Cynthia Plaster Caster, Penis de Milo: "My mother told me not to go into a man's hotel room"
Veda
Mat Snow in Q
September 1989
Cynthia was a normal 1960s American teenager, with an abnormal
interest in rock musicians. Then, one day in art school, she was told
"to make a plaster cast of anything that was solid enough to retain
its shape". Cynthia, as it happens, had the very thing in mind...
Suddenly, the notorious Plaster Casters of Chicago were in business.
"MY LIFE," declares Cynthia Plaster Caster (not her real name), "has
been one long embarrassment. A flop, in my estimation," she adds with
a sigh somewhere between self-pity and self-mockery, "and therefore it
would make for a great autobiography. It would be therapeutic for me
to tell it in public."
In the Golden Age of Rock that was the late 1960s, Cynthia Plaster
Caster was a legendary bit-player. Not for her the lowly status of
mere groupie; Cynthia has left a more durable legacy of those fabled
days. As her acquired name so gently hints, she immortalised -- in
plaster of Paris -- the most anatomically intimate yet heroic feats of
those stars of yesteryear.
Cynthia's story starts in a hard-working Catholic household in
Chicago's celebrated South Side. It was here in the infancy of the
television era that six-year-old Cynthia developed her first passion --
for glamorous ivory-tickler Liberace ("a real dreamboat with his wavy
hair"). From there, her infatuation with the famous was fuelled by the
personal appearance of the cast of Sergeant Bilko at a local appliance
store ("the first time I saw a real star in the flesh!") But,
disdainful of the tastes of her friends at high school, Cynthia
resisted the lame-suited gyrations of the first generation of
rock'n'rollers. However, like many young Americans in the wake of the
Kennedy assassination, she became intrigued by news of four cheeky
lads from Liverpool.
"I saw a photo of The Beatles in a newspaper, before they played Ed
Sullivan or anybody in America had heard of them. I didn't even know
they were a rock'n'roll band:' I thought they were a comedy troupe.
They were gorgeous-looking with their long, straight bangs, their
tight pants ...I was starting to develop a fascination for cocks, even
though I'd never seen one before, just by seeing these bulges in the
tight pants of The Beatles!
"I decided I wanted to meet them even though they were a rock band. I
made myself listen to the music, and it took no time at all to get
into it. I couldn't meet the Beatles because they were too popular by
the time they got to Chicago, but the Stones were pretty unknown. They
came to Chicago to record 12x5 at Chess Records.
"How do you find a band?" Cynthia recalls those frenzied days of the
British Invasion. "You call up the likely hotels and ask to be put
through to one of them and see how the hotel responds. So the second
hotel I call up, they connected me to Brian Jones' room, and as soon
as I heard it ringing, I knew I'd hit the jackpot and hung up."
Finding herself outside the Stones' hotel with her friend Barbara and
a handful of other girls, Cynthia was so "flipped out" when the taxi
pulled up and disgorged sundry "long-haired, foreign, tight-crotched
boys" that she approached the first she saw manager Andrew Loog
Oldham, and asked "Are you a Stone?!?" Breath reeking of Scotch,
Oldham replied "Yeah, baby!" and thrust his tongue into Cynthia's ear.
"I went into true shock; everything around me was like a whirling haze
and my girlfriend's voice was like an echo chamber. It left me cross-
eyed, staggering towards the elevator after the other Stones."
Leaving Cynthia in the lobby ("my mother told me mother told me not to
go into a man's hotel room"), Barbara followed Mick and Keith to their
room for a chat, whereupon Oldham attempted entry, but was denied
because he was drunk and armed with a gun. He got in anyway and,
brandishing the gun, chased Barbara round the room, too strong to be
subdued by Messrs Jagger and Richards: "They kept yelling for Charlie
to come and help them, but he couldn't be bothered because it had
happened so many times. Finally Charlie got tired of all the
commotion, talked in, whopped Andrew Loog Oldham on the lead and
knocked him out cold, walked back to the next room and watched the
soap opera! They dragged Andrew Loog Oldham's unconscious body into
the bathroom, and then Brian Jones sauntered along, patted my
girlfriend on the wrist and offered her a cup of tea."
Even at this remove, Cynthia "was bitten by the bug. I wanted to see
more longhairs and I loved the music." But there was a problem...
'We were still virgins. We were getting interested in sex, finding out
bits and pieces about the facts of. My fascination with what dicks
must look like as growing all the time. We were pretty silly," she
chuckles. "To me, it was more comfortable to talk to a pop star if I
could make myself and them laugh."
Help was at hand in the shape of The Robin Hood Clan, an otherwise
obscure English band who had settled in Chicago. It was the Clan who
taught Cynthia and her friend Barbara the basic tools of communication
with visiting British long-hairs -- like "charver" for sex, "plating"
for oral sex, and those indelible Cockney rhymes, "Barclay's Bank" and
"Hampton Wick".
"Now we had these words, I thought, let's incorporate them into notes
we'd present to the bands and see how they respond. We wrote one which
said, 'We are the Barclay's Bankers of the Chicago charver chapter. We
have convenient night banking tours: would you like to make a
deposit?' We gave his note to Gerry & The Pacemakers and Wayne Fontana
& The Mindbenders. When I got home there were two phone messages. My
mother wanted to know who the hell this 'Barclay' was. So we knew we
were on the right track. "
The duo who would become known as the Plaster Casters of Chicago thus
opened for business as "Barclays' Bankers".
