GTO's
The group GTO’s was one of the first all-female groups in the history of rock music. Most of the members of the group were known in music circles as groupies . The group released only one LP and one single, both produced by Frank Zappa . With his group The Mothers of Invention they could be seen live at several appearances on the American west coast in the late 1960s.
origin
The actual catalyst of the group was Christine Frka. She was employed as a nanny at the Zappa house in the late 1960s. "Miss Christine", as she was later also called, invited her friends over and over again to practice dance steps with them in the basement of the Zappas property and to cultivate their mutual preference for extravagant wardrobes. The quirky ensemble even gave themselves a name: "Laurel Canyon Ballet Company". (P. 198)
In addition to dancing and a penchant for unusual clothing, the girls had another thing in common: rock musicians. The groupie group could not have looked for a more suitable accommodation than Frank Zappa's house, where famous rock musicians of those days literally gave each other the handle. (P. 199)
Foundation and name
The founding of the GTO's group in 1968 goes back to an idea by Frank Zappa. He had inevitably become aware of the hustle and bustle in his house and enjoyed it. So he suggested to Miss Christine and their friends Miss Pamela, Miss Sandra, Miss Lucy, Miss Mercy, Miss Cinderella and Miss Sparky to tap into their "hidden talents", knowing full well that none of them could sing or play an instrument. (P. 49f)
The name GTO's initially stood as an abbreviation for "Girls Together Only". Later - after many other explanations for this abbreviation - the name "Girls Together Outrageously" prevailed. Other traditional names are "Girls Together Occasionally" or "Girls Together Often". (P. 198, 212) (p. 50)
Members
Miss Christine was the daughter of Yugoslav immigrants and was born Christine Frka in San Pedro. She met Frank Zappa when he bought the house in which she lived with a freak community in May 1968. She stayed there because the Zappas hired her as a housekeeper and nanny. Miss Christine loved fancy clothes that she sewed exclusively herself, possibly to better hide her skinny stature. She was friends with Alice Cooper in the late 1960s and introduced him to Frank Zappa.
Miss Cinderella , by her own admission a “chronic liar” who “can't remember anything”, is the second creative head of the GTOs. When asked by Frank Zappa, she wrote most of the group's songs. Her predilection for translucent mini skirts is traditionally known.
Miss Lucy was born Lucy Offerall in Puerto Rico. After moving to Los Angeles, she met Miss Pamela and Miss Sparky at the house of a mutual friend. She later left the GTO's on the grounds that the group had become too commercial. She worked in Frank Zappa's films 200 Motels and Uncle Meat, among others .
Miss Mercy came to Haight-Ashbury , the center of San Francisco's hippie scene , as a 16-year-old teenager from a suburb of San Francisco. During this time, her parents sent her to a correctional home several times. Tired of being a hippie, she shuttled between Laguna Beach and San Francisco for a while, went briefly to New York and finally came to Los Angeles. There she moved to the "Landmark Hotel". This motel was used by many groups as accommodation when they performed in the area. Miss Mercy shared a room there with Miss Christine and Miss Cinderella.
Miss Pamela was born as Pamela Ann Miller. Like Miss Christine, she worked as a nanny in the Zappa household. She still calls herself “Queen of the groupies” today, a name that shows her special relationships with celebrities like Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Noel Redding, Jim Morrison, Keith Moon, Nick St. Nicholas, Jimi Hendrix, Ray Davies and Don Johnson reflects. In 1977 she married the rock musician and actor Michael Des Barres, with whom she has a son. The marriage was divorced in 1991. She wrote her experiences as a groupie in 1987 in the book "I'm with the band - convictions of a groupie".
Miss Sandra was of Italian descent and came from San Pedro in southern California. In the Los Angeles scene, she met Miss Christine, with whom she later went to New York. After a short interlude at an art school, she came back to Los Angeles. There she moved into the commune of Karl Franzonis, which lived in a huge log house in Laural Canyon, which the silent film star Tom Mix had once built. When Frank Zappa bought this house in the summer of 1968, Miss Sandra stayed there as well as her friend Miss Christine.
Miss Sparky (born Linda Sue Parker) liked music, with a focus on “Everything!” She knew Miss Pamela from their time together at Cleveland High School. In the Los Angeles club scene at the time ( Cheetah and others), she and her friends Miss Sandra and Miss Lucy stood out as dancers dressed in diapers. It was on one of these occasions that Frank Zappa became aware of them.
