Music Groupie Hotel
from the Groupie Feminism art series
Attributions
23” x 15” x 16”
Assembled from 2011-2020
The hotel
The architectural model, which I purchased in 2012 at the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil, is from brinca dada's Dylan House, made of durable foamboard in 3/4” scale, inspired by Paul Rudolph and Tadao Ando. It's 23” x 15” x 16”, eco-friendly MDF with non-toxic and lead-free paints.
The bed, two lawn chairs, and bathtub are made of durable foamboard, and designed by Michelle Everett.
The etymology of "hotel" is related to hospitals. When I began this art work, it was with a sense of fun and mischief, fascination and some envy - but now I see the suffering so clearly. It makes me so sad. How to hold onto the joy!
Rooftop pool, clockwise:
Two lounge chairs poolside, with towels I made from my own towels! The pool represents where many groupies and musicians met and frolicked, and also my own sexcapade at the Ramada Inn in Louisville, KY. It was 1985. I felt so shamed; I was thrown out, never allowed to return again. The only thing that made me feel better was realizing rock stars and groupies have had good times and bad times at hotels and motels, too. And the previous year, a roadie for Bon Jovi poolside there invited me to the afterparty but instead I went home to binge and purge. I was bulimic, and self-conscious. I was too afraid to be a groupie. Making this art makes me feel better about it all!
The pool is represented by a blue film gel I've had since 1988, when I was earning my BFA at NYU, and making short films.
Harlow and Cynthia Plaster Caster were thrown into the Riot House pool by someone involved with Led Zeppelin - either in the band or entourage, sometime in the late 1960s or 1970.
At the end of the musical, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the star swims. The movie was filmed at a country house in England that became a hotel in 1981 - the Oakley Court Hotel along the banks of the Thames.
The edge of the roof symbolizes the balcony where Lemmy Kilmeister wrote the song "Motorhead" at the Riot House (aka The Hyatt Hotel in West Hollywood, CA) when he was on tour with Hawkwind in 1974 (then got fired, and went on to form the band, Motorhead).
Also, a terrace. Before he went solo, Andy Gibb sang in the band, Melody Fayre. They performed on the terrace at the Grand Island Hotel in Ramsey on the Isle of Man in 1975. They were fired because they were too loud.
In 1933, Black people were only allowed in the balconies, and Black bandleaders and orchestras were barred from white restaurants and hotels. So Duke Ellington and his orchestra toured in their private Pullman cars (sleeping cars that moved along railroads), and when asked about it, Duke said they were traveling like the President.
A champagne candle to represent my favorite drink, and Marilyn Monroe, whose favorite drink was champagne, too, and Ava Gardner, both of whom died with Frank Sinatra on her turntable. (MM, died 1962; AG, died 1990)
Drums, because musicians rehearse at hotels. Musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil. The drums also represent drummer Mitch Mitchell, from the Jimi Hendrix Experience, who died at Portland, Oregon's Benson Hotel, in 2008.
Singer, Nicolette Larson, married session drummer, Russ Kunkel, in 1990 at the Intercontinental Hotel in Maui, Hawaii. Linda Ronstadt is the godmother of their daughter.
A black ring with silver stars, suns, and moons to represent groupies and musicians with names that light up the day and night skies: Sabel Starr and Lori "Lightning" Mattix, groupies known as an LA Queens, or "baby groupies," because they were underage. Historically, and in rock 'n' roll, some girls are Queens at 13 and 14. When Lori Lightning was 14 in 1972, she met 28 year-old Jimmy Page in his room at the Riot House, and stayed there with him. The ring also represents Starr's torrid relationship with musician, Johnny Thunders, a Heartbreaker who physically abused her. In 1991, he died at the Inn on St Peter hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana. Ring from a vending machine at Lucy's Lavanderia in Echo Park ca 2000
The ring with the star emblem refers to stardust. Leif Garrett performed at West Hollywood, CA's Hotel Ziggy in April, 2022, performing The Rolling Stones's 1969 "Honky Tonk Women." Hotel Ziggy was named after a David Bowie character and early 1970s stage persona, Ziggy Stardust.
The star ornament usually goes on top of the Christmas tree. Around 1938-1940, Irving Berlin wrote the best-selling song of all time in a hotel: either the La Quinta hotel in La Quinta, Ca, or the Biltmore Hotel in Arizona. "White Christmas" was sung by Bing Crosby on the radio in 1941, and for the troops during World War II, and for two films, one of which has the name of a hotel, 1942's Holiday Inn. Irving may have written the song about the death of his three-week old son, who died on Christmas day in 1928.
A 1967 Lincoln Continental, because The Who's drummer, Keith Moon, might have driven his own LC into a Holiday Inn's hotel pool in Flint, MI that year, on his 21st birthday. Vintage Matchbox #31 car.
The car also refers to listening to music in your car. In 1936, John Hammond, was staying at the Goodman Congress Hotel in Chicago, and listening to the radio in his car when he heard Count Basie live in Kansas at 1 am.
A gold candle to symbolize Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant who reportedly called out from the balcony where he stood in 1975 at the Continental Hyatt House aka the Riot House Hotel in West Hollywood, CA: "I am a Golden God!" He's a Leo, which is a fire sign, and candles yield flames. Gold spiral candle from Bakery Crafts, ca 2012
The candle also symbolizes Hotel Theresa. Seventh Avenue in Harlem, known as the Great Black Way, housed Hotel Theresa, named after the wife of the man who financed it, Gustavus Sidenberg, where Jimi Hendrix lived. Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Dorothy Dandridge, and Lena Horne also stayed at the hotel. When I visited, I noted that it was not far from the Apollo Theater, and stands tall like an enduring and formal friend, proud of itself without bragging, it's name factually at the top. Old-fashioned style, pure gold.
