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- [00:00]
Dylan
He's coming here, you know, in three weeks, and I'm dying. I am just dying. Oh, did you see him this time?
- [00:11]
Evan
What happened?
- [00:12]
Dylan
Did you see him? Oh, wow.
- [00:15]
Pamela
It was midnight in Topanga.
- [00:19]
Evan
Topanga. I heard the DJ say, there's a full moon rising. Join me.
- [00:41]
Dylan
My heart's buttering.
- [00:46]
Pamela
This is a long, long time coming. That Dylan Tupper Rupert is on Jokerman podcast. This is like, years in the making. Literally, like a year, two years.
- [00:56]
Dylan
Yeah. It's kind of embarrassing. Took this long. Embarrassing for you guys, not for me.
- [01:01]
Pamela
No, it's embarrassing for you as well. I think we can all just be embarrassed.
- [01:05]
Dylan
I think we should all just. Yeah. Start this off with a ton of shame.
- [01:09]
Pamela
Way ahead of you.
- [01:10]
Dee Dee
We wanted to wait for you to become a brand name in podcasting.
- [01:15]
Dylan
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [01:16]
Pamela
A brand name in podcasting. Unto.
- [01:18]
Dee Dee
Unto yourself. Exactly. Not just producer Dylan, but narrator Dylan.
- [01:22]
Pamela
Yeah.
- [01:22]
Dylan
Yes.
- [01:23]
Pamela
Your brand as producer Dylan is long standing and a very durable one. But you've pivoted.
- [01:30]
Dylan
I've pivoted. I've pivoted to having other people do.
- [01:33]
Dee Dee
That for me, and that must be nice. Imagine having a producer for a podcast.
- [01:38]
Pamela
I don't think it would work out for us because I would probably.
- [01:41]
Dee Dee
I don't think it would work out for you. It would work out for me just fine.
- [01:46]
Pamela
We're here because you have a podcast called Groupies. Women of the Sunset Strip, from the Pill to Punk.
- [01:55]
Dylan
Right on.
- [01:56]
Pamela
That subtitle does a lot of the legwork. It kind of says what it's about right there.
- [02:00]
Dylan
It's nice. It does the job. I don't need to tell you that. It's not about every groupie, and it's not about every groupie scene, and it's not about every era of rock and roll, but it's just that little slice.
- [02:12]
Pamela
It's not about all women. That would be a very ambitious project.
- [02:16]
Dylan
I think. I think the message of this series is not all women.
- [02:21]
Pamela
What is the message of the series?
- [02:23]
Dylan
I. You know, I think, like, at the time that this podcast is going to come out, the full season will have been released. And, you know, we came into the show thinking maybe groupies were this, like, you know, maybe they were uncredited stylists or they were like publicists that shouldn't. Should have gotten paid, or they were, like, inspirations to songs and that, you know, had all these undue influences. But then we just sort of sat with it for longer, and I was just like, this is a lot more of an ephemeral relationship that Has a lot to do with less the transactional nature of, like, reclaiming the female experience from the clutches of the rich men of rock and roll. And it's a lot more like, this is a story about an ecosystem. It's a story about a scene. It's a story about when, like, young women came to Hollywood, which is already just, like, where so many crazy, intersecting cultural forces collide and sort of like, what happens when they, like, run headfirst right into the middle of that and how their world receives them or rejects them or sees them for who they are or who they want them to be. And I think it's just a lot more complicated than anyone probably expects. Before they throw it on. Yeah, we're sort of leaning, like, the whole tagline of the series is, like, from the pill to the dawn of punk. It's like birth control became readily available at the same time that, like, rock and roll was becoming the dominant cultural force. And so as we get into punk, you know, it's like, we've all heard. We've all read Please Kill Me and we've all, like, heard the origin stories of punk. But something that was, like, this untapped or guess I guess, like, unconnected link in this process was hearing a lot of the first punks like Alice Bagg and Teresa Carriages and Kid Congo Powers and Pleasant Gaiman say that, like, the reason that they ended up on the strip in the first place is because they thought groupies were so sick and they just wanted to, like, go be them and hang out with them. But they were just coming in, like, 75, 76 instead of, like, 72, 73. And the message that they got from the groupies was, like, those girls know how to go out there and, like, get what they want from the world, from their idols. And I think that was, like, a really disruptive narrative, this idea that, like, punk came straight out of glam and the kids that were just, like, carrying it on into the next iteration of Sunset Strip, like, youth, nightlife and rock and roll. We get the reflections from, like, our main four groupies in the last half of episode eight. It's like, Pamela Des Barre, Laurie Notics, and then a couple of the girls we introduce you to in the season. And they're kind of like our link to show the evolution of, like, women and rock music from the mid-60s to the late 70s, and how they all are sort of linked in this chain and they build off of one another. To me, it feels like this undisputable lineage between all these Girls and their experiences.
