"Betty & Veronica: My Groupie Diary"
The Groupie Feminism art series
Attributions and Artist Statement
Betty & Veronica comic book cover, No 13, Feb. 1995
Cut and paste of diary covers and name of comic
Pen and paper
10 1/2” x 14”
2025
This artwork is inspired by the Betty & Veronica comic book cover, which made think about groupie diaries real, rumored, and imagined: Pamela Des Barres’s I’m With the Band (a best-selling book that’s been in print since its 1987 publication date, a memoir based on her diaries)! Margaret Moser’s imagined Pearl Necklaces and No Regrets: How I Went From Backstage to Printed Page, and her article, "Lust for Life: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Ex-Groupie"! Lithofayne Pridgon’s voluminous and precise notebooks! Sabel Starr’s rumored little black book of bedded rock stars! The imagined Intimate Adventures of Sweet Sweet Connie! Cherry Vanilla’s Pop Tarts Compositions book, which is like a collage diary! And my own fantasy-filled diaries about imaginary meetings with musicians!
I replaced “Betty’s Diary” with “a diary” on her diary cover by cutting and pasting from her diary, and replaced “Veronica’s Diary” with “A Groupie’s Diary” by cutting and pasting from her diary and writing by hand on it.
The pink diary with the leopard-print heart and lock with two keys that covers their names in the comic book’s title is from my “Groupie Suitcase”, an assemblage in the Groupie Feminism art series. The diary is filled with excerpts from: my own diaries; the short story I wrote in 2006, Pop Star Sparkling (based on a fantasy I wrote in my diary in 1977), and published in 2009; the collection of short fiction based on groupie rock star legends, Power Ballads, unpublished and that I wrote from about 2005-2014; and my two novels, The Groupie Gospels, and The Adventures of Annabelle Ballantyne, unpublished and written from 2006-2021. It also includes a few excerpts from notes I made about interviews I did from 2011–2025 with groupies, musicians, and music journalists and photographers for my mixtape zine, The Groupie Gospels, an oral history about groupies. My forthcoming book, The Golden Era of Groupies: 1965-1978, is based on those diary notes, and my debut book, ‘70s Teen Pop (Bloomsbury, 2023) includes some of those notes.
Bibliography
Comic book cover. Betty & Veronica. No 13. Archie Comic Publications, Inc., February, 1995.
Des Barres, Pamela. I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie. United States of America: William Morrow and Company, 1987.
Moser, Margaret. “Lust for Life: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Ex-Groupie.” The Austin Chronicle. August 11, 2000. https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2000-08-11/78202/ Digital link. Accessed 7.24.25.
Pearl Necklaces and No Regrets: How I Went From Backstage to Printed Page. Imagined.
Pridgon, Lithofayne. Notebooks. Legendary - and verified! In her lifetime. (born 1940- died 2021)
Starr, Sabel. Little black book of bedded rock stars. Rumored. (born 1957-died 2009)
Sweet Sweet Connie. The Intimate Adventures of Sweet Sweet Connie. Imagined. (born 1955-died 2021)
Lucretia Tye Jasmine. Diary fantasies and creative fiction: Pop Star Sparkling, Power Ballads, The Groupie Gospels, The Adventures of Annabelle Ballantyne. Imagined and written. (Written 1977-1984; 2006-2021) My own diaries. (1972-present) Selected notes from The Groupie Gospels. (2011-2025)
Cherry Vanilla. Pop Tarts Compositions. USA: Vanilla Paper, Inc., 1974.
"My Confidential Groupie Diary"
The Groupie Feminism art series
Attributions and Artist Statement
High School Confidential Diary, Volume 1, Number 9, October 1961
Album Covers, l to r:
Lust for Life by Lana Del Rey (2017)
Love Gun by Kiss (1977)
Shadow Dancing by Andy Gibb (1978)
Pop Star Sparkling byline and excerpts (2009)
Orange fabric with satin piping for bed-skirt
10 1/2” x 18”
2025
When I was eleven years old in 1977, I began writing fantasies about musicians. I wrote the stories in my diary. I’d been reading romance comics for a few years, and that year I discovered pornography. The visual porn bothered me but I fell in love with the written word. So I wrote a novella about my having love affairs and sexcapades with numerous musicians. My confidential groupie diary!
In 1982, I penned a feature script about underage best friends who run away from home and have adventures, including a tour with musicians. It had the best soundtrack! My last year of high school, 1983-1984, I wrote a fantasy for the high school newspaper, a continuing saga written in several installments about my getting to know a rock star.
In 2005, I re-wrote one of the fantasies from memory, hoping to publish it in a girlie magazine I co-founded with a few classmates from graduate school. The magazine, Touché, was to feature naked men and great interviews, thought-provoking articles, and stellar fiction. Our tagline was “going to any length.”