In 1970, Elvis Presley was presented with a gold belt by International Hotel president, Alex Shoofey. The belt, valued at $10,000.00 then, was inscribed: "World's Championship/Attendance Record/Las Vegas Nevada/International Hotel."
Two pieces of Beechies! peppermint candy-coated gum in a box that asks, "Want Some Candy, Little Rock Star?" to represent Sweet Connie, name-dropped in the rock 'n' roll anthem by Grand Funk Railroad, "We're An American Band." (1973), and to represent Jobriath, the rock star/cabaret performer who died in his NYC pyramid-shaped home on the Chelsea Hotel rooftop in 1983.
The gum also represents the “Have another stick of gum” lyric from the 1975 song, "Motorhead," written by Lemmy Kilmister at the Riot House in West Hollywood, CA.
Flashing Fountain fireworks to represent Pamela Des Barres's rock tour, which takes riders on a trip through music history as the van carries them through Los Angeles, with Des Barres narrating antics she experienced firsthand, such as The Who's Keith Moon pouring laundry detergent into the fountain on Avenue of the Stars in 1973 so they could view the mountainous soapsuds from their nearby Century City Hotel room, in CA
TNT fireworks to represent the excitement and damage. That includes mental and emotional as well as physical and spiritual excitement and damage.
Gibson ES 175, musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil
Second floor, stage left, clockwise:
A blue bowl, a mixing jar, and a spoon, from American Girl, to represent artist Cynthia Plaster Caster's artmaking materials to cast rock stars' penises or breasts. Hotels where she's made her sculptures include: Conrad Hilton Hotel in Chicago, 1968; Holiday Inn, Chicago, 1968; Sheraton, Chicago, 1969; Continental Hyatt House, West Hollywood, CA, 1969; Travelodge, Chicago, 1970; and Tropicana Hotel, Chicago, 1980.
A green candy heart outlined in black nail polish that reads "cool" to represent the animal rights activism of former Runaway, Joan Jett of Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. It also represents that Jett asked her role model, musician Suzi Quatro, for her autograph at the Riot House. In 1979, Jett met with Kenny Laguna at the Riot House in West Hollywood, CA, and with him in the early 1980s formed Blackheart Records.
Heart's song from 1990, "All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You" is feminist in its sexual joy, especially because its sung by a fat woman in a fatphobic and misogynist culture. The video for the song features the hotel, too:
"So we found this hotel
It was a place I knew well
We made magic that night
Oh he did everything right"
Ukulele, musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil.
A knife from the board game, "Clue," to represent Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious. Vicious, previously a bassist and vocalist for the Sex Pistols, may have murdered girlfriend and manager, Spungen, with a knife at the Chelsea Hotel in NYC, 1978.
The knife also represents a lyric from the title track of 1976's Hotel California by the Eagles:.
They stab it with their steely knives
But they just can't kill the beast
The album was recorded in Miami, Florida. But the album cover was of the Beverly Hills Hotel, in CA. The song, "Hotel California," describes a night of beauty and mystery, violence and entrapment at a hotel.
The gold envelope and red heart represent a telegram on a popular TV show: The Brady Bunch, an American comedy show that lasted half an hour per episode, aired episodes on TV weekly from 1969 to 1974, when it went into syndication. It told the story of a family and its housekeeper. The episode, "Getting Davy Jones" (Season 3, Episode Twelve, December 10, 1971), proclaims female agency - and it's at a hotel. As President of the local Davy Jones Fan Club, Marcia promised her high school friends that Davy from The Monkees would sing in person at the high school prom. She tried various resourceful ways to ask him - she went to the Royal Towers Hotel where he was staying; she called the hotel; she composed a telegram; and she dressed as a boy and pretended to be a busser at the hotel. It's when she shows up at his recording session and he overhears her talking about the prom gig on a hot mic that she gets him!
In Angry Women in Rock, Volume One (Andrea Juno, 1996), the musician, Jarboe, describes a night she spent at a hotel when she was on tour with the band, Swans. A rock band was staying at the same hotel, and she noticed folded love notes from fans and groupies adorning that rock band's hotel room door.
An unread love letter, made from gold candy wrapping paper and a red heart sticker, to represent David Niehaus's sweet missive awaiting Janis Joplin at the front desk of the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood, CA, 1970, the night she died, according to Holly George-Warren's 2019 biography of the rock star. The heart is red because I wish the love letter had been read by Joplin.
And: Louis Armstrong was denied accommodations even though he was hired to play music for a three-day run from October 12-14, 1931, at the Hotel Driskilll in Austin, TX.
Also, Louis Armstrong, dressed in a tuxedo for the gig he was hired to play at a hotel, was told to enter through the back.
And: the Davenport Hotel in Spokane, WA told Louis Armstrong in 1950 that he couldn’t stay there, even though he was scheduled in town to play. So he left town, but then the Spokane Hotel said he could stay at their hotel, and when he returned, three cars and a police escort met him at the airport and got him to the hotel. According to the 2022 documentary, Louis Armstrong's Black and Blues, in a letter dated 1967, he wrote: "I was the first Negro in the business to crack them big white hotels..." He had it written into his contract that he'd only perform in places where he could also stay. The gold envelope and red heart represent his new contract.
The heart also signifies Addie Harris from The Shirelles, who died of a heart attack while performing in 1982 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.