- [05:25]
Dee Dee
Were you at all like. I mean, the title of the series is literally Groupies. And you know, everyone sort of uses that term pretty frequently throughout the show. Were you at all concerned about, like, that, literally, that work? Because I feel like groupies has a pretty strong connotation to it. At least it did in my mind. And I think this series has kind of expanded my mindset or knowledge of what a groupie really was and could be. But was that a concern that you or anyone that you were like, you know, any of the groupies themselves had is like kind of adopting that identity.
- [06:03]
Dylan
And kind of like, oh, am I a groupie or am I going to like piss anyone off for being like, hey, we think you are a famous groupie. Do you want to make it?
- [06:11]
Dee Dee
Yes, exactly.
- [06:12]
Dylan
Yeah. No, everyone really. I mean, first of all, like Pamela and Lori, you know, are like noted famous groupies. They're like, yeah, I was a groupie, whatever. Morgana, Dee Dee, Dee. Dee Keel, who like booked the whiskey for 13 years. It feels like so long ago now. It wasn't that long ago, but I think just because I've. It's been so accepted in my mind that I'm like, yeah, all of them are just like, really comfortable being like, yeah, of course I was a groupie. I was like going there to fuck these guys and party and also do whatever else I wanted and also try to get a job and also try to build a recording studio or book these shows, you know, and they were just like porcano lados. Like, that was like the whole vibe. And I was like, sick. That was a really cool thing to hear from a woman, particularly like Morgana and Didi, I think, who had like, pretty professional aspirations in the music industry to just sort of have no shame around that word. And then also there's mostly Dee Dee and Pamela brought this up, but the word groupie wasn't really like code for you're going to go fuck guys in bands. Until, like the later 60s. It was just what their parents called their young preteen daughters when they were like following the Beatles from LA to San Francisco or whatever.
- [07:29]
Dee Dee
Sure.
- [07:30]
Dylan
I was just like, you know, like, it's just. It's just what it's called, you know, like, it wasn't disparaging because they already had like pre owned it, you know.
- [07:38]
Dee Dee
Totally.
- [07:38]
Pamela
Yeah. There's not a shame associated with it because the reason they were successful at the. The reason that they're. They became kind of folk heroes in their own right in the first place is I think that the definition they had of that was always broader, was always more open. I feel like there's something interesting there in the. Specifically the glam and punk moment.
- [08:07]
Dylan
Yeah.
- [08:07]
Pamela
Because men who are entering that world, it's not like they're doing that much different on paper than these women. They're dressing flamboyantly, they're going to parties, they're trying to be seen. And there's the androgyny aspect of glam. Of course, it is kind of as equal a moment for men and women to be trying to make it in music in some way, in culture in some way than there ever has been as there ever has been.
- [08:40]
Dylan
You might. You might say all of those are, you know, aesthetically and maybe like, maturity wise and culturally, they're on the same plane, except that the Girls are like, 13 and 14, and the men are, like, 27 and 28.
- [08:55]
Dee Dee
I mean, that is like, a good point because. And what was so interesting listening to, I mean, the women in themselves speak in general, is because, like, their mindsets and kind of the angle that you take on this is so antithetical, I think, to a lot of the language and the way that people kind of approach things like this in modern celebrity culture, where you've got things like, know, age gap discourse, quote unquote, or like, the concept of grooming, you know, that would, you know, a certain type of person would very much look at this whole story through that lens. But that's clearly not the way that any of. Any of the groupies themselves, you know, have thought about it up until this point.
- [09:34]
Dylan
Or it's like they're able to talk about it because they are in their 60s and 70s. They're able to talk about it without all the buzzwords. Do you know what I mean? Like, I felt like I was like, getting sort of, like. I don't want to say unfiltered, because it's coming from a single source, and it's sort of like, been stored in their memory. And it's all, like, locked in with these positive, like, these are my glory days sort of feelings. But it's like, you know, you have Laurie Maddox talking about being stowed away at the Hyatt house because Led Zeppelin had gotten, like, tons of money stolen. And so the FBI was, like, investigating that. So the FBI was, like, around Led Zeppelin. Meanwhile, he's, like, dating Lori Maddox, and he can't take her on the plane to go from state to state because that is a federal Violates the Man act.
- [10:22]
Dee Dee
Federal crime. Yeah.
- [10:23]
Dylan
Major crime. And so. But then it's like, okay, well, I kind of have to hide you in the hotel. And so she sort of just walks you through that and tells you how she feels about it. And it's a whole fucking mix of stuff. And it's kind of refreshing to hear that without a lot of like, like buzzwords and like shoe horning it into a certain narrative that fits our current moment. Because my biggest thing, like this is like a kindred idea in your guys wheelhouse with what you do. But like, my biggest thing with the series was like, everyone says it was a different time, it was a different time. And I'm like, let's talk exactly about how it was a different time, because it was not. Because it was like more or less wrong. You know, like, you know, statutory ribs and statutory weight for a very long time. That was not invented with MeToo. But like, glam rock in the Sunset Strip was literally a different fucking universe than like anything any of us have grown up with or like been involved with in music. I think too. Just like me being someone that was doing all the same shit on just a sillier, smaller, more local scale. Where I grew up, all these dynamics they're talking about are the present dynamics, or they were. You know, when I was a teenager in the 2000s, those were the present gender and age dynamics of like indie rock music.
