Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (43 page)

Patti: Like it's a dirty word! I'm thinking, "Fuck you. You wish you were with the band." But I don't usually tell my stories with this much detail. I might say, Taime and I both appreciated the fact that I enjoyed going "Downe."

Pamela: I have to ask, how would you feel about your daughters being groupies?

Patti: If that's the path they choose, I hope they have the time of their lives, because I sure did. I'd only worry about them having safe sex.

Lisa: I agree. Whoever my daughter is with, I just hope she's safe.

Patti: I was in the Rainbow one night, talking about being a groupie. This woman butted in, and said, "Don't lower yourself." I responded by saying, "Listen, unless you've never left a bar with someone you just met, you have nothing to say to me. There's no difference between us except this: tonight you'll leave here with someone you just met, climb into a Pinto, pick up a six-pack, and head to a Motel 6, where you'll spend the night with a stranger. I will, however, leave here with a rock star I just met, climb into a limo, drink champagne, and head to the Hyatt, where I'll spend the night with a stranger that I've seen on MTV. Which one of us has the better deal?" As Steven Tyler said, "We give it out and the groupies give it back." Once, I was standing by a backstage door in all my groupie regalia, when some woman sneered, "What are you supposed to be?" And I said, "I'm the reason they picked up a guitar in the first place."

Come as You Are

have long been fascinated with rebellious types, from Mozart to Walt Whitman, from Elvis to Eminem. I honor them for not being able to keep their candor, fury, and naked truth under wraps, even when it hurts like mad.

So where have all the outraged rock stars gone? Real rock stars are supposed to upend tables, point fingers, and shake drumsticks at the flimsy, insidious status quo. I believe the last rock star that wreaked such havoc in the world was the late Kurt Cobain. Like Dylan, he was able to put into words what was lurking within the hearts and minds of his disillusioned fans. For better or worse, he single-handedly altered rock fashion forever, but what he contributed musically and sociologically far outweighs the plethora of flannel-wearing wannabes that moaned and wept in his wake. He was a multitalented, desperately angstridden genius, and he pointed out small-minded hypocrisy and the shameless sellout of his pissed-off generation. Nirvana altered music the way the Sex Pistols had a decade earlier, and it was a welcome slap in the face. Kurt unwittingly became eerily close to what he was railing against, which I feel added to his reasons for leaving us all behind. I met him once when I interviewed Courtney Love at their messy house in damp, gray Seattle, and his torment was a palpable thing that filled the room.

In my search for open-hearted groupies, Lexa from the Plastics suggested I meet a certain sensual, edgy brunette who's been making her name as a singer in Hollywood. "Miss B," as she wants to be called for this chapter, also spent several nights with Kurt Cobain just as he donned his rusty grunge crown.

She doesn't make any pretense about the difficult and shady turns her life has sometimes taken, but she's feeling more optimistic these days. She e-mailed me some bombshell photos of herself-heavily darkened, come-hither brown eyes, extra lowcut black lace accenting her voluptuous curves-so I am surprised by her initial shyness when I arrive for our interview. She has just moved into a charming deco apartment in West Hollywood and there is nothing on the walls except a poster for Gus Van Sant's film Last Days with Michael Pitt uncannily channeling Kurt Cobain. While we chat, Miss B focuses on three absurdly cute baby kittens that take turns purring in our laps.

It turns out that she was introduced to the dizzying world of rock and roll at thirteen by an old friend of mine, Steppenwolf guitarist Michael Monarch. "It was very exciting for me," she says, intently stroking her jet-black kitty, "especially because I don't come from normalcy. I come from a broken home. I was a foster child, so I was really looking for something that would tie me in to people I could hang out with." Her relationship with Monarch was purely platonic, but the fact that she felt included gave her some much-craved self-assurance. "The music scene became a family that I could fit into perfectly. It seems like anybody can fit into some kind of genre of music, so I found a welcome home right away."

With almost no parental nurturing or attention, Miss B made her way to the Sunset Strip, seeking counsel from unlikely rockers. "I was just finding my way, not even looking for that kind of scene. But I've always loved music. I really didn't have an identity. I'm almost a Jane Doe because I didn't know who my father was, so it made me feel special to be involved with well-known people. I became very attached to guys who were famous, and believe it or not, I was finding my identity through them. It helped me move forward in life and made me think, `If I can be with this person, that means that I am worthy of just about anything.'"

Today Miss B is a member of two local rock bands, playing bass for Krell, a metal band she describes as "Marilyn Manson meets Black Sabbath," and fronting a tribute cover band that mainly focuses on Jefferson Airplane anthems. She's been writing for local Hollywood papers for ten years. She had a small recurring role on HBO's Deadwood. She also admits to being a longtime groupie but wishes the word hadn't become so besmirched. "I've had people label me, `Oh, you're such a groupie,' and I laugh and say, `You wish you were!' Rock stars marry their groupies-Sid and Nancy, Kurt and Courtney. I mean, what is a groupie anyway? Somebody who enjoys music and wants to be around it. I don't like when it's used in a derogatory sense because everybody wants to get backstage. I was at a show recently and my friend asked, `How do we get back there?' I said, `I'll get back there.' I just walked right in and she hated me for it. I was like, `Sorry, but I'm good at this.' I also wanna say that from a musician's standpoint, most people in bands are groupies as well because they like to be with other groups. You could say that about half the world is made up of groupies, you know?"

