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What You Need to Know to Be a Rock Star:  Getting a Codependent Supermodel Girlfriend (No Cover Magazine, April 2001)

By Robert Welborn

Ahh, the trophy girlfriend…it seems as if they are issued with the record contract.  The girl shows up on your album cover or kissing your cheek as you stand grinning like an idiot on page 40-something of Spin.  That is when you have arrived in the foul smelling temple that is Rock and/or Roll Stardom.

"Beautiful women," the author John Wainwright once said, "are a breed unto themselves".  This breed, however, tends to turn on their handlers.  Let’s look at each bitch individually:

The Talent-less Actress Girlfriend

The spunky, Maybelline-coated screen actresses seem to hop from stubble faced hunk to hunk.  Since acting requires some modicum of intelligence, these anorexic thespians won’t fall for the volume of crap that goes into to being a rock star’s bitch for very long, so you’ll want to pass this puppy by.

The Screeching Diva Girlfriend

Pop divas are a bit dimmer, but they tend to find themselves in competition with you for record sales or faked nude pictures on the web.  You also can’t rely on them to testify in your defense at your first “Trial of the Century”, so leave this one in the bin. 

The Anna Kournikova Girlfriend.

Beautiful athletes are a great option. They don’t have to actually be smart (contrary to the Charles Schwab commercials) to be good at most sports.  They are in good shape and you know they are not going to get flabby and have to explain why on Entertainment Tonight through a veil of tears and snot.  They can, however, kick your scrawny ass if you ever piss them off, so that excludes jock girls from this visit to the pet shop.

The Supermodel Girlfriend

That’s why you want to pick the “Holy Grail” of trophy girlfriends, the supermodel.  What kind of intelligence does it take to stand there and look bored?  Odds are, she has no taste in music and will think that you are the next Dave Matthews (only quirkier and without all the annoying acoustic stuff and confusing lyrics).  Her looks are the ONLY thing she has got, so she’s hyper-sensitive already and will be easy to manipulate.

Step 1:  Finding a Supermodel

There are two very simple paths to finding a supermodel, and you might be upset that you hadn’t traveled these in the first place.

Path A:

Convince your current unstable girlfriend that she needs to become a supermodel or you’ll stop loving her.  Even better, show her that you won’t leave, only that you’ll cease caring for her.  She’ll dive for Katie Ford’s phone number (Katie is the chick who runs the Ford Agency, and that’s the place where supermodels come from).  Just to give you a head start, Kate’s cell phone number is (212) 219-6500.  Call her late at night.

Path B:

Go to Spago’s in LA.  Look for the table of women eating nothing and drinking only non-carbonated water (“Hold the ice please, I’m on a diet.”).  Distract one with a piece of cheese (they haven’t eaten since the last Bush White House), then show her the page on your CD cover that has your picture on it.  You doubt me?  Cindy Crawford once said “In the studio, I do try to have a thought in my head, so that it's not like a blank stare.”  You could cull one of these out of the heard with “shiny things”.

Step 2: Establishing the co-dependence

Let’s be honest here.  If your career lasts longer than a Guitar Center “String Sale”, it will be on luck alone.  Keeping one of these uber-hotties around will take work once you are forced to play nothing but your “old stuff” at “more intimate venues”.  You want a girlfriend that will stick beside you through years of promising to marry her/ sober up/ stop having sex with her friends while she’s home or in the room.  Furthermore, you want a chick who will hop into the drivers seat when you are driving drunk, or be willing to leave some of her DNA evidence at the crime see too.

In the 1950’s they called them “co-alcoholics”.  They were the wives (most often) of addicts.  These women actually supported their husband’s alcoholism or drug abuse, by covering for them at work, buying them liquor or narcotics, and suffered silently during abuse or neglect.  Co-dependency, as it is called now, is the act of “enabling” someone with a destructive lifestyle to live an even more destructive lifestyle.  Let’s be honest, there are few lifestyles more destructive than that of a rock star.  Most often the enabler or co-dependent has suffered years of abuse within a family setting, so if she had a good family life and remained relatively happy, now’s the time to get started!  Follow the bouncing ball:

Breaking down the wall of self-esteem, or as I like to call it, training camp.  This begins a home.

Develop the Cycle where you screw up, she helps you, then she gets mad at you, then you apologize profusely and promise to change, then you treat her “extra nice” until you get distracted by your next binge of stupidity.   Start by doing the stupidest thing you can think of that doesn’t require you to lose a limb or your ability to speak.  If you’re too fried to think of one, try one of these:

1. Steal an ambulance with a deceased (prior to your arrival of course) passenger in the back.
2. Try to buy drugs off your local police chief during a press conference, end the scene by vomiting (that’s a given of course for almost all of the stupid things you will ever try).
3. Although it's not really original, try starting a race riot (end with the requisite vomiting).

Involve her in the madness, phones work nice, but it’s so much more personal when you bring the madness into your home.  Here is where all of that natural uselessness that your 5^th grade math teacher warned you about will really pay off.  You just go to bed, and dream of nice things and leave the whole thing for her to clean up.

Take the beating that she has planned for you in the morning.  Few of these women's names appear on the roles at MENSA, so the “logical” part of her argument should be easy to beat (even with a “dog peeing in my mouth” hangover).

Promise to change every five seconds.  Make up things in your life that sound like they caused your problems, like your dog eating your little brother or growing up in the oppressive stucco encrusted suburbs.  It’s important to take responsibility for nothing. 

Planning to be washed up , or as you will call it “retirement”, is a difficult part of every musicians career.  Having someone around to cushion the fall from greatness makes it easier.  During all of the jokes about your lame career, someone will always mention this girl and refer to you as a lucky bastard.

Disclaimer

The easiest way to keep cops and girlfriends around is to speak in unbelievable lies. 

Disclaimer to the disclaimer:

Our generation has done some marvelous things with the word co-dependency.  Not only is all care given to someone engaged in a destructive lifestyle considered co-dependant, but the very act of compromising one's needs to help a loved one is now considered symptomatic of the first step in a progressive mental disorder, a relationship addiction.

Authors Note: