At a time when rock`n`roll had yet to be absorbed fully into the consumer mainstream, stars such as Bowie or Mick Jagger were youth culture royalty. Josette was a sexually inexperienced 16-year-old from New Jersey. Like most teenagers she was obsessed with rock stars. One day in 1969 she found herself sitting in a restaurant adjacent to Fillmore East, Bill Graham`s famous New York concert hall. Nearby sat Led Zeppelin`s Jimmy Page and that other prominent British guitar strangler of the day, Jeff Beck. Josette approached them, trembling. Page took her by the hand, pulled her on to his lap and asked her to come up to his room later. She consented. "What else was I going to do?" she says now. "Here I was on Jimmy Page`s lap; it was my fantasy come true." Josette stayed with Page for several days knowing full well that her single mother – whose only child she was – would be desperately worried.
When Led Zeppelin came back to New York to play Madison Square Garden, Josette asked her mother to meet the band and bring her some clothes. She expected to be dragged home immediately. Instead, her mother was all smiles and went home apparently quite content for her daughter to cuddle up with the group. "Years afterwards I said to her: why did you let me do that? Her answer brought tears to my eyes. She said she was afraid that, if she didn`t let me, I would leave her."
The dynamics within Led Zeppelin soon became difficult. Josette claims: "Jimmy [Page] and Robert [Plant] used to like threesomes. I didn`t enjoy that because Robert was demanding and you felt used with him. He just discarded you when he was done."
Nevertheless, Josette says she felt she had no choice but to continue sleeping with them until the drummer John Bonham "saved me and made me his girlfriend". When asked how she felt after having spent the night with someone who treated her like a prostitute, she shrugs. "I would look at myself in the mirror and laugh," she says. "Well, it`s still Robert Plant! You know, it wasn`t some kid from a gas station."