For those of you who might not know…about Cynthia Albritton

In the 60s, Cynthia Dorothy Albritton and her best friend ‘Pest’ wanted to find a better way of meeting pop stars than queuing up for autographs. After hanging out with The Hollies’ rhythm section and learning some Cockney rhyming slang (obviously not from those Northern lads), Cynthia felt better equipped to relate to musicians and soon the Hampton of no less than Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere & The Raiders’ took her cherry.

She and Pest then hit upon the idea of capturing band’s members in plaster of Paris.

After failed attempts with Peter Tork of The Monkees and Gary Brooker of Procol Harum, Pest retired and was replaced by Dianne and the pair had a better (*cough*) experience with Jimi Hendrix and Noel Redding.

Cynthia’s various accomplices providing pre-plaster oral stimulation were referred to as ‘platers’, which seems to have been derived from a misunderstanding over the meaning of ‘plates of meat’ – which is feet rather than eat.

Zappa met the duo after a gig in Chicago where Cream and The Mothers were on the same bill. “Eric Clapton introduced me to the Plaster-Casters. They had all these statues of the dicks of people like Jimi Hendrix. One of them mixed the plaster stuff to make a mould, and the other gave the guy a blow job. She took her mouth off the guy’s dick, and then the other one slammed the mould onto it. We declined to be enshrined, so to speak.”

Jimmy Carl Black noted, “As far as I know, none of the Mothers got cast – I know that I didn’t!”

According to Don Preston, Frank and Cynthia slept together, and she commented that, “Casting was never his thing – but he sure was qualified to be in my collection!”

Zappa was fascinated by Cynthia’s work, declaring it an art form worthy of promotion, and had her follow him back to LA with a view to setting up a rock-cock museum. He also included excerpts from a telephone conversation with the Plaster Casters on the GTO’s 1969 Permanent Damage album.

After her apartment was burgled in 1971, Cynthia gave her ‘sweet babies’ to Herb Cohen for safe-keeping, and shortly thereafter returned to Chicago.

Over the years, two Zappa employees were immortalized: in September 1970, drummer Aynsley Dunbar (“He wouldn’t dip into the canister until he thought he was big and beefy enough,”); and Frank’s personal minder, John Smothers (aka Bald-Headed John), when the Zappa band played two shows in Chicago at the end of November 1980.

Cynthia eventually asked for her collection back, but Cohen – by then estranged from Zappa – refused, claiming they were a part of Bizarre Productions assets and that ownership had accordingly transferred to him.

In 1993, Cynthia sued Cohen in the Los Angeles Superior Court. While Frank supported her, he was unable to appear in court due to his failing health.

Cohen argued that there were not only original plaster casts, but also bronze and silver copies of the originals which he had made. The judge though awarded ownership of all of the casts to Cynthia. Cohen then claimed he didn’t know where the originals were, so only the bronze and silver copies were handed over. The originals are still missing and will probably never be seen again.

In 2000, Albritton held her first exhibition in New York and the following year the cockumentary film Plaster Caster was released.

She participated in a BBC documentary, My Penis And I, in 2005.

In 2015, Cynthia exhibited her plaster collection at the annual Zappanale festival in Germany.

Back in 1969, when Frank found out that Redding, Albritton and Pamela Des Barres were all keeping diaries, he wanted to turn them into a book called The Groupie Papers. “Each diary starts as each of the characters are finding out about rock and roll and life. Before the end of the book, they converge through the most bizarre set of circumstances, and then it tells where they go after that. It would be one hell of an historical novel.”

Sadly, this never came to be, with Zappa saying, “It’s unfortunate that the only diaries published so far have been Pamela’s. Good as they are, they’re not nearly as well written or insightful as Cynthia’s.”

When Albritton passed away in 2022 from cerebrovascular disease, Des Barres revealed that she now had the job of finishing off Cynthia’s memoir.

Des Barres, who has referred to Cynthia variously as the Michelangelo of Sex and the Rodin of Rock, has yet to complete work on these at the time of writing.

There have been a number of songs written about Cynthia, including the track Plaster Caster on the 1977 album Love Gun by Ahmet’s favourite band, Kiss. And she also inspired the character Tiffany Plastercaster (played by Miley Cyrus) in Ethan Coen’s 2024 road film, Drive-Away Dolls.