The "groupie," the ghostwriter and me

I’m a ghostwriter. I’m not, and never was, a groupie. But my debut novel, "The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers," features one of each, and both female characters were loosely based on me.

The ghostwriter character Mari was obvious, as I’d set out to write a novel based on my 14 years in the ghosting business, writing 21 books, five of them New York Times bestsellers. I had Mari work for a famous, enigmatic client known for high-profile relationships with three members of a world-famous band, the Midnight Ramblers. I set the book in the rock milieu because I knew it well from my career as a music journalist, which had been my dream job in my 20s — I was getting paid to write about music, which has always been a great love, and I got to frolic in this dazzling, debauched world with all of the other broken toys. (I have met a few stable, well-adjusted rock stars in my day, but people who crave this lifestyle, mostly not, at least in their younger days.)

I created the “groupie” character with the goal of writing about her life and loves in a way that gave her agency and dignity, which women adjacent to famous men often don’t receive. Just like me, Anke doesn’t think of herself as a groupie and pushes back against the label repeatedly, but it wasn’t until I had finished my publisher’s edits that I understood I had also written Anke to give agency and dignity to myself and the affairs I had enjoyed with several indie rock musicians.

While my own relationships with these men and the stories I told about them did include sex (let’s be honest, this has traditionally been the main tool young women have to gain access, whether they use it or not), sex was neither my goal nor my focus. I fell for them because I loved their music so much, and I sat at their feet because I wanted to be an artist myself — not just by mastering the craft of writing, but by having the courage, ego and sometimes self-destructive energy to break free from the typical life path and decide my stories had enough merit to be shared. And, given how insecure I was at that age, the fact that these celebrated men saw something in me galvanized me to declare myself an artist as well. (My motto in those days: “Be like a boy.”)  

Not everyone will get it, I know. But for me, this was potent stuff. At 16, I took my first fiction workshop and decided I was a writer. My then-best friend gave me a tape she had recorded of an indie rock album that had been released to fanfare. It was romantic, obsessive, full of allusions to sex, drugs and self-deception, delivered with grandiose vocals, like a back-alley opera, over chiming, churning guitars. The singer was telling me all the secrets I most wanted to know about: the essential natures of men and women, and the alchemy they can create together; the raw thrum of creativity, the cost of ambition. I listened to it on repeat for years, saw them play live — crushing on the brooding frontman — and returned always to their opus.  

A decade later, when I was living in Boston as a freelance music journalist and aspiring novelist, I had the opportunity to interview this singer about his latest project, which I also adored, of course. I wanted to write something to capture his essence as an artist. I wanted to get his attention. I wanted to walk around in his shoes, inside his songs. I went to his house, took his drugs, undressed for him, listened to the rough mixes of his new music, took his calls from around the world for months — for years, on and off, in the end.   

I described this affair in gory detail in my 2015 memoir, "Good Girl." As a young writer, I felt I needed to be candid about the excess and lack of boundaries I was prone to before doing the work to heal from a childhood scarred by my gambling addict, wannabe mystic dad. I was also trying to write an artistic coming-of-age story, and I wanted to call out the ways male artists often get celebrated and deified for their bad behavior, while the women who choose to be the Bonnies to their Clydes are often dismissed as groupies, sluts, disposables. Even when they have their own bands, books and stories, they are usually seen in relation to their paramours. At the time, I was proud of my memoir and how raw I dared to be in it, and I felt gratified when other female artists told me they had related to my book. I was less thrilled that the men involved, for the most part, weren’t interested in reading it.  

I emailed the singer in advance of its publication, and he offered his congratulations but said he didn’t want his name or his band’s name in anyone’s book. I was hurt but acquiesced. I didn’t have the maturity at the time to understand why his privacy was so important to him. He had been in the throes of an intense drug dependency, and as I can now see, he might not have wanted someone he didn’t really know all that well to share his secrets with the world. I can sympathize with that point of view today. I also still believe my story as the young female artist, sitting at his feet, is as important as the story of the grizzled prizefighter wooing the ingenue.

I had affairs with several other musicians over the years — too many, from a literary perspective. My editor had me cut a few, feeling they covered the same ground — a young, ambitious, music obsessive and artistic aspirant uses her access to gain audiences with male artists she admires, often launching long-distance love affairs built around their inherent unavailability, mirroring her childhood relationship with her gambling dad. Some of them were addicts. They lived far away or toured constantly. They had girlfriends and women in every city. I was drinking too much and giving too much to my writing to be in any condition to have a real, intimate relationship, anyhow. (All that therapy does work eventually.)

Of course, I’ve had to ask myself why it mattered to me so much that they let me name them. I suppose the simplest answer is I wanted to be recognized for having a role in the story — not just their stories, but the story of the larger artistic community to which I have devoted my life. And so, eventually, I gave myself acknowledgment in the best way I could. I wrote Anke, who was famous in her own right and had more serious relationships with more famous men than I had. I also gave her greater self-worth, discernment, and restraint than young me.

Without creating spoilers, let’s just say Anke showed more reserve in her fictional memoir than I did in my real one. But then again, I’m a storyteller, and Anke was not. I believe in the redemptive and connective power of storytelling, and that it is OK to risk some exposure, within reason, in the pursuit of that connection with your readers, especially other artists you admire. Not everyone agrees. People who tell their truths in song often prefer to filter them through metaphor, the emotionality of the music itself. They may not feel as comfortable being exposed as I did; they may have more to hide. As I wrestle with the pages of "Ramblers," it does matter who gets to tell the story that becomes the official record. With greater understanding and compassion, I am grateful for the moments I shared with these men, but I realize the lessons I took from them are really my own — and were really my own all along. Even more than that, I am so glad I got to pursue my own truth, about who I am as a writer and a woman, in my own time, and to express myself as an artist without asking anyone’s permission.