- [11:47]
Dee Dee
Yeah, you remember the whole Burger Records thing from.
- [11:50]
Pamela
Oh, yeah, like Evan.
- [11:52]
Dylan
Evan knows my. I mean, that's a huge part of like my personal history. And a friend who also was really deeply a part of that scene asked me while I was in production for this. She's like, do you think she just asked if like this that sort of made it in the show in any way? And I was like, absolutely not. But also that scene, its intent was to kind of replicate this one that we talk about in the show.
- [12:18]
Dee Dee
It's like a bootleg knockoff, Walmart version of it.
- [12:21]
Dylan
Bootleg Rodney's dude.
- [12:22]
Dee Dee
Yeah, absolutely.
- [12:24]
Dylan
Straight up from the way the music sounds to the sort of like androgyny thing that Evan was touching on and like how that sort of like defangs adult masculinity for teenage girls, you know, like, that's a very real phenomenon. Like all my musician crushes when I was like 14, 15, 16 were like the really like girlish boys. And like, luckily for me, it was 2008, so they were all around me.
- [12:50]
Pamela
There's something that happens in the course of this story. A sort of pseudo narrative, a kind of meta narrative, not explicit Exactly. But there's something happening between these, what we can, I think, largely understand as emotionally immature men kind of finding inspiration, looking up to, feeding off the energy of women who are able to see what's messed up about these guys in music, but also, I think, see clearer than those guys themselves at times. What's good about them, like, what's pure about what they do, what's special about who they are. Through all the nastiness and difficult situations, there is this connection of trying to hold on from both sides, from the side of the groupies and the performers to some vision of, of what could.
- [13:50]
Dylan
Be like a shared dream, like a shared delusion, a shared fantasy.
- [13:55]
Pamela
Yeah, exactly. There's something really, I think, touching about that.
- [14:00]
Dylan
I agree. And I am glad you picked up on that sort of like shared the shared dream element of it, because something that I really wanted to hang a lot of this show on was this idea of like mythology and who gets to belong to rock mythology and who gets to write it. There is something really specific though, that something that I want to get across which is like, and we, we do this in the arc of the show, but like, there's sort of the famous baby groupies, which is Sable Star, who is Johnny Thunder's girlfriend. She was, she was 16 when she was 15, when she was with Iggy Pop, you know, there was Lori Lightning, who was Jimmy Page's girlfriend and like allegedly slept with David Bowie, took her virginity. Like, those are the girls where there's all of this, like, you know, pedophilia and statutory rape scandal surrounding. But like Pamela didn't lose her virginity until she was 19. Like, Dee Dee was partying on the Sunset Trip when she was 17 and 18, but she didn't start working at the Whiskey a Go Go and being like a full on groupie until she was like 20, 21 and Morgana was going in high school to party. She was just kind of like, you know, you're like. I, I describe it in one episode as like Morgana was an upperclassman, you know, like a junior senior. And like Lori and Sable were like underclassmen, freshman, sophomore. And like, those are wild differences. Like teenager encompasses so many stages of development. And I think that the, this idea of groupies gets really stuck on the scandal of the age. And like, it's something that I think like erases a really, really important part of the story. But it's like a coming of age story too. I'm like Paul Thomas Anderson, fucking call me bro. But it's like coming from The Valley to Hollywood to like see what sort of like rock chick you can be, you know, and see if it could like last your whole life and see if you can ride this fucking thing. And like, they don't, they don't get to do that. Like a lot of the dudes and bands, but they really were sort of like, they did have this shared dream of a sort of like, can the fucking 60s last forever? That is literally. That was so interesting to me. It was like, you know, the glam rock babies were coming in and they were kind of like these girls that came before I'm going to steal their boyfriend because they're 14 and they're acting like it, you know, like, versus Pamela at that time was like already had turned 21. So you already have like, you have age gaps between the girl beef on the scene too. Like it's. Yeah, it suddenly goes from. And Pamela, I think is really like astute at articulating how all these changes in the music scene, like it gets more transactional and cynical and like party drug instead of like psychedelic drug in the 70s. And it really reflects in sort of like the ages of the girls around. Like it wasn't always, you know, a scene full of bitchy, dominant 14 year old party girls, which is what I think Lori admits to being. I love her, but she was like, yeah, what the fuck? I was at the table being like, get that girl out of here. You know. And Pamela was like, I love art. Like Captain Beef Heart, Frank Zappa, my ultimate inspiration, Mick Jagger. You're like a God to me. I love Jesus. You know, it's like, it's just the difference between the 60s and the 70s embodied and these women so directly.