Two lip glosses: one pink and one brown, by Advanced Healthcare Distributors, to represent the photograph of Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant gleefully smiling over sleeping road manager, Richard Cole, who wore vivid-topped pastries over his chest and between his legs. The band formed in 1968, and dissolved in 1979.
A yellow Polaroid camera from American Girl, to represent the photographs Gene Simmons from KISS has reportedly taken of the legions of women who've bedded him in hotels (and elsewhere), since 1973, when the band began.
Cher dated Gene Simmons, and they shared a bite in a 1979 photo by James Fortune at the Diplomat Hotel in Miami, Florida.
The camera also signifies when Ava Gardner and Duke Ellington danced together at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan, a photo of the two dancing together published in the May, 1969 issue of Jet magazine.
The camera also represents Ann Moses, the editor of Tiger Beat magazine from 1965-1972, who also photographed the musicians the magazine covered, and who spent a fantasy-perfect weekend with Bee Gee, Maurice Gibb, at London's Thistle Piccadilly Hotel in 1967. They had to pretend they were married to room together. She photographed the band for a pictorial and pin-ups after the perfectly romantic weekend with Maurice (who wore the necklace she'd made for him).
The Doors released the album, Morrison Hotel, in 1970. The album cover is from a 1969 photograph by Henry Diltz, who co-founded the Morrison Hotel Gallery in 2000.
The camera also represents Pattie Boyd, the photographer who married Beatle, George Harrison, and who left him for Cream's Eric Clapton. She took photographs of both rock stars at various hotels.
First floor, stage left, clockwise:
A pink octopus from American Girl, to symbolize the baby octopi in a hotel-room bathtub with Jimmy Page.
The bathtub itself represents the tryst LA Queen, Lori "Lightning" Mattix, had with David Bowie in a hotel bathroom, when she was 14. Mattix said it was her first time having sex. Her best friend, Sabel Starr, waited in the next room, reportedly fogging up the hotel room window with sad hearts until she was asked to join in for a ménage a trois.
The bathtub also represents Bette Midler and Barry Manilow, who played at the Continental Baths in NYC at the Ansonia Hotel in 1971.
The bathtub chain (not visible) represents Sam Phillips using the money from his 1955 sale of Elvis's Sun Records contract to RCA to invest in the Holiday Inn start-up chain.
A champagne bottle to represent Whitney Houston, who died in 2012 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA.
It also represents Warrant's Jani Lane, who died in 2011 of acute alcohol poisoning at a Comfort Inn in Woodland Hills, CA, and Milli Vanilli's Rob Pilatus, who died from a fatal combination of drugs and alcohol on April 3, 1998, in a Frankfurt, Germany hotel room.
Black charcoal, to represent Amy Winehouse, who, in 2008, stained her hotel room bathroom with her dark hair dye at the Rivington Plaza Hotel in London.
Also, the charcoal symbolizes Joe Walsh. In Life magazine's Eagles issue, a reissue in 2022, Joe Walsh is quoted as discussing hotels, Super Glue and chainsaws. Gluing a toilet seat down, gluing items to the ceiling, gluing a person in their room so they're stuck there a day. "You find if you have a chain saw, you really don't need to use it very often - just walking up to the front desk holding it will usually get a lot done." (p 47) He and Keith Moon bought charcoal and lawn fertilizer, mixed them into a condom they flushed down a toilet, and two or three floors below another toilet would explode. (p 51)
A heart made of laundry lint to represent the 'women's work' male musicians assumed of female musicians while touring together, such as Lynyrd Skynyrd's drummer, Artimus Pyle, who, in 1977, expected Heart's Ann and Nancy Wilson to babysit his son in their hotel room.
The heart also represents the laundromat where Gladys Love Smith Presley worked in 1946 when her son, Elvis Presley, was around 11 years old. Elvis earned nickels and quarters singing in front of the nearby Tupelo Hotel in Mississippi, and he'd go over to the laundromat to give the money to his mom.
It also represents when Sonny and Cher were kicked out of the lobby of the London Hilton Hotel in England, 1965, because of the clothes they were wearing.
A strand of real pearls to signify when Cyrinda Foxe-Tyler wore nothing but pearls during a hotel room bathtub tryst with spiky-haired red-tressed David Bowie, who wore nothing underneath his robe. Foxe-Tyler performed with Bowie in front of the Mars Hotel in San Francisco, CA, in 1972's music video for Bowie's song, "Jean Genie."
In 1974, Bowie shot film based on his album from that year, Diamond Dogs, at the Pierre Hotel in NYC, and the footage shows the writing of her name, Cyrinda Fox.
A deck of Rider-Waite Tarot cards to represent the spiritual searchings of Tina Turner on the road as she toured with Ike Turner after 1956, preparing for her solo career, after she left the abusive Ike Turner in 1976. She escaped him at the Hilton Hotel in Texas, running down an alley and across a freeway to the Ramada Inn, where the hotel manager gave her soup and crackers and a room on the tab. The lace paper doily represents a tablecloth.
It also represents the night she listened to records with Keith Richards and David Bowie at the Plaza Hotel in NYC, after they attended a concert of hers in 1983 at the Ritz.
The cards also refer to Al Jolson, of 1927's The Jazz Singer fame, who died after a game of cards in 1950 at the St. Francis hotel in San Francisco, CA.
Firecrackers, because Keith Moon reportedly blew up toilets in various hotel rooms when he was the drummer for The Who. He was in the band from 1964-1978.
