The GTOs

The GTOs were a "groupie group" that consisted of Miss Pamela (Pamela Ann Miller, later Pamela Des Barres), Miss Sparky (Linda Sue Parker), Miss Lucy (Lucy Offerall, later Lucy McLaren), Miss Christine (Christine Frka), Miss Sandra (Sandra Lynn Rowe, later Sandra Leano), Miss Mercy (Mercy Fontentot, aka Judith Edra Peters) and Miss Cynderella (Cynthia Wells, later Cynthia Cale-Binion). The group hailed from the area around Los Angeles in the late 1960s, with most of the girls being denizens of the Sunset Strip scene. Their only album, Permanent Damage, was released in 1969.

History

Miss Pamela and Miss Sparky met while attending Cleveland High School. Miss Christine had travelled to Los Angeles from San Pedro with Miss Sandra, and both lived in the basement of Frank Zappa's log cabin in the mid 1960s. Miss Christine was the live-in nanny for Zappa's eldest two children, Dweezil and Moon Unit, before Miss Pamela took over the position during the late 1960s. Miss Mercy had emigrated from the Haight Ashbury hippie scene to LA due to "boredom", alleging she "couldn't be a hippie forever." Miss Cynderella was an addition to the group brought by Mercy after the nucleus of the group had been formed. This accounts for Cynderella's presence in some, but not all of the GTOs publicity shots. Miss Lucy was also not an original member and joined after the recording of Permanent Damage.

Originally known as "The Laurel Canyon Ballet Company," they changed their name to The GTOs on the advice of Frank Zappa, their financial supporter and producer. The new name is an acronym which, as Stanley Booth wrote, could mean "Girls Together Outrageously or Orally or anything else starting with O."^[1] The acronym has also been defined as “Girls Together Occasionally”, “Girls Together Often” and “Girls Together Only”.

The members were connected by their association with Zappa, who was a complex musician who encouraged their artistic endeavors, even though the GTOs were not singers of renown. Performances by the group were sparse, although they created a strong impression at their 1968 performance at the Shrine Auditorium. A mix of theatrics, singing, and dance were staples of their act. Their only album, Permanent Damage, (Straight Records) was produced in 1969 by Frank Zappa with the assistance of Lowell George and Russ Titelman (tracks 7 and 11). The latter track also features Titelman's brother-in-law, guitarist Ry Cooder, both of whom appear on Captain Beefheart's Safe As Milk album. Track 5 "The Captain's Fat Theresa Shoes" is a GTO comment on Beefheart's taste in footwear. (Beefheart's cousin Victor Hayden had also effected Pamela Des Barres' introduction to Vliet). The songs are mixed in with conversations between the members of the group, friends, and others, including Cynthia Plaster Caster and Rodney Bingenheimer. The album features songwriting contributions from Lowell George, Jeff Beck and Davy Jones. A young Rod Stewart also pops up on the vocals of one track. Permanent Damage was re-issued on CD in 1989 by Enigma Retro.

Personal lives

• Miss Pamela (born September 9, 1948) is the most famous of the GTO's in terms of overall commercial success. Prior to joining the group, she had been a member of Vito Paulekis' dancing troupe. Des Barres is the author of three memoirs, the first, I'm With The Band(1997), is based primarily on a diary she faithfully secretly kept from her high school years all the way through her eventual marriage, due in part to the encouragement she received from her group's future producer, Frank Zappa. The book went on to reach the critically acclaimed top 10 Best Seller's List for a few weeks straight at one point. Each book contains different perspectives of describing her life during the 1960s and, in particular, the groupie scene, which Des Barres's book, Let's Spend the Night Together(2007), a collection of interviews with fellow rock groupies, (2007) defends. Miss Pamela married British actor/musician Michael Des Barres(he would eventually take the place of singer Robert Palmerin the 1980s rock band The Power Station). Together they have a son, Nicholas Des Barres, who is now an editor for a video game magazine in Tokyo, Japan, where he also currently resides.

