Linda Lovelace's Electric Orgasm

It was 36 years ago today that Linda Lovelace lived what must have been a dream come true: Introducing Led Zeppelin onstage at the LA Forum for the final night of their US tour. Linda was a huge Zeppelin fan and had spent the previous couple of days hanging with the band. Robert Plant had brought her to the Shrine Auditorium the previous night, where he introduced her and she introduced The Pretty Things.

Here, thanks to the magic of bootlegging, you can relive this incredibly short moment in Linda Lovelace history, as recorded by legendary taper Mike the Mike. The first clip is very short and Linda's only on it for about 5 seconds, then there's lots of crowd noise as the band hits the stage. The second clip is LZ's performance of "Rock and Roll" followed by a third clip, "Sick again," which ends with Robert Plant thanking Linda for the intro.

The show appears on lots of boots including Deep Throat, Electric Orgasm, Linda Love Led and Deep Throat Trilogy, a box set collecting all three shows of their LA Forum stand. The link will take you to a piece of pretty funny artwork for Deep Throat from the excellent website ZeppelinArt.

Linda told me she thought Robert Plant was "really really nice." Seems like a gentleman here. . . . 

Eight Urban Legends About Linda Lovelace

There are lots of things that the media got wrong about the life and career of Linda Lovelace Boreman that have affected the public's perception of her and her legacy. Let’s set the record straight on some of them, shall we? 

1. Linda Lovelace made a stag film in which she had sex with a dog

Actually, there are two, separate two dog films. . . .

2. Linda Lovelace’s first interview was in Screw magazine

Linda Lovelace’s most notorious interview was in Screw; her first interview was in Women’s Wear Daily, published September 1, 1972.

3. She made her first allegations of abuse in Ordeal

She first mentioned her treatment at the hands of Chuck Traynor in her second book, The Intimate Diary of Linda Lovelace, in 1974—six years before Ordeal was released.

4. No one has ever backed up her allegations of abuse

Several people have mentioned the fact that Linda would show up to the set of Deep Throat bruised, most notably DT director Gerard Damiano. The definitive quote on the topic was given to. . . (wait for it) . . . culture warrior Bill O’Reilly. In an interview with Damiano published in the Boston Phoenix newspaper of April 30, 1974, Damiano tells BillO:

“I thought she might progress when she got rid of her husband, Chuck Traynor, who then went over to manage Marilyn Chambers. That man was a nothing. He had no personality, no charm, no brains. He was just a user of people and he used Linda. He gave her nothing and abused her. He was very brutal with her. She was supposed to do what she did but she wasn't supposed to enjoy it, and if she enjoyed it he beat her up. Many times she'd come on the set and be completely black and blue.”

5. Linda Lovelace had a radical double mastectomy

Linda had a liver transplant. After her health began to fail in the mid ’80s, she went to a doctor who, while testing her for possible cancer as a result of silicone injection breast enlargement, discovered that her liver was failing due to Hepatitis C, the result of a tainted blood transplant in 1970.

6. Linda Lovelace became a born-again Christian

Linda was Catholic and, by the time I met her, didn’t seem to be particularly religious. Her Deep Throat co-star Harry Reems, however, did become a born-again Christian.

7. Linda Lovelace advocated censorship

There’s no evidence in any of the transcripts I’ve read of her testimony before the Meese Commission or Minneapolis City Council in the ’80s to back this up. She protested showings of Deep Throat, but only because it directly involved her. She told me several times she was against censorship, she enjoyed a good dirty joke and, one night when we were looking for a movie to rent, her choice was the anti-censorship flick South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. She was a big South Park fan.

8. Linda Lovelace died in a car crash

Linda was hospitalized for three weeks following her 2002 car crash during which she sustained massive injuries, but died when she was taken off life support by her family.

Think You Know Linda Lovelace?

See how much you know about the star of Deep Throat! You'll be graded at the end, then get your report card and your very own Certificate of Achievement!

The Linda Lovelace Trivia Quiz » online testing

Linda Lovelace Gave Me Head(wear)

I’m German. I’m a Taurus. And I’m a journalist. So my apartment is filled with lots of . . . stuff. All in the name of research, of course.

My friends all know I have a huge collection of Blondie and Debbie Harry music and videos. Robert Stone, director of Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst, told me I have the biggest collection of Patty Hearst memorabilia he’d ever seen. And everyone knows I have a massive Linda Lovelace archive: multiple binders of newspaper and magazine articles; promotional photographs from her films; original posters from same; dozens of books; vintage vinyl records; obscure video and audio interviews; and lots more.

How do I do it?

Being a German Taurean journalist helps, as did my tenure at Screw magazine, whose archives were an incredible resource. I’m also a motherfucker when it comes to research, so I spent hours and hours at libraries, bookstores, thrift shops and online hunting down every scrap of information, every fact, every opinion, every rumor, every innuendo, every mistaken supposition and every flat-out lie I could get my hands on.

But some of my most interesting pieces came from Linda herself.

When Linda first agreed to give me an interview for The Complete Linda Lovelace, she asked how much I would pay. This didn’t surprise me; like another famous Linda—Evangelista—Linda Boreman didn’t get out of bed for less than $5,000 (for an interview). Being the honest, upstanding journo I am, I told her I don’t pay for interviews—I also couldn’t afford to; I do put the “poor” in “pornographer,” after all—but I said I’d gladly buy something from her, like an article of clothing from back then. She went to her closet and pulled out a funky, ’70s-era fringed jacket and pants. I recognized them immediately. She wore them in promo photos shot for her 1974 appearance in “My Daughter’s Rated X” at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino in Vegas. I made an offer, she took it, and the deal was sealed.

While I was writing the book, she gave me amazing access to photographs, correspondence, and a pile of newspaper clippings she’d gathered from the mid ’70s to the late ’80s; she did chronicle her own career throughout her life, saving articles, magazines and even movie ads for Linda Lovelace for President and, yes, Deep Throat. I received copies of important legal papers, including all four of her book contracts. (At one point we were trying to figure out exactly who owned the rights to Ordeal and Out of Bondage; Lyle Stuart's Barricade Books had to auction off its properties after Stuart lost a defamation lawsuit brought by Las Vegas entrepreneur Steve Wynn, and Linda wanted to see if she could buy them.) She also sent me copies of ledger sheets with accountings of her book royalties—or lack thereof, in some cases—and letters to various lawyers concerning unpaid bills and potential cash settlements. Even though most of those documents didn’t make it into my book, the revision will include some of them, one way or another.

While wrapping up the book in 2000, I’d reserved Linda and myself a table at the Chiller Theatre convention in New Jersey so we could do some promotion. I didn’t finish the book in time for the convention though, and when I told her, she offered to wait until the book was done. I'd already bought her plane ticket and booked the hotel room, so I said, “No, come out anyway and see what the convention scene is like. You can make some money. We'll do it together next time.”

I had 8 x 10s printed up for her, and our friend Dian Hanson arranged for advance copies of her Leg Show issue to be sent in from New York. Linda brought some mementos too: her ticket to the 1974 Academy Awards; a few foreign editions of Ordeal and Out of Bondage (which I bought); and some more ’70s-vintage clothing. A few autograph dealers came in while I was setting up her table and wanted to buy the whole lot, minus the clothes. I negotiated the deal and got Linda a nice chunk of change. She wound up meeting lots of really nice people, porn fans and post-porn fans both, and had a five-figure weekend money-wise, all of which made her very happy.

When we were getting ready to leave the hotel, I did a final count of the money for her and handed it over. Then she asked me if 10 percent would be good.

“Good for what?” I asked.

“For you, for setting this up,” she said.

Ten percent of her take would have been a nice little chunk of change for me, too, but I told her no, I didn’t want her money. I wasn’t her manager—despite what some people thought at the time, I definitely wasn’t her manager—I was just teaching her how to market herself. She insisted on giving me something, so I told her to just pay me back for the plane ticket and hotel room and we’d call it even. That way I didn’t lose anything, and she still made out really well.

