The Romance of Rock

This is Confessions of a Closet Romantic, a podcast where I celebrate my favorite romantic TV shows, movies and books and talk in detail about why love them so much. Without shame or embarrassment. Mostly! This is Poppy and in this episode, it's all about the Rockstar Romance.

Did you ever have a rock star crush? Right after I graduated high school, mine was lead singer Kevin Cronin from REO Speedwagon. 

I hung out with a group of guys and girls in the neighborhood who were REO fanatics, so we’d travel around the Midwest wherever they were playing, playing their albums over and over on cassette as we all smashed together on the floor of the van.

We weren’t groupies but we were…sure something for this band.

And then there was Marshall Crenshaw, the sweet little rocker of the 80s. I wore out his album Flag Day on vinyl.

I loved his songwriting so much, it inspired me to move to a town known for its music scene. After I got there went to a party at an old warehouse with my guitarist boyfriend — and who do I see but a very drunk Marshall Crenshaw way across the room. 

I say…. Is that…? as he weaves his way over, and sits right next to me. Right next to me, people! Thigh to thigh—and just looks at me. 

I definitely take pride in being cool around celebrities—once I followed not only Rupert Everett but Julian Sands out of the Piccadilly Circus tube station— and never said a word though I loved both of them. I was not stanning— I was going in the same direction.

But drunk as Marshall Crenshaw was, I decided I was going to take that opportunity to tell him how much his music meant to me. It was just too perfect. 

But then…he just kind of nodded, bleary eyed. And shuffled off. Yeaah. Still have no idea what brought him clear across the room to my side.

What’s the magic of musicians? It's like they're conjurers or something. If they’re struggling, have made it big or if they don't give a flip about those listening —hello Nirvana—they all seem to open up only when they pick up their instrument or start singing. It just makes me want to love up on them more.

That kind of creativity, power and vulnerability just oozes sexiness, especially in the shy ones. But some get cocky witth it. Literally.

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The rockstars in Kristen Callihan’s VIP romance series (can't recommend this series highly enough)  are kind, thoughtful and creative, and they struggle with the lifestyle. They're way past the days of regularly overindulging in sex and drugs, now falling for people in and out of the circus, which makes the stories so fly on the wall interesting.

In Idol, Killian is a rock god, the lead singer and guitarist for a massive band— Bono-level. He rents a remote farmhouse in North Carolina to get away from the rock star circus and recover from the near overdose of a friend but ends up drinking too much whiskey one night and wrecks his Harley on his new neighbor's front lawn.

She happens to be a singer-songwriter, an introvert and a bit of a hermit and doesn't recognize him. She drags him into her house, cleans him up, lets him sleep it off, and then feeds him breakfast and still doesn't clock who he is! And oh, how that starts to bug him.

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Idol is a memorable story about how a talented rockstar learns to relate to someone beyond fame and ego, helping Libby to find her own, folky inner rock star. 

What I love most about rockstar romances is seeing this supposedly glamorous world from the inside out and the found-family/band of brothers vibe… see my episode on Romantic Belonging for more on this delicious trope! 

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Sure, male rock stars especially are often loud, rude, destructive egotistical maniacs, and without a doubt there is a dark underbelly to the whole scene. But… nobody can argue that lots of guys want to be them, lots of women and men want to do them. 

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Living through the excesses of that biopic got me thinking: why don't female rock stars have groupies? Nico Case talks about how male groupies are not as safe as female groupies, duh, and when she was younger she felt a bit robbed by that. Because random hot guys chasing you to give you orgasms would be a super fun thing! Apparently they just hook up with other male rock superstars. I guess you really sign up for the whole package when you sign with a label.

But beyond the fun of easy sex it can be difficult to express yourself in the male-dominated world of rock. The biopic The Runaways is based on the true story about the all-female rock band of the 70s,  and how they struggled against expectations for women at the time.

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But If you prefer your rockstar stories with a bit less drama and more romance, if you'd like to live vicariously through the average people who sometimes fall in love with them, if you'd like a peek at the glamorous multimillionaire lifestyle that comes with writing music that makes you adored and desired around the world – well, you need to go no further than a bunch of rockstar romances that I will link to in the show notes.

Here's a dramatic moment from Dirtshine, the rockstar series by Roxie Noir. Darcy is the bass player and Trent is the guitarist and her best friend in the band Dirtshine. When something goes terribly wrong at one of their shows, it pushes them from friends to lovers and becomes the most touching stories ever. The rock details in this series are really fantastic.

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And now I'm waving my rock-on fingers to all the rockstars across the world who have persevered and survived with their creativity intact so we could enjoy the best freaking music on the planet!

If you enjoy this podcast, I hope you’ll consider clicking share from your podcast app, or following me or or telling a friend about it… 

You can find show notes with links to a bunch more of my favorite rock documentaries, movies and romances about male and female rockstars at confessions of a closet romantic.com You can also find me on Twitter and Instagram at Poppy_confesses —see you there!