Live Music Headgoes to Los Angeles
Best-selling author,
renowned journalist and internet columnist,
Pamela des Barres is the rock and roll chick writer
known to many of us as
‘the world’s most famous groupie’.
An authority on classic rock
and a spokesperson for her generation,
des Barres chronicled her relationships
with Mick Jagger, Keith Moon and Jimmy Page
among others, in the 1987 book,
I’m with the Band;
a book that left a big impression upon me
when I first read it at the age of twenty.
Because I was a rock and roll chick writer at the time,
and I’m still a rock and roll chick writer,
twenty seven years later.
When I first heard about Pamela’s L.A. Rock Tour,
I wanted to sign up immediately.
But it took till last summer,
following the worst rock and roll heartbreak of my life,
and the need to escape my own city,
that I finally booked it.
I’ve always had difficulty calling myself a groupie,
probably because of what the word commonly conjures up.
But I suppose I am.
And having said that,
I would have undoubtedly been just like Pamela
back in the golden days of rock,
drawn to the sense of humour
and zest for life imbued by Keith Moon.
And this despite the fact that
Pamela describes the Who drummer as
an alcoholic cokehead who wrecked cars,
stripped naked in pubs and bars,
and demolished his marriage with cognac.
"Making mistakes is simply part of
the locomotion of vitality" ~ Keith Moon
Loving a man like that can destroy you.
Loving the wrong person can destroy you.
Not much seems to have changed
since the 50s, 60s and 70s, really.
There’s still plenty to be destroyed by in rock.
Over the years,Pamela de Barres has popped up in documentaries
covering the tumultuous counter-culture of the 1960s,
and she’s also in one of my favourite flicks,
the Mayor of the Sunset Strip.
She’s released five books to date,
and when I discovered her in my bootleg copy of
the Jimi Hendrix Sex Tape,
alongside Cynthia Plaster Caster
(a self-described "recovering groupie”
known for casting rock star penises),
I realized the one who wrote I’m with the Band
was still very active in the world of rock and roll.
Hearing her discuss the manliness of the rock guitar god was fun,
but no one will ever convince me that that was actually Jimi.
Nor would anyone have convinced me back in the eighties
that I’d be boarding a Rock Tour van with Pamela des Barres,
outside Amoeba Records in Hollywood California, twenty ten.
But before booking the flight to LAX,
a re-visit of Pamela des Barres’ early days got underway.
A handsome fella by the name of O.C. Miller
slaved in the Kentucky gold mines before
moving his family to sunny California,
where his daughter Pamela Ann was born,
in Reseda, 1948.
I too come from a family of men who slaved in the mines;
the Canadian coal mines of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, that is.
I’m a Coal Miner’s Granddaughter.
Growing up, Pamela idolized Elvis Presley,
daydreamed about Paul McCartney
and fantasized over Mick Jagger.
My first loves were Glen Campbell and David Essex,
before I was dead set on marrying both Elton John
and Eric Faulkner of the Bay City Rollers.
In high school,
Pamela made the genitalia of Jagger
the focus of her art class project,
and it earned her an A.
This was around the time she met Don Van Vliet,
better known as Captain Beefheart,
who introduced her to the music scene
heating up the Sunset Strip.
Pamela Miller popped the Pill
and went searching for an identity through rock and roll.
What young Pamela wanted was
to take care of a man who made music;
a man who might yank out her own lurking creativity.
As someone who’s been searching for the very same thing
over the last three decades,
I can certainly relate to this.
But I hadn’t yet begun penetrating Toronto’s music scene
when Miss Miller was already dancing to the Doors,
tripped-out inside the psychedelic haze of the Whiskey a Go-Go.
Pamela not only met the leather-clad god of cock,
but rolled around on the backstage floor with Jim Morrison.
But the first man to break her?
Nick St Nicholas, the bass player from Steppenwolf.
After graduating from high school in 1966,
Miss Pamela landed the job of nanny
to the children of Gail and Frank Zappa,
whom she not only made lifelong friends with,
but became a member of Frank’s girly group creation,
The GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously).
A mix of music, spoken word and performance art,
the singing group released an album in 1969
and they called it Permanent Damage.
I was exposed to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention
when I was still a minor;
sitting in the passenger seat of my brother’s
souped-up 1968 Ford Torino
with Over-nite Sensation blasting through the car stereo.
In the 1970s Miller pursued a career as an actress,
beginning with the Zappa film 200 Motels.
She also did television commercials
and appeared in the soap opera,
Search for Tomorrow.