Couldn't agree more.

Miss B's late teens and early twenties were drastic and dangerous, and she freely admits she never believed she'd make it to thirty, a momentous mark she passed five years ago. "I wanted to live the ultimate rock 'n' roll life. The rough stuff kicked in when I was eighteen or nineteen. I don't know if I planned it like that, but I was living the life, and I was around it 24-7."

One of her earliest conquests was the ubiquitous Taime Downe of Faster Pussycat. I have spoken to many girls who described encounters with Taime that range from the sublime to the scandalous to the pitiful. Miss B and Taime recently reconnected and it seems she still has the hots for the rocker/DJ/Strip fixture. "I was into the notoriety of Faster Pussycat and Taime took a liking to me. We started hanging out a lot and becoming friends, then I went to his house and we had sex. He had a doll next to his bed; a woman, but she was decapitated so there was just the torso, and not even both arms, but it was all dressed up. Taime is an incredible lover. And he's also a creative, interesting person, very intelligent."

Hanging out on the wicked Strip in the mid-'80s, Miss B easily hooked up with various hard rockers. "There've been quite a few," she admits candidly. "I was with a couple of guys in Pretty Boy Floyd, Jeff Pilson from Dokken, and I had a brief sexual encounter with Lemmy from Motorhead. He's definitely a weird one. He's probably the oldest guy I've been with; he's been around since the Jimi Hendrix days."

She may have been wild, but Miss B makes it clear that she's never been into kinkiness or group sex. "I'm not the kind of groupie who's a home wrecker. I didn't steal anyone's boyfriend, and I prided myself on that. I've never had threesomes; I've never had more than a twosome in my life. I've seen certain things going on with other people, but never participated. The only rock stars I knew that were into really crazy stuff were Guns N' Roses, because I saw them having orgies. I was at Slash's house one time, with Duff, and I saw Slash and Ron Jeremy in bed with some porn stars. But I don't mess with that. I'm not into that whole thing." She did, however, wind up sharing the sack a few times with their enigmatic frontman, Axl Rose. "Axl was more of a friend that became like, you know, a lover. He was sensuous and very good. He's an interesting person, but he's shorter than the kind of guy I usually like. That was his dilemma-he was real short, but trying to be all manly. Axl had short-man syndrome, I think, so he overpowered people. I guess that's partially because when he was young on the farm in Indiana he had a mean stepfather who abused him. He's withdrawn and more of a pot smoker and a drinker than a drug-taker."

I saw GNR open for the Stones in the middle of their rock peak and was taken with Axl whooping it up, slip-sliding back and forth in his bicycle shorts, slinging his long, flaming hair in every direction. Sadly, I have heard that Axl is a bad-tempered scalliwag who regularly beat up his wives and girlfriends. "He didn't flip out on me because I didn't give him a chance. I know he's done awful things to women, but I didn't get attached to him in that way. Besides, he's doing better now. We were more like friends and didn't sleep together that often. Even when we had sex, there were all these people in the other room. He knew my past so he was very nurturing with me. Contrary to most people's beliefs, every time I was with him, he was trying to calm me down. Usually it's him flipping out on other people, but I was freaking out and he was sweet, saying, `C'mon, calm down!' I will always consider him a friend."

Since I know Miss B is still friendly with Axl, I ask if she's heard Chinese Democracy, the infamous album he slaved over for over eight years.

"He was actually gonna use my voice on one of the tracks, but they never released the album. It's techno, and the record companies didn't believe in it. It's like Ozzy all of a sudden going techno, because Axl was such a metalhead."

So what happened? Why did he suddenly alter his music and himself so radically with techno beats and those crazy braided hair extensions? He now seems like an impersonator trying to copycat Axl Rose in his prime. "I know he's had a lot of surgery," Miss B says. "He wants to look young again. I think he's trying to look like a hip-hop guy and it's just not working." Like so many reclusive rockers, Axl seems to have lost touch. "Oh, yes, he's a hermit, definitely. Anything he does, he does with the few people that surround him. He has a South American maid that lives in his house in Malibu, and she's protective over Axl." Sadly, Axl's life sounds like it's become a rock and roll Sunset Boulevard with Axl Rose as Norma Desmond. "Yeah," Miss B agrees, "except that his housekeeper looks like tattooed Barbie from Brazil."

During the late '80s, Miss B was slowly sucked into the dismal, thriving hard drug scene in Hollywood. She was spending a lot of time among heroin users, and a quiet, slim blonde from Seattle soon became her constant copping companion. "I used to hang around a lot of people doing that kind of drug, and Kurt Cobain and I met in those circles. He became a friend. I was always pretty easygoing; people warm up to me. It began by him giving me rides places, taking me to buy drugs. I remember he used to compliment me a lot-I hadn't had any of that growing up, so I really liked that about him."