general and random thoughts on music and groupies.

Tonight I’ve been literally carried away watching some documentaries on groupies in the 60s/70s on YouTube… As I was browsing through some videos, I found some clips from Pamela Des Barres’ reading of her book Let’s Spend the Night Together (you can watch them here if you’re interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8ppZCBKVsg&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL ). I knew about her book I’m with the Band (that should be her first book, if I’m not mistaken) but never read it, although I’ve always been attracted by it for some mysterious reasons.

I had no idea her books literally corresponded to cheap erotic fiction with the variant of well-known rockstars as male protagonists. I indeed found it interesting under some aspects but it generally left me perplexed under many others: for whatever reasons (I blame you Cameron Crowe, you and the fantastic Penny Lane) I thought groupies back in the day were more about the music than having sex with rockstars for social climbing motifs. Apparently I was wrong: everything in Pamela Des Barres’ accounts is focused on how god/how bad the sex was with those people, "the guitarists with fast fingers" and all that stuff including some shallow comments on the “physical qualities” of the rockstars, seriously worthy of any cheap quality female oriented magazine.

Most of these groupies seemed to think to have had some influence on these people and elevated themselves to the state of "muses" (Cat Stevens dedicated one of his most romantic songs to his historic groupie apparently - then again, this makes me pose the question “are romantic songs necessarily speaking the truth?”). Isn’t this far from considering groupies’ position as empowering for women? They were chasing rockstars only because of their “high” status in society and slept with them, regardless of their personality, which is rarely mentioned in the epic accounts of their wild adventures. And again, is going to bed with them a way of exerting power over them? When people blame them to have been considered mere objects by the men who had sex with them, they reply saying that they have had the power of choosing who to sleep with, therefore they were in complete control of the situation. According to groupies, they are not used by rockstars and instead they claim to be the ones using them. Basically, "I reduce myself as an object on purpose and I'm proud of it", empowering indeed.

I definitely want to put my hands on Pamela Des Barres’ books, just to have a clearer idea about them, but what seriously left me disappointed is the poor content of the comments on the rockstars and the attribution of “qualities” to the different groupies simply identified by the persons they slept with.

I honestly found it mortifying, as a woman and as a music lover. But then again, I would never pursue that kind of lifestyle in any moment or situation, past future and present. Just as I don’t judge people by their careers/jobs/"position in society", I don’t believe musicians are a “different breed” as Pamela Des Barres writes.
On the contrary I believe in the power of music and how music itself makes me feel, all the emotions attached to it, the power it has to make me feel in a certain way, regardless of the physical or personal “qualities” of who is writing it.

Or maybe I am the one who should stop reducing everything to "feelings".