TMS Muse of the Week: Linda 'Sparky' Parker

(Baron Wolman)

If you have as much longevity of groupie lore as I do, then there’s one set of groupies who regularly linger throughout all the research: The GTOs [Girls Together Outrageously]. Because of my lack of interest in the clique’s Svengali, avant garde rocker Frank Zappa, as well as my aversion to anything involving most popular GTO Pamela Des Barres; I always assumed the others were ordinary girls who liked to party and have fun, like most groupies. Not to mention most of these ladies’ lives ultimately had pretty bleak conclusions, whether it be drugs for Christine Frka and Mercy Fontenot or HIV for Lucy Offerrall and Cindy Wells. It’s a sad state of affairs when Pamela’s kissing and telling is considered one of the happy endings here. But in more recent years I’ve started clueing in that one of the most private GTOs is actually pretty close to my brand of fascinating, elusive lady in the wings: Linda Parker, referred to by the moniker Miss Sparky [sometimes spelled Miss Sparkie] during her brief groupie days.

Considered the most creative of the GTOs, Linda Sue Parker was brought up in California’s San Fernando Valley in the 1950s and early 1960s where she was active in writing, painting and dancing. As a teenager, she worked at a local candy shop. By the time she was 18 in 1966, Linda was part of a Los Angeles dance troupe put on by bohemian legend Vito Paulekas, where most of the other GTOs were also members and met each other. Though Linda and Pamela were schoolmates at both Northridge Junior High and Cleveland High School [located in Reseda, CA], the two didn’t officially become friends until they were both frequenting the Sunset Strip in their late teens. Initially coined The Laurel Canyon Ballet Company, the young feminine dancers were eventually acquired by musician-producer Frank Zappa in 1968, after they quickly gained reputations for appearing at as many concerts, clubs and house parties in LA as possible. Within no time the Ballet Company became the GTOs and were being publicized for their association with male rockstars more than dancing. Frank, probably the biggest ‘champion’ for groupie-ism, always insisted that the presence of groupies was vital to the success and atmosphere of rock music. He took the niche to its full potential by producing a whole record for the GTOs called ‘Permanent Damage’ in 1969. If you look at the credits on the LP, you’ll find all of the instruments are played by male musicians, and superstars like Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck even make appearances. The content of the record itself though, is a bit polarizing, and mainly consists of candid spoken word conversations with the girls along with a few tracks of some semi-offkey singing vocals from them.

(via tumblr.com)

But what’s interesting to me is that nearly all of the ‘lyrics’ on ‘Permanent Damage’ were written by Linda, with the music composed by a piano instructor coincidentally named Davy Jones, and additional words by Pamela. You might also notice Linda’s missing from most of the photos on the inside sleeves. This is because Miss Sparky completely left both the GTOs and California before ‘PD’ was even released. Since she’s kept to herself all these years, we have very little info on what exactly Sparky has been doing with her life since 1969. We know that she lived in New York City in the 1970s, where she was married and had a son, Santo, with a local performer who was a part of the original 1968-69 Broadway production of ‘Hair.’ She reunited with Frank and the other girls in 1974 for a one-off ‘concert’ in Hollywood for the 5th anniversary of ‘Permanent Damage;’ and provided backup vocals for the track ‘Disco Baby’ on Frank’s album ‘Zoot Allures’ (1976). The Zappa associated rock band Ruben & the Jets featured a track called ‘Sparkie’ on their 1973 LP ‘For Real!,’ making her a muse as well. The coolest thing about Linda might be that she worked as part of the design department for both Disney World’s Hollywood Studios and the Universal Studios theme park in the 1980s and 1990s.

Every once in a while, fans will wonder on social media where Miss Sparky is these days, and if she’s even still with us. As of right now, Pamela and Linda are the last surviving GTOs, with the latter participating in a very rare, short interview this past January for the UK fansite Zappa News. From her responses, it sounds like Linda was starting to get uncomfortable with the type of men the GTOs were attracting; and by the time the clique was even formed, a clear divide was already made between those who considered themselves strictly fangirls of the songs and image, and those who legitimately wanted to be intimate with the musicians. Though she had her own episodes, particularly with Frank’s saxophonist Buffalo Roberts in 1968, Linda openly admits groupie culture turned out to not really be her thing in the end. She even went as far as to say she wanted “nothing to do with groupies and drugs” despite her own friends’ histories with these subjects. It seems like there might have possibly been something between Sparky and Frank himself, as she claims she spent a lot of personal time with the artist “riding around in her Hudson Hornet” through town, and Mrs. Zappa didn’t particularly care for her either.

Although she is an authentic part of classic rock history, Linda has chosen the route of not publishing any of her early life memories. A good example of turning the page and starting a new chapter.