Films Groupies

at the Kenmore Square Theatre

FILMED documentaries of rock are forced to deal directly with the music's mystique. They can neither elaborate its power as in Monterey Pop , or, as in Groupies , expose it as the nut of sexual exploitation. Nowhere does rock mystification slide over into exploitation more easily than in the groupie sub-culture. The lessons of Groupies are clear from the start. In one of the opening sequences, an ex-groupie says she "balled fifty, maybe a hundred musicians." Then one day she looked at herself in the mirror, "my boobs were hanging out of a low cut dress, and I said to myself- 'whore.' " The film is equally self-conscious. But instead of demystification, it manages only to show that rock stars act like rock stars off stage as well and that groupies would have it no other way.

Groupies are not unique to rock-there have always been literary groupies, for example. Though Lord Byron tried hard to be discreet, his large following was well known. Norman Mailer once said the only advantage to being a famous writer is that one could have sex with whomever one wanted. And if we can believe Newsweek , even polls like Henry Kissinger have groupies.

Most of rock groupie sub-culture is a direct descendant of the "band-chicks" that lived around jazz groups in the forties. The rock lexicon is almost completely derivative of jazz groupies. Plaster-casting comes from a saying out of the "be-bop" era, "Plate you now, cast you later." The word "rig" seems to have originated in the lyrics of the Delta blues singers.

But that was back when everything was underground, when groupies were sexual daredevils, sleeping with different bands in the Catskills or New York. With rock, things changed. Groupies acquired their first public notoriety in the Rolling Stone of several years ago that carried a four-article spread on groupies, all-woman bands, and the plaster-casters. With something like pride, Stone gave biographies of the most "successful" groupies, detailing their life with the "prettiest boys," the freakiest clothes and the best dope.

An all-women rock group supported for a time by Frank Zappa released an album not long after the Rolling Stone articles. The song titles have to stand as a high point of the sexual exploitation of rock. "Lanoola Goes Limp" (a term originally used by Paul Revere and the Raiders), "Seven Foot Drummer from Fleetwood Mac," and "Welcome Hampton Wicks" (from the Who's first U. S. tour), and "Diana's Plate Special" all need little explanation.

GROUPIES was made over a period of two years and still catches some of the energy and excitement that was a part of rock until recently. Filmed in many rock houses that have now been closed-The Fillmore West, The Boston Tea Party, and others-it already seems dated. But nothing seems more dated than the fresh spirit that hovered around the music and sustained the groupies. Though the groups that appear in the film are not of the first rank, there are the packed houses, the screaming, the light-shows, and the familiar baselines.

Co-directors Ron Dorfman and Peter Nevard do not have to try very hard to expose the poverty of the culture. The girls, the musicians have the same things to say over and over. Homosexuals backstage are beaten up and ridiculed. Lonely groupies talk about the good times when they were travelling with the big name groups, "doin' far out stuff, staying at the best hotels." But rarely does the camera do more than catalogue meetings and encounters, jumping from one group to another, from town to town, until even this straightforward visual style is muddled.

There are occasional interviews that ask the usual questions about home, and the groupies give the usual answers. "No, my mother didn't like it, so I left," she says without breaking her smile. All the recorded dialogue was smooth in a similar way, as if they had been practicing the lines for years. But the camera remains impersonal, never attempting to break through the sheen of confidence and wit. Only once, with a beautiful groupie from California, is there a break in the tidy performances. But the scene is marred by her obvious awareness of the camera, and she begins to mumble uncomfortably.

The film's highlight is an interview with Diana, the chief plaster-caster, and her protege, Cynthia. While she calmly kinks her hair she describes the mixing formulas, techniques of excitation, and the different results she has obtained with the different stars. The scene cuts to a bedroom where she is trying to convince members of Spooky Tooth that they should have their casts made. Hesitating for a moment, they finally agree. During the plaster casting, the camera pans away to a cabinet with the rows of completed casts. Soon, from the sounds of casting activity off-camera, someone yelps, "I'm stuck."

But despite inadequacies of Groupies -it is not a good film-it should be seen. If it is no more than a bad artifact of rock culture, it is still important for the material it records. It may be all for the good that rock groupies disappear, but they were an integral part of the music and our time. Groupies gives us one more look.