Groovy shampoo in a pink bottle from American Girl, to represent when LA Queen, Morgana Welch, washed Led Zeppelin drummer, John Bonham's hair, in 1975 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA
In Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers (2018), Yale and Fiona march and chant with ACT UP in 1990 Chicago, only stopping to use a hotel bathroom . (p 366)
Entrance to hotel, clockwise:
Two mermaid costumes in windows, one sea-green and the other shimmering pink, both glitter stickers by Eileen Rudisill Miller and Dover Publications, to represent the fishing rock stars such as the Beatles and Led Zeppelin did at the Edgewater Inn in Seattle, WA. In 1969, Carmine Appice from Vanilla Fudge, along with Mark Stein (who reportedly filmed the incident), Led Zeppelin's John Bonham and Led Zeppelin's road manager, Richard Cole, used a shark to flail at and have sex with a groupie. Probably there were other band members and wives present, who either watched, filmed, or left the room. Frank Zappa wrote a song about it - an early 1970s song by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, "The Mud Shark," referring to the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle, WA.
The bands hung the dead fish like coats and also filled their bathtubs with dying sharks and fish.
The mermaids also represent Devon Wilson, Jimi Hendrix's girlfriend and Mick Jagger's lover, who fell to her death from a balcony or window at NYC's Chelsea Hotel in 1971.
The windows represent Lithofayne Pridgon, who kissed Sam Cooke at a window where he waited for her at the Cecil Hotel in Harlem, NY.
And represent the cover of 1979's Room Service, teen pop idol, Shaun Cassidy, wears a ribbed tank top and jeans as he stands, turned away from the mirror and a TV on a dressing table in what looks like an anonymous hotel room, smiling so openly as a voyeur peeps in at him that certainly no harm can be done!
And also Donna Summer, who, alone in a Central Park South hotel room at the Navarro in 1976 New York City, attempted suicide by jumping out a window, but her foot got stuck in the curtain just as she was interrupted by the Hotel Housekeeper.
The windows could be missing walls. Joe Walsh's 1978 solo hit, "Life's Been Good," reinforced my interest in hotels when I was young. "I live in hotels, tear out the walls/I have accountants pay for it all." Joe Walsh told Conan O' Brien that he and John Belushi were billed $23,000 for trashing the penthouse suite of a hotel. (Life magazine's Eagles issue, a reissue in 2022, cp 72) When the Eagles were honored at the Kennedy Center in 2016, President Barack Obama said: "And Joe Walsh, who's as rowdy with a guitar lick as I'm told he once was in a hotel room. Twice. This is the White House though. And Michelle and I are about to leave. As I've said before we want to get our security deposit back."
https://youtu.be/ozV2bub4wW4?si=Kr3rPCOfCqyXeit6
The lines of the windows - or mullions - represent jail in the following quote: Alan Gratzer, a founding member of the rock band, REO Speedwagon, told Behind the Music (2001), "Being on the road, being away from my wife, being away from my kids, it was torture. When the, my hotel room would slam, the door would slam behind me…it felt literally like I was in prison. I just thought, I'm in this quiet room, 3,000 miles away from home, this is not where I want to be." (33:48, accessed YouTube 8.22.23)
The lines of the windows - the mullions - stand for the Chateau Marmont employees who unionized in 2022 after worker protests. But musicians such as Rihanna and Sean Combs crossed the picket lines outside the hotel to attend Jay-Z and Beyonce's annual post-Oscar "Gold Party" inside.
A bed, because after I tried to glue it to the ceiling, it fell down, and in true rock star groupie style, I threw it outside where it landed in front of the hotel. I affixed each pillow with a silver star sticker because groupies are stars, too, however invisible. The bedding includes a black cocktail napkin from the Chateau Marmont. Beside it is a white cocktail napkin from the Riot House smeared with (my own) blood.
I attended several of Pamela Des Barres's memoir writing workshops from 2011-2016. At a class in 2016, as we brainstormed possible titles for the anthology, I suggested the first part of the book's title,"Let It Bleed", which features her students' work (including three of my essays, one of which is about SuperGroupie and artist, Cynthia Plaster Caster).
The bed also represents when John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged Bed-Ins, their call for peace and their nonviolent way of protesting the Vietnam War. Their first Bed-In was at the Hilton Hotel during their honeymoon in Amsterdam in 1969, and their second was in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel that same year. The Beatles's 1969 song, "The Ballad of John and Yoko," refers to the Amsterdam Bed-In.
Memories are like dreams. The Rolling Stones sing about a lonely night in a motel called memory in their 1976 song, "Memory Motel."
Also, nightmares.
The blood by the bed represents several rapes: Jackie Fox of The Runaways by band manager, Kim Fowley, in 1975, at a motel in Orange County; Bay City Roller singer, Les McKeown, by band manager, Tam Paton, in 1977 at a hotel; Les said he stopped Tam's attempted rape of bandmate, Pat McGlynn, at a hotel; and Menudo's Angelo Garcia, who said he was raped repeatedly in a hotel room during 1988-1990 while he was in the band. He was eleven years old when he joined Menudo.
The blood also symbolizes fights. In the 1940s, Sammy Davis, Jr., was refused accommodations in Spokane, WA, then he and a bellboy got in a bloody fight, and so he and the band slept on tarps in their dressing room.
Bongos with heart earrings to symbolize what my mom's professor, Mary Ellen Rickey at the University of Louisville's History of Criticism class, in 1985 said: that drums were the first way humans communicated. Mom and I observed that drums mimicked the heartbeat. Musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil.
A white pack of pink and white-tipped matches from Shane the rock star valet at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, CA, on New Year's Day, January 1, 2020. I painted some of the tips with "Cherry Slush" nail polish by Scherer, a color I wore during a happy time in my life.