My stay-at-home mother watched soap operas,
and when I became a teen
I too was lured to General Hospital
by way of Luke and Laura.
There are also screen tests to be found of
des Barres stretched out on a bed with Rocky,
this girl’s all-time favourite film of 1976,
starring Sylvester Stallone.
Pamela was auditioning for a role as a prostitute.
Woody Allen, my all-time favourite film maker,
was also Pamela’s date on several outings to the cinema.
Miller kept journals of these and other experiences,
faithfully recording all the exciting details of her life,
which of course ended up in her books.
My life hasn’t been nearly as exciting,
but I too kept a journal throughout my teens and twenties.
I really wish I could go back and read the story I wrote
about three-way cocaine sex with a Rastafarian,
while menstruating in Jamaica,
but I lost my journals to a basement flood.
Pamela went through all the highs and lows one could imagine,
searching for love beneath a rock star’s belt buckle,
but it was the actor Don Johnson,
star of the 80s cop drama Miami Vice,
that Pamela cites as her first real love.
This of course, was before she totally flipped over
glam rocker Michael des Barres,
and married him in 1977.
Mrs des Barres gave birth to their son Nicholas a year later.
Living the life of wife and mother,
Pamela cooked, cleaned and nurtured,
but settle down?
Not.
The groupie guru set the standard for
sexual honesty in women's writing with her first book,
and then followed it with
Take Another Little Piece of My Heart,
(a Groupie Grows Up)
documenting the ups and downs of a rock and roll marriage,
and the ultimate demise of hers to Michael, in 1991.
I often cite Carrie Bradshaw, and thescripts of Sex and the City as top influences
in boosting my confidence
as a female writer, but Pamela had to be the first.
She’s written numerous articles for Cosmopolitan,
the New York Times,
Spin, and Playgirl, and for five years,
interviewed rock stars for a column at E! On-Line.
These days,
I too interview musicians.
Pamela has made numerous appearances on radio and television,
and in 1998 got her very own E! True Hollywood Story.
She also had a monthly column in Rolling Stone Italy.
And Pamela’s love of sex?
Well,
I can certainly identify with that too.
I’m fascinated by the world of Hugh Hefner,
and I highly recommend the 2009 documentary
Playboy, Activist and Rebel.
It’s a very good study on the controversial media mogul
who built his sexy empire dressed in silk pajamas.
While on a separate tour of L.A.,
I made a point of visiting the resting places of
a few Playboy Bunnies,
including that of Marilyn Monroe,
who graced the very first cover of Playboy magazine.
It was her resting place I was most moved by.
Hefner has reserved the spot above Monroe
for when his time comes,
but did you know that at the age of 40,
Pamela posed nude for Playboy as well?
She’s also a breast cancer survivor, a yoga devotee,
and believe it or not,
an ordained minister who marries people, to boot.
She collaborated with Dick & Dee Dee
to release a Rock and Roll Cookbook,
a book I’ve never seen or read, let alone cooked from,
but I’d sure like to!
For me,
it’s not just about Pamela’s enthusiasm for great music
and writing about it that I find so fascinating.
Nor all the sex she’s had with the men who make it.
I’m fascinated by all her accomplishments,
and that she’s had the strength to survive.
Many of her peers in the generation of
sex, drugs and rock and roll,
simply did not.
I’m not sure I would have survived
the heartbreak of rock’s relationships back then.
I’m barely surviving the one I just had.
And Pamela’s also endured the often cruel criticism
that comes from just being a groupie.
People have forgotten that the word groupie
wasn’t always a bad word.
"One time I was standing by
a backstage door
in all my groupie regalia,
when some woman sneered...
'what are you
supposed to be?'
I replied, 'I’m the reason
they picked up a guitar in the first place'”.
~ Patti Johnsen
“Of course it sounds narcissistic when
‘muse’ is used to describe one’s self,
but I identify with the class of groupie
such as Marianne Faithfull.
She brought style and class to the dirty Rolling Stones.
She should be admired and respected for that.
Of course I identify with the exciting wild sex,
but I never wanted to be the heavily made up chick
hanging out back stage snapping bubblegum,
hoping some rock star would notice
my short shorts and tube top,
and go back to the trailer park with me” ~ Bebe Buell
This writer likes role play,
and has to admit to a little excitement typing that,
but admires and respects Marianne Faithfull
for the very same reasons as Beull.
I also admire Faithfull’s courage for recording
Why d’ya Do It?
Steven Tyler said,
“we give it out, and the groupies give it back”.
I just finished reading Pamela’s book,
Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon,
and much of it will stay with me for a long time.
