About A Girl is a new podcast about the influential women behind the musical legends - women who inspired, supported, and challenged icons like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, and Bob Marley on their way to greatness. About a Girl is executive produced by Jake Brennan of Disgraceland and premieres November 30th, 2020.
In the summer of 1969, people all over the world were gripped by space fever in the wake of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission, which would successfully land men on the moon. In London, nineteen year old Angie Barnett, freshly out of boarding school, was searching for an identity of her own. She found it one evening in an up and coming singer named David Bowie, whose single “Space Oddity” was rocketing to the Number #1 spot in the UK charts. While their marriage a year later was one of convenience above all else, she would help him bring his alter ego, Ziggy Stardust, to life, and the relationship they developed was unique indeed.
In the mid-1960s, Los Angeles was a mecca of American music, and it was where Pamela Courson decided she wanted to be, escaping her suffocating conservative community in nearby Orange County. Pam was an intelligent but restless young woman, and she found a home among the outcasts of her generation who frequented the nightclubs and parties all over town. On one of these nights, she’d meet a sensitive and handsome poet who’d been thrust into the role of lead singer of a strange rock band called The Doors. Pam and Jim would quickly fall in love and over the next few years; their time together would be a rollercoaster. Ultimately, it would lead them to Paris.
Mary Austin, shopgirl. Farrokh Bulsara, art student. They formed a bond that didn’t have a name and couldn’t be defined. Even as he metamorphosed into the superstar the world would know as Freddie Mercury, their connection would last until the end.
In the early 1970s, actress Peggy Lipton was at a crossroads. She was the beautiful star of The Mod Squad, admired by girls and desired by men. And yet, she could not make a real relationship last, not until she met Quincy Jones, bandleader, record producer, and composer of Oscar-winning films. Sure, he was 13 years her elder, twice (and still) married with four kids. And never mind the roiling legacy of racism in America that would haunt their relationship. She knew he was the one.
By the time she was seventeen, London actress Jane Asher had already made a name for herself, onstage, in films, and in 1963 as a panelist on the BBC’s Juke Box Jury, a popular musical variety show. Due to her youth and popularity, she was offered an opportunity: interviewing The Beatles after their upcoming Royal Albert Hall concert. This simple assignment would be the start of a five-year relationship with Paul McCartney and a wild journey through the eye of Beatlemania and the 1960s cultural revolution, during which Jane would truly find herself.
In 1962, the Caribbean island of Jamaica gained independence from Great Britain, and the fledgling nation yearned to establish an identity of its own. Two years later, Rita Anderson was a teenage single mother living in the impoverished Kingston suburb of Trenchtown, in search of something beyond her circumstances. She would find it as a singer in a rocksteady group. That would lead her to discover her twin flame: a shy young man who also saw music as his ticket out of Trenchtown. His name was Bob Marley.
In 1959, an American teenager named Priscilla Beaulieu, daughter of an Air Force officer, was living in West Germany. Lonely and bored, she was introduced to another American who understood the feeling. Elvis Presley, already a huge star, was serving a stint in the U.S. Army, and fell in love with the beautiful, though very young girl. The troubling relationship only became more complicated as the years passed.
In rural Alabama, circa World War II, a farm girl named Audrey Mae Sheppard was at the tail end of a series of bad decisions. An ill-fated marriage and a pregnancy made her a single mother at the age of 18, and she’d had to move back home. An aspiring singer herself, she one day discovered an unassuming, lanky singer-songwriter named Hank Williams, and they fell in love. Their tumultuous union was defined by her singular, driving ambition to make them both stars.
Los Angeles, 1957. In the time of drive-in movies and sock hops, high school student Donna Ludwig liked to sneak out of the house to have fun with her friends. On one night out, she met a young guitarist named Richard Valenzuela and was immediately smitten. As Ritchie Valens, he would have a chart-topping hit with a song he wrote for her, before his life was tragically cut short.
Robyn Crawford met Whitney Houston when they were both just teenagers. From the moment their eyes met, Robyn was drawn in by Whitney’s warmth and beauty — and when she heard her sing, Robyn knew she wanted to be in Whitney’s life for good. But the price she would pay for Whitney’s success was their own romance.
Los Angeles, the mid 1990s. Tupac Shakur is one of the biggest emcees in the world, a lyric poet of a rapper. Kidada Jones is the daughter of music legend Quincy Jones. With her mother acting again, her younger sister Rashida headed to Harvard, and her father as active as ever, twenty-one year old Kidada was left to search for her place in the world. She would find it in Tupac, ironically after he’d blasted her interracial family in an interview.