Live performances
Frank Zappa invited Miss Christine, Miss Pamela, Miss Sandra, Miss Mercy, Miss Lucy, Miss Sparky, and Miss Cinderella to dance on stage at the Mothers of Invention's next gig in San Bernardino in June 1968 . A strict moral order prevented the performance "because a nipple peeked out from behind Pamela's bib," says Barry Miles , describing the career-inhibiting incident. On July 23, 1968, the GTO's in the Club Whiskey-A-Go-Go stood on a stage for the first time, sang two songs, danced and earned standing applause. (P. 198)
Record recording
On the side, Zappa encouraged the GTO's to continue to be creative. "How about we wrote a dozen songs while he and the mothers were on tour, and when he came back we could maybe record them for Frank's new record company Bizarre Rekords!" said Pamela Des Barres about this phase. (P. 50) The GTO's were now on Zappa's payroll, each of the girls received a weekly advance, the name of the group now stood for “Girls Together Outrageously”. The recordings began shortly before Christmas 1968. (p. 212)
Contributors were Frank Zappa and Lowell George as producers and ex- Monkee Davy Jones as one of the composers involved. Most of the tracks were recorded by Ian Underwood (keyboards), Don Preston (synthesizer), Roy Estrada (bass), Jimmy Carl Black (drums), Frank Zappa (tambourine), Nicky Hopkins (keyboards) and Craig Doerge (keyboards). Guest musicians Jeff Beck (guitar), Rod Stewart (vocals), Rodney Bingenheimer (vocals), Lowell George, Russ Titleman and possibly Ry Cooder (guitar) participated in the recording sessions.
The recordings were on tape and the promotion campaign for group and record had long since started when Zappa temporarily stopped the project in the spring of 1969. Three GTO's had been caught with heroin in a hotel. (P. 213) It took a few months before Zappa turned back to the album and finished it because he had already invested a lot of time and money in it. First a single was released at the end of September 1969 with the two pieces Circular Circulation and Mercy's Tune , which followed the release of the album Permanent Damage in December 1969 . In the same month, Zappa's album Hot Rats was released , on the cover photo of which Miss Christine is shown. (P. 227)
Reactions
Now this album was on the market, of which Zappa's business partner Herb Cohen said at the time: “No record distributor in the world will ever include something like this in their program.” (P. 228) The record nevertheless went around the world, was made twice in 1989 and 1991 released on CD.
Sounds reviewer Rainer Blome considered it the “most unbridled album of 1970”, and not only for that reason “brilliant”. Blome did not only consider the unity of what was presented and its references to Karlheinz Stockhausen , John Cage , Luciano Berio or other representatives of new music to be remarkable . He praised the GTO's text presentation - which on the 17-track album sometimes singing, sometimes reciting, then again "gossiping" - as "Dadavantgarde", listening with open ears without prejudice. (P. 94)
Aftertaste
Some of the GTO's can be seen in Frank Zappa's 1970 film 200 Motels . Miss Pamela appears there in the role of an always curious reporter. Miss Lucy and Miss Jane Fergusson, on the other hand, played, as Carl-Ludwig Reichert noted, "what they were: groupies". (P. 70)
Miss Christine died in 1972 of a drug overdose. Miss Lucy died of AIDS in 1991. Miss Sandra went back to San Pedro and later died of cancer.
Web links
- Permanent damage songs, cast, lyrics
- Pamela Des Barres homepage
Single receipts
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Barry Miles : Zappa . Rogner & Bernhard, 2005. ISBN 3-8077-1010-8
- ↑ a b c d Carl-Ludwig Reichert : Frank Zappa . DTV, Munich, 2000. ISBN 3-423-31039-1
- ↑ a b Pamela Des Barres (as of October 9, 2006)
- ↑ a b c d e Electric Gypsy ( Memento of the original from April 29, 1999 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (As of October 9, 2006)
- ↑ a b c d Permanent Damage (as of October 9, 2006)
- ↑ a b Miss Lucy (as of October 9, 2006)
- ↑ I'm with the band (as of October 9, 2006)
- ↑ Pamela Des Barres' homepage (as of October 9, 2006)
- ↑ a b Miss Sandra (as of October 9, 2006)
- ↑ Miss Sparky (as of October 9, 2006)
- ↑ Frank Zappa gig list (as of October 9, 2006)
- ^ Rainer Blome: The GTO's. In: Sounds - Platten 66-77 . Two thousand and one, Frankfurt, 1979.
