Are porn stars the new rock stars?

It seems an unlikely prospect at first. Porn may be a multibillion-dollar business, but it's hardly as above-ground as rock. Porn stars don't do stadium shows. Their work isn't carried on mainstream broadcast media. They're not household names.

Or are they?

Where once porn stars were more infamous than famous, now such names as Jenna Jameson, Janine Lindemulder and Tera Patrick ring a bell with even those who don't hang out in the red light district. Jameson, in particular, has developed an unusually high profile. Over the past six months, she has been featured in ads for Pony athletic shoes, was on the cover of the mostly metal music magazine Revolver, and signed a two-book deal with HarperCollins. (Her book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star is due in September.)

Jameson is hardly the only porner trying to make an impression on the mainstream. Ron Jeremy, an X-flicks veteran of long standing, was the subject of the 2002 documentary Porn Star, and has made cameo appearances in dozens of movies, including the Kiss-centric Detroit Rock City and the teen sex comedy American Virgin. And during last fall's Fashion Week in New York, porn production house Vivid Video hosted a "meet and greet" featuring starlets Sunrise Adams and Savanna Samson, in hopes of garnering more clothes-on modelling work for the company's stable of "Vivid Girls."

Nor have porn stars been entirely kept off TV, particularly when it comes to music videos. Porn star Gina Lynn plays Eminem's ex-wife, Kim Mathers, in the video for the rap star's current single, Superman. Jameson turned up in Eminem's Without Me video, while porn star Dasha was one of Madonna's party gal buddies in the clip for Music. And while no porn star has had the equivalent of a hit single, that hasn't exactly kept them off the radio, as any listener to The Howard Stern Show knows only too well.

So let's ask again: Are porn stars the new rock stars?

"Absolutely," says Jim Merlis, a New York-based music publicist who handles such bands as the Strokes. "But it's a very special kind of rock star. They're like the seventies and early eighties hair metal rock stars, not the Beatles kind of rock stars."

Merlis points out that, like rock bands, porn stars generally have a large following of "incredibly devoted male fans." Moreover, having an interest in porn -- while hardly the sort of thing one includes on a résumé -- is no longer a badge of shame.

"There was a stigma up until a few years ago where no one wanted to admit they watched porn," he says. "And now, it's 'Oh, yeah. Of course I do.' So it's very mainstream."

Rock stars, in particular, admit that they watch porn. Some take a fairly extreme interest in the field. Korn lead singer Jonathan Davis boasts of being a porn connoisseur, while rapper LL Cool J has spoken in interviews of being addicted to porn. Meanwhile, on his coming album, The Golden Age of Grotesque, Marilyn Manson mockingly snarls in Slutgarden, "I memorize the words to porno movies/ It's the only thing I want to believe." But even seemingly mild-mannered stars have owned up, as when Phil Collins included a "thank you" to eighties porn icon Desiree Cousteau in the credits to his 1993 album, Both Sides. (As he explained, her movies helped get him through "some lonely nights" on tour in the eighties.)

Some musicians, however, have gone a step closer and publicly hang out with porn stars. "Particularly in Los Angeles, which is the nexus of the metal world," says Tom Beaujour, editor of Revolver. "There is a lot of cross-pollenization between the two worlds -- probably a lot more than we even know about.

"It's a conscious decision by most rock stars to admit they associate with porn stars," he adds. "Because once you've done that you can't undo it. There is a certain stigma attached to it, that you're a seedy kind of person."

That wasn't a problem back in the eighties, when porn starlets and budding rock stars hung out at the same hard rock clubs on L.A.'s Sunset Strip. Not only did the two groups have a certain amount of geography in common -- the porn industry was based in the ultra-suburban San Fernando Valley, where by coincidence many hard-rock acts either lived or rehearsed -- but the two groups shared a certain underground ethos. Back then, Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash seemed just as dangerous and disreputable as his then-girlfriend, porn actress Savannah. Knowing who either of them was generally put a person at the lower end of the social scale.

Not any more -- at least as far as Slash is concerned. "Rock star" may not rank with "brain surgeon" or "stock analyst" in terms of respect, but it's hardly the stuff of social blacklists these days. "I think that is one of the biggest problems with rock music right now," gripes Beaujour. "If anything, rock stars have become too respectable for their own good.

"Rock has been around for so long that, unless you're unhinged, you're not doing anything countercultural or even adventurous by being a rock musician -- or even a hard rock musician. That trail has been blazed. You don't not get beat up on the street for having long hair and tattoos. Everyone has tattoos."

By contrast, he says, "Pornography is a genuinely outlaw culture. It's really viewed as a non-acceptable thing, still. Being a porn star is like having a tattoo on your face. It's a no-return act of defiance. Because once you've done it -- even though it's celebrated -- you're entering a universe from which you cannot return."

This is where the special alchemy between rock and porn comes in. When Blink 182 got Janine Lindemulder to pose in a nurse's costume for the cover of their 1999 album, Enema of the State, the band gained a certain amount of edge and notoriety, while Lindemulder got the benefit of being seen on the cover of a hit album. Likewise, when Kid Rock posed with porn stars Houston, Claudia Chase and Coral Sands for the cover of the LP edition of 1998's Rebel without a Pause, he got to look like a stud, while they got to look like legitimate models.

The association with porn, says Merlis, "has made rock 'n' roll more dangerous. In the same way, I think it has made porn safer. At least, the stars are more mainstream in a way. A lot of people get a thrill out of meeting a porn star, in the same way they got a thrill out of meeting a rock star back in the day."

(Of course, one other way that meeting porn stars is like meeting rock stars is that they always turn out to be shorter and smaller in real life than their fans imagine.)

Fandom is fandom, after all. Within the porn business, being acknowledged by a rock band carries certain bragging rights. After the band Sublime name-checked Jeremy in the 1996 single Caress Me Down, he wound up getting autograph requests from co-workers. "I'd go on a porno set, and I'd have an actress say, 'My kid wants your autograph,' " he said in 1998. " 'He doesn't know who the hell you are. He just knows that for some reason you're in a song that's No.1 on KROC.' "

Meanwhile, the rock press has been more than happy to play up the sizzle factor that comes from a rock star's association with porn. Rolling Stone has, in recent issues, run gossipy items about such events as the recent Adult Video News awards show, during which Shifty Shellshock of the band Crazy Town performed with a group of gyrating porn actresses -- one of whom was later revealed to be an actor. (Ooh, shocking!) Revolver, for its part, includes a poster in each issue, with a rocker on one side and a porn actress on the other. (The current issue pairs Jessica Drake of the Ozporns with Metallica.)

Revolver's Beaujour is careful to point out that not every band is keen to underscore the rock/porn connection. "There are some bands that are unhappy about it and let us know," he says. "We don't try to put the bands with the girls any more, because we discovered that most artists weren't really comfortable doing that for the press."

Still, the whisper of sex and danger the porn world carries remains a siren call for some in the music world. Ivan Shapovalov, the former psychiatrist who assembled and manages the Russian duo Tatu, has told the press that he came up with the group's teen lesbian shtick after noting the boom in "Lolita porn" in his homeland. Meanwhile, rappers Ice-T and Too-$hort have recently released porn videos, while Snoop Dogg's 2002 video release, Doggystyle, won two awards at the AVN confab -- only one of which was for its music.

Could it be that rock stars are the new porn stars?