Connie Hamzy claimed to have had sex with many famous musicians, including John Bonham, Keith Moon, Neil Diamond, and Eddie Van Halen — and she even alleged that she had an encounter with Bill Clinton when he was the governor of Arkansas.
InstagramConnie Hamzy said that she started sleeping with rock stars when she was just 15 years old.
Connie Hamzy collected several nicknames throughout her life. Some called her “Sweet Sweet Connie,” others dubbed her “Connie Flowers,” and yet others simply knew her as “Sweet Sweet.” A prominent rock groupie, many of her nicknames and her “celebrity” status came from the 1973 song “We’re an American Band” by Grand Funk Railroad.
The song, which became a number one hit, featured these memorable lyrics:
“Out on the road for 40 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.”
But those lyrics were just a small glimpse into Connie Hamzy’s wild life.
How Connie Hamzy Became An Infamous Groupie In The 1970s
Connie HamzyConnie Hamzy, pictured with The Eagles’ Joe Walsh in 1988.
Born on Jan. 9, 1955, in Little Rock, Arkansas, Connie Hamzy was captivated by music and the idea of fame from an early age. She claimed that she first became a rock groupie when she was just 15 years old.
After her mother dropped her off at the Barton Coliseum to see the rock band Steppenwolf, Connie Hamzy alleged that she “hooked up” with Jerry Edmonton, the band’s drummer. At the time of the purported encounter, Edmonton would have been in his mid-20s. However, Hamzy also claimed that she lost her virginity to Frijid Pink drummer Rick Stevers.
From there, she said that she later became involved with both Keith Moon of The Who and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, which led to many other drummers pursuing her, partly in the hopes of hearing about Moon and Bonham. “The drummers gravitated to me,” she later told Howard Stern.
Eventually, she became a sort-of staple in Little Rock, a common sight at rock shows whenever famous bands toured the city. She hoped that her association with these bands would ultimately lead to her own fame.
“I was determined to become a famous groupie,” she said. “I really was.”
In a way, she got her wish when her name was featured in Grand Funk Railroad’s song “We’re an American Band” in 1973. At the time, she was 17.
YouTubeGrand Funk Railroad, the band that mentioned Connie Hamzy in the song “We’re an American Band.”
The lyric “Sweet, sweet Connie, doin’ her act” quickly earned her the nickname “Sweet Sweet Connie” and many other similar nicknames. Even more exciting for Hamzy, the song became a number one hit.
Hamzy said the band’s manager told her the news: “He called me and said, ‘You’re never going to believe this. But Grand Funk’s written a song called ‘We’re an American Band’ and your name is in the first lyrics.'”
That wasn’t the only time her name was immortalized in the lyrics of a rock song, either. The Guess Who also mentioned her in their 1974 song “Pleasin’ For Reason.” It’s also been speculated that she’s the same “Connie” mentioned in the 1985 Cheap Trick song “Standing on the Edge.”
Unsurprisingly, Hamzy enjoyed her new notoriety and remained determined to stand out amongst the other groupies of the era who wanted a taste of fame: “When girls find out what they’re in for — group sex, kinky sex, sex with other women, and usually all of it in one night — they chicken out. I didn’t. I felt as though I had arrived. I thought I was somebody.”
An Alleged Encounter With Bill Clinton
Connie Hamzy claimed to have slept with numerous musicians and other celebrities throughout her life, including Huey Lewis, Rick Springfield, Alex Van Halen, Neil Diamond, Eddie Van Halen, multiple members of KISS, and Vanilla Ice. But her most infamous alleged encounter was with Bill Clinton.
Hamzy said that she met with Clinton in 1984, when he was the governor of Arkansas. According to Hamzy’s claims, Clinton not only propositioned her but also agreed to receive a blowjob from her in the laundry room of a hotel. She alleged, “Somebody poked their head up from behind one of the washing machines and said we couldn’t do that in there… we didn’t get to complete [the blowjob], but we began it. And he was very well endowed.”
Hamzy’s allegations about Clinton first became public in 1991, around the time that Clinton announced that he was running for president.
Wikimedia CommonsBill Clinton, pictured in 1986. Connie Hamzy was at the center of one of Clinton’s first sex scandals.
A controversy later overshadowed by the much more infamous Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and the Paula Jones case, the Hamzy scandal seemed to fizzle out relatively quickly in the press.
Clinton’s communications director George Stephanopoulos was able to secure affidavits from witnesses that cast heavy doubt on Hamzy’s story.
“We’d survived our first bimbo eruption,” Stephanopoulos later wrote. “The Hamzy episode was a test — of Clinton’s character, our campaign’s competence, and the media’s resistance to tabloid trash. We all passed. Too bad it was only a drill.”
The Hamzy controversy briefly resurfaced in 2016 when Hamzy took a polygraph test regarding her claims and released them to future President Donald Trump’s political campaign, giving her full support to Trump.
How Connie Hamzy Continued Her Presence In The Rock Scene In Her Later Years
Though many groupies move on from their wild lifestyles after they get older, Connie Hamzy continued to pursue rock stars even when she reached middle age. In a 2005 interview with SPIN, when she was 50 years old, she claimed to have had a recent encounter with Neil Diamond while she was “smokin’ dope and blowing roadies” who were on a tour.
She said, “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.”
Chris King, the owner of the local Sticky Fingerz Rock’N’Roll Chicken Shack, remarked, “She’s a legend in Little Rock. Whenever there’s a good concert at the amphitheater, she likes to come in before the show, have a glass of chardonnay on the rocks, and tell us these wonderful stories about her life.”
In 2010, when she was 55 years old, she told Howard Stern, “Every now and then I give a good blowjob to somebody coming through town, but all the damn venues around here hassle me all the time. Apparently they [think], in my age range, blowing roadies and band guys isn’t appropriate.”
Stern asked Hamzy if she ever felt insulted by the rockers’ crass behavior toward her and how they passed her around like “a plate of potatoes.” Hamzy simply replied, “Well, a plate of good potatoes.”
Connie HamzyAn article about Connie Hamzy and some of her most salacious claims.
Though Hamzy was eventually forced to slow down due to unspecified health issues, she reportedly enjoyed recounting her stories with rock stars at local bars until her final years, entertaining the patrons with her supposed escapades. She also worked as a substitute teacher to support herself.
She never married, but she said she was engaged twice and kept both rings.
On August 21, 2021, Connie Hamzy died at the age of 66 in her hometown of Little Rock. The cause of her death was not publicly revealed, but it was learned that she had entered hospice care before she perished.
Don Brewer, the Grand Funk Railroad drummer who sang the famous lyric, “Sweet, sweet Connie,” said that he was sorry to hear of her death: “My memory of her is of a very outgoing ‘sweet’ girl that wanted to be famous. That was her goal in life. May she rest in peace.”
Next, go inside the story of Cynthia Plaster Caster, the groupie who made dozens of plaster casts of rock stars’ penises. Then, discover the controversial story of Sable Starr, the “Queen of the Groupies.”
