Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (57 page)

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.