I’m in a dark place myself,
and much of what’s analyzed in this blog,
comes directly as a result from my own heartbreak
and the many heartbreaks documented in rock and roll.
But it was Pamela’s relationship with Jimmy Page
that she wrote about in her first book
that’s stayed with me from the beginning.
I was never particularly hot for Led Zeppelin’s guitarist.
As a teenager, I worshipped at the altar of Robert Plant instead;
the singer of Whole Lotta Love,
the greatest cock rock anthem of all time.
Today, when I re-visit the band,
I seem to be drawn more to the Zeppelin drummer.
Before John Bonham consumed forty shots of vodka,
choked on his own vomit and died in 1980,
he was just like Keith Moon,
slightly insane,
and an incredible life force behind the drum kit.
But I must say,
I’m completely horrified to learn that
Bonham had a thing for taking a shit
inside the shoes and purses of his groupies.
Could he not think of a more charming way to thank them?
And because we’re speaking of groupies,
does anyone remember Sweet Connie Hamzy,
who’s charms are immortalized in
the Grand Funk Railroad song,
We’re An American Band?
As opposed to other groupies I’ve read about,
Hamzy strikes me as a chick who
looks at sex just like a guy;
simply adding knotches to her belt of conquests.
Again, I prefer the style of Marianne Faithfull,
Bebe Beull, and Pamela des Barres.
Or even the woman who slept with a lot of men in music,
but wouldn’t have sex with assholes...
“If David Lee Roth was nice,
I’d have slept with him in a heartbeat.
But he was an asshole.
Like Roger Daltrey; cocky and belligerent.
They were both assholes” ~ Gayle O’Connor
And for loving and catering to the every whim of Mr Page,
by succumbing to the guitarist’s powerful seduction,
Miss Pamela was rewarded in the end by
being pushed aside by Jimmy as he whisked away a new groupie
(all of 13 years of age, no less),
in a waiting limo outside the a Go-Go.
Miss Pamela,
his lover up to that point,
with no reason to think that seat in the limousine wasn’t hers,
was left standing at the curb, stunned,
jaw-dropped and heartbroken.
She loved him.
She loved him then,
and she probably still has love in her heart for him now.
It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out why
someone like me identifies with someone like Pamela des Barres.
She’s pure rock and roll baby,
and she writes about it.
And what a writer;
clever, witty, hilarious, and at times,
painful and sad;
yet always revealing in its ugliness,
as well as its glorious beauty.
Pamela: “I was crushed almost beyond recognition”.
But she overcame the hurt.
Me?
I was fighting back tears the entire time I was on the Rock Tour,
processing a fresh wound.
I’m still crushed.
But it’s a lifetime of hurts, really.
In 2001,
I recall a most profound emotional moment
that happened to me,
and it was at a show in Kirkersville, Ohio.
Standing in a field at Frontier Ranch surrounded by tractors,
I was terribly excited to know I was finally going to see
my favourite country music outlaw,
Willie Nelson.
But I was in love with a rock guitarist at the time,
and he wasn’t there with me.
Just before departing on the road trip with a girlfriend,
I had a big fight with him;
a big enough fight that left me wondering whether
he’d be there when I got back.
Troubled, and only steps from the Hookahville stage
when Willie began to sing Always on My Mind,
it’s no wonder I fell apart.
It was the first time I ever experienced
such uncontrollable emotion at a show.
I rushed to cover my face with both hands,
but the cracks between my fingers couldn’t stop
the flood that gushed through them.
“If I made you feel second best
Girl I'm so sorry I was blind
But you were always on my mind
You were always on my mind”
I’ll never ever forget it.
What a song that is!
I can still barely listen to it.
My relationship with that rock guitarist went on for 7 years,
but smoking pot and the bass player in his band
were always much bigger priorities to him than me.
I’ve had similar emotional moments since then,
and when I booked the flight to Los Angeles,
I was full of self-doubt that I’d be able to control
my emotions under a bright California sun.
Truth be known,
I much prefer clouds and rain.
Like Loudon Wainwright the Third says,
“When it’s Grey in L.A., it’s much better that way
It reminds you that this town’s so cruel.
It might feel like fun when you’re sportin’ sunglasses
But really, you’re just one more fool”.
Mr Wainwright has a new record out aptly titled,
10 Songs for the New Depression.
However, from the second I stepped foot in Hollywood,
my emotional well being was well looked after.
From the staff of the places I stayed,
and the proprietors of the bars and restaurants I frequented,
to the people I met pounding
the star-studded pavement of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame,
I was treated very well.