After she gave me the money, she went over to a box in the corner, opened it up and walked back to me. “Here. I want you to have this.” It was the hat she wore to the Ascot Racetrack in 1974, a big felt topper with long black and white feathers. I recognized that immediately, too. And yeah, I took it gladly!

Once the book was done, she sent me a package with a note discussing some problems she was having with her family; she often confided in me when things weren’t going well with them. The package also had some other items: a few more articles; a few more photographs including some baby photos, one of which showed up in Inside Linda Lovelace; and an envelope with a very interesting surprise—a lock of hair from her first haircut, in 1949. (I didn’t put that in the book either. There wasn’t enough to include in each copy.)

The lock of hair confused me most of all. I know Linda didn’t think I was a freak, even though my interest in her story perplexed her sometimes, but for her to give me something so personal really touched me. More than anything else, it made me realize that yeah, she must really trust me. That trust was the best thing she ever gave me. 

(Some of the items mentioned above—and plenty more—will be on exhibit at “Whole Lotta Lovelace,” the gallery show celebrating the re-release of The Complete Linda Lovelace, to be held in New York City later this year. Stay tuned for details.)

Think You've Seen "Deep Throat"? Think Again.

While writing The Complete Linda Lovelace, I watched Deep Throat more times than I can count—certainly more times than I’d like to admit—and if there's one thing I learned it's that there's more to Deep Throat than meets even the eye. Well, to quote Neil Innes, "I've suffered for my art, and now it's your turn." Here are some takes on the world's most infamous porn flick you may not have seen. 

Geek Throat

Remember, back in what us old timers wistfully call “The Day,” making dirty pictures on a computer? When the party didn't really start until some nerd from the high school AV department showed up with half a bottle of swiped Boone's Farm and a crumpled dot-matrix printout of Charlie Brown banging Lucy? Luka Frelih did those dorks one better by programming Deep ASCII, everyone’s favorite (or at least first) porno in beautifully low-tech, IBM-style, green-on-black, binary animation. Deep ASCII premiered at the 1998 WorldWide Video Festival in Amsterdam (one more reason pot should be legal) and played at a few European festivals over the next year or so. If you didn't catch it there, you can see it here. It’s silent, it's slightly off-speed and it's kinda hard to watch—just like porn should be. 

PLEASE NOTE: The java application it runs with can be buggy depending on your computer’s OS, but it's worth the risk.

D**p Thr**t

Heeeey, jus' cuz Noo Yawk Judge Joel Tyler sed Deep T'roat wuz obscene didn’t mean dat da Peraino boys wasn’t gonna make no more fuggin’ money off it, capisce? So a special "Revised" version was re-released at the Lincoln Art Theater in June 1974. The new cut of the film had some scenes blown up so the penetration appeared off-screen; other parts, like the orgy scene, had two- or three-frame stop action “animation” superimposed over the live-action hardcore (the good parts, anyway). Al Goldstein, reviewing the film in Screw magazine’s "Dirty Diversions" column dated June 10, 1974, came to the conclusion that, yes, it sucked.

Nip/Suck

Japanese director Kan Mukai’s 1975 Deep Throat in Tokyo puts an interesting spin on Gerard Damiano's original plot: Kumi Sakuma (Kumi Taguchi) leaves her boxer boyfriend for Hideo, the son of a wealthy buisinessman. Imagine Hideo's disappointment when his father, Takehiko, falls in love with her and plots to have Hideo killed. Imagine Papa-san's disappointment when, now that he has the beautiful Kumi all to himself, she refuses to give him head. Then imagine Kumi’s disappointment when Takehiko has her clit surgically removed from its natural hiding place and reinserted in her throat to give her a little incentive. Now imagine your disappointment when I don't reveal the film's amazing shock ending. . . .

Director Mukai didn't just borrow from Deep Throat's plot. Check out this clip of the surgery scene, and you’ll hear a very distinct similarity between its score and Deep Throat’s theme music. 

(A longer version of this post will appear in the revised edition of The Complete Linda Lovelace, available in multiple formats on October 1, 2011.)