sex?' I said, `What does that mean? Talking about it?" She later found out that her rock conquest wasn't referring to public speaking and quickly set about learning the delicate art of giving head.

Following Steppenwolf's anti-cock-teasing lyrics to the letter, Connie was determined to "put out" for the next band to come through town. The drummer for Detroit's Frijid Pink happily removed the obstacle of Connie's virginity and was also the lucky recipient of her newfound oral knowledge. The soon-to-be Sweet Connie was on her merry way.

She's world infamous for her blow jobs, so I ask how and why that practice began. "Because you can't get pregnant doing it! And I was desperate for a backstage pass to Three Dog Night. I went to one of the roadies and said, `I don't care what it takes. I'll blow everybody on your crew to get me back there.' And I did." Did she get to the band? "Yeah, the drummer and Chuck Negron. I blew him during the drum solo in the backstage restroom, sitting on the toilet while he stood in front of me." Was giving head an enjoyable experience? "Yeah, definitely. For one thing, it doesn't take very long and it isn't really messy." Did she swallow? Dumb question. "Hell yeah!" When I mention that a lot of girls don't swallow, Connie shrieks, "Then a lot of girls are sitting out there in the fucking crowd, aren't they? I don't know what I enjoyed more: the blow jobs or standing on stage waving at all those people from North Little Rock Old Main High School."

After knocking back her glass of wine, Connie wants to take me to the Canyon Grill, a favorite haunt. Obviously warmly familiar with her, the bartender pours wine while Connie introduces herself and flirts with a pair of young cops. Then we pick up where we left off. "After Three Dog Night it began to get around, because I had to blow and fuck promoters to get to roadies and past the security of the building. I started on the ground level and worked my way up."

Spotting backstage stickers on guitar and amp cases gave her a brilliant idea. "I went to a printer in Little Rock and got five hudnred paper stickers made that said `Connie in Little Rock - 501.753.1005' and you know what happened? The very first batch got ripped off and some asshole plastered 'em around town and people called myparents asking, `What's this?'" How did her folks deal with her blossoming popularity? "They did not have a clue for a long time-until the song came out, and then they began to get wind of it." What did they think all the guys were calling about? "Selling cookies for the Girl Scouts, I guess-and I sold candy for the Future Teachers of America."

Connie says she got along fine with her mom until she hit puberty. "Then she turned into a bitch. I think she was just afraid and insecure, even though my father was a good man. My mother had an agenda-she was a cunt and is to this day. She thought if she gave me enough rope, I'd hang myself. When they found out I'd lost my virginity and was fucking around, all hell broke loose. And that came about because I got the clap. I tell you what: when I lost my virginity, they couldn't have been any more hurt than if I had lost a limb."

Her home life was hellish, but even though she spent many nights at concerts, in tour buses, and in hotel rooms, Connie somehow kept her priorities straight. "It was never a question that I'd graduate high school and go to college because I knew the bands and crews wouldn't respect me if I was just some dropout loser."

Her parents couldn't keep her at home, and conquests came fast and furious. She had a grand of time with Grand Funk Railroad, she "got it on" with all the members of Chicago while everyone watched the proceedings. The same happened with the Allman Brothers. A trip out of town with her mom backfired when Connie discovered they were staying in the same hotel. "The Allmans were there for a couple of days. I did the roadies. I did everybody. They all got a kick out of it-knowing my mother was right upstairs. It was a real picnic when we got back to Little Rock and she told my dad. `You mean all she did when you all got there was chase them bands? I sent you all over there to get her away from them! I can't do anything with her! We might as well put her in a juvenile home or send her to the nuthouse!' They threatened that repeatedly."

Concert promoters took advantage of Connie's oral largesse and began inviting her to gigs in nearby cities. "They flew me to Oklahoma City to see KISS and to St. Louis to see the Who, which was where I wound up with Keith Moon the first time. I got flown to Shreveport to see Alice Cooper. I started fucking him way early in the ball game because I would drive to Memphis to meet him."

Gene Simmons, the monster bassist for KISS, is a longtime friend of mine, and I'm curious about his bedside manner. "He was pretty good. He's well-endowed, but you know what? The time I got it on with him, I had bad anorexia and he spent a lot of time chewing me out for being underweight. I was never with Ace Frehley. He got drunk and threw a roomful of furniture out of the hotel room next to me. I fucked Peter Criss, I fucked Paul, and he was wonderful! He told me that I've got a clit like a little dick. But when I hooked up with Peter, it was usually Peter from then on."

While her parents were on vacation in Vegas, Connie took the family car to a concert in Memphis and spent more time with Three Dog Night and their opening act, Black Oak Arkansas. One upstanding quality Connie got from her folks was honesty, and when they got back to town they confronted her. "They said, `When we called from Vegas, you sounded like you had something you wanted to tell us,' and I said, `Well, you always told me to tell you the truth and while you all were gone, I drove to Memphis to see Three Dog Night.' Man, I really got an ass whipping that night. My father had a horrible temper, but then he was apologetic."

Connie and I have more in common than we realized: Waylon Jennings, Jimmy Page, and Keith Moon. She met the brilliant, manic drummer for the Who when a promoter took her backstage in St. Louis. "I was in the dressing room after the show-security wasn't the way it is nowadays-and Keith and Roger were not getting along. For some reason, Roger decided to upend a whole table full of food, then he started crying. Keith and I started fooling around, and before I knew it he had my jeans off and was fucking me with a banana to ease the mood and break the tension. Keith was that kind of guy. After you see somebody get fucked with a piece of fruit, you forget what happened five minutes earlier! Then he said, `Come back with me to the hotel,' and I spent the night with him at the Chase Park Plaza. The whole time I was with Keith I thought, `This is that guy I used to see on Where the Action Is! He had the most beautiful facial features when he played the drums. When we weren't making love, he had a little 45-rpm record player and played a stack of records and sang along to 'em. He'd go down to the bar for booze and bring it back up to the suite and we'd sit there and drink and sing and fuck. We sang `This Diamond Ring' and `Love Potion Number Nine' at the top of our lungs. He invited me to go to with him to Detroit and I said, `I can't go. I live with my parents and I ain't got any clothes.'"