Thank f^*king god.
Because you see,
we shared the same memories
of nineteen seventies suburban culture,
that last guy and me.
Growing up on the same rock and roll music,
being able to communicate in the middle of the night for hours,
on a wide variety of subjects,
along with outstanding sexual chemistry,
should have made me that guy’s dream girl.
Being a hot cock rocker with a James Brown smile,
a big supporter of my writings,
and the producer of rock shows
covering music I desperately loved,
certainly made him this rock and roll chick writer’s dream guy.
On my first Hollywood night,
I spun around Hidden L.A.
in a very cool sports car convertible.
And in my head I heard the driving drums
behind the Detroit rocker who sings...
“Night after night, day after day, it went on and on.
Then came that morning he woke up alone.
He spent all night staring down at the lights of L.A.,
wondering if he could ever go home”
~ Bob Seger, Hollywood Nights
Parking the convertible,
my friend Lynn and I entered the legendary Rainbow Room,
where we eyeballed porn king Ron Jeremy
dining with a busty bleached-blonde at the table next to us.
If I hadn’t inhaled such copious amounts of food
to the point of barely being able to breathe,
I would certainly have peeled my ass off the chair
to go introduce myself to The Hedgehog.
I really wanted to say,
“It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr Jeremy...
I’ve seen ALL your films”.
Instead I reached down under the table,
undid the bloated button of my blue jeans,
and watched a steady stream of other patrons approach him.
“I was always such a seeker,
tho’ all the way through it seems
I had an unworthy feeling,
like I didn’t deserve the great things in life,
yet somehow kept expecting them.
That constant hope seems to have diminished,
but I know I could change it in a snap.”
~ Pamela des Barres
Since entering my forties,
time moves faster than a locomotive.
My god, I’m closer to fifty now!
How the hell did that happen?
And why didn’t age prevent me from
getting crazy over that guy?
Instead, I was just like The Rose who said,
“let me open up my lovin’ arms and my lovin’ legs...
dive right in baby, the water is fine!”
And I opened them for him again and again,
and again and again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
And then he denied he knew me,
publicly.
Twice.
Three times, and I would have cried Peter.
The humiliation and betrayal of his lie
still hurts like nothing I’ve felt before.
I loved that man of music.
And it wasn’t like he was married
and I signed up to be his dirty little secret either.
No.
Not at all.
With the way I put myself out here,
shedding layer upon layer of my skin,
the last thing I was looking for was
to be his, or anybody’s dirty little secret.
It may not have been a committed relationship,
but it was certainly intimate, and going on for years.
But more important than being his lover,
I was his friend.
His denial of me leaves me feeling sub-human,
and completely alienated from his music.
My hometown is no longer the same for me,
and I can’t even listen to music the same way.
I do still listen, of course,
because I don’t know what else to do.
“Miss Tina is proud of her oral abilities
and loves to climb aboard the bus to show her appreciation.
But when she leaves, they’ll talk shit about her. ~ Sarah Madison
Many have perished tragically in rock and roll,
and I’m not talking about just the ones who made the music.
Take Pamela Courson, for instance; Jim Morrison’s muse.
It’s amazing Pamela des Barres didn’t end up like her.
But no matter how many times des Barres
ended up a crumpled heap on the floor of rock and roll heartbreak,
she always seemed to rise above it.
And remaining friends with her past loves
seemed the only way for her to go.
Where some people become angry and bitter,
or dead,
Pamela’s large love of life and large love of love
seems to have prevented any of that.
"I stay single because I don’t want to be someone’s ex.
I don’t want to lose people in my life" ~ something about Mary
The early evening of my second day in Los Angeles,
was spent making glorious trails
through the Hollywood hills on horseback.
It was like I was in a western movie
trotting atop Shakespeare with Poncho,
as the sun went down over the Hollywood sign.
And just like Bob Seger,
I stared down on the lights of L.A.
but thought it looked more like the Emerald City.
As glorious as it was,
and as lucky as I was to be up there,
I still felt sad.
Love Hurts ~ Nazareth
Love Stinks ~ J Geils Band
And then on July 31, 2010,
my third day in Los Angeles,
I finally met Pamela des Barres,
queen of the groupies.
It was a litte weird...
as it always is when
you meet someone you’ve known all your life,
for the very first time.
She on the other hand seemed quite comfortable
leading her groovy flock down the lane of classic rock memories...
The first stop on the Rock Tour was
The Hullabaloo on Sunset Blvd,
a place where the Allman Brothers played
when they were still called Hourglass.
