Lost Notes: Groupies

In the mid 1970s, as glam rock fizzled out, new kids began to trickle in on the block–kids who looked up to the groupies as party girl icons, as rock’n’roll legends, who went out there and got what they wanted…come hell or high platforms. Kid Congo Powers, Alice Bag, Pleasant Gehman, and Theresa Kereakas all were pulled towards the glitter and guitars and debauchery, and give their first-hand teenage accounts of those crucial years where glam burnt out and in its embers, early LA punk started cooking.

Hello Lost Notes fans! The final two episodes of Groupies: Women of the Sunset Strip from the Pill to Punk are coming later this week. But first, we want to share an episode of the podcast Dressed: The History of Fashion. Mary Wilson is a founding member of one of the most iconic, successful—and stylish— 1960s singing groups of all time: The Supremes. Mary has been collecting and archiving the gowns the Supremes wore and shares many of the glittery details with Dressed. New episodes of Dressed drop on Wednesdays and Fridays. Want more Dressed: The History of Fashion? Dressed's website and online fashion history courses Dressed's Instagram

Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. The Continental Hyatt House. The Rainbow Bar & Grill. Glam rock was the genre du jour and there was no more convenient or welcoming a circuit for an intrepid teenage groupie to land in than the Strip in the early 1970s. As for Led Zeppelin, LA became their spiritual home-away-from-home (read: wives). From flying in on their private jet, the Starship, to cruising down Sunset picking up groupies in their white stretch limo, the Slutmobile, Led Zeppelin’s superstardom marked a new era, and level, to groupiedom.

A teen magazine so daring, so outrageous, so scandalizing and sexually suggestive that it only lasted…five issues. Star Magazine: from the publishing empire that brought you Hot Rod, Motor Trend, Guns & Ammo, and later in the 90s, Sassy, there was, in 1973, a red-hot new music rag that glamorized the teenage groupie lifestyle rampant on the Sunset Strip. Or did it? We asked the original staff who made the magazine: who, exactly, was a Star girl?