Sarah Priscus' "Groupies" -- Another Incompetent Attempt at Explaining the '70s

It has been twenty-five odd years since Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” hit movie theatres, and we are still living with the consequences. The character of Penny Lane was introduced to America, and suddenly women everywhere were reveling in the idea of traveling around the world with rock and roll musicians as–some would say muses, but let’s call them what they really are: groupies. 

Groupies have quite impressively rearranged their roles in the cultural zeitgeist. In the ‘70s, they were viewed as nothing but overindulged fan-girls who had little to no respect for the musical complexities of the bands they trailed. Now, they are promoted as starstruck music lovers who were none the wiser as to what ending up a road wife really entailed. They are portrayed nauseatingly sympathetically, like they are just as if not more important than the bands they follow. Sarah Priscus’ 2022 novel “Groupies” is no exception to this rule.  

“Groupies” follows 23-year-old aspiring photographer Faun Novak as she explores the allegedly seedy underbelly of the rock scene in 1977-78 L.A. with her best friend and co-conspirator Josie. Together, they follow the band Holiday Sun around and try to glean some meaning out of the sights and sounds around them. 

Faun Novak is chock full of naїveté, which is her one and only major character trait. She’s pulling the wool over her own eyes and throws an internal temper tantrum whenever someone tries to rip it off. She is far too easily influenced by the other women around her, which leads her to make hilariously cringe-worthy decisions in regards to her relationships with side characters, the kind that no self-respecting 23 year old would make. Though I guess the point is she doesn’t respect herself at all, which is extremely overdone and tiresome by the fifth chapter. But not to worry, because she proves throughout the novel that she is also capable of making horrible, ultimately life-ruining decisions not from the influence of other people but out of her own merit. I wonder in what world Sarah Priscus lives in in which these traits make a protagonist endearing instead of insufferable. 

You would assume in a book detailing the lives and times of groupies who follow around fictional rock band Holiday Sun, the escapades and exploits of the band would be given considerable attention and detail in a 358 page book. You, dear reader, could not be further from the truth. 

Holiday Sun consists of four band members, who can all be summarized in one defining trait: Scott Sutherland, guitarist, who is married. Kent Pearce, drummer, who is dating a sixteen year-old. Cal Holiday, lead singer/guitarist, who hits his girlfriend. Howie Guerrero, bassist, who can have any woman he wants. Understanding the bands relationships to the women around them is all fine and dandy considering the subject matter, but the problem arises in the fact we don’t know any other damn thing about them. 

Holiday Sun is the most underdeveloped fictional band I have ever had the displeasure of reading about. There is absolutely no sense of a band dynamic or any actual personality traits aside from the basic ones that can be ascribed to them, as we rarely, if ever, get to witness the band interacting with each other. 

Priscus likes to write Holiday Sun like they are the devil incarnate, which causes their existence to be unbelievable and lacking even the slightest hints of nuance. We cannot be shocked by the bad things the band gets up to if you can’t even be bothered to show us the band being good people. Kent cheating on his girlfriend elicits no reaction. Howie being shallow elicits no reaction. The band scamming Faun out of money for a photoshoot elicits no reaction. Cal abusing his girlfriend elicits no reaction, even when he gets his comeuppance for it. 

Cal Holiday’s outgoing, take-no-shit-from-anybody, loud and proud girlfriend is Josie Norfolk. In any other world, she would be the character through whose eyes we get to see the story unfold. She has the most going for her, personality wise, and has already seen all the ins-and-outs of Holiday Sun’s dynamic that we are so starved of, of the debauchery they allegedly engage in. She is the most compelling character in all of the book, but is unceremoniously relegated to the sidelines and is primarily discussed when Faun projects identity crises upon her. 

Of course, there are other groupie side characters circling around the band. And while Priscus put a lot of thought into the names of her half-baked characters, she sure as hell didn’t put any into researching for her story. 

It could be assumed that somebody writing a story set in 1977 L.A. would at least put minimal effort into researching the time and place they were writing about, especially considering the fact that Sarah Priscus wasn’t even born until long after the ‘70s music scene lost its chokehold over the city. Somehow, that wasn’t the case, and the book ends up dredged in its own logistical faults. 

A store radio plays 1977 T. Rex songs, presumably off Dandy in the Underworld, which never charted in America. A chauffeur plays old songs by The Mamas and The Papas while they drive, and it is never specified if this is over a cassette player, an eight track player, or a college radio station. New albums do not need to have the cellophane torn off, and the records can instead be slipped right out fresh from the store. Little details that any other writer would think to mention slip by constantly. 

Even Holiday Sun itself is full of these inconsistencies. They never interact directly with any real people or institutions. Almost every show they play is at some unnamed location, save for the Troubador, and they record in nameless studios with nameless producers and session musicians who are there to do god-knows-what. We don’t even get to see any of the recording process that so tortures this band. The group has existed since roughly 1970, but by 1978, they only have four albums, the kind of release schedule that would pronounce your career dead with how cut-throat the industry was at the time. They are alternatingly described as one of the biggest bands America has to offer and as small and insignificant, as creative powerhouses and unoriginal shmucks. 

Priscus can’t even make up her mind what part of the decade she actually wants to cover. Holiday Sun’s style of rock wholeheartedly embodies the Eagles. Punk stores are set up all across L.A., completely ignoring the fact punk was built on second-hand and DIY culture. When Faun goes to New York to live out the rest of 1978 at the end of the novel, she describes meeting “folk-singing Ginsberg-wannabes”, “draft dodgers with berets and unwashed beards”, and “[doing] acid with a James Taylor type”, sights that would not be seen in this or any other city past 1973 (and that’s a generous estimate). 

Sometimes this novel reads like Priscus just wanted to write little vignettes depicting different parts of the era, and at the last minute decided she wanted to make it one, “cohesive” novel. The plot certainly makes it seem that way. 

Nearly everything that happens in this book is of little consequence. The sexism Faun is subject to is so shameless, unsubtle and straightforward that it’s almost unbelievable. It reads like parody. When it is revealed that drummer Kent Pearce is actively taking heroin, nobody in the room even takes the time to react, despite the fact that heroin had the reputation of being the “serious” drug in rock circles for decades. 

The twist the book hinges on, that Cal is beating Josie, is predictable from the first mention of the bruises on her arm. We don’t even see this abuse until page 159 despite all the references to it, and it’s revealed like it’s supposed to come as some massive shock, like Priscus wanted to trick the audience into thinking it wasn’t actually happening even though it could be spotted from a mile away. 

Josie takes it one step further, stabbing Cal in the arm with nail scissors, and, guess what, nothing comes out of it. The gig the band is about to play doesn’t get cancelled. Josie isn’t sent home to think about what she did. This altercation doesn’t immediately trigger earth-shattering communication breakdowns that could tear her and Cal apart and, thus, tear the band apart. When Josie eventually murders Cal, it reads like Priscus watched the “up to eleven” scene from This is Spinal Tap and decided that was good advice. And oh, how the murder goes down is positively ridiculous. 

Sarah Priscus’ “Groupies” is a novel written so amateurly that it is grating. It is lacking and it is flimsy. She thinks that she can just throw the typical moral dilemmas that surround groupies and expect it to count for something, despite the fact she makes no grand statements about the nature of groupie culture. By the end of the novel, all we know is that Priscus still feels vaguely positively about the whole thing. This is not a novel I could recommend in good conscience to anybody looking for literature set in the 1970s. I hope Priscus never tries to write about anything that occurred before she was born ever again.