And across the street was the Hollywood Palladium,
where a number of shows were recorded by the Grateful Dead.
Speaking of the Dead,
I was a follower of theirs through much of the 90s.
But followers of the San Francisco psychedelic band
who rock impresario Bill Graham described as
“not the best at what they do,
but the only ones who do what they do”,
were never called groupies.
Followers of Jerry Garcia and his mates
are called Deadheads;
the most deadicated music fans in rock history.
Lured by the jam of intelligent spontaneous music,
enveloped in a kind (emphasis on kind) communal,
travelling circus-like atmosphere
with other creative and colourful individuals,
was the appeal.
Through the voices ofCrosby, Stills, Nash & Young,
it was Suite Judy Blue Eyes who said,
“sometimes it hurts so badly,
I must cry out loud”.
Pamela says remaining friends
with past loves is easy.
It’s only up to me.
But he denied my existence,
so friends with that guy,
how can I possibly be?
Our relationship was
blown apart by lies,
and I’m not sure
I’ll ever rise above the debris.
But Pamela and Nick
are still friends.
She told us how her very first lover
called up only recently and said,
“I think of you often,
and when I do, I love you”.
However, another side of Pamela tells of a
turbulent relationship she’s had with the Lord, and
“panicky throes of guilt for just being born”.
She plans to release a book about it,
and I can’t wait to read it.
Because I’m a girl who went to Catholic school
and was forced to go to church until she was 12.
And the first time I heard the name J Krishnamurti
may have been when I interviewed
Toronto blues musician David Rotundo,
but the second time was in Pamela’s books.
She wrote about wanting to transform herself instantaneously,
while listening to the spiritual philosopher speak.
I wouldn’t mind being transformed.
I wouldn’t mind that at all.
“If you don’t have a sense of community
or a higher power,
then you blame yourself,
think bad of yourself,
struggle,
and try to divert.
One form of diversion is entertaining.
If you can make thousands love you,
you’ll be all right.
But in fact,
it makes no fucking difference.
It’s a kick when you’re on stage,
but an hour and a half later,
it starts all over” ~ Peter Tork
Next stop, the Landmark Motel.
Janis Joplin stayed here.
And I must’ve visualized this place a hundred times
while reading Buried Alive by Myra Friedman.
Sitting in the van looking out at it,
I’m soaked in memory of when I drank
an entire 26 ouncer of Southern Comfort straight up,
right out of the bottle, all by myself.
I was under a suburban bridge with
my suburban teenage friends,
who were drinking stubby bottles of Labatt’s 50.
A few hours later those same friends
deposited a five foot small poisoned mess of alcohol,
on the front porch of her parent’s house.
My mother exclaimed,
“your eyes are rolled back in your head!”
It was 1979, and I was 16 trying to prove
I was as tough as Janis.
Needless to say,
I haven’t touched that brand of whiskey liqueur since.
Janis Joplin was a “doomed diva chock full of soul”.
And oh, how she struggled with her insecurities and ego,
working in what was primarily a man’s field.
Highly intelligent with the emotions of a child,
her lonely rock and roll world became uncontrollable.
Those who’ve seen the documentary Festival Express,
will know the rant inside her performance of Cry Baby.
And I was just that,
sitting in the cinema watching her in the film
when it premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Joplin was found in Room 105 of the Landmark,
dead from a heroin overdose.
The hotel is now called Highland Gardens.
Pamela may not have discovered Bruce Springsteen until the 80s,
but the Sunset Marquis is apparently where
the Boss stays when visiting L.A.
The groupie queen wrote in her book that
she got sprayed with Springsteen sweat pellets,
standing side stage of Bruce,
compliments of Howard Kaylan.
She ends the latest edition with the same song lyric
I had silkscreened across my 1985 breasts...
“You can’t start a fire without a spark. This gun’s for hire”.
The space between my mid-eighties thighs
throbbed over the Boss,
when I saw him eleven times at the peak of his career.
Pamela chose to read a Tiny Tim story
as we sat parked in front of the Marquis.
Tiny was the first to call des Barres Miss P.
Next stop...
The Whiskey a Go-Go.
There was lots of hustle and bustle
as some band was pulling in with their gear.
I sat in a wine-coloured booth
absorbing the Whiskey around me.
But only briefly.
Soon I was back out on the sidewalk where
Kip Brown,
(one helluva nice guy who cruised me
in his sports car convertible
directly to the gravesite of Marilyn Monroe),
had our group positioned for a photo,
just like the GTOs back in the 60s.