- [17:24]
Dee Dee
Yeah. That second wave radically reshapes, I think the whole ecosystem, plus the reputation or kind of the public image of what a groupie is or would be. The same way that the second wave of rock musicians does that to the first wave of the previous wave of 60s rock groups. Which on that note, something that occurred to me and has always been kind of clear to me in the guys that we focus on here. And I can say guys, because it's almost, it's almost entirely guys.
- [17:55]
Dylan
Yes, you can.
- [17:56]
Pamela
Almost.
- [17:57]
Dee Dee
Almost. You know, we're gonna work on that in the future.
- [18:00]
Pamela
Mo Tucker and Nico notwithstanding.
- [18:04]
Dylan
Yes, no Mo Tucker and Nico.
- [18:06]
Dee Dee
That's why I said almost. A lot of the groups, the guys that we focus on, on Jokermen, are not really the groupie type of bands. You know, Bob Dylan, Lou Reed and the Velvets, the Beach Boys, Steely Daniel, you know, obviously had adoring fans, screaming girls in the audience and so on. But, like, this really kind of vivid, pungent groupie phenomenon does not surround them the way that it does someone like Zeppelin or the Stones or Jim Morrison, the Doors or the Eagles. I wonder if you have any sort of insight or reading as to why the groupies kind of were attracted to one strain of rocker and maybe not.
- [18:52]
Dylan
Another, or vice vice versa. You know, I was like. There's the one episode where I was like, yeah, the teenagers of Hollywood loved glam rock. And, like, glam rock loved the teenagers of Hollywood.
- [19:04]
Dee Dee
Chicken or the egg type of thing?
- [19:05]
Dylan
Yeah, total chicken or the egg. And, like, yeah, just so parallel to all of the scenes that I grew up in. Literally, like, say, like, ages 12 to 21, you know, like, I really was just growing up with a lot of people cosplaying this time, you know, like, clothes and dynamics and all and something I. Morgana. I don't think a lot of this ended up in the actual episode, but I asked Morgana because she was. She comes in. In episode four, and she's kind of like. She's like the cool girl that grew up in, like, the flats of Beverly Hills. And so she's not, like, coming from the suburbs with these starry eyes about Hollywood. She kind of has, like. She's streetwise and her friends are, like, sex workers. And, like, she is, like, skipping class and had. She's basically like a latchkey kid living on her own. And she was talking to me about one of her friends and how she had kind of, like, graduated to the Topanga Canyon scene. And while, like, a lot of Laurel Canyons kind of migrating out to, like, Malibu and Topanga, and she was like. It was just really, like, domestic and boring to me. And it. My friend was a couple years older, so she was, like, down to sort of, like, settle down in rock and roll terms and, like, go do that, like, bucolic, you know, version of La Rock in the 70s. But, you know, there's all these. It really is, like, this ecosystem where there's all these micro subcultures happening even in just parts of Hollywood. Like the Troubadour scene. Yes. People would go see shows at the Troubadour, but it was a totally different scene than what was happening at, like, the Rainbow or the Whiskey. In terms of socially.
- [20:39]
Pamela
Yeah.
- [20:40]
Dylan
There's also this quote, man. What. There's this enemy, journalist, Nick Kent, and he got sent over by the enemy to sort of COVID like, the debauchery of the Hollywood music scene. And he was just like, maybe if you're the bass player of Sweet, these are the best days of your life. But unless you're someone just hopelessly addicted to pussy, this is like a pretty sordid scene, you know?
- [21:01]
Dee Dee
Damn. A nightmare.
- [21:02]
Dylan
Yeah. It's like, holy. He was like, what the fuck? You know? And a lot of the rock press at the time was kind of like, on one hand, like, holy shit. Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, glamrock ground zero on the West Coast. And then kind of on the other foot, they're kind of like, yeah, but what the fuck is going on here?
- [21:20]
Dee Dee
Yeah, I mean, we've seen this very recent, you know, very clearly in some of the conversations we've had recently. And you bring this up actually in one or two episodes, like the Manson thing, like Dennis. Dennis Wilson, I think, is the clearest subject of all. Who, like, does exist in the groupie culture and that, I think the Manson thing is a great example of how.
- [21:39]
Pamela
That leaves you open.
- [21:41]
Dee Dee
It can spiral rapidly, deeply out of control in a million different directions.
- [21:47]
Pamela
Part of why we're talking about the Beach Boys on Jokermen is part of what's fascinating about them is that I think their story is kind of of young American masculinity in the music world. Struggling. Struggling even within that group. Yeah, you have Dennis, who wants to be in a band that is part of that world. You have Mike Love, who I'm sure wants to be in a band that is part of that world. And then you have Al Jardine and Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks. And they're all living, you know, to somebody who doesn't know anything about Los Angeles. They're all living, oh, in the same city, but yeah.
