Mercy Fontenat,
otherwise known as Miss Mercy of the GTOS, led an iterant rock ‘n’ roll life life.
A butterfly of a music fan, Mercy’s travels took her from Haight Asbury to
Laurel Canyon to Stax in Memphis to the punk rock scene in Hollywood. She
befriended and worked with many rock icons and had trysts with others. That’s
the good news. The bad news? She got caught up with drugs at a young age. Mercy
(born Judith Peters) had a dysfunctional childhood. Her Dad was a gambler with
a predilection for showgirls, and her family traveled across the country. Mercy ran
away from cushy San Mateo, California to SF’s Haight Ashbury as a teenager, and soon took on the
moniker Mercy, after the Don Covay song.
Although Mercy spent
her whole life around the music scene, she’s primarily remembered as a member
of the GTOs, an avant-garde singing and performance art troupe.
The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously) were a psychedelic
combination of female Hollywood scenesters/groupies. They first got together as the
Laurel Canyon Ballet Company and released one Frank Zappa produced album, Permanent
Damage, in 1969. The group consisted of Miss Pamela (Pamela Des Barres) Miss Sparky (Linda Sue Parker), Miss Lucy (Lucy
McLaren), Miss Christine (Christine Frika),
Miss Sandra (Sandra Leano), Miss Cynderella (Cynthia Wells Cale-Binion)
and Miss Mercy (Mercy Fontenat). Fontenat,
arguably the quirkiest member of the GTOs, passed away in July 2020 after a
long illness. This leaves Pamela and Sparky as the last living members of the group.
Zappa recruited Fontenot to join the GTOs at the last minute,
intrigued by her wild gypsy look. Pamela Des Barres remembers Mercy as a
“threat to normalcy”. Mercy’s autobiography, Permanent Damage: Memoirs of an
Outrageous Girl, was released posthumously in June 2020. Yahoo music editor Lyndsey Parker interviewed Fontenot extensively for several
years to unravel the tale of an unorthodox, colorful, (and sometimes dangerous)
life.
Permanent Damage combines Mercy's overarching love of
music, fashion, pop culture trends through the decades, unorthodox
relationships with musicians, and sometimes unsettling side jaunts involving
drugs and unsavory characters. Mercy has a sense of humor and no self-editing,
which actually is good because you always knew she was telling the truth. She
had no agenda.
Of the GTOs, Mercy says: “The ethos of punk was that you
didn’t have to be a professional musician or be trained to play and read
music…. You could do it yourself. The GTOs were like that. I guess we were punk
rock in our own way.”
The GTOs played an infamous show at L.A.’s Shrine Auditorium
as the opening act on a bill with Frank Zappa and Alice Cooper. Their combination
of comedy, theater, and singing was utterly unique and very much of its time. Mercy remembers that she and Pamela got really
stoned on pot while riding with Gram Parsons in his T-Bird before the show. Miss
Christine admonished Mercy before the show, fearing the worst, but the show was
a hit. Unfortunately, only a few photos of their performance exist, and there’s
a short clip of the performance in Alex Winter’s Zappa documentary.
The GTOs socialized with a lot of the movers and shakers of
the music, underground and hippie movement. I never thought about it before,
but could it be the “Miss” before the GTOs’ names were cadged from friend and
fan Tiny Tim’s habit of addressing females with “Miss” before their first name.
Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart, The Monkees’ Davy Jones and Nicky Hopkins provided musical backdrop for the GTOs album; Lowell George produced it. Rod Stewart, then a rock star-in-training, sang on Mercy’s song The Ghost Chained to the Past, Present, and Future (Shock Treatment) She also took Rod thrift store shopping and helped him develop his early look with The Faces. Decades later, when she was a homeless crack addict in Hollywood, she saw Stewart walk into the Pantages Theater before one of his concerts. She called to him, and he waved at her and moved on. Did she feel bad about it? “Shame isn’t a thing I do”, she says, “After all, I looked cute.”
Mercy doesn’t pull any punches about her fellow groupies, other
scenesters, and her various sexual encounters. The ickiest moment involved
Chuck Berry, a bucket, and bathroom function. Mercy said she later felt bad
about it, but at least there were no pictures. Although she confessed to not
liking sex that much, she had relationships with several musicians, including
Arthur Lee of Love and Jobriath. She
actively pursued the funk musician Shuggie Otis and eventually married him. The
couple had a son, Lucky, also a musician.
The list of musicians in her orbit reads like a who’s who of rock –the Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Rod Stewart, Gram Parsons, Al Green, Otis Redding, etc.
Here are just a few examples of Mercy’s rock ‘n’ roll
adventures:
- She read the Stones’ tarot cards before Altamont
- Popped out of a cake at Alice Cooper’s birthday party at the Ambassador East while on LSD. She also helped Alice devise his initial look.
- Dropped out of beauty school but became a hairdresser anyway, hung out with the Gears and other punk rock bands in Hollywood, went to the famous punk club the Masque
- A pre-fame Courtney Love meet Mercy on a Hollywood bus and gave Mercy her phone number
Many of
Mercy’s cast of rock ‘roll characters disappeared from the scene, or died from
drug abuse or violence. She kept
in contact with her parents and her sister throughout the years, but her family of origin didn’t provide much comfort. Music and her friends kept her positive. Finally off drugs for good, she turned her life around. Her son Lucky and job at Goodwill Industries kept her grounded.
For all her bravado, there are a few times Mercy expresses remorse about how her drug use affected others, and about glitches in her relationships
with ex-husband Shuggie Otis and their son Lucky.
Near the end of her life, Mercy once again appeared in the
public eye. She appeared in photos for the Starcrawler
song “She Gets Around”, co-starred in an internet fashion promo, and often
appeared at many readings with her BFF Miss Pamela.
Fontenot's story reveals the seedy underbelly to the peace and
flower power generation. There’s as much drugs and violence here as rock ‘n’ roll,
much of it pretty intense. There is a dizzying array of arrests, rapes,
physical and emotional abuse, bad decisions, and all the other dangers lurking
to people way out on the fringes. No wonder Parker asked Fontenot several times
during interviews for book, “How are you even alive?” Mercy persevered and slayed
most of her demons. Despite her hardships, Mercy’s wisecracking persona and
love of music remained intact. She is regarded, along with rest of the GTOs, as
a rock trailblazer for her outrageousness and style. Marianne Faithful, John and Exene of X, Shirley Manson, Alice Cooper, Dave Davies and other rockers laud
Mercy for her contributions to rock music culture.
Permanent Damage: Memoirs of an Outrageous Girl revisits
a wild roller coaster of a life with honesty and humor.
The GTOs (From Straight to Bizarre documentary)
