Well, it appears that our friends Motley Crue are having a moment right now with the film version of their memoir The Dirt. I can’t even count how many times someone has asked me if I’ve tuned into Netflix to get my Motley fix. Why so many questions? Because everyone knows that I’ve penned a series of books about 80s rock. Written as memoirs of groupies and rock stars, The Girls of Glam Rock Series was heavily influenced by The Dirt and several other balls to the wall tomes by rock stars who lived the life, some whom have survived to look like hell (like Motley) and some who lost their lives because of the decadent lifestyle of earlier years.
I hear that The Dirt is having a renaissance. It’s back on the bestseller lists. Motley is making lots of dough so they can have more cosmetic surgery to please their much-younger wives. And it’s a great read, though Nikki Sixx is claiming now that a lot of it is fabricated. Stop the world! But hey, fiction is what I do, so who am I to gripe? What a lot of viewers probably don’t know is that The Dirt is old stuff now: it was originally published in 2001, when it was still okay to reminisce about treating women like, well, dirt. I’m guilty of reading it three times. I consider it one of the best pieces of research I could get my hands on for my own books.
Yeah, I was there. (No, not in L.A., though I did move there in 1994.) I lived through the 80s. It was a magical time. But I wasn’t a groupie, so my “research” isn’t first hand. I had to hit the books to create my own. The Girls of Glam Rock Series is a fictitious account of young women coming of age in the mid and late 80s. Is it politically correct? Nope. Is it based on real people? Nope. Would I have wanted to live this life? Nope. But was it fun to write? Yes.
There are plenty of books out there (and on my shelf) written by actual groupies like Pamela Des Barres, Sweet, Sweet Connie Hamzi, and Roxanne Shirazi for your viewing pleasure. But to the very best of my knowledge, my series is the only fictionalized account of “the groupie life” on the market.
Let me make this clear, if my motto doesn’t already: I don’t write about weak women. These are not just girls spreading their legs for a rocker that looks like Brett Michaels, and I don’t believe that the most famous groupies are trash. In my series, Dandelion, Highway Child, Carolina, and Tulip are rock solid. They’re ambitious ladies with healthy egos and staying power. To be in their line of business, they have to be. But that doesn’t mean they can’t have some good, dirty fun. And it doesn’t mean they always like it. Sometimes, they bite off more than they can chew.
From Carolina, in Girls Gone Groupie, the first book in the series:
“It’s time for one o’clock, two o’clock!” Geronimo suddenly appears with his pants unzipped. “And you’re gonna be six o’clock!”
This must be some kind of great honor, so I sing, “Oh, thank you!”
A clock game! What could be better than that!
More girls are being brought into the room and they’re stumbling and giggling, too. The same three guys who pulled the cover off Smut’s instruments are putting us in a circle. So cute! Are we going to play something like Ring Around the Rosie? Or wait, Mother May I?
“Oh, can I please be the Rosie and everyone can make the ring around me?” I throw my arms around the neck of one of the big bruisers.
“Huh?” He looks at me in confusion, but then he must remember the rules of the game. “But don’t you want to be six o’clock?” he asks.
Six o’clock! Of course, I want to be six o’clock!
My stomach isn’t feeling so good now as Mr. Big tells me to bend all the way over and put my hands on the floor in front of me. What a terrible position to be in with wine in my belly! And then that awful man makes it worse by throwing my dress over my head so I can’t see anything! But I peek up from underneath it and see that Dandelion, Highway Child, and the rest of the girls all have their hands on the floor in front of them, too, and then the shouting starts: “Four o’clock!” “Eight o’clock!” “Eleven o’clock!” and the three members of Smut have their pants around their ankles and are running around behind our girl circle like silly little boys playing with their hot dogs.
Carolina Clampett may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but she knows what she wants. And of all the groupies, she’s the one who gets the most of it.
Looking to read a great series and relive more of the 1980s after seeing The Dirt?
Check out my BOOKS page.
Happy Reading!
I Am Barb Lee 