- [22:30]
Dylan
In the same neighborhood, even.
- [22:31]
Pamela
The same. Yeah.
- [22:33]
Dee Dee
Brian's Mansion right there on Bel Air, right off Sunset, just a mile or two down from the Strip.
- [22:38]
Pamela
It even came down, like, which clubs certain bands tended to play more at would influence whether or not they became one of those groups that was part of it. But also just temperament. I can't stop thinking about the song Poor, Poor Pitiful Me, the Warren Sivan song, as being like so much about all of this. Like, it even name drops. The Hyatt House and Rainbow Bar, more than almost any other song, I think is written explicitly about this drama. Yeah, these men who are natural born pussy addicts and they find themselves enabled forever, seemingly. And it's really not good for them. But if they were to try to explain their troubles, once someone think of.
- [23:24]
Dee Dee
The men, how difficult it was for them to be in these situation at the Pussy Buffet.
- [23:30]
Pamela
Yeah, these girls need to leave me alone.
- [23:33]
Dylan
Yeah, right. No, I mean, it's like. It is like one of my favorite things to think about is just like all of the parallel universes that are happening in LA during this exact era. And not la, Hollywood, like Hollywood. And it's like this LA that we're mapping the teenage girl experience of is the same language, it's the same Hollywood as Warren Zvon, as Steely Dan, as Randy Newman, the Beach Boys. It's the same street, it's the same clubs, it's the same recording studios, It's a lot of the same house parties. This is the sort of uncharted lineage of like, the teenage girl streak that's happening as like an undercurrent of all of this, like, professional music happening. If the 60s was all sort of like, come one, come all and just like, be a part of this, like, jamboree, like, those streams got a lot more rigid, do you know what I mean? Like, I think there was like, maybe less cross pollination, but also people picked their lanes and like their little.
- [24:38]
Pamela
Their party circuits, you know, and those kind of calcified. And there's no way to know without running into potentially unfortunate circumstances which lane you're supposed to be in, which ones you're not welcome in. How this all works.
- [24:55]
Dylan
Yes, like the music world of the 60s in which the ways to, like, be a woman that are celebrated are to be like a Joni Mitchell, like a singer, songwriter, or just like a regular Hollywood girl, like an actress, a model, and like, maybe be like a secretary, you know, sort of in the business. But, like, they're trying to sort of make their own. They're trying to stake their own claim as they both grow up. And the times are changing like fucking crazy. And so it's like they're. They're sort of both emblematic of the changes that are happening and are also sort of like, dealing with them in real time as they're growing up and.
- [25:34]
Dee Dee
Are sort of driving them in some cases as well.
- [25:37]
Dylan
Totally. In ways that, like, I think, you know, there are things that I wanted to uncover. You know, talking to these women. It's like, how did you actually, like, what did you do that actually changed the course of the way the music scene operated in the Strip? But also, I think there's just like, if you're okay. Evan, one of our, like, first, like, friendship bonding conversations was about, like, indoor kids versus outdoor kids.
- [26:02]
Pamela
Oh, yes.
- [26:03]
Dylan
Do you remember? And it was like, of course it was like, are you at home on Tumblr full time and, like, watching music videos and, like, studying your favorite band's facts and kind of being a Stan? Or are you, like, out there hitting the streets, like, going to everything you can and, like, trying to be a part of it? Yeah, this show is about the outdoor kids of Los Angeles because fandom was crazy at that time too. But, like, these girls were like, I'm gonna go out there and get it. Like, liner notes are not enough for me. I need. I wanna. I want a husband, bitch.
- [26:34]
Pamela
Maybe neither the outdoor or indoor kid perspective is ever going to be the full picture, but there's something to be said for this story. These stories which are of those kids who are then, like, well, I'm certain that I'm not getting the whole picture from just thinking about it and reading about it in these magazines.
- [26:55]
Dee Dee
Yeah, I'm sick of masturbating, thinking about Mick Jagger in my bop room. I need to go out and actually fuck Mick Jagger.
- [27:03]
Pamela
But that's amazing because that actually, like.
- [27:05]
Dee Dee
Just listening to some of the stories, talk about manifesting.
- [27:08]
Dylan
They're incredible manifesters.
- [27:10]
Pamela
Reading these magazines, just thinking, I could be his friend. He would actually like me. And boy, boy, did that turn out to be right a lot of the time.
- [27:21]
Dylan
And by golly, I'm beautiful and 18 and oh, my gosh, it was just magic.
- [27:27]
Dee Dee
Some of these people had some advantages that maybe you and I wouldn't be able to lean on quite so easily.
