TMS List: Muses and Other Ladies Too Obscure for Their Own Articles
(via rocksbackpages.com / pinterest.com)
It’s hard to believe, but even with the advancement of the world wide web, its search engines, key words, and almost 20 years of my own obsessive, semi-creepy, stalkerish deep diving; there are still some people behind the scenes of film, music and other arts too private for me to find much detail on. So this week, I’m going to go in a bit on some of the ladies that I would love to cover in my regular Muse of the Week series, but simply can’t because I just don’t have enough photographs or information on them.
Ladies in Journalism and Broadcasting:
Unlike veteran magazine writers like Ann Moses and Lisa Robinson, both of whom have published memoirs and are occasionally interviewed, a lot of young women who were a part of entertainment media at the height of classic rock and the British Invasion surprisingly went incognito after retiring from journalism. Ann’s pals Tracy Thomas and Carol Deck, who wrote for Flip Magazine, are a couple of these private gals five decades later. But the one pop culture reporter who fascinates me the most is Rochelle Reed, a colleague of Ann’s at Tiger Beat and who can be spotted in a set of 1968 photos with Ann and some of the Monkees on the Columbia Studios lot. Something about Rochelle’s vibe in the pics, with her long, black hair and dark sunglasses, just makes her seem pretty cool to me. All we seemingly know of Rochelle in 2025 is that she was a staff writer for KRLA Beat in the mid-1960s before TB; and was later extended to columns in Monkee Spectacular and Fave in the late ‘60s before leaving the publications for a transcribing stint at the American Film Institute in the early 1970s. She also authored a handful of paperback books affiliated with Tiger Beat. Other than that, nada. I did once, by coincidence, come across a picture from 2011 on Getty Images, of an older woman credited as ‘Rochelle Reed,’ a local head editor of The San Luis Obispo Tribune, and actually does look like she could be 1960s Rochelle in her later years. Is it the same woman? It sounds plausible to me, but the question technically remains.
Similarly, while not an unknown, Cathy McGowan was one of the most popular figures of UK television as the co-host of ITV’s music variety program “Ready, Steady, Go!” in 1963-66, and has somehow successfully gone completely under the radar since the 1980s ended; even with both of her husbands [actors Hywel Bennett and Michael Ball] being famous in their own right. I don’t know about anyone else, but I would love an in-depth update on Cathy and her memories on meeting, mingling and interviewing so many legendary music stars at the height of London’s notoriety.
(ScreenGems / coolcherrycream.com)
Ladies in Groupiedom:
Of all the girls to be associated with the rock groupie scene over the years, the one semi-recognizable name I have never been able to find any pictures of is Debbie Donovan. Famous for her connection to singer-songwriter David Crosby, Debbie and her best friend Christine Hinton were initially the presidents of the Byrds’ fanclub in Los Angeles in 1965-66, before upscaling to groupies of the band [specifically David] by the time they were done with school, and eventually moved into the musician’s place in a legitimate ménage-à-trois. Unsurprisingly, this arrangement primarily centered on sex and other ‘free love’ activities you “had to be there” to understand. What is surprising is that there are quite a few photos of Christine out in the wild, though a big part of that might because of her tragic death from a car accident in 1969. David and Debbie continued living together for a few years, which included conceiving a daughter, Donnie. Supposedly the relationship ended badly, and Crosby bluntly claimed in his twilight years he was not on good terms with either Debbie or their daughter. In my head, I usually imagine Debbie with long, platinum blonde hair opposite Christine’s dirty blonde shade. Am I far off? Your guess is as good as mine. Pennie Ann Trumbull is also a former groupie with little visual proof of her heyday in the ‘70s. Despite now being known as the inspiration for Kate Hudson’s character, Penny Lane, in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000), the same, single, vintage, personal photo remains her only visual identity outside of when she appears at a modern event. Very frustrating for a nosy fan like me.
(Richard Creamer)
Ladies in Total Anonymity:
Back in the ‘70s, there was an LA based photographer named Richard Creamer [hurr-hurr], who shot a ton of photos at various Hollywood clubs, concerts and events. Somewhere along the way, Richard’s portfolio was acquired by Michael Ochs Archives and most of it has been uploaded on Getty. Unfortunately, MOA aren’t known for being very precise or accurate with their photo captions, so most Creamer photos on Getty don’t include names of the person in the shot, even if they’re well known. Throughout many of these mid-‘70s club photos—particularly at places like The Whisky a Go-Go, The Rainbow, and Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco—there are numerous young ladies who sometimes pop up and seem to be having a blast. They could be locals, they could be groupies, who knows. But it would be nice to have some proper context behind these historical snapshots of SoCal. This also goes to the group of uncredited ‘Monkee girls’ seen in the background of the first season of the group’s NBC sitcom who aren’t named Valerie Kairys, Jan Freeman or Roxanne Albee, and got to witness the golden age of both TV and pop music up front in 1966-67.
These aren’t even half of the secret ladies I’ve come across during my research over the years. There’s also Martha Wax, mid-‘60s San Francisco groupie and best friend of former MOTW subject Girl Freiberg; Valerie Romero, who is a former Monkee girl, ex-wife of Chad & Jeremy’s Chad Stuart, and widow of TV star Brian Kelly; a junior reporter known as ‘Gladys the Night Tripper’ who was a staple on the Sunset Strip in 1973-75. But I’m already two pages into this article and should probably stop before things get longwinded; and hope some of these women come across this piece and realize how fascinating some fans, like me, think they are.