Two hours later, I went to check on Sable.
Then he escorted me into the bedroom, gently took off my clothes, and de-virginized me. He got into the tub, already filled with water, and asked me to wash him. He walked me through his bedroom and into the bathroom, where he dropped his kimono. He focused his famously two-colored eyes on me and said, “Lori, darling, can you come with me?” Sable looked like she wanted to murder me. We were getting stoned when, all of a sudden, the bedroom door opens and there is Bowie in this fucking beautiful red and orange and yellow kimono. Bowie excused himself and left us in this big living room with white shag carpeting and floor-to-ceiling windows. I found myself more and more fascinated by him. We got to the Beverly Hilton and all went up to Bowie’s enormous suite. “Danny’s Song” was playing on the radio and Sable started singing to David: “We ain’t got honey, but I’m so in love with your money.” He laughed so hard. Kill Bowie!” Next thing you know, Stuey’s got the guy pinned down and we’re being escorted out a side door and back into the limo. We were drinking cocktails and looking at menus when some crazy guy dove over the table and said to David, “You flaming fucking faggot. John Lennon and Yoko Ono stopped by to say hello. We sat at this corner table in a private room. In the limo ride to the Rainbow, Sable said, “If you touch David, I will kill you.” I didn’t think she was kidding. People there were so high all the time - Quaaludes, heroin, whatever. At the time, Sable and her sister Coral were both dating Iggy Pop, spending time at the home of Tony DeFries up in Laurel Canyon. I figured that she would sleep with him while I got to hang out and have fun. I said that I would like to go but that I wanted to bring my friend Sable. I wasn’t spending a lot of time at school anyway. He told me that David wanted to take me to dinner.
Next time Bowie was in town, though, maybe five months later, I got a call at home from his bodyguard, a huge black guy named Stuey. I had probably kissed boys by that point, but I wasn’t ready for David Bowie. I grabbed on to Rodney Bingenheimer and said I was with him.
He had hair the color of carrots, no eyebrows, and the whitest skin imaginable. I had not yet turned 15 and he wanted to take me to his hotel room. I met him when he was doing the Spiders from Mars tour. What I remember most about the E Club was Bowie. On weekend nights, while she worked, I snuck out of the house to hang with Queenie and Sable at the clubs on Sunset Strip.
My mother owned a concession at the movie star restaurant Chasen’s. My junior high school friend Queenie became friends with Sable and introduced me. She was so glamorous, totally one-of-a-kind, wearing scarves for shirts and going topless without hesitation. Here she is, in her own words, with the occasional interjection: As Mattix remembers it, “He said to me, ‘Lori, we were both children back then.’ I felt like telling him, ‘At least one of us was.’” Over cheeseburgers at Father’s Office in LA, she told me that when the 71-year-old Jimmy Page, now dating a 25-year-old, recently came to town, they met up. These days, she has found success as a partner and buyer for the Glam Boutique on Melrose Ave in West Hollywood. In time, she and Sable Starr helped inspire Kate Hudson’s character in the film Almost Famous. She hung out at the Playboy Mansion and modeled in the pages of Star.
Starting from the age of 15, Lori Mattix ranked among the most desired of these so-called baby groupies who were helping to satisfy the sexual appetites of Jimmy Page, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and others. Hell, in 1973, a leisure-suited Tom Snyder devoted an entire show to interviews with some of LA’s highly desired teenage groupies. Other publications, such as the rock ‘n’ roll bible Creem, flicked at the Sunset Strip doings without so much as a wagged finger. It was all glorified in the pages of a glossy magazine called Star, which reveled in the underage groupie scene for five issues. Kelly faced multiple allegations of having sex with minors, the most visible rock stars in the world blithely made it with girls who were barely out of junior high school. Scantily clad 14- and 15-year-olds like Sable Starr and Lynn “Queenie” Koenigsaecker sipped cherry cola, dropped pills, and evolved into pubescent dream girls for the platform-shoed rockers who could get anything and anyone they desired.ĭecades before Drake dissed Tyga for dating 17-year-old Kylie Jenner, and R. They all hung out in the VIP rooms of louche LA nightclubs like E Club, the Rainbow, and Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. And with them, of course, came groupies. In the early 1970s, the Sunset Strip was a magnet for rock stars: Bowie, Zeppelin, Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople, The Who.