- [27:33]
Dylan
But that's the thing too. It's like, there's a thing about the sort of gall of youth and being a girl and sort of getting really savvy to like, okay, this is where the end of the stick is really fucking short for me. Okay, Accepting that. How do I navigate this world then with that sort of acceptance of this? And I think, like, Dee Dee and Morgana, Didi basically booked the Whiskey from like 71 to 83. She got rat signed, she got Van. She, like, basically managed Van Halen. Like, she also had six kids, you know, like, and she also was like, blowing her boss for the whole time, right? And, like, covering. He had, like, mob connections and she was covering for him for the FBI and stuff. And she was, like, really calculated. Not in this, like, selfish, get ahead way, but because she was like, yeah, these are the calculations I have to make to have this life that I want. And Morgana was kind of the same way. She was like, yeah, I wanted to get in with the crowd at Rodney's English Disco. And so, you know, I let my friend, like, put a bow on my head and be like, here's your gift. And like, be expected to spend the night with this, like, you know, strange little elf man. And she was like, yeah, I did it because I wanted to get into the parties. I'm not, you know. Of course.
- [28:50]
Dee Dee
Right, yeah. Making. Making lemonade out of lemons, so to speak. There's a version of those stories that is like the trauma narrative where it's like, you know, this is what I went through and I was forced into this unequal, hierarchical, hierarchical relationship with men in positions of power and stuff. But there's almost an aspect, at least in their stories, where they're choosing to not have it be a trauma narrative. It's like they are looking it in the face and acknowledging it for what it is and they're making the most of it. It's almost like traumas in the eye of the beholder, so to speak.
- [29:23]
Dylan
I think what is most interesting to me about the compromises they had to make is how many of them are really clear eyed about it. And I think some of them, like, take great lengths to not be seen as a victim and really sort of position themselves in certain ways to not be seen as a victim of anything. And I understand why they don't want to do that because it's not like being a part of rock and roll is this like cynical trafficking scheme. It's like they wanted to be there and they wanted to be a part of it. You know, in an ideal world there were going to be more avenues for them. And I think you can hear the disappointment in a lot of their voices. Sort of like at the end of episode eight where we sort of talk about their legacy and what sort of lives they were able to build. And I think there's like, you know, the two truths are happening at once. They're like, I have no regrets. I had the time of my life. And also maybe I didn't get exactly what I wanted out of this because it wasn't. There really wasn't something as fulfilling as I wanted going into it that I was able to find once I really spent some time there.
- [30:34]
Dee Dee
It's a very adult, nuanced way of processing your own life. I find it very admirable, like we.
- [30:43]
Pamela
Were talking about earlier, this idea of a sort of, at best, a shared dream, a shared vision. If one side of that bargain goes sour, I think that the whole thing kind of falls apart. And maybe some of these groupies are in a way, if They're a victim of anything. It's a victim of the people that they were there to be with. Those people kind of giving up on some of that dream. It really depends on a kind of innocence, however unlikely that might be.
- [31:16]
Dylan
And that's like the change between the 60s, right. I mean, that's like the death of the 60s and 69 with, like, Manson and Altamont, all the political assassinations in 68, it was like that was the death of the innocence of the hippie dream. And, like, the long tail of that is the rest of fucking rock music history. You know, it was like those four years where it was like, this art form is giving us a collective community outside of the nuclear family that's been forced down our throat, you know, since the end of World War II. It's giving us new ways of being men and women in society. And also, like, people of different races in a really segregated time are finding, like, an art form to be new places of integration. It's like this really tiny moment of, like, hopeful innocence. From, like, 60. I don't know, five to seven is like, the sort of dream that the rest of rock and roll kind of hangs onto even as it mutates and becomes more cynical and, like, exploitable down the road.
- [32:19]
Pamela
Yeah.
- [32:20]
Dylan
I feel like Pamela is, like, the absolute emblem of all of the dreams and hopes and wishes and the fairy tale of it. And then, like, it does get more cynical. And I. That's kind of why we started off the season with the moment where, like, it goes from Pamela being Jimmy Page's LA girlfriend and she's in her early 20s and he's in his late 20s, and then he ditches her for Lori, who's 14. That's sort of like the big moment of change in groupie culture. And it does get really fucking cynical because he, like, does pretty much traffic her, like, out of the club and into a room, even though she's like, oh, my God, this is my rock star dream. She's too young to fully understand she's being trafficked. Yeah. Or, like, even know what to do.
- [33:12]
Dee Dee
Right.
