The Rockstar’s Girlfriend (or the Rockstar Herself?)

Cigarettes for breakfast, black eye shadow, Devon Lee Carlson’s smile, big furry coats, Kate Moss hanging her head out the window, platform heels; all compiled to the sound of The Arctic Monkeys’ “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High.”

 Have you seen anything like this on your Tik Tok the past year? 

It was one of my favourite trends on Tik Tok: “The Rockstar's Girlfriend” aesthetic. From makeup looks, to fashion, to niche photo collections it was on my For You Page a lot as someone who likes music and is a female. But there’s an issue with this trend. Why as a woman do I get subjected to seeing women as an accessory while men get to start their own little indie rock bands? Is this  not limiting to what other women have and will accomplish in music? Specifically in rock, which is typically a male dominated genre.

What is our definition of a rockstar? On Tik Tok, it seems to be defined as a person with a guitar and as rock musician Suzi Quatro puts it: “Most of society didn’t see girls with a guitar between their legs.” As women, we get to accompany these men  as “the rockstar's girlfriend”. Although women have come a long way since the 70’s rock and roll scene, there is still a lack of public knowledge of the turmoil women have struggled through to participate in rock and roll. That is why I seriously question our fantasy of the rockstar’s girlfriend and personally, would rather listen to the rockstar Herself…

One of the careers that most closely reflects the rockstar’s girlfriend delusion is The Velvet Underground’s Nico. Working as a model, Nico was given the opportunity to be the lead singer of The Velvet Underground for her “visual qualities” thanks to the artist and producer Andy Warhol. This pigeon-holding gave Nico no creative control over her work. Her best known album Chelsea Girl included none of Nico’s wishes, she wanted drums, guitar, simplicity and instead Nico was devastated to get flutes. The record was said to be “her aura commodified by men who were intoxicated with the idea of Nico.” Her longtime collaborator John Cale stated after Nico’s death at 49: “[Nico] hated being a woman, because she figured all her beauty had brought her grief.”

 Society has conditioned  us to value women’s looks and put them on a pedestal, rather than listening to what they have to say. It’s sad to think about  what else Nico could have created in her lifetime had the people in control given her ideas a chance. 

Not only have women been unrecognised in rock but they often were treated poorly by the society in the industry. The band Heart features two sisters, Ann and Nancy Wilson who came to fame straight after their release of the debut album Dreamboat Annie. This fame came at a high price for the sisters; when their record company insinuated they were having a incestuous relationship using album photography in which they appear topless, as you can see pictured below. Shortly after it was published, a male music promoter asked how Ann’s “lover” was, meaning her sister. Enraged, Ann wrote the track “Barracuda,” a powerful and pulsing song seemingly condemning a lover. 

In 2018 Ann reflected in Rolling Stone:

 “Those lyrics were written by my true nature, in true rage. I hope that that song will come in handy now when women are thinking about what they want to do and not do.”

Heart's experience is an example of men' perpetuating their fantasies of women in rock, as we saw with Nico and as we see within the modern trend in question. 

Fanny is one of the first all female rock bands. They not only faced sexism, but also racism and homophobia. The band is Filipino-American, founded by Filipino sisters June and Jean Millington in San Francisco. They would often get booed by crowds before starting their sets but they always won them over because they were undeniably good.

A lot like our rockstar’s girlfriend trend, issues for Fanny stemmed from a surface level judgement  from rock consumers. Brie Darling, the band's drummer and half American, half Filipino recalled in NBC Asian America, “If somebody looked at me as if they weren’t expecting much or if, you know, they weren’t particularly friendly, I just thought to myself, ‘Just wait until we play. Wait until you see what I can do.’”

There was a lot Fanny could do; they were a favourite of David Bowie, the first female band to sign to a major record label and as The Runaways Cherie Currie stated in Fanny’s documentary,“They cracked that door and made it possible for us to believe that we could do it too.”

In 2018 the band reunited to create their album Fanny Walked the Earth. Only now is Fanny and their milestones being talked about, they now have a documentary, Fanny: The Right to Rock. “The rockstar’s girlfriend” is not only sexist, but exclusively caucasian and heterosexual. June the queer lead singer and guitarist stated about the industry: “There was a sort of secret ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that was unspoken and with me my whole life.” It’s ironic how such a sexually charged genre can be so limiting. Half of Fanny was gay, and thus they debunked all of the rockstar’s girlfriend’s exclusions 50 years ago!

Greatly affected by the culture of rock and roll and its patriarchal structure was the all female rock band The Runaways. To begin, The Runaways consisted of five talented girls only 15 and 16 years-of-age who sang provocative music about sex, drugs, and rage with songs such as “Cherry Bomb”. 

Their age made them a lot more susceptible to being exploited by older men, the worst perpetrator being their manager, the infamous glam-rock producer Kim Fowley. Fowley marketed the young girls as “hard-rock jailbait”, telling them to be “sexy”, having sex in front of them for “sex education”, throwing objects at them during rehearsals to “prepare them”. Fowley created the band with inspiration from Fanny, but with the intention that The Runaways would make him money. Lead singer Cherie Currie stated, "We were making no money at all. They were making a lot of money off of us.” 

When Fowley died in 2015, bassist Jackie Fox came forward alledging that Fowley had raped her in front of her fellow bandmates. Fox left the band shortly after the awful occurrence and understood that her bandmates were silenced from speaking out at a time where they were just as in danger as Fox was. This is a sad example of how the fantastical expectations for women in rock left them vulnerable to violence. 

After the end of The Runaway’s, the member Joan Jett prevailed and became one of the most widely known female rock artists. At her first guitar lesson, Jett was told “girls can’t play rock and roll” due to the sexuality the genre exudes. Jett and The Runaways clearly proved this notion wrong at an expense and when Jett went solo she wrote the iconic song “Bad Reputation” as a response. 

As much as I enjoy the aesthetic of the trend, it needs a name change and more inclusive sources. The fact that it was given the title “The Rockstar’s Girlfriend” indicates a lack of public knowledge of female rock stars. Women have served as so much more than just a “girlfriend” in rock. Nancy Wilson broke up with Heart’s bassist and went on to compose soundtracks for movies such as Almost Famous, Motley Crue were inspired by muses to create androgyny, Yoko Ono made all kinds of art herself, Devon Lee Carlson has a thriving phone case business,  and the list goes on. In all three of our insights there's a pattern of society trying to create a fantasy around these female artists. This perpetuates a lack of control, gossip, unrecognition and exploitation. In the present day rock scene, we have a lot of female rock bands and musicians like The Beaches, Miley Cyrus, and Beabadoobee yet we’ve still managed to create this antiquated trend that discredits the reality of what females are capable of musically and beyond. With that, I say we listen to the rockstar herself!

Illustration by Valerie Letts