The ladybirds topless

The Ladybirds: The world’s first all-girl topless rock band(s)

Now as it turns out, there wasn’t just a single band of topless Ladybirds, either. There were two! What are the odds of that?

First we have the American Ladybirds, a garage rock group that was comprised of five showgirls and begun in San Francisco (some sources say NJ) sometime in 1966. When they first started out their act was just a T&A gimmick—I’m guessing one that was inspired by Charlotte Morman’s topless cello playing, then in the news, although topless waitresses were already a “thing” at that point—with the ‘birds shaking their tailfeathers (and tits) at punters but miming along to backing tracks in places like the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, LA’s risque Blue Bunny Club and Tipsy’s, a “cabaret” in San Francisco’s then wild North Beach neighborhood where they were booked for 14 solid months. Like the Monkees, eventually they learned how to play their own instruments.

And then there are the Danish Ladybirds who also got topless. It’s known for instance, that this Copenhagen-based group played a double bill with Led Zeppelin—then still called the New Yardbirds for contractual reasons (Ladybirds/Yardbirds, geddit?) at the Fjordvilla Club in Roskilde, Denmark, on September 8th 1968. These Ladybirds stuck it out until 1986 before calling it quits.