The matches allude to comedian and Blues Brother, John Belushi, who died of a drug overdose in 1982 at the Chateau Marmont.
The pack of pink and white-tipped matches from a hotel also represent the night in 1955 that Elvis Presley stayed up all night, looking out a hotel room window in Arkansas to admire his new pink and white 1954 Cadillac. That next day, his car caught on fire.
Charlie "Yardbird" Parker was naked in a hotel lobby after he'd set his bed ablaze with a lit cigarette. The matches represent that. He resisted arrest but was beaten by the police and sent to jail, then to Camarillo State Mental Hospital for six months in 1946, where he formed a band with the other patients. He died in 1955 at the Stanhope Hotel of pneumonia and complications from cirrhosis of the liver, and maybe also from the death of his two-year old daughter. Upon his death and thereafter, graffiti appears here and there, proclaiming "Bird Lives."
A starry spangle to represent Betty Davis, who lived in the Sausalito Hotel in San Francisco while recording her first album, and who rehearsed with her band in a hotel for her last. She made music from the 1960s through the 1970s, with more recordings reportedly released in the 1990s, the 2000s, and in 2019.
Rock 'n' Roll Room Service! On the menu for breakfast: Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones. On the menu for lunch: the Rolling Stones's Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Bill Wyman and Ron Wood, Brian Jones and Ian Stewart, Charlie Watts and Mick Taylor. Fender Heavy tortoiseshell guitar pick. Drumsticks from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil.
Also available from room service:
On the menu for breakfast: The Who's Pete Townshend, Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, and John Entwistle. On the menu for lunch: The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Noel Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Mitch Mitchell, and Billy Cox.
The magazines are like guidebooks. The Green Book, 1936-1966, listed hotels (and restaurants and gas stations) that were open to black people.
The magazines suggest Led Zeppelin's 1975 song, "Sick Again," which refers to the LA Queens and to a hotel in the lyrics:
Clutchin' pages from your teenage dream
In the lobby of the Hotel Paradise
Through the circus of the L.A. queens
"Rolling Stone" magazine covers featuring rock stars and groupies (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, July 17, 1975, photo by Annie Leibovitz; Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, March 13, 1975, photo by Neal Preston; Karen Seltenreich, February 15, 1969, photo by Baron Wolman; Jimi Hendrix, February 1, 1969, photo by Baron Wolman; Keith Moon, December 21, 1972, photo by Bob Gruen; Pete Townshend, September 28, 1968, photo by Jann Wenner). Ballet dancer, Juliana Navarro, contributed stage design and props to the photographs by her husband, Wolman.
2005's Electric Ladyland: Women and Rock Culture, by the writer and musician, Lisa L. Rhodes, turned me on to the photos of groupies by Baron Wolman.
American Girl gold room service bed tray with white cloth, silver serving tray with curved lid, knife and fork in napkin with flower-embossed napkin ring, mimosa with orange slice, cinnamon roll, bacon (vegan!), assorted fruit, menu with stand and tiny clear jars of salt and pepper, faux daisies in pink vase.
The elegant tray of food represents Florence Ballard, the founder of The Supremes, who, in 1967, after record producer, Berry Gordy, called her fat, pooched out her belly onstage at The Flamenco Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.
It also represents Elton John, a recovering bulimic who purged in hotel bathrooms.
And, it represents the possible poisoning of Robert Johnson, who made his first recordings at a hotel: Room #414 at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, TX, in 1936. John Cougar Mellencamp recorded 2009's "Right Behind Me" in Room #414 at the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio, TX.
The salt, which was once a valued commodity and sometimes used as money, refers to a ransom. Pioneer of mutes, the cornetist, King Oliver, was held for ransom by a Cumberland, KY hotel because of unpaid rent, and missed a gig.
In 1971, teen pop idol, David Cassidy, stayed in a guarded room at a Holiday Inn for a month in Hollywood, California after he was threatened with kidnapping.
The salt also represents when money was stolen from Led Zeppelin at the Drake Hotel in NYC in 1973. The cash, kept in a safety-deposit box in the hotel's lobby, was mostly from three concerts at Madison Square Garden.
The salt also represents Stephen Foster (1826-1964), who died almost penniless after a career of writing popular minstrelsy songs. He'd been taken from New York City's American Hotel to Bellevue Hospital, where he died.
A coaster picturing a pot of coffee and a cup of coffee to represent my sweetie, the punk rock carpenter, meeting musician, Little Richard, in the coffee shop of the Riot House in Los Angeles 1993-1994, the hotel where Little Richard lived during the 1980s and 1990s.
A tiara to represent Courtney Love, whom I met in a conference room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills, CA. She called the riot grrrl hotline and asked us to meet her there at the hotel, in 1993. The glittering tiara is from my sweetie, Wayne, who found it in the parking lot of Trader Joe's in South Pasadena in 2017, the very night I completed my article about tiara-wearing Courtney Love for the anthology, Women Who Rock: From Bessie to Beyoncé, Girl Groups to Riot Grrrl, edited by Evelyn McDonnell (2018).
In 1994 Los Angeles at the Peninsula Hotel, Courtney Love tried the "Hotel Detox," a plan to get clean by staying in a hotel while being visited regularly by drug counselors.
The tiara represents royalty. Frances Taylor Davis said Miles Davis sent her to check into hotels because he was so afraid of being told no. "He really feared the prejudice that did happen in this country then." Frances was a ballerina on Broadway, and is featured on the cover of his 1961 album, Someday My Prince Will Come.
Taquila Mockingbird hosts Tiarapalooza at a hotel in 2022 Los Angeles.
