During the early 1970s, the club scene on Los Angeles' famed Sunset Strip ran rife with nubile, wild-child groupies, some barely into their teens and already under the sly sexual tutelage of arena-rock giants like Led Zeppelin and David Bowie. These “L.A. Queens”, as Robert Plant affectionately dubbed them, studded the sidewalk in front of the Rainbow Bar and Grill, owned the dance floor at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco and sashayed about their rock 'n roll kingdom in tiny tops and sky-high platform shoes.
At a mere thirteen years old, Lori Maddox was a member of this Lolita troupe, and her heavy-lidded eyes and dark beauty helped to seduce the Dark Prince, Zeppelin's Jimmy Page – among others. Bearing the appropriately glitter-rock moniker of “Lori Lightning”, she pouted sensuously from the pages of the groupie bible Star magazine, her lithe, small-breasted body clad in the briefest of short-shorts, printed scarves wound as halter tops, faux-fur jackets, ripped fishnet stockings and teetery heels.
Lori owned the 70s glam-rock style, a mix of flashy, trashy and funky, vintage and vibrant. Decadent as it was, elements of her look have great potential to blend seamlessly into modern style. In one of of my favorite photos, Lori and Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls pose provocatively in some club, Sylvain giving the photographer a classic bad-boy sneer. Lori is clinging to him, Her body alternately melting into his arm and turning seductively towards the camera, wearing hot pants, a denim jacket and fantastic dark sunglasses under her tangle of thick ebony curls. Before the liquid leggings and Yves St. Laurent heels of modern club girlies, there was the dark angel, tiny dancer, misty mountain mama who slipped out of Jimmy Page's Riot House love nest and into style infamy.
