THE net benefits of being a groupie are debatable, but you get to have sex with good-looking, charismatic rock stars and sample the rock-and-roll lifestyle. Although not so much with these acts…
Fairground Attraction
For some reason it’s hard to imagine Fairground Attraction being into groupies or hard drugs. Of course this is just speculation and it’s possible they used to perform Perfect then Eddi Reader and the boys would go backstage and start shooting up like the New York Dolls and f**king anything that moved. Hopefully they’ll clear it up in a future biography. The fans deserve to know.
The Proclaimers
The Proclaimers and groupies just aren’t logically compatible, like the concept of a four-sided triangle. You’d never be sure which one you were sucking off, and their woefully misguided image just screamed Thunderbirds: The Horror Movie. Actually the Reid twins weren’t as geeky as they looked, being inspired by the likes of The Clash and The Jam, but their appearance would still have been an obstacle, unless you normally meet your sexual partners at the Christian Union or Games Workshop.
Chumbawamba
The squat-dwelling anarcho-Marxists were extremely right-on, and being a groupie is the worst kind of sexual exploitation, so you’d probably get a lecture on internalising patriarchal oppression before you’d even shagged anyone. There are other obvious drawbacks too: the drugs would be a grimy bag of foul-tasting dried shrooms, and you’d have to listen to Tubthumping again. Any sane person would prefer having a dead mud shark inserted into their orifices to that.
The Rembrandts
I’ll Be There for You hangs over The Rembrandts like Death hangs over the characters in the Final Destination films. Unsurprisingly, they hate it for eclipsing their other songs, but who gives a shit about their other songs? As for groupies, the only women who’d want to service them would be tragic Friends obsessives, and it would be obvious they’d rather be shagging Ross, Joey or Chandler. Maybe not Chandler.
The Kronos Quartet
This experimental neo-classical quartet must be gagging for some blowjobs, and there’d be a lot less competition to fellate a fat, bearded cellist than, say, Tommy Lee. However you can’t imagine the booze and narcotics would be flowing freely after a performance of an aural soundscape inspired by the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon, so maybe you’d be better off sticking with the Crüe.
Level 42
Widely regarded as the nicest guy in the music biz, Mark King was more likely to offer journalists a homemade pizza than drugs or a fight. The others were pretty wholesome too – you could definitely have taken classically-trained keyboard player Mike Lindup home to meet your parents. And herein lies the problem for a groupie – you’d be in the mood for filthy sex and a coke-induced nosebleed, and Level 42 would take you for a walk in the countryside followed by lunch in a charming country pub with a friendly labrador.
Simon and Garfunkel
The Feelin’ Groovy duo presumably weren’t averse to offers of sex and marijuana in the late 60s. However their professional relationship was notoriously tense, so you’d probably be trying to have sex while listening to bitter, ‘unhappily married couple’ arguments, eg. ‘I suppose I’ve got to tune the guitars again while you sit there having blowjobs all evening.’ ‘Oh f**k off, slaphead. Go and write a song about rabbits.’