The tiara also represents singer, Dana Gillespie, who was born into aristocracy. David Bowie wrote a song for her to sing, and Bob Dylan invited her to his hotel room after his press conference at London's Savoy Hotel in 1965.
The tiara symbolizes anyone who has ever cleaned a hotel room - and cleaned up after the mess that musicians, their entourage, and groupies made. The album cover of REO Speedwagon's Good Trouble (1982) features a Hotel Housekeeper with a cleaning supplies cart entering an open hotel room. Bras, stockings, guitar cases and a view of the city from the window!
Wherever the hotel is set, a road leads to it. The road refers to 200 Motels, a 1971 musical film directed by Tony Palmer and Frank Zappa, stars GTO's Pamela Des Barres and Lucy Offerall. It's about life as a musician on the road.
Much of the 2000 film, Almost Famous, depicts scenes of a band on tour, including hotel room stays.
First floor, stage right, clockwise:
White flower earrings to represent the gardenias Billie Holiday wore in her hair. In 1938, she was asked to enter and exit through the kitchen instead of through the front of the Lincoln Hotel in NYC. The saxophonist, Lester Young, who nicknamed her Lady Day, died at the Alvin Hotel in New York City on March 15, 1959.
Fans in Stockholm filled Duke Ellington's hotel room with flowers for his fortieth birthday in 1939.
Black Fender Stratocaster, musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil. It represents Cher's 1979 song, "Git Down (Guitar Groupie)," on which Gene Simmons sings back-up.
A vial of tears representing lyrics to the song by AC/DC, "It's a long way to the top (If you wanna rock 'n' roll)" (1975)
"If you think it's easy doin' one-night stands
Try playin' in a rock roll band
It's a long way to the top
If you wanna rock 'n' roll
Hotel, motel
Make you wanna cry"
1970s Teen Pop idol, Leif Garret, told Angela Bishop for Studio 10 that "When I first started out in music, when I was going on the road at 15, 16 years old, I was spending nights alone in these huge suites, so I spent a lot of time by myself in hotel rooms, crying. I mean, I really did. I mean, I wanted to be home, and I wanted, you know, maybe my mom around or whatever, or somebody, you know, that was family."
The vial is from the Tsi-La Green Luxury fragrance collection of living flower extracts and pure essential oils. "Kizes" is the perfume, made from bergamot, citron, elderflower, tuberose, jasmine, and orange.
Vintage gold and coral-colored lipstick to represent the lipstick feminism of original GTO, Super Groupie, and bestselling author, Pamela Des Barres. She also produces her own clothing line, including vintage delights. In 2017, she edited the anthology, Let It Bleed: How to Write a Rockin' Memoir, at Days Inns and mainly local mom and pop motels, several in Palm Springs and Palm Desert, CA, some near various beaches. Her longest stint editing the book was at a rental house in Fairmount, Indiana.
The lipstick represents Angie Bowie, formerly married to David Bowie. She's authored several books, including 2012's Lipstick Legends. During the mid-1970s, she was raped at the Seville Hotel in NYC.
Stephen Stills, who loved Rita Coolidge, wrote "Love Rita" in lipstick on a hotel bathroom mirror and then he overdosed but did not die. Jim Gordon abused Rita Coolidge in a hotel hallway at the Hotel President in 1970 New York. He also stole a melody she and Jim wrote and gave it to Eric Clapton, which resulted in the 1970 song, "Layla."
Red Harley-Davidson motorcycle representing Cherry Vanilla, who is pictured astride one on her 1979 album, "Venus d'Vinyl." When she worked as David Bowie’s publicist, they stayed at the Riot House in West Hollywood, and she let groupies sleep in her room. “I wanted to let them know that I saw nothing wrong with what they were doing. I wanted to honor it," she told me. She believes that groupies and fans create the rock star. In 1973, Cherry Vanilla's name was on the hotel marquee.
A rose, representing the 1977 song by AC/DC, "Whole Lotta Rosie," reportedly inspired by a woman named Rosie, who hooked up with the lead singer, Bon Scott, at the Freeway Gardens Motel in North Melbourne, Australia.
The rose can be a rose button to symbolize the buttons that read "3E" for Third Encore, which were handed out to beautiful female fans at Eagles concerts, who were then brought to the hotel's hospitality suite where the band met them.
Red piano to represent the piano Stevie Nicks reportedly installed in various hotel rooms as Fleetwood Mac or she toured during the 1970s and 1980s, and that she and Christine McVie utilized to write songs while their male bandmates cavorted with groupies. Fleetwood Mac formed in 1967, McVie joined Fleetwood Mac in 1970, and Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac in 1974. Nicks began solo tours in 1981. Musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil.
There is sometimes a piano in an orchestra. When Ivie Anderson (1904–49), a Californian known for her jazz phrasings, bluesy feeling, and scat singing, sang with Anson Weeks at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco in 1928, she may have been the first Black singer to perform with a white orchestra.
The piano also represents Elvis Presley, because "Every night Elvis held court in his suite...the room was always filled with people, and Elvis was always singing," at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1969. (quote from 1999's "Careless Love: The Unmaking of Elvis Presley," by Peter Guralnick, p 356.)
Also, one of Elvis's signature songs is 1956's "Heartbreak Hotel," the song that catapulted his career, and became a rock 'n' roll standard, covered by virtuosos such as Leon Russell.
Black and chrome Harley-Davidson motorcycle representing Led Zeppelin and/or their band manager Richard Cole, riding a Harley or a Honda up and down the halls of two hotels during the early 1970s: Cole on a Honda at the Continental Hyatt House aka the Riot House in 1973, and drummer, John Bonham on a Harley, at the Chateau Marmont in 1973, both in Los Angeles.
