Groupies were more than just the sex that came with music stardom — they were muses who left their marks all over the history of rock music.
Pamela Des Barres
Des Barres hooked up with Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, and countless others before memorializing it all in a memoir called I'm With The Band.
Pamela Des Barres with Alice Cooper. Los Angeles, California, 1974.Richard CreamerMichael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Pamela Des Barres
But on June 3, the couple attended an after party at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco on the Sunset Strip — and Page left with teenager Lori Maddox.
Los Angeles, California, June 3, 1973.Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The "Baby Groupies"
This was a well-known place for rockers to pick up "baby groupies": underaged girls, some as young as 12, waiting to become a rock star's prey.
Los Angeles, California, 1974.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The "Baby Groupies"
Los Angeles, California. 1972.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The "Baby Groupies"
American DJ Chuck E Starr (second left) with groupies at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, circa 1973. Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
The "Baby Groupies"
Los Angeles, California, 1972.Elterman/FilmMagic
Lori Maddox
Page's relationship with the young girl was a scandal at the time, but he was hardly the first rocker to take an interest. Lori Maddox says she lost her virginity to David Bowie when she was even younger.
Lori Maddox with Jimmy Page. Los Angeles, California, June 3, 1973.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Lori Maddox
Los Angeles, California, June 3, 1973.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Lori Maddox
Sable Starr, who had been sleeping with rockers since she was 12 years old, introduced Maddox to the groupie scene. Maddox says that, when Jimmy Page invited her over, Sable Starr threatened, "If you touch him, I will shoot you. He's mine."
Los Angeles, California. 1973.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Lori Maddox
Lori Maddox and Jimmy Page split up when she caught him in bed with another groupie, Bebe Buell.
Los Angeles, California, 1973.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Lori Maddox
Lori Maddox (second right) among a group of female clubbers at the Whisky a Go Go.
West Hollywood, California, 1975. Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Lori Maddox
West Hollywood, California, 1975.Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Sable Starr
Iggy Pop would write about his flings with Sable Starr and the moment she left him for Thunders in his song "Look Away":
I slept with Sable when she was 13,
Her parents were too rich to do anything,
She rocked her way around L.A.,
'Til a New York Doll carried her away…"
New York City, New York, circa 1970s.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Sable Starr
Sable Starr
"He tried to destroy my personality," Starr would later say. "After I was with him, I just wasn't Sable Starr anymore."
Sable Starr with Stiv Bators. Los Angeles, California, circa 1980s.Virginia Turbett/Redferns/Getty Images
The "Redlands" Groupies
Jones had been caught with these women and a stash of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines.
United Kingdom, 1967.Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images
Hamburg Groupies
Cynthia Plaster Caster
Here, Cynthia Plaster Caster clings tightly to a box filled with her collection.
Chicago, Illinois, 1969.Baron Wolman/Iconic Images/Getty Images
Bebe Buell
Steven Tyler wasn't Buell's only love. She claims to have hooked up with everyone from Elvis Costello to Mick Jagger to Rod Stewart.
Bebe Buell with Stiv Bators. Los Angeles, California, 1979.Brad Elterman/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Bebe Buell
It wasn't until she met Steven Tyler when she was 10 or 11 and noticed a similarity that she asked her mother about the truth, which didn't become public until 1991.
Knebworth, United Kingdom, August 1976. Michael Putland/Getty Images
Nancy Spungen
The romance would cost Spungen her life. On October 12, 1978, Sid Vicious stabbed her to death with a knife in New York's Hotel Chelsea.
Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious. New York City, New York, 1978.Allan Tannenbaum/IMAGES/Getty Images
Nancy Spungen wasn't the only groupie that followed the band around.
Location unspecified, 1978. Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images
Anita Pallenberg
When Pallenberg left Brian Jones for his Rolling Stones bandmate Keith Richards, Jones sunk into depression and heavy drug abuse. Within a year of losing Pallenberg, he'd be kicked out the band.
Anita Pallenberg and Brian Jones. Munich, Germany, 1966.Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix/Mirrorpix via Getty Images
Anita Pallenberg
Richards and Pallenberg shared a love for heroin, which got them arrested in 1977 and nearly cost the Rolling Stones another guitarist.
London, England, 1969.McCarthy/Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Anita Pallenberg
Jagger had The Rolling Stones album Beggars Banquet sent back for remixing when Pallenberg said it wasn't up to par. He also let her sing back-up on the album's best-known single, "Sympathy for the Devil."
Officially, Pallenberg denies ever having been with Mick Jagger.
London, England, 1968.Andrew Maclear/Redferns/Getty Images
Silky Gage
Silky would be the inspiration for many of Golden's songs, such as "Silky Is Sad."
New York City, New York, 1969.Baron Wolman/Iconic Images/Getty Images
Annette Walter-Lax
Walter-Lax was the last person with Keith Moon when he died. In his final moments, Moon asked Walter-Lax to cook him a meal and, when she refused, yelled, "If you don't like it, you can f--- off!"
He died of an overdose shortly after.
Los Angeles, California, 1974.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Sweet Sweet Connie Hamzy
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.
Connie Hamzy and Ringo Starr, 1989.Connie Hamzy
The Butter Queen
But it was Cope's hotel antics that earned her a nickname so enduring that Robert pined for her onstage and The Rolling Stones mentioned it in a song: The Butter Queen.
Allegedly, while hanging out with The Partridge Family's David Cassidy, Cope called room service and asked for a pound of butter to be brought up to the suite. But to this day, no one has confirmed what she ever did with it. And Cope herself once said, "Those who know, know. And those who don’t, wish they did."