• Miss Mercy (born February 15, 1949) was born in Burbank, California. She has been referred to by Miss Pamela as "the human facsimile". Having moved to Florida with her parents and older sister at an early age, the family eventually settled in San Mateo, California. Then, in 1964 (when she was 15), she dropped out of the local high school and told her parents she was ready to legally become an independent. Despite their strong disapproval, she went ahead and filed for her own emancipation, becoming a ward of the court within a couple weeks. Miss Mercy went to live with a group of friends in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco, California. Some of their earliest neighbors included members of the Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, and even a young Charles Manson. Eventually, the time came Miss Mercy and Miss Pamela had heard from peers that Los Angeles was the mecca for meeting entertainers and especially rock & roll musicians. In addition, Miss Pamela wanted to pursue her acting career in Hollywood, and in early 1969, they moved south, instantly immersing themselves into the local scene. Then, one of Miss Pamela's childhood friends by the name of Don Glen Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) took the girls to a large castle-like compound in Laurel Canyon where they were introduced to a semi-well-known musician named Frank Zappa. Soon after the breakup of the group, she became romantically involved with blues guitar prodigy Shuggie Otis, the son of rhythm & blues pioneer Johnny Otis. They eventually were married and had a son named Lucky Otis, who is also a world-renowned multi-instrumentalist / musician in the likeness of both his father and grandfather. A few years later, Miss Mercy and Shuggie divorced and went their separate ways. For the next 15 to 20 years she moved around northern and southern California, living a mysterious life of heavy drug use which resulted in a lifestyle riddled by sporadic public appearances. During the middle of this phase, Miss Mercy later re-married in 1991, and then, in 2000, Miss Mercy divorced her second husband and finally quit all hard drugs (and cigarettes) all concurrently. She has been clean and sober ever since. Miss Mercy currently resides in downtown Los Angeles and works for a thrift store in Hollywood. A somewhat concise account of her biography, entitled "Miss Mercy's Blues", is extensively featured at length as its own chapter of I’m With The Band, and her quite extensive resumè spanning over five decades, ranging from magazines and books to radio, television, and feature-length award-winning documentaries (she had a ten-minute segment dedicated to her life in the cult hit called The Mayor Of Sunset Strip starring alternative rock pioneer KROQ disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer, who is also a close longtime friend of the GTO's). Miss Mercy and Miss Pamela still remain close friends. As of 2011, Miss Mercy is working closely with an author / biographer to help document her life.

• Miss Cynderella was married John Cale of Velvet Underground in 1971, but the marriage was rocky. Cale's song "Guts" opens with the line, "The bugger in the short sleeves f*cked my wife" (referring to Kevin Ayers sleeping with Miss Cindy in 1974).^[2] They divorced in 1975. Miss Cynderella died on February 19, 1997, in Palm Desert, California;^[3] however, her death was not widely reported until 2007, when Pamela Des Barres mentioned it in her book Let's Spend the Night Together (where she inadvertently listed the wrong death year for reasons unknown).

• Miss Christine appeared on the front cover of Frank Zappa's 1969 album Hot Rats. She is shown halfway emerging from an empty swimming pool on the infamous Errol Flynn Estates (once private and now open to the public as a park) in the Hollywood Hills. She also dated rock & roll singer Alice Cooper, as well as Todd Rundgren from Utopia fame and a member of the Flying Burrito Brothers. Miss Christine died on November 5, 1972, of a heroin overdose in a house in Cohasset, Massachusetts, which was at the time being rented out by musician Jonathan Richman and his original group, The Modern Lovers.^[4]. Her death occurred shortly after she had spent close to a year in a full body cast to correct her crooked spine.

