Once a GROUPIE.always a GROUPIE

For Sandie Jones, a teenage obsession became a pathway to the future

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I blame my 'groupie' tendencies on my mother, who was so upset by Elvis' death that we had to come home from holiday a week early. As a seven-year-old, it was disappointing to say the least, but by then, I think I must already have had an innate sense that pop culture was so much more than spinning vinyl on the turntable or putting a blank tape in the cassette deck to record the Top 40 countdown on a Sunday night. It may have been my mum's insistence that if Elvis ever came to London and met her, it would be love at first sight. Or perhaps it was the scrapbook of newspaper clippings of his wedding to Priscilla that she kept in the sideboard, which cultivated the idea that kneeling at the altar to an ego we'd never met, was a perfectly normal thing to do.

Because by the time I was 11, the groupie gene had well and truly taken hold. The word itself has always had onerous connotations; carried by generations of supposed sex-crazed fans who would happily exchange their morals for a night between the sheets with their idol. In fact, the dictionary definition refers to a young person, especially a teenage girl, who is an ardent admirer of rock musicians and may follow them on tour. And that defines me perfectly!

My first pop crush was Shakin' Stevens, ironically an Elvis impersonator, whose face covered every inch of my bedroom walls and ceiling. I saw him in concert and bizarrely appeared in one of his music videos, alongside hundreds of other prepubescent girls, which was beyond thrilling. Though to have recently discovered that he was 32 at the time makes me wonder if he was my idol or that of my chaperoning mother!