It was now 1966 and 19-year-old Cynthia was an art school major. One
weekend she was given an assignment "to make a plaster cast of
anything that was solid enough to retain its shape". She had the very
thing in mind -- and Barbara had the same idea: "The Dick Clark Caravan
of Stars with The Hollies was in town: let's go to their hotels and
spring the question!" Armed with a stolen bag of plaster and a calling-
card "with an official, industrial-looking logo" ("When we had the
calling-cards made, the lady at the print shop asked what a Hampton
Wick was. I had to tell her it was a dinosaur bone"), the "Plaster
Casters of Chicago" arrived.
"We asked Paul Revere & the Raiders and the Hollies if they would like
their Hampton Wicks plaster-cast. They thought it was hilarious. But
thank goodness we didn't do it, because I had no idea what to use as a
mould. I still never had seen a cock. The first I ever saw, that
weekend, was Billy Joe Royal's [an Atlanta singer, his Joe South-
penned 'Down In The Boondocks' and 'Hush' were mid-'60s hits]. We
knocked on his door and mentioned something about plaster-casting, and
he immediately started waving this long, snake-like dick. It scared me
so shitless that I ran out screaming. We moved out down the hallway to
Mark Lindsay's room of Paul Revere & The Raiders. He was already busy
with a chick but told us to come back later. We didn't plaster-cast
anybody but I wound up losing my virginity to Mark Lindsay next
morning. The reason I lost it to him was that 'Kicks' was Number 1 in
the charts - that's what sold me! I'd been saving myself for the
Beatles or Rolling Stones, but I thought, this guy is no ordinary
American."
Casting techniques posed a problem. Aluminium foil, melted wax and
moulding clay were all tried. "Those were the days of free love and
experimentation, so bands were game. We tried the aluminium foil out
on one of Herman's Hermits, but it didn't stand up -- I mean the image
wasn't retained after he pulled out. And then someone told us about
dental mould -- I think it was the bartender at a pizza parlour...
"We'd been asking bands if we could try plaster-casting out on them
for two years, and our reputation was building up across from
California to London - and we hadn't even done it yet. When the
Yardbirds came to Chicago, we met Jeff Beck at a party, and he thought
we were just goofy girls. The first thing he sees is when we slapped
the kit in the suitcase with the official Plaster Casters logo in from
of him -- this was even before we knew who was going to be plasterer
and who was going to be the mould-mixer. Jeff took one look at the kit
and ran off screaming hysterically."
And so to Monkee-mania.
"We were sitting outside the Monkees' hotel. One of the roadies saw
the suitcase outside and had us brought up to the room. We were going
to cast Peter Tork, who was notorious for walking around naked. There
he was playing the grand piano, totally naked, and Buffalo Springfield
were also hanging out, except for Neil Young. I was about to open the
can of dental alginates which I didn't know how to mix, and I split my
middle finger almost in half. Luckily for me, because I didn't know
what I was doing. Mickey Dolenz personally tourniqueted my finger. So
much for The Monkees. I tried it on one of Procol Harum -- I won't say
who because he regrets to this day he was such a wild man. The mould
turned into this mountain of water and pink lumps all over his dick.
He was looking at it, like 'Holy shit!'
"Jimi Hendrix was corning to town and I really wanted to do him. But
for some reason I didn't lubricate Jimi enough, and his pubes got
stuck in the mould. It takes about 45 seconds for the mould to set, so
I'd tell him to think hard until it softens and slides out, but I had
to pull Jimi's hairs out one by one. Afterwards, the plaster had been
setting in the mould for about four hours, and I was too anxious to
see the product. I cracked open the mould, and it broke into a hundred
pieces. So very carefully I put the mould back together again, and
waited till the following morning. Then it broke again, into three
pieces. But I glued them together and the image wasn't destroyed at
all. There was very good detail, just a little cracked in places. It's
been called the Penis De Milo..."
By 1969 Cynthia was living out in California, courtesy of Frank
Zappa's Straight Records, and had made the cover of Rolling Stone on
the strength of her casts of the Lovin' Spoonful, Savoy Brown, Aynsley
Dunbar, Anthony Newley -- and Led Zeppelin ("Assholes. Robert Plant was
very cocky and arrogant, and John Bonham was just plain mad -- an evil
kind of lunacy"). But by '71 "the fad had faded", plus "the music
scene was at an all-time low in my estimation", so Cynthia hung up her
can of dental mould. Lately, though, she's become interested again,
her enthusiasm fired by "Mary", the youth who sings for British
"grebo" band Gaye Bykers On Acid.
"He said it would do a lot for his street credibility and so would
have to do it. He was a very co-operative, patient guy. I hoped and
prayed I would remember how to do the formula right, and everything
came out really wonderful. And when Jon Langford (of Mekons and Three
John fame) found out that Mary had been done, he wanted to be done
too. A splendid subject."
Cynthia is currently trying to recover her '60s casts from safekeeping
in Los Angeles. She also promises her no-holds-barred memoirs based on
detailed notes taken at the time. And now her appetite for casting has
returned, Cynthia hopes for a better class of subject: "All I really
wanted was talented musicians whose music I loved. I didn't really
care how famous they were or how big their dicks were. Now I'm at the
point where I want talented artists in any field -- rock, poetry,
painting -- though I certainly wouldn't turn down Mario Cuomo or The
Pope..."
(c) Mat Snow, 1989