The magazine never happened, but I made a zine based on our one and only photo shoot. And sent out the fantasy I’d re-written to one of my favorite journals, PRISM international. It’s one of the first pieces of writing I ever got published. The story is based on the first rock ‘n’ roll fantasy I ever wrote, starring me, Andy Gibb and KISS.
Over the next several years, I wrote fictional accounts of rock star groupie stories I’d heard or read, a novella about two groupies, and a novel about an underage fan meeting a pop star, befriending groupies, and going on the road with them. None of it published yet. I interviewed groupies, musicians, music journalists and photographers, recording with permission almost all of the interviews on to cassette tapes, and wrote my notes about what they said and how I felt about it in numerous diaries. Those interviews and notes are the basis of my book, The Golden Era of Groupies: 1965-1978, forthcoming from Chicago Review Press, and some are included in my debut published book, ‘70s Teen Pop (Bloomsbury, 2023).
My mom’s diaries are something I always knew she kept, for as far back as I can remember. She’s very private, so I never even thought about reading them, but one time when I was in college she and I had so much fun as she read to me from her teen diary. And so much sorrow as she told me about a time my father, when they were first dating, read her diaries, and he was enraged with her for writing about other boys. The thing is, she knew she loved my dad - she was just making up stories for her diary. It was around the time this comic book came out. My mom as a teen looked exactly like the teen on this comic book cover!
My grandmother kept diaries, too. Hers looked very official with their supple binding! I admired them along her bookshelves. I figured my mom and grandmom wrote about their lives, their thoughts, their ideas and dreams.
I began my first diary when I was in third grade when my mom’s best friend gave a diary to me. The lined pages made it seem serious, and like a challenging homework assignment. I wasn’t sure what to write in it. What was important enough to write? A few years later, when my mom gave a Nothing Book to me - a hard-cover book with woven maroon covers, and blank unlined pages in various colors - it felt like freedom to create.
The comic book cover for High School Confidential Diary reminded me of my mom, and my own diary-writing. So I modified the cover with a cut and paste collage of album covers by Andy and KISS and Lana Del Rey, along with my byline and excerpts of the fantasy, and kept the teen-aged girl intact. I added fabric as a bed skirt over the excerpts.
In the fantasy I’m wearing a dress that looks a lot like what Lana Del Rey wears on her album cover! She looks almost exactly like how I imagined myself looking in my fantasy. And her album has a song about a groupie.
The KISS album has a song about a groupie, too, the artist Cynthia Plaster Caster!
The following is the excerpt from my short fantasy story, Pop Star Sparkling, which I slightly tweaked for this artist statement, and which I placed on the comic book cover under the sheer orange bed-skirt:
The year before I loved Andy, I loved the band Kiss. They played hard rock. They wore costumes, and make-up, and they had their own comic book. I read they put their own blood in the comic book’s ink. I loved Ace Frehley, their lead guitarist and sometimes singer, best. But also Paul Stanley, their lead singer and rhythm guitarist. On the way home from my career I see them walking down the street. The whole band! The band on my turntable, the band shouting out loud in my headset, the band painted in black, silver, and white with just a little bit of red on my mirror at home. They’re in costume and wearing their platform boots. They all follow me. We look like shiny sequins in motion on rich velvet.
Paul, the one with the star on his eye and the red kiss lips, waits until I unlock my door then he walks fast up to me and slams the door behind us. Somehow, my front room feels like an outdoor garden. There are huge potted plants, the smell of a thousand tiny white flowers, the sound of a miniature waterfall. What are you doing, I ask, but he grabs me and kisses me. It feels good, but scary, like when I listen to his music - I am never sure what will happen next, and so I keep listening. I run my hands through his long, dark hair. I really like your skirt, he whispers as he lifts it and kisses me some more. His hands – those long, strong guitar-playing fingers - on my bare thighs. His red-lipsticked mouth opens. His tongue is pink and soft, and tastes that way too, like candy. I remember Andy and push Paul away. Let’s just go for a walk, he says, so we walk to a stream by my house. We hold hands, swinging them back and forth, and now I am wearing a long white skirt with three tiers in it and a white top with off-the- shoulder sleeves made of lace. The skirt flows even when I stand still. Paul kisses my exposed shoulder. His make-up is bright in the starlight.
What happened next is strictly confidential! (But you can read about it in PRISM international!)
Bibliography
Comic book cover. High School Confidential Diary. Volume 1, Number 9. Charlton Comics Group, October, 1961.
Del Rey, Lana. Lust for Life. Polydor Records, 2017.
Kiss. Love Gun. Casablanca Record & FilmWorks, Inc., 1977.
Gibb, Andy. Shadow Dancing. RSO Records, Inc., 1978.
Lucretia Tye Jasmine. “Pop Star Sparkling”. PRISM international. Fall, 2009.
Sewing Dreams
Butterick patterns 5704, “7th Grade Disco Dreaming”, silver pen on paper
and 4331, “I Want To Be Beautiful”, color pencils on paper
8 1/2” x 5 1/2” each
2025