Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (51 page)

"There were a lot of couple-of-week flings. Jeff Labar, the guitarist from Cinderella. We hit it off within five seconds and had a blast. We always made each other laugh. We were perfectly compatible-as compatible as you're going to be on the Poison summer tour. Then there was Jason `Gong' Jones, lead singer from Drowning Pool-he was cool. He pursued me a little bit, but I said, `Honey, you've got an album coming out in a few months. You're about to go huge. I'm not even going to pretend we could have any sort of a relationship.'"

Sarah was diligent, sticking to her keeping-it-fun rule until one of the rockers treated her a little too well. "I'd been seeing this guy from Dope, Sloane `Mosey' Jentry, just casually. When he quit the band, I remained friends with the rest of the guys, then they got Brix, his replacement. You're supposed to stick to one dude per band, but I made an exception because Brix was phenomenal. He treated me really well. He took me out to dinner, then we got to the show and he handed me, like, thirty dollars and said, `Here, this should buy you drinks until I'm ready to hang out.' We were seeing each other a lot and I started to feel guilty because he was married. As far as his wife knew, he was just `wham, bam, thank you, ma'am,' on the road. But if she'd known he was taking me out to dinner ..."

Dope was playing Madison, and as far as Sarah knew, all was still groovy between her and Brix. "After the show, I'm waitin', waitin', waitin'. Finally, he came out and I said, `What the fuck is going on?' He said, `Let's go talk about it. I've been thinking, and I just don't think we're compatible anymore.' I said, `That's obviously a blatant lie.' If he'd said, `I think you have an ugly vagina and I never want to see it again,' I would've been way less offended than if he tried to BS me. Like, was he watching Sex and the City last night for bad breakup lines? We certainly didn't seem to be incompatible two weeks earlier when we were getting it on. So that was the end of that. I text messaged him a week later, `When you're ready to tell me the truth, I'm ready to listen.' He left me a voice mail, `I'm so glad you called. I really want to talk to you.' Then I saw their drum tech at Hooters and he said, `Hey, Brix wants your number. He wants to apologize,' but I haven't heard a word from him. But he made me realize they're all the same. Even when they give you the impression that they're good people, they're all the goddamn same. That's when I decided to do this interview."

It sounds to me like Sarah may have finally had it with rock stars, especially married ones. "For right now I have," she agrees. "It was part of my life and I had a blast. But I'm just tired of it. I need something real, and you aren't going to find it there. But I know the second I say, `Oh no, I'll never date another musician,' some dude on a national tour will sweep me off my feet. I truly feel I've lived my life with no regrets. If ever I think, `Should I, or shouldn't I?' I always do. How many times have you looked back and thought, `God, if I had only done that.'"

Yes, I recall the exact moment Jimi Hendrix beckoned to me, and I wimped out on him. Of course, I was a semi-inexperienced seventeen-year-old virgin at the time. Noel Redding, the adorable, scrawny, pale-faced bass player seemed like a safer bet.

"I still dream, because I have more in common with musicians than with accountants," Sarah continues. "It's really the look more than anything else. I like the piercings and the tattoos. I like the funky hair. Everybody's got their top five guys they'd like to sleep with. It's not a pipe dream to me. I think, `This could maybe happen: Joe Perry is my number one. Then Lenny Kravitz was my number two until I heard he doesn't smell that good. But I'm like, `I'll plug my nose, just bring me that man and his PA!"

Does Sarah ever imagine herself twenty years from now, all cozy with her funky, tattooed rock guy? "You've got to look at the facial features," she says with a knowing smile. "Because he may look pretty hot now with all that hair, but you have to imagine that schnoz on your kid!"

After dinner, we cruise over to Sarah's condo, an immaculate, airy place, to look through her copious rock scrapbooks. She opens a chilled bottle of white wine and pours us a glass. "This is me with Jeff from Cinderella, thirty seconds after we met ... here's Jason from Drowning Pool ... these are the feathers from Ozzfest that Ozzy blew up at the end ... here's Glen from Beautiful Creatures ... ahh, look at Tommy Lee! I have never been so starstruck in my life. He was trying to talk to us and we just kept stuttering. He finally said, `All right, nice meeting you guys' and started to walk away. My friend was going, `P-p-picture!' If Tommy Lee wanted to have some kids, I'd be more than happy to oblige. Oh, these are the guys from Nickelback. I didn't hook up with any of them. But I did kiss Nick. Oh, this is a great shot, because right when I moved to Madison, we went to see Tantric and took a picture with the singer, Hugo Ferreira. We walked back saying, `Oh, he's so dreamy.' Then two years later I hooked up with him. I'd been hanging out with their drummer, Matt Taul, the night before. We were chillin', and he got me into the show. I was looking for him and I asked Hugo, `Where's Matt?' and he said, `Just go on the bus.' I refused, because you look like an idiot when you do that. So he said, `Come with me.' It was Matt and Hugo and me, and they were watching porn. I said, sarcastically, `Dude. This is really fun.' I had a fling with Hugo on the bus that night, and the next day we went to Chicago. We had a blast because we actually got a hotel that night. Hugo is phenomenal, and he smells good in the morning. He's that guy right there," she says, pointing to another shot of the haughty bad boy. "If I was going to be unrealistic and wanted one of them to change and be the guy, it'd definitely be him."

I've noticed that all the younger groupies call sleeping together "hooking up." "Right," Sarah says. "To me, the term `hooking up' puts less weight, less pressure on it. It goes in order as it gets more relationship-y. You've got `hooking up,' then `sleeping together,' `having sex,' then `making love."'