• Miss Lucy appeared in Frank Zappa's underground cult classic film 200 Motels. in which she had a moderate role in portraying an overtly promiscuous groupie. She was married to the late Gordon McLaren (bassist for the New York City group called, coincidentally, The Groupies from 1975 to 1981, with whom she had a son, Coleman. ^[5]Years later, she was impregnated by a close friend and bore another son named Dallas, only to find out she had contracted AIDS, still a fairly new and rather unheard-of disease for that time. Miss Lucy died in 1991. Dallas only lived to the age of ten, having been born with ARC (the child equivalent of the AIDS virus), in 1991 of complications from AIDS. She was among the first of many cases in California history who were diagnosed to have the disease to actually die from it.

• Miss Sandra was in the group only a short while before becoming pregnant by Frank Zappa's official artist-in-residence, Cal Schenkel, and they had a daughter named Raven. She soon moved back to her hometown of San Pedro, California while Raven was still a baby, and after the GTO's breakup, only to meet and move overseas with an Italian citizen, with whom she married and gave birth to three children. Miss Sandra died in Italy of ovarian cancer on April 23, 1991.

• Miss Sparky recorded a vocal track (credited under the pseudonym "Sharkie Barker") on the song "Disco Boy" on Frank Zappa's album Zoot Allures (1976), and was also at a time employed with the Walt Disney Corporation.

Discography

• Permanent Damage (1969) - Sole album by the GTOs

Track Listing

1. The Eureka Springs Garbage Lady (3:47)
2. Miss Pamela and Miss Sparky discuss STUFFED BRAS and some of their early gym class experiences (2:10)
3. Who's Jim Sox? (0:18)
4. Kansas and the BTO's (1:12)
5. The Captain's Fat Theresa Shoes (1:56)
6. Wouldn't it be Sad if There Were No Cones? (1:11)
7. Do Me in Once and I'll Be Sad, Do Me in Twice and I'll Know Better (Circular Circulation) (2:19)
8. The Moche Monster (1:46)
9. TV Lives (1:03)
10. Rodney (3:42)
11. I Have a Paintbrush in My Hand to Color a Triangle (2:11)
12. Miss Christine's First Conversation With the Plaster Casters Of Chicago (0:57)
13. The Original GTO's (1:05)
14. The Ghost Chained to the Past, Present, and Future (Shock Treatment) (1:45)
15. Love on an Eleven Year Old Level (1:18)
16. Miss Pamela's First Conversation With the Plaster Casters Of Chicago (1:31)
17. I'm in Love with the Ooo-Ooo Man (3:27)

Individual songs were also released on several compilation albums. Tracks released in this way have included:

• "Do Me in Once and I'll Be Sad, Do Me in Twice and I'll Know Better (Circular Circulation)" - from Zappéd, a 1969 Warner Bros. loss leader.
• "Kansas and the BTO's; the Captain's Fat Theresa Shoes; the Original GTO's" - from The Big Ball, a 1970 Warner Bros. loss leader.
• "Sock It to Me" - from Sound of Funk, Vol. 9, a 2001 compact disc released on the Goldmine Soul Supply label.
• "Girl From New York" - from Cameo Parkway 1957-1967, a 2005 compact disc released by Universal.

References

1. ^ Booth, Stanley (1984). The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones. New York: Vintage Books. pp. 65. ISBN 0394741102. 
2. ^ What's Welsh for Zen, by John Cale and Victor Bockris (1998)
3. ^ A search under her married name of the Social Security Death Index
4. ^ "The Modern lovers Live Radcliffe 27-10-1972 - Tapecity Live Music Sharing". tapecity.org. http://www.tapecity.org/showthread.php?t=25095. Retrieved 6 February 2010. 
5. ^ "The GTO'S - LAUREL CANYON STORIES". seastwood.com. http://www.seastwood.com/gtos.htm. Retrieved 6 February 2010. ^{[dead link]}

External links

• The G.T.O.'s at Allmusic
• Pamela Des Barres.com
• hollywoodhangover.com
• Pamela Des Barres