Memorial Auditorium, Dallas, 1968.Barbara Cope/Facebook
Audrey Hamilton
After their relationship fell apart, Hamilton would move on to Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley.
The Starship, 1973.Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
The GTOs
Los Angeles, California, 1968.Baron Wolman/Iconic Images/Getty Images
Cathy Smith
Then, after a brief fling with Gordon Lightfoot, she became a groupie/drug dealer for Keith Richards and Mick Jagger while partying in Hollywood with actors on the side — before infamously giving John Belushi a fatal overdose of cocaine and heroin in 1982.
Cathy Smith with her lawyer at the Plaza Hotel in New York, circa 1982.Lenore Davis/New York Post Archives/© NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images
Roxana Shirazi
But she cautioned against others following too closely in her footsteps as well, once telling The Guardian, "It’s never possible to have full agency [as a groupie]. From the outset, the power structure is not equal. They’re famous, and, unless you’re famous yourself, you’re not on the same plane."Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images
For a rock star in the 1960s and '70s, the groupies came with the territory. They would follow bands on tour, cheering at their shows and fighting for the chance for a backstage pass and a night in a celebrity's bed.
Such groupies are usually nothing more than a footnote in music history, but behind the scenes, they were more than just fans. They were a part of these musicians' lives – and sometimes, they completely changed music history.
Rock And Roll Groupies Who Became Legends
The term "groupie" was coined in the 1960s to describe teenage girls and young women who followed rock and roll bands on tour, many of whom dated rock stars. But no one is certain of exactly where it came from. Some say a journalist created it, others think Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman used it as a code word for the women they met on tour.
What's certain is that by 1960, Rolling Stone blew the lid off the subculture of women making themselves available to touring rock stars with a February 1969 cover story called simply "Groupies and Other Girls."
Inside, the magazine lavished 14,000 words on the phenomenon, showing how integral groupies had become to the lifestyle and music of rock and roll. Some even began influencing the stars themselves.
Rolling Stone photographer Baron Wolman told The Guardian in 2015 that many musicians even started emulating the groupies in their dress, donning flamboyant outfits anchored with fur, feathers, flowers, and stars. "Just look back at pictures of the Rolling Stones," he quipped.
Central Press/Getty ImagesMick Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and Keith Richards at London Airport. December 18, 1968.
There were also some groupies who became minor celebrities in their own right. Women like Pamela Des Barres built up legends of their own. She worked her way through the beds of men like Jimmy Page and Mick Jagger, leading a life that helped inspire Kate Hudson's character in the movie Almost Famous.
"A groupie is someone who loves the music so much she wants to be around the people who make it," Des Barres told The Guardian in 2018.
"A fan is content with an autograph or a look from the stage, or a selfie. A groupie takes the next step. And that takes a lot of courage. But they do so totally willingly, sometimes hoping for a romance, or a one-night stand – or sometimes hoping to marry them."
Other groupies, however, broke up bands. Anita Pallenberg nearly ended The Rolling Stones twice by working her way through the group. When she left Brian Jones for his bandmate, Keith Richards, she sent him into a spiraling depression that would end with him getting kicked out of the band. And not long after, a heroin binge with her new beau, Keith Richards, would see him pleading before a court to stay out of prison.
The Predatory World Of 'Baby Groupies'
Other groupies would find themselves in even deeper trouble. At Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco in Los Angeles, rock stars would browse a selection of so-called "baby groupies" — underaged children who spent their school nights sleeping with grown men. Some of the girls were as young as 12.
This was a scene in which women over 20 were called "old." And one in which during Bingenheimer's after-party on June 3, 1973, following a show at the Forum in Inglewood, Jimmy Page entered with his 25-year-old girlfriend Pamela Des Barres — and left with a 15-year-old named Lori Maddox. Or, perhaps more accurately, Page had her kidnapped.
According to Maddox, Led Zeppelin's manager came up to her and said, "You're coming with me, young lady."
"I wound up in a limo and didn't know where I was going," she told Thrillist. "But it was to the Hyatt. I felt like I was being kidnapped. I got taken into a room and there was Jimmy Page."
Still, she said that the relationship "became so serious that Jimmy asked my mom for permission to be with me" — and then her mother went around saying, "My daughter is like Priscilla [Presley]."
Richard Creamer/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesRodney Bingenheimer, Jimmy Page, Pamela Des Barres, and Lori Maddox at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco on the night Page will leave Des Barres for Maddox. Los Angeles, California, June 3, 1973.
But it was far from Maddox's first time with a rock star. She'd lost her virginity at 14 to David Bowie — in a threesome with her best friend Sable Starr, who introduced her to the world of rock and roll in 1972.
In fact, Sable Starr, a girl who had been sleeping with rock stars since she was 12 years old, was known as the "queen of the baby groupies." Starr's life of scandals would be immortalized in the lyrics of an Iggy Pop song Look Away:
I slept with Sable when she was 13
Her parents were too rich to do anything
She rocked her way around L.A.
'Til a New York Doll carried her away.
But these women were more than just the sex that went with the drugs and the rock and roll. They were muses. They inspired songs. They raced through the minds of famous musicians as those stars strummed out the first few notes of a future classic — and more than a few groupies were named directly in the lyrics themselves.
These groupies' names might not be well-known, but they've left their imprints all over the history of rock and roll.
After reading about some of the most influential — and infamous — rock and roll groupies, learn the history of hippies and the Mods.