Where do blow jobs come in, I wonder? "I'm not sure. I guess that could be called hooking up. But I very rarely do that. I'm like, `Uh-uh, dude!"' I'm astounded. Not even when she's crazy about someone? "No, at that point, I've already got 'em," Sarah declares, "so why do I need to impress them anymore? I see no pleasure in that whatsoever."

I ask Sarah if she scans groupie message boards on the Internet. "I'm not going to post anything, but you bet your ass I read the message boards, especially Metal Sludge. I'm sure you've heard of this girl who goes by Rikki Sixx? Let's just say that when she got to be `Sludgette of the Month,' she probably pissed herself from excitement. She's talked about how she's in love with Taime Downe and had hung out with him, like, thirty times. Then suddenly she announced on the message board, `I BLEW TAIME.' I was thinking, `Taime does not want people to know that.' Have you seen the sex tape of Kid Rock and Scott Stapp? As if you couldn't hate Scott Stapp any more. They show him sitting back, saying stuff like, `It's good to be the king . . . this is my third one today.' Where was that girl's self-respect? I mean, go ahead, sleep with him. But to allow herself to be filmed sucking him off while he says such degrading things. Like I said, I don't really do that a whole lot."

I tell Sarah that Miss Tina, the other girl I'm meeting here in Minneapolis, is proud of her oral abilities and loves to climb aboard the bus to show her appreciation. "But when she leaves, they're probably going to talk a lot of shit about her," Sarah says, sipping her wine. "When I leave, at best, they'll say nice things, and at worst, they'll say nothing."

T !, T

In So Deep

iss Tina King is persistent. She has called several times, making sure I have the right directions to her house on the other side of town. When I pull up and park in the crunchy snow, Tina is waiting for me on the porch, smiling brightly. She's just a little over five feet tall, with short pixie blonde hair and impish dimples, and she looks like she's about to burst with bliss.

Tina has inundated me with e-mails about her exploits, and of all the girls I've come across, she is the most effervescent and excited at the prospect of sharing her experiences. "Oh, I just can't believe you're here!" she exclaims, hugging me tightly and ushering me into the small wooden house she shares with her mother, Debbie, and her four-year-old daughter, Amber. Debbie welcomes me with a wide grin. Little Amber has been diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and although she frolics happily with her toys, she doesn't interact much with me.

Before I arrived in Minneapolis, Tina and I discussed my desire to plunder antique malls and thrift stores to hunt for buried treasure. So the first thing we plan to do on this bitterly cold afternoon is rummage around Goodwill and Salvation Army stores together. While Tina gets ready to go, I notice an eightby-ten of her with Kid Rock hanging over the big television set. Debbie motions me toward her and whispers in my ear. "Tina gave Kid Rock a B-L-O-W-J-O-B," she says proudly, spelling out the letters, then looking over at Amber. "She can't spell, but you can't be too careful." For the first time in years, I am actually speechless. Debbie doesn't seem to notice and pulls out Tina's high school newspaper, The Bluffer, dated November 4, 1988. She points to a small article: "Time Will Tell-Imagine a world famous professor invented a machine that can answer any question about the future. Tina King: Will I ever reign as a groupie queen and be featured on the cover of Rolling Stone?" She then shows me an assignment Tina wrote for English class that describes Richie Sambora's guitar playing: "Magician's fingers produce auras of tone to mesmerize the fans ..." I am struck by how wonderfully OK Debbie is with her daughter's, shall we say, achievements, and I'm filled with admiration for this openminded mama.

While we gadabout antique shops, I ask Tina how her mother came to be so accepting. "She got divorced when I was fourteen and never remarried. We'd go to concerts and meet rock stars together. I'd take her backstage. We liked the same kind of music, and the same musicians. At first, I'd say, `Hey, guys, this is Debbie.' But if it was a band I hung out with more than once, I'd finally say, `Guys, this is my mom.' They'd say, `Oh, that's really cool.' But since Amber was born, Mom mostly stays home with her."

Tina's remarkably sunny disposition belies a difficult beginning, as well as laser-focused determination. She already has a master of arts in human development and is close to getting a master's degree in social work. The job she hopes to land is quite unique. "I would like to work at a veterinarian hospital so I could hold a grief and support group for people who've lost a pet or recently found out their pets have a terminal illness. That combines my two big loves of animals and people in one setting."

Pretty incredible for a girl who says she came from a family that was "dirt poor." "I was four when my parents divorced. My mom married a traveling salesman when I was seven and was gone a lot, so my grandma raised me. I was pretty slick at keeping things hidden from my grandma. I'd sneak off and party. Where I grew up, if you weren't rich, no one paid you any attention, so I didn't get any boyfriends. I was really smart, but I was a stoner. I hung out with potheads but made good grades. Later on, my mom was a single parent on welfare and food stamps. She worked in a bar for $2 an hour and didn't make enough to make ends meet, so we both moved in with my grandparents and uncle. The five of us shared a one-bedroom house. My mom and I grew up as friends. We loved Dokken-all the '80s hair bands, we just loved 'em. They were great showmen. I thought glam rock guys wearing makeup, spandex, and big hair were really sexy. I started followed them around, and knew that between two and four, they were at sound check. So I'd go hang out by the buses. I'd dress sexy and flamboyant, and it always caught their attention. I'd say, `Hey!' and they'd send their tour manager out to get me. A lot of times, security would try to prevent me from going to the bus: `Stay back behind the yellow line. The police tape says do not cross.' But the rock stars would always say, `She's with us."