Lori Mattix

Lori Mattix, sometimes known as Lori Maddox or Lori Lightning, is a former child model and "baby" groupie of the 1970s. As of November 2015, she is a partner and buyer for the Glam Boutique in West Hollywood. She is perhaps best known for an interview with Thrillist in 2015 in which she made allegations of being involved in sexual relationships with David Bowie, Jimmy Page, and Mick Jagger; relationships which would have occurred while she was underage and while the musicians were in their twenties. Her experience has become a notable discussion point in the Me Too movement, with her story marking one of the more notable examples in the shift of the movement's focus from the film industry to the music industry.

Life as a groupie

At the age of 13, Mattix began frequenting clubs on Sunset Strip with her friend Sable Starr, particularly the Rainbow Bar and Grill, the Whisky A Go Go, and Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco.

When Mattix was 14 years old, she and Starr were introduced to David Bowie. A few months later, when Bowie returned to town, Mattix claimed that Bowie's bodyguard was sent to pick up her and Starr for a sexual encounter. According to Mattix, as she told to Thrillist in 2015:

[Bowie] walked me through his bedroom and into the bathroom, where he dropped his kimono. He got into the tub, already filled with water, and asked me to wash him. Of course I did. Then he escorted me into the bedroom, gently took off my clothes, and de-virginized me... that night I lost my virginity and had my first threesome.

Mattix gave a different account of her encounter with Bowie to music journalist Paul Trynka, in which she claimed that she and Starr sought out the hotel room Bowie was staying in and entered uninvited. Mattix claimed that when they entered his room, Bowie was “tired” and initially reluctant to have sex with them, but that they eventually persuaded him.

However, Mattix's allegations regarding her experience with Bowie have been called into question due to timeline issues; she may have already been in a relationship with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page by the time she claims to have met Bowie, as Led Zeppelin's 1972 North American tour came to Los Angeles several months before Bowie's Ziggy Stardust Tour arrived for the first time. Mattix had also previously claimed that she had been a virgin when she first became involved with Page. Furthermore, unlike the numerous photos of Page and Mattix together, and the "heavily corroborated and well-documented evidence of their relationship", no photographic evidence of Bowie and Mattix together exists.

In June 1972, while Led Zeppelin were in Los Angeles for their 1972 North American tour, the 14-year-old Mattix began dating Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page. According to Rolling Stone, Page went to great lengths to keep the relationship a secret due to the possibility of being arrested for statutory rape. At the insistence of Led Zeppelin's manager, Peter Grant, Mattix was kept in a locked hotel room with a security guard at the door during the band's subsequent U.S. touring. According to Mattix, after they had been together for a year, Page was willing to be seen in public with her and began bringing her to concerts. She claimed she ended the relationship when she was 16 years old after finding Page in bed with Bebe Buell. Buell gave an alternate version of these events, claiming that despite the fact that Mattix "had given herself exclusively to Jimmy (Page) from age fourteen to sixteen," she was barred by Page's security from seeing him once he began dating Buell.

Lori Mattix is said by Led Zeppelin biographers to have been referenced by the band in the song "Sick Again", specifically with the lyrics:

One day soon you're gonna reach sixteen
Painted lady in the city of lies

Mattix claims to have had a physically intimate relationship with Mick Jagger when she was 17.

Cultural impact

In 2015, an interview with Mattix was published in which she detailed the alleged relationships between her and Bowie, and later Page. The issue later became a central debate topic across social media, prompting a widespread review of how such stories should be understood in the #MeToo era.

When asked whether the Me Too movement had changed her opinion on her groupie years, Mattix admitted that she hadn't seen her relationships as exploitative at the time, but that the movement had forced her to view these years in a different light, and that now:

I don’t think underage girls should sleep with guys... I wouldn’t want this for anybody’s daughter. My perspective is changing as I get older and more cynical.

Commentators have used Mattix's story to highlight the differences between social attitudes in the 1970s regarding the sexual exploitation of minors, particularly regarding people in positions of power, compared to more modern sociological values. Dr. Rebecca Hains, a children’s media culture expert, viewed the problem as a symptom of sexism in the music industry, arguing that it is a "sad commentary on our culture that modern masculinity can be so entitled, so toxic, that we are repeatedly put in the position of both loving the art and hating the man behind said art for what he did to women and/or children." Journalist Stereo Williams framed the problem of lax social attention to such crimes as one endemic to the time period – considered unworthy of concern in the 1970s and earlier – but incompatible in a modern era where society has a greater focus on "protecting victims and holding celebrities accountable."