Brooke Shields was a young star who had her first taste of massive fame — and controversy — with the film Pretty Baby, in which she’d played a child prostitute. Michael Jackson, youngest of the Jackson Five, was transitioning to solo stardom as an adult. They met in 1981, each with an uncertain path before them, but Brooke and Michael would find comfort and friendship in each other.
About A Girl is back with 12 new stories about women who have played crucial roles in music history, but whose fascinating personal stories have been eclipsed by the legends of their famous romantic partners. Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, Notorious BIG and Faith Evans, Miles and Betty Davis... Host Nikki Lynette sheds light upon the women — many of them artists themselves — without whom the landscape of popular music might be very different. About a Girl is executive produced by Jake Brennan of Disgraceland and premieres on June 7, 2021. Listen to About A Girl on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
About A Girl returns on June 7th with twelve new episodes about women who have played crucial roles in music history, but whose fascinating personal stories have been eclipsed by the legends of their famous romantic partners. Nikki Lynette, the host of About A Girl, sits down with Chelsea Ursin of Dear Young Rocker to discuss the new season and to preview an upcoming episode about Marianne Faithfull. For more info on About a Girl, Dear Young Rocker, and other great shows, visit the Double Elvis website and follow Double Elvis on Twitter and Instagram.
Mayte Garcia, a young dancer from Puerto Rico, meets Prince and slowly becomes immersed in his extraordinary world. Their collaboration becomes a romance and then a marriage, before tragedy pulls them apart. Sources for this episode can be found on our website. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners.
A beautiful English girl drifts into pop stardom and the inner circle of the Rolling Stones in 1960s London. As the girlfriend of Stones frontman Mick Jagger, the glare of public attention and personal misadventures take their toll on her mental health. She withdraws from her life, descending into addiction and hitting bottom before returning with a new voice (figuratively and literally) and an artistic triumph. Sources for this episode can be found on our website. This episode contains references to addiction and suicide and may be disturbing to some listeners.
Faith Evans met and married Christopher Wallace in 1994. Within a year, they both became stars. The new marriage suffered under their grueling work schedules, but their connection remained strong, despite external drama and pressure. Just as Biggie was looking forward to the next stage of his life, though, it all caught up with them.
The daughter of a blues pioneer falls in love with two brilliant musicians. Sly Stone takes her out of her quiet life, but almost drags her into the dark world of his own demons. Then she meets Carlos Santana, a long partnership built on a mutual search for transcendence.
The White Stripes. Jack and his sister Meg. His wife Meg. His ex-wife Meg. The non-musician who became a rock star. The unassuming, pretty, porcelain-complexioned woman who evoked thunder from behind the drum kit. Her silent intensity became a riddle and compelled millions of fans to puzzle for the solution. And her disappearance has made clear that none is forthcoming.
Behind Marvin Gaye's incredibly smooth, affable exterior was a soul tortured by the abuse he suffered as a child, insecurity, and paranoia. Like many victims, he turned perpetrator and dragged his child bride into his world of pain, drug dependency, and more sexual abuse. But Janis is a survivor...
Norma Tanega was a soulful American Latina artist, a one-hit wonder who never wanted stardom, but who fell in love with Dusty Springfield, the Queen of White Soul, who wanted stardom very much. They kept their contentious love affair from the public, but Norma had to leave behind Dusty's glittering world for the pain it concealed.
A songwriter and singer so erotic, raw, and ahead of her time that no one was ready for her. An earthquaking icon of feminism and Black power during a time when it was unheard of for a woman, let alone a Black woman, to own her sexuality so explicitly. Betty Davis pushed her legendary husband out of cool jazz and up to the cutting edge, before divorcing him and releasing three of the most unexpected and astonishing albums of the 1970s. Then she disappeared.
Long before June Carter came along, there was Vivian. Johnny Cash and Viv were deeply in love, and had four daughters together, before... well, you probably know the rest. But you might not know the heartbreaking story of a young woman who went through hell to save her family, whose racial identity became a scandal emblematic of mid-century American strife, and who made it through the dark times, only to be insulted and written out of history.
When Tammy Wynette was a young girl, she dreamed of singing with George Jones at the Grand Ole Opry. Her single-minded drive to be a star brought her to the top and to George Jones, and these two great voices of country music fell in love. But once seated as the queen of country, Tammy was lost, while George proved to be a troubled and dedicated alcoholic.
Lou Reed was fascinated and inspired by all kinds of real people who existed on the edges of society — junkies, street hustlers, gender non-conformists — but he fell in love with trans woman Rachel Humphreys, a beautiful mystery even to him. This episode contains references to heavy drug use, abuse, and suicide.