- [33:12]
Dylan
And. But she just wants to be a part of the world, but on a different basis than Pamela. They're very. They have very different personalities. If Jimmy Page first came to California because it was like, oh, my God, like, women and freedom and sunshine. And by the time it gets to 73, 74, he's, like, fully into Aleister Crowley shit that is, like, all about, like, vampiric, sucking the energy out of youth, you know, it's like There are some really cynical fucking things that are happening. Sinister, like, sinister. Truly. I put this like, very generously because I wanted the story to be about the woman and not like bad things that men did, but like how women navigated a really complicated world when they were really young and, like, had big dreams. That was like my goal for the show. And at the end I sort of make this argument of like, did these men want to see themselves in these, like, magical girls? And that gave them a sense of fulfillment, like creative artistic fulfillment. It wasn't just that they inspired the songs. It's like having them on the other side of, like. The creative exchange is like the mystical element of it that kept everyone engaged in the scene and like, wanting something from it, even if it started to feel like a cynical delusion. But I think, like, the dark side of that is just like, yeah, you're a fucking. Like you're a 30 year old man, like fucking a 14 year old, probably full of shame. There is something sinister about tapping the life force of these innocent people.
- [34:47]
Pamela
Yeah, yeah, that exchange. And it's rendered really beautifully at the end, toward the end of the last episode, I think it was Pamela at the end who was really beautifully putting some of those ideas together about the muse kind of as an archetype, about this relationship being sort of, yeah. Mystical and transcendent of its culture, that it's something that's always existed. And there is, I think, something really profound to that where you have these. This very high drama art form, this. That's finding new ways to be higher drama. That's like trying to break through to another plane of existence with how fantastic it can be. And at a certain point, like a sea of people, faceless people just sort of screaming. That's not going to really convince the artist, maybe that what they're doing is breaking through to something beyond that. Maybe there's in some way an aspiration that is a true artistic one to want to see what they're doing mirrored. Like you want the mirror to be as beautiful as the thing itself. And that's a very tricky and perilous thing.
- [36:21]
Dylan
Yeah. And I think that, like, it's a parallel reality about any art, about sex. Why do you want to consume this person so badly? There's. There's one reality where it's just like these horny dudes on a ton of drugs show up to the strip and it's just like a ton of girls that want to fuck them and it's just easy. And that happens most of the time. But These really sort of like, intense creative partnerships where it's not just sort of like body count, free love, free for all. Pam feeling really connected to Chris Hillman and really inspired and inspiring. Tim McJagger and Laurie crying with Jimmy Page on the floor, listening to play guitar. You know, I don't want to say there's like, a dark side to all of this. There's definitely a dark side to Laurie and Jimmy Page, but, like, there's just this deeper thread of. It can be like, the most, like, mystical and really scary and dark thing to ask yourself is like, what do you want from these objects of your affection driving some of my questions. Why? Really? I really wanted to get to know their core desires because it wasn't just. It wasn't just I want to. Mick Jagger and Pamela talks about this advantage. It's like you find something that just, like, makes your life feel meaningful, and you want to throw yourself at the source of that energy, basically. And I think that exchange goes both ways with the groupies. You know, you're the Rolling Stones, you're the ambassadors of youth worldwide and, like, ferality, like to have these. This quality of girl, you know, like this, like, incredible, fashionable, cutting edge, smart, USDA prime. USDA fucking prime. Like, raised in the hills of the fucking valley. Like that California sunshine.
- [38:21]
Dee Dee
I did want to make sure, before we go to talk about that element of things, because, you know, you two are both down there in beautiful Southern California, but I'm in exile up here in San Francisco these days.
- [38:32]
Pamela
The.
- [38:32]
Dee Dee
I mean, it's right there in the title. Sunset Strip. Right. And you spend a lot of time kind of cataloging the specific venues, many of which are still there today, obviously in very different qualities or circumstances. The Roxy, the Whiskey, the Troubadour, the Chateau, obviously. I wonder just what your read is on why this scene developed so fertilely in Los Angeles, for instance, because it was, in many cases, a lot of British bands flying in, and this was the world that greeted them. Obviously, you know, Led Zeppelin would have been going to New York as well, and I'm sure that they, you know, had plenty of underage girls to sleep with there. But like, this groupie scene, this is like the Sunset Strip scene. It's like, what is it about Los Angeles in particular that kind of led. Led to this scene to bloom to the extent that it did?
- [39:22]
Dylan
Yeah, yeah. One of my favorite, like, guiding research questions, when we were sort of, like, honing in the lens of the time and the place, we wanted to focus on Sunset Strip, like, up until Punk, because punk kind of breaks the equation down. You know, it doesn't eliminate sex and gendered power dynamics, but it just sort of like throws in more valuable variables. Excuse me. And like, changes it around a bit. But, like, the thing about New York, because they're famous groupies from New York, there's like cherry vanilla. Like, there was a whole scene, but it was more of like a downtown scene and it was more of like an art scene and avant garde. And like, a lot of the girls that were famous for being groupies were also publicists or artists or they were factory girls.
- [40:04]
Dee Dee
Right.