A cake from American Girl representing the cake from which GTO, Miss Mercy, jumped out of in celebration of Alice Cooper's birthday at a party in 1969 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
The cake also represents when Elvis Presley and Priscilla Beaulieu got married in 1967 at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The bride and groom cut a six-tiered wedding cake.
The cake also symbolizes Halston and the Halstonettes - the famed fashion designer accompanied by almost as famous models wearing his fashions - who made an appearance in 1981on the popular television show, The Love Boat. Boats are like hotels on water. Botels! Halstonettes are like groupies, demonstrating an artist's importance.
Halston dressed Sly Stone and Kathy Silva in gold and white for their June 5, 1974 wedding at Madison Square Garden, before a Sly and the Family Stone concert, on a stage like a wedding cake. The reception was planned for the Starlight Roof at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. Needle and thread on satin fabric!
A pistol from the board game, "Clue," representing the murders of Sam Cooke, in 1964, at the Hacienda Motel in Los Angeles, and Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, in 1995, at the Days Inn Hotel in Corpus Christi, Texas.
And: in 1971, at a Las Vegas Hilton, Elvis Presley showed Alice Cooper how to take a gun away from someone.
Basic electric bass (utilizing many brand styles), musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil. It represents Prince, whose favored Cloud guitar was based on a bass. Also: Suzi Quatro. Suzi met lookalike Joan Jett at the Riot House aka the West Hollywood Hyatt House. Joan's style was inspired by Suzi. It was 1974.
Second floor, stage right, clockwise:
Two silver chairs engraved with a musician serenading an audience wearing full-skirted gowns in a garden. The silver chairs originally belonged to my step-great-grandmother, the artist, Constance Ward (b. @ 1890 - d. @ 1972-1973). My mom gave the chairs to me. The chairs represent Judy Garland (1922-1969), who got the audience to their feet and who played standing- room only concerts, and who often lived in hotels, sometimes skipping out without paying the hotel bill.
One chair is glued to the ceiling in honor of Eagle, Joe Walsh, who says he glued hotel-room furniture to the hotel-room ceiling. He also says he chain-sawed the legs off hotel-room furniture to make the room a grande suite! Rod Stewart would fill the hotel elevators with hotel furniture, then send the packed elevator to the lobby. Van Halen glued furniture to the hotel ceiling, and in 1979, acknowledged on their second album's liner notes the 7th floor of Madison, Wisconsin's Sheraton Inn.
A packet of Sugar in the Raw, to represent Def Leppard's song, 1987's "Pour Some Sugar On Me," and the hotel-like glee of their understage performances. When a band member took a break and most of the band played onstage, he went under the stage where groupies shared the sweetness and sweat of a sexual fervor fanned by the lights and music!
American Girl animal crackers, to represent Ellen Sanders's article, "Inside the Cages of the Zoo," about Led Zeppelin's 1969 tour in America. Published as "Can I Borrow Your Razor in Minneapolis?", in Trips: Rock Life in the Sixties, 1973.
The box of graham crackers is also for Nirvana's Kurt Cobain, who liked fun food. Kurt Cobain overdosed but didn't die in New York City's Omni Berkshire Place Hotel in 1993, and at the Hotel Excelsior in Rome, Italy in 1994.
At the Hotel Excelsior in 1994 Rome, Kurt Cobain wrote a suicide note and tried to die from an overdose of a prescribed tranquilizer.
One of the last places Kurt Cobain was seen alive was at the Marco Polo Motel in Seattle, WA, in 1994, before he died at home of a shotgun wound.
Michael Azerrad read a draft of his Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana at the Warwick Hotel in 1992 Seattle, WA. The manuscript was a photocopy with bits of chocolate-covered peanut butter cookies on its pages.
The graham crackers also represent youth. In 1987, teen pop band, Menudo's keyboardist Victor G. Junquera died of an opiate overdose in his Kansas City, Missouri Park Place Hotel room.
A bottle of Chanel parfum, given to me by my mom and my grandfather when my grandmother died. It was her last bottle of perfume. Lucretia Baldwin "Lukey" Ward was a feminist civil rights activist who marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1968, she was at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee when he was assassinated. In the 2017 documentary about Elvis Presley, "The Searcher," Bruce Springsteen says the idea of the front-person in the band is proto-religious, based on the preacher in front of the choir. Dr. King was preaching the gospel of equality, so I think he's a rock star.
Hotels and venues are places to party as well as places to form political parties, my mom pointed out to me when I told her about my interest in hotels and rock stars on tour.
Razor blade, to represent the razor blade sandwich that Jimmy Page said groupie frenemies gave to his girlfriend in 1974.
The razor blade represents when singer, actor, and activist, Paul Robeson, attempted suicide in 1961 at a hotel room in Moscow, Russia.
Paintbrush, because it's reported that Charlie Watts from the Rolling Stones sketches the hotel room interiors when he's touring. The Stones formed in 1962, toured thereafter, and Watts reportedly sketched every hotel bed in which he's slept since 1967.
The paintbrush also represents LA Queen, Morgana Welch, who was covered in watercolor paint by Peter Tolson and Skip Allan of The Pretty Things at an Atlanta, Georgia, Holiday Inn, circa 1972-1973. In 2020, she was commissioned by band member, Jon Povey, to design album cover art.
The paintbrush is like a pen. Ann Moses edited Tiger Beat magazine from 1966-1972. She told me she travelled with bands such as Paul Revere & the Raiders and stayed at hotels such as the Holiday Inn, on assignment with the magazine. She said it was a more innocent time - no sex or drugs. Also, she told me fans wanted autographs and no-one took the girls back to their rooms.