Linda Eastman was born a free spirit, but she was also the daughter of a strict and demanding father, a poor Jewish boy who became a wealthy lawyer and rebranded himself as a WASP. Linda fought her own nature to try and please him, and then her first husband, before finally breaking free to find success as a freelance photographer in Manhattan. Shooting and hobnobbing with ‘60s pop stars led her to Swinging London.
Host Nikki Lynette returns on May 16th to bring you 12 fascinating and dramatic stories of women whose pivotal roles in music history and pop culture are not widely known. Learn about Bob Dylan's secret wife Carolyn Dennis, Rick James's protegee Teena Marie, and Jenny Boyd, the woman Mick Fleetwood loved so much he married her twice. Nikki delves into the private struggles, the triumphs, and the heartbreak that occurred alongside the creation of timeless music.
Carrie Snodgress turned her back on Hollywood so fast that she didn't even attend the Academy Awards when she was nominated for Best Actress. Her dream was never stardom; it was love and family. But it was hard to find the stability her own childhood had lacked when she went to live with Neil Young on his remote ranch, just as Neil's solo career went into high gear.
A heat-seeking young beauty rockets through Europe, ricocheting off Fellini, Warhol, & Nico, before landing with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. But she falls for Keith Richards, and together they extricate her from Brian. Anita Pallenberg is with the Stones as they grow into world's premiere rock and roll band; she sings with them in the studio, makes films with Jane Fonda and Mick Jagger, her powerful aura a guiding force, but when things start to go bad, she discovers that a woman will only be allowed that position of power for so long. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including suicide and death of a child. If you're thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255.
The gospel-fed daughter of one of Ray Charles’s Raelettes had no idea who this Bob Dylan character was when she was called to audition for his band. Within a few years, she would be his wife and mother to his daughter—both of them hidden from the public, as Dylan converted to Christianity and tried to find his identity as a man and as an artist.
One of the ‘IT’ girls of Swinging London reconnects with her high school classmate, a talented drummer, striving to succeed. But his all-consuming obsession with his band and inability to communicate with Jenny makes for a difficult and unhealthy relationship. Once Fleetwood Mac finally hits big and Mick slides into fame and drugs, Jenny has to confront her own patterns of codependency.
America’s girl next door meets the leader of America’s wildest rock band. As Valerie Bertinelli struggles with her career as an actress, Eddie Van Halen and his band skyrocket to success, and he faces his own challenges by leaning into his drinking. Valerie moves to help him, but when the lifestyles they lead and the demands of work cause a rift, she finds she has her own demons to face.
Rita Coolidge soared as a singer and songwriter, working with Joe Cocker, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Bobby Womack, and Booker T. Jones. She was denied credit for writing the famous piano coda to “Layla” and her contribution to “Superstar,” a huge hit for The Carpenters, was similarly unsung. That was all before she met country rock troubadour Kris Kristofferson, whose superhuman levels of drinking did not help their marriage as her solo career took off. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners and includes descriptions of domestic violence.
A simple story about two people falling in love and then growing apart, except one of them was trying to navigate being extremely famous and under the oppressive thumb of Bill Cosby, while the other was on the verge of becoming a rock and roll superstar.
With a guitar slung over her shoulder, Teena Marie walked into downtown LA and came out with a contract with Motown, where funk master Rick James was enticed to take her under his wing. She was soon shocked to find herself in love with him. But nothing is sweet and simple where Rick James was involved.
Frank Zappa ruled his kingdom of freaks, a prolific and obsessed man with many plans. But Gail was undeniably the woman behind the man, a role to which she felt duty-bound, and when Frank passed away, there was a new freak queen on the scene.
Britt Eckland became famous first as the wife of comic genius Peter Sellers, whose troubled and unstable inner life eventually drove her away. Then she became a Bond girl and international sex symbol, and hooked up with one of the world’s biggest rock stars, Rod Stewart. Together, they led a life of wild excess, but true contentment eluded her under Rod’s reluctance to commit and wandering eye.
Linda Keith was so determined to make Jimi Hendrix a star that she dumped Keith Richards. She got Hendrix a manager and a record deal, but then felt compelled to let him go, even if he was never able to really let go of her.
Mary Ford did more for Les Paul’s career than most people know or care to admit. Before she met Les for a radio audition, Mary already had notoriety in the country scene as “Colleen Summers.” When the two musicians became entangled - both professionally and romantically - her plush vocals and quick pickin’ made them one of the most popular acts in America. But Les’ pride and workaholic lifestyle would eventually strip Mary not just of her love of music — but also the proper credit she deserved.