In the recently released American Masters documentary,
Lennon NYC,
Yoko Ono talks about the night Richard Nixon was elected;
the same night she went to a party at
Jerry Rubin’s in New York with husband John.
Drunk and full of rage,
John Lennon,
in front of everyone at the party,
went into another room to fuck a girl
who was not his wife.
And apparently he was fucking her so loudly,
a Bob Dylan album was cranked
to try and drown them out.
Perhaps a more suitable record would’ve been...
Woman is the Nigger of the World.
Completely humiliated,
Yoko threw John out of their Manhattan apartment,
and he ran off to Hollywood
to drink vodka at the Troubadour Club,
with a Kotex on his head.
The Rock Tour didn’t stop at Doug Weston’s,
but I thought about poor John as we drove by,
and how,
by his own admission,
he couldn’t deal with the loneliness of bachelorhood.
Dan Tanas was pointed out to us as whereWall of Sound
record producer
Phil Spector
was spotted before
killing movie actress
Lana Clarkson.
I saw The Agony and Ecstasy of Phil Spector;
a film that is absolute essential viewing
for someone like me.
I was mesmerized, disturbed , and riveted.
I also laughed out loud.
Spector came from poverty,
unpopular and bullied in school,
and had a mother who abused him.
Yet he grew up to be writer of many songs,
songs with the hook.
Be My Baby,
written in 1963 for the Ronettes is
not only the most enduring song of its era,
introduced by Dick Clark on American Bandstand as
“the record of the century”,
but it’s a song of longing,
longing for acceptance that pleads for a chance...
“The night we met I knew I needed you so
And if I had the chance I'd never let you go
So won't you say you love me
I'll make you so proud of me
We'll make 'em turn their heads
Every place we go
So won't you please”
Spector also wrote
To Know Him is To Love Him
for his first vocal group, The Teddy Bears.
At first listen one may think it’s just a sappy teenage love song,
but Phil is actually conveying feelings about his father,
who took his own life in the family garage
when Phil was only 10.
These songs were cast in darkness and isolation,
by a writer on the outside looking in.
And perhaps this is why
John Lennon had Phil in the studio with him
when he was working on the song God;
God as a concept by which we measure our pain.
George Harrison also sought Spector out
when he was writing My Sweet Lord.
Spector,
“the genius who the geniuses went to”,
also produced the Beatles album Let it Be.
But Phil Spector was and is a scared man,
a man whose insecurities are evident in
his teased-high hair and platform shoes.
He is a self-described loner of no faith or beliefs,
but sincerely wishes he could be that little old lady;
the trusting little old lady who gives her life savings
to the televangelist every Sunday.
Larry Paul Fidler,
the Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge
who presided over the trial,
put the Tycoon of Teen on suicide watch when he was found guilty.
Because Fidler wanted to ensure
Spector served time for his crime.
“I have devils inside that fight me,
and I’m my own worst enemy” ~ Phil Spector
The Rock Tour is now speeding past a Mexican restaurant
that we’re told used to be the offices of the Doors,
before Kip whipped around a corner
and suddenly stopped in front of a house;
the same house where Jimmy Page telephoned Pamela
with promises of an airline ticket to join him on the Zep tour.
The same house at the corner of Alfred & St Romaine
where Pamela took on Waylon Jennings;
a strapping man the likes of which she’d never had before.
The entire van was a heavy intake of breath,
thinking about that one.
Next stop, the legendary Barney’s Beanery.
A place that inspired the Doors to write Soul Kitchen,
and where Janis Joplin was last seen alive.
Walking behind Miss P into the restaurant,
I get a good look at the tattoos on her shoulders.
Jesus.
Over huevos rancheros,
she tells everyone just one more thing...
and that’s how much she loves Lt Columbo.
Just like me!
Stairway to Heaven plays overhead
and the menus read like newspapers.
The table tops are my desk at home with a collage of
pop culture under glass,
and the plaque over there marks the bar
where Jim Morrison pissed all over it.
While happy hippies floated by on puffy clouds of 1967 mary jane,
Morrison was yet another out-of-control rock star,
crooning about insanity, incest and murder.
I once loved everything about Morrison.
I had a lifesize poster of him tacked to my bedroom door.
But after viewing the Oliver Stone biopic a dozen times,
I find it harder and harder to tolerate his story.
I did however enjoy the never-before-seen images of
Jim swimming in the oceans of When You’re Strange.
About Marilyn Monroe,
Jim Morrison has been quoted as saying...
“She lets it all hang out.
She’s everything to all people”.
