Mercy Fontenot - Permanent Damage: Memoirs of an Outrageous Girl

Mercy led a fascinating life. As a founding member of the GTOs, along with her relationship with Arthur Lee, she was at the epicenter of the Hollywood music scene.

Johnny Echols , Love

Mercy was absolutely the real deal, for real.

Blackbyrd McKnight

Lower Los Feliz is filled with trendy lumberjack and low fashion model wannabes, and out of nowhere there was Miss Mercy telling her stories about being in attendance at Jimi Hendrix and his Rainbow Bridge , watching Arthur Lee and Love in concert, a few Chambers Brothers performances and how she was the Gears hairdresser. Mercy was the ray of sunlight cutting through gray skies and a fire opal in an ocean of gravel and rocks.

Keith Morris , Black Flag, Circle Jerks, and Off!

Mercy was my counterculture cover girl. She represented the movement of women finally staking their territory in the world of individuality, free of societys demands to conform.

Baron Wolman , Rolling Stone photographer

Even though I met Mercy near the end of her life, Id seen her around at different rock events over the years, always thinking, Who is this bold-ass woman?! I later learned that we came from Northern California and had traveled our own musical paths, both crash-landing on the Sunset Strip in the sixties in our teens. Im looking forward to everyone else hearing Mercys stories and learning about her journey through her own words.

Brie Darling , Fanny/Boxing Gandhis

Back in late 78, I met Miss Mercy. To say she made me realize there was a lot more to life is an understatement. Before I knew it, I had bleached-blond hair, a large pompadour, and skateboarding was never to be the same again. She was, and always has been, important beyond most peoples comprehension. Her knowledge was unmatched to most. I thank you and love you, Mercy. Its time for you to be acknowledged for the queen that you are.

Steve Olson , pro skateboarder

The women of Laurel Canyon and beyond wrote their own rules and changed them when they chose. Mercy was one of them. Her group was appropriately named because they decided they were going to be outrageous. Mercy simply would not have it any other way.

Elliott Mintz , celebrity publicist

this is a genuine rare bird book

Rare Bird Books
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Copyright 2021 by Lyndsey Parker

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Set in Dante

epub isbn : 9781644282083

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

For Lucky

Contents

Foreword

by Lyndsey Parker

How are you still alive? That was the recurring question Id incredulously blurt out during my nearly three years of conversations with the mythical Miss Mercy as I attempted to capture her death- and odds-defying story. How are you still here? Id gasp as she shared tale after jaw-dropping tale of her fearless, sometimes reckless existence. But this was just a running joke between us. Because honestly, I thought Mercy Fontenot would live forever. I thought shed outlive Keith Richards. Even toward the very end, I still thought this true soul survivor would outlive us all.

Mercy was of course best known as the most outrageous and possibly least together member of the trailblazing, Frank Zappa-produced girl group the GTOs, or Girls Together Outrageously, alongside her best friend Pamela Des Barres, author of the celebrated groupie tell-all Im with the Band . When Rolling Stone reported the news of Mercys July 2020 death at age seventy-one, her GTOs tenure pretty much comprised the entire obituary. But if there was ever a Zelig of rock n roll, it was Mercy. When the first Acid Test went down in the Haight-Ashbury or when Jimi Hendrix made history at Monterey Pop, she was there. When the Stones played Altamont, she was thereeven though her tarot card reading for the band the night before had spelled disaster. When Al Green was a rising star in Memphis, or Wattstax took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, or punk rock was just beginning to take over Hollywood, she was there. (She later explained to me that she knew how to gravitate toward musics energy centers. It was one of her greatest talents. She really should have gone into A&R.)

Mercy was such a character, such a one-offsuch a threat to normalcy, as Pamela had once writtenthat I knew she had her own story to tell, a very different story, a story much darker than Pamelas. (When she finally agreed to work on her memoirs with me, after Id been trying to convince her for ages, she suggested the title Im with the Band Too , which I shut down immediately. But A Threat to Normalcy almost made the cut. I knew that Mercys stint in the GTOs would be but one of many fascinating chapters.)

It was January 27, 2017, when it all began. Mercy rang me out of the blue to let me know shed had a health scare and would soon be undergoing a serious operation. She wanted to see me, to say goodbye, just in case. She asked me to meet her at DJ Miles Tacketts Funky Sole Night on Broadway event at Downtown LAs Globe Theatre, where she would be serving as a dance contest judge. I have two vivid memories of that evening. One was how she cantankerously complained about the contestants dancing skills, or lack thereof; Mercy gave absolutely zero fucks and never had a problem speaking her mind. The other memory is our ascent up to the balcony via the Globes faded, brocade-carpeted stairwell. Mercy was ahead of me, swathed in a ridiculously molting red feather boa, trailing loose feathers in her wake. It was almost a metaphor for the colorful chaos that ensued whenever she burst into any room. Thinking this might be the last time Id see her, I surreptitiously scooped up a fistful of feathers and tucked them into my purse. I just wanted something to remember her by.

I still have those ruby plumes, but as it turned out, there would be many memories to come. Mercy survived her surgery, just like shed survived everything else thatd been thrown at her. But while my feather-gathering moment was the first and really only occasion when I had a sense of this larger-than-life ladys mortality, it seemed to have put Mercy in a reflective mood. So a couple weeks later, she called me again, and she called my bluff: So, are we doing this book or what? I guess we were, then.

I soon learned that cantankerous was Mercys defaulther forever mood, as the kids say. Getting her to open up and tell her stories honestly was way more challenging than Id anticipated, especially considering how unfiltered she usually was. You try remembering things that happened fifty years ago when you get to be my age, she used to bark at me when I pressed too hard. There was a guard up, a certain brittleness, which I eventually realized was the result of enduring some truly harrowing experiences that would have broken or even killed a lesser woman decades earlier. She only wept once, right in the middle of some Hollywood Boulevard fast-food joint while discussing her fraught relationship with her son, Lucky. But she quickly regained her composure, seemingly surprised by her momentary breakdown. (Why am I crying? she asked aloud, nervously stabbing her fries into a plate of ketchup. I knew why.)