- [40:04]
Dylan
You know, and like, that was the way that you were a scene girl in New York and you sort of were like an early multi hyphenate, but you were more underground. And LA didn't really have, like, avant garde underground like that. And so I think, like, just because LA is the entertainment industry, it exists and it permeates in every single thing here culturally. Like it really does. Even the subculture. Sure, I think it was a lot of that. I think a lot of just like, intrinsic, you know, not to be on my, like, fucking Mike Davis shit, but just like the intrinsic obsession with like, youth and sunshine and chasing the dream to the edge of the ocean and all of that shit, really just. And that's what all the British dudes wanted when they came here. This was the American dream they were promised and like, California dream. Yeah, the California fucking dream. And like, New York is too serious and too arty and like, in some ways a lot more adult than the LA scene. San Francisco is like real hippies and, like, you know, women who may or may not shower, but it's more like runaways and dropouts. And LA is full of people who still want to be famous. They still wanted to live glamorous lives in Laurel Canyon. And. And so, you know, it's just like, I have so much envy for an LA that had like half the population. And all of the cultural activity was centered in like a walkable three miles.
- [41:33]
Dee Dee
It is crazy that there were just like groups of teenagers parading up and down Sunset Boulevard, a stretch of Sunset Boulevard that is for the most part utter dog shit today. Like, one of the worst stretches of the entire city. Especially now that Greenblatts is gone. Like, it's just like it's a wasteland. Besides a couple cultural artifacts that are still hanging on there seems like a beautiful. A beautiful world that once existed. Especially because you make this point in the podcast at certain points, like, there were still legacies of, like, old like, old, original, like, 30s, 40s, like, glamour Hollywood that, like, were kind of run down and grimy at that point, but they were still. They were still there. They were part of the cultural firmament.
- [42:12]
Dylan
And, like, to Evan's earlier point of, like, shared dream, this. I just love this so much. This is some, like. I think it made it into episode seven a little bit, where we're sort of showing all the baby punks as they're witnessing glam rock and Hollywood and wanting to go and party and be rock and roll, where they were like, they're like, we loved Hollywood lore. Like, we loved classic old Hollywood glamour. Like, that was fascinating to us to go, like, kind of live our youths in these relics of, like, cultural youth, the youth of America and the motion picture business and, like, music and, like, just continuing on that shared dream of Hollywood in general. You know, it's like, that's what I'm so fucking trying to do. Even though I want to die, like, half the time I'm living here, I'm just like, God damn it. These mythologies are so captivating.
- [43:02]
Pamela
I mean, it's indestructible. It's like, it doesn't have to have that. It really is how magic works. Like, with a ck. Like, these few symbols are so potent, and it was always this thing that never really exists in the physical world. You have these key sort of sigils, these symbols that are so loaded with energy. And that energy, I think, lives on, can live on, can stretch through generations when it's carried by individuals like these musicians, like these girls.
- [43:43]
Dylan
I have this motif in the show where I'm just, like, talking about, who were these girls in the picture and what did it take to get into the picture? Because what they have now is, like, mythology, and that's like the biggest currency, you know, that they can sort of keep sustaining their own memories with. And I was like, is the great tragedy that there were girls that didn't get these professional opportunities, or is the great tragedy that there was this promise of a really exciting, liberating, perhaps delusionally utopian, but delightful way of life that they were really attracted to that didn't sustain through the rest of the 20th century?
- [44:23]
Dee Dee
And that is the question that you wrestle with throughout the series? I think that might be a good place to end it. We've eaten up enough of your evening already. Dylan, any last statements for all of the Jokerman groupies out there?
- [44:38]
Dylan
Document groupies. Be careful. These men have partners.
- [44:44]
Dee Dee
Thank you, Dylan. The podcast again is.
- [44:47]
Dylan
It's. It's a season of the acclaimed the acclaimed series Lost Notes and it's called groupies Women of the Sunset Strip and the Pill to the punk came out on kcrw. You can find it anywhere. You get your podcast.
- [45:02]
Dee Dee
Beautiful. Full series streaming now. A wonderful listen from start to finish.
- [45:06]
Dylan
And I'll be back for the season. Whenever you do that, you can't.
- [45:12]
Dee Dee
You got to bleep that in the edit. Evan.
- [45:14]
Pamela
Yeah, the rat season. Thank you, Dylan. Love you.
- [45:19]
Dylan
Bye.
- [45:20]
Evan
When I lay my head on the railroad track? Waiting on on the double leave? But the train don't run by here no more? For poor pitiful me? Poor for pitiful me? Oh, these boys won't let me be? Lord have mercy on me? Whoa, whoa is me.
- [45:59]
Pamela
When I met.
- [46:00]
Evan
A man out in Hollywood? Now I ain't naming names? When he really worked me over good Just like Jess James yes, he really he was a credit to his gender Put me through some changes Lord Sort of like a wearing blender for pitiful me?
- [46:37]
Pamela
Oh, these boys won't let me be?
- [46:41]
Evan
Lord have mercy on me.