It’s also been written that Janis Joplin
smashed a bottle of booze over Morrison’s head.
I wonder if he said the same thing to her
as some loser said to Bette Midler
before she did the same thing in the Rose.
And now, some forty years later,
a U.S. court has posthumously pardoned
Morrison’s outrageous behaviour,
at least that of which happened
on the concert stage in Miami, FLA.
I wouldn’t have wanted to be Pam Courson;
the so-called love of Jim Morrison’s life.
Nor would I have wanted to be Patricia Kennealy,
the New York writer who became his Wicca wife,
and then aborted his baby.
With the life Jim led;
full of temptation, lies and deceit,
it’s amazing he lived as long as 27 years.
Pamela Courson couldn’t cope with it,
and followed in death a few years after him.
Morrison once said:“a hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel
against the facts of existence,
and even seems
to conquer them.
Obviously that can only work at moments.
It can’t be a lasting thing.
That’s not to say
people should stop rebelling
against the facts of existence.
Someday, who knows,
we might conquer death,
disease and war.
I think of myself as an intelligent,
sensitive human being
with the soul of a clown.”
Miss P reminds me of Mackenzie Phillips
and Stevie Nicks in some of the old pictures
that have spilled from her bag of James Dean.
I absolutely loved Mackenzie in American Graffitti.
Images of her as a minor in the passenger seat of
Milner’s piss yellow and puke green hotrod are ingrained.
I also grew up watching Phillips
and Eddie Van Halen’s ex-wife
when they took it One Day at a Time.
But I had no idea back then that
the teenage actress was a drug-addicted psychotic
with deep seeded paranoia.
She claims to have had an incestuous relationship with her father;
John, from the Mamas and the Papas.
As for Stevie Nicks, well,
from the small bits I’ve heard and read about,
there still seems to be a fair amount of bad weather
between the Bella Donna
and her old band mates from Fleetwood Mac.
And as more mementos are passed around the table,
Jill breaks from the Rock Tour;
the producer who’s been tagging along with us,
researching for the adaptation of I’m with the Band
into a television miniseries.
Jill also worked on Six Feet Under,
a brilliant HBO drama about
a family of funeral directors,
and a series I’ve seen every episode of.
Next stop is Laurel Canyon,
and on the way there,
we saw where Frank Zappa’s log cabin burned down.
We also saw the house where Gail Zappa
currently still lives with daughter Diva.
But standing out front of the house that
Jim Morrison once lived with Courson,
directly beside the apartment where
des Barres lived at the same time,
we heard another story;
the story of when des Barres got high
on Trimar with Jim
and did a naked back bend for him,
while an enraged Courson tossed
his clothes out the window.
There’s a laundromat below the apt now,
and I silently wished it was a public washroom.
The twists and turns of the Canyon,
played serious havoc on my bladder,
but dammit,
we had to find Burrito Manor!
When a hand-drawn map by Chris Hillmanspilled out of James Dean back at the Beanery,
it was quite a surprise to Pamela.
She didn’t know it was in there.
Telling us she hasn’t been to the Manor in over forty years got the whole van excited to be finding it again, with her.
And when we finally did,
I peed at the foot of it;
an incredibly long pee,
that despite all the standing strength postures I do in yoga class,
still challenged my ankles,
as I squatted behind the Rock Tour van.
Fortunately no one could hear the endless yellow hiss
as they listened intently to Pamela read,
standing between two brick pillars.
The Flying Burrito Brothers wrote, recorded and lived here.
And at the time,
Pamela was head over heels in love with Hillman.
She was also head over heels in love with Gram Parsons,
the other Burrito Brother.
The opening passage of Rock Bottom is
one of the most beautiful des Barres has written.
She describes her experience listening to Parsons sing a song
about a guy who couldn’t bear to stay in the same town
his ex-girl used to reside.
I know what that feels like.
I’d love to abandon my home in Toronto
for someplace else,
but in today’s world,
there’s really nowhere left to hide.
With the internet,
and society’s ability and addiction
to instantly record,
and share anything and everything on the www,
it’s harder and harder to escape.
As long as there’s an electronic device at your fingertips,
it’s ever so easy to access the very pain you’re trying to avoid.
Not that you can leave your pain behind on the run anyway.
“Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide”
~ Martha and the Vandellas
When Springsteen was on Jimmy Fallon in Nov, 2010,
he said,
“you can’t sneak around like you used to”.
Gram Parsons’ life was full of cheating,
backstabbing, drugs and suicide.
He said to his sister,
“Life can be real and beautiful
if you build it that way, honestly;
with no lies or shadows to be afraid of later.”
Parsons may have been a heroin-addicted
alcoholic country rock star,
but upon seeing the front man of the Rolling Stones
cozy up to Pamela des Barres
from the Burrito stage one night,
Parsons warned Mick Jagger...
“Watch out for Miss Pamela.
She’s a beauty, and she’s tender-hearted”.
Emmylou Harris said of Gram Parsons,
“He was never afraid to write from his heart,
and perhaps that’s why he was never really accepted.
It’s like the light was too strong and bright,
and people just had to turn away...
Not many people can take music that real”.
I think it’s safe to say,I would have fallen in love
with Gram Parsons too.
When Pamela tried dating
someone outside of
rock and roll,
someone “normal”,
the closest she came
was Kramer, as in Cosmo;
Michael Richards
from the Seinfeld tv show.
But she was also
alone for a time,
thinking she may have had
all the sex, love,
and romance
one woman can stand.
But Pamela des Barres today, in 2010,
is madly in love with country music sensation
Mike Stinson.
And living in Marina del Rey,
she still carries a great love of life, and love of love,
claiming to be
“happily sound as ever”.
She’s very proud of her groupiedom,
and though I continue to struggle with aspects of the lifestyle,
and especially the behaviour of our heroes,
there are tons and tons written
between the pages of all her books that
I relate with in some way,
shape or form.
I wish I had half Pamela’s courage.
And at 61,
she’s still very beautiful.
I’m crossing my fingers I look nearly as good
fourteen years from now.
Despite my wounded heart,
and all the doubt I have
in the goodness of mankind,
I still love music.
I dwelled in the tragedies of rock
beating around L.A., I know,
but I was grief-stricken then,
as I am now.
I’m sure this blog would have read differently
had I gone to Hollywood a few years ago,
but I didn’t.
I seem to have lost a great deal
of my vitality over the past year,
as I question every single day
how I can love something
that causes me so much pain.
I also wonder if I really am naive
to have thought
we’d evolved as human beings,
and learned something
since the golden age of rock.
Am I really so naive to think
I could have a true and respectful
relationship with a man of music,
in this decade?
The only thing I know for certain is,
I write from my heart.
And I was sincerely thrilled to be part of
the Pamela des Barres Rock Tour.
Every classic rock fan
should go to Pamela’s website right this moment
and sign up for the next one.
Because I haven’t forgotten
how much joy many of the musicians
talked about on the tour,
have brought into our world, and still do.
And every music fan should read
Pamela’s books as well.
Robert Plant gave a copy of
I’m with the Band
to his teenage daughter,
“so she could read about
what the glorious rock dog and doll days
had really been like”.
Not many artists have
the intelligence and refined tastes
that Plant does,
but I got a chance to witness his charm again
mere weeks ago,
at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto.
The moody, atmospheric, Tom Waits-infused
gospel-blues of his new Band of Joy,
show Plant’s continued growth.
I particularly like the new song
Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down.
The only thing that could have made the night even better
would have been if I heard
Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us from Raising Sand...
"Secrets are written in the sky
Looks like I've lost the love I've never found
Though the sound of hope has left me again
I hear music up above"
Robert Plant never worries about what Pamela des Barres writes.
“She’s a truthful chick,” he says.
But Bill grew up under a lie,
and changed his name to Axl.
Angry, violent, and a victim of child abuse,
Axl Rose has been arrested more than once
for assault, disorderly conduct,
public drunkenness and property damage.
He also got rich fronting the rock band Gun n Roses,
because Appetite for Destruction became
the biggest selling debut album in history.
Chuck Berry likes to watch shit fall
from under a woman’s naked bottom.
He was charged with secretly videotaping women
doing just that
in the washroom stall of his restaurant.
When police raided Berry’s home,
almost sixty videotapes were found.
He denied making the tapes,
but still paid out 1.2 million in settlement dollars.
Pamela got a copy of one of the tapes
and paid witness to a very stoned Mercy
(one of her GTO pals)
defacating in a bucket for Berry’s pleasure.
The tape apparently also shows
the naked rock and roller
passing gas in a tub with a bubble bath blonde,
while waving his urine-streaming ding-a-ling
all over her open mouth.
“I know Dennis (Wilson, the Beach Boys)
loved me with all his heart,
but boys will be boys.
The male ego has nothing to do with
the women in their lives.
I’m not saying I applaud it,
but I understand after performing
in front of 250,000 cheering people,
you can’t come off stage, go back to the hotel,
call your wife, and then go to bed.