The Sugarhill Gang became one of the first hip hop groups to get on the radio and the charts with "Rapper's Delight" in 1979. Singer, Sylvia “Love is Strange” Robbins organized the rap group for her record label. It's chorus about hotels and motels, in a song made so beautiful by their sample of Chic's "Good Times" from 1978, could be misogynist were it not for today's gender-bending fluidity and gender role transgressions, and of course, me just changing the lyrics in this moment. I can change the gender anytime I want:
"Everybody go: Hotel, motel, whatcha gonna do today
Say what?
'Cause I'm a get a fly girl, gonna get some spank and drive off in a def OJ
Everybody go: Hotel, motel, Holiday Inn
You see, if your girl starts acting up, then you take her friend"
Accordion, musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil. According to the 1978 film, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, Beatlemania expressed itself in screaming fans, and fans who snuck into the band's hotel room. It shows the adoration, the determination, and the cleverness of the fans. Also random chance! One of my favorite scenes is when a fan touches the items the band members touched, and kisses one of their guitars.
Gold bullet casing, to represent when Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner drove around Coachella Valley, in 1949, shooting their guns at the hotels and motels they drove past. In the early 1950s, Frank feigned suicide by gun in a hotel as a way to appeal to Ava. In 1951, Sinatra appealed to her again by taking an overdose of pills at Cal-Neva in Lake Tahoe. Sinatra and Gardner were movie stars from the 1940s through the 1980s. Crooner Sinatra was a radio presence from the 1930s onward.
Rope, from the board game "Clue," to represent three deaths: Soundgarden's Chris Cornell in 2017 at the MGM Grand in Detroit, Michigan; INXS's Michael Hutchence's death by self-strangulation in 1997 at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Sydney, Australia; and The Band's Richard Manuel in 1986 at Quality Inn and Suites in Orlando, FLA.
It also represents Rick James and Tanya Hijazi, who were charged in 1991 with tying Frances Alley to a chair and abusing her at his Hollywood Hills home, and, in 1992, with abusing Mary Sauger at the St. James Club and Hotel in West Hollywood, CA.
And: in a New Orleans hotel elevator, six fans tied up Elvis Presley and kept him there for six hours.
TV, to represent the many musicians who've thrown televisions out of hotel windows: Led Zeppelin at Continental Hyatt House in Los Angeles and Edgewater Inn in Seattle, Washington; the Rolling Stones's Keith Richards and Bobby Keys in 1972 at Continental Hyatt House in West Hollywood; Frank Sinatra; and The Who's Keith Moon in 1972 at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, CA (I found the miniature TV at a thrift shop in Echo Park, CA, @ 2010, no markings other than "on" with an arrow for the moveable volume knob).
Also, that Elvis Presley, in 1974, shot a television at his top-floor suite of the International Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. Elvis Presley dreamt of touring internationally but the furthest he got to seeing the world was a residency at a Las Vegas hotel with "international" in its name, and a 1973 pioneering satellite concert from Hawaii.
More music videos and TV shows: in Michael Jackson's 1982 Billie Jean music video, he climbs the stairs and as he passes a sign that spells out "HOTEL," each letter lights up.
Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley performed a recorded duet at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami, Florida, on March 26, 1960. The performance was for Frank's show in a special to welcome Elvis back from military service.
In 1956, Nat King Cole was the first Black person to host a variety show on television, The Nat King Cole Show, which lasted until the end of 1957. His father was a Baptist pastor whose teachings inspired Nat's lyrics for an early hit with the King Cole Trio, 1943's "Straighten Up and Fly Right," which he wrote in a hotel room in Omaha, Nebraska.
In Lara Feigel's fiction book, The Group (2020), a character wins a big French literary prize, and thereafter has her schedule managed by her publicist. "Deposited in the lobby of a French hotel, told that she had seven minutes to go up to her room before her next interview, she said that she went upstairs and had a sudden urge to throw the television out the window like rock stars do. She understood why her children had such messy rooms. It's the only available form of protest." (p150)
Basic acoustic six (steel) string guitar, musical instrument magnet from the Walt Disney Concert Hall's gift shop, LA Phil. Represents Flying Burrito Brother, Gram Parsons, who died of an overdose in 1973 at the Joshua Tree Inn in Joshua Tree, CA.
Exterior of hotel side, stage left:
Pink golf tee to represent Frank Sinatra's insistence that Nat King Cole be allowed to eat in the restaurant of the hotel where they both performed, that Sammy Davis, Jr. be allowed to live at the hotel where he and the rest of the Rat Pack lived, and when Sinatra bid adieu to that hotel, the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, by driving a golf cart through the window.
The exterior is an entrance and an exit. There were so many fans at the hotel where Menudo stayed that the hotel asked the band to leave.
Two fabric daisies from high tea with my sweetie, Wayne Pemberton, at the American Girl restaurant in Los Angeles at the Grove in 2019. The daisies refer to the dedication in Trips: Rock Life in the Sixties (1973), a book by Ellen Sander:
"...this book is dedicated to the incorrigible spirit of the Sixties; a seed planted, a weed grown, the promise, forever beckoning, of a garden."
And!
Author and Bay City Rollers fan, Caroline Sullivan, remembered trying to meet the band. She told Behind the Music: “When I look back on it, the things I remember most are waiting outside hotels with my friends, those Saturday night strategy meetings that we used to have, I mean, the Rollers were … the catalysts, but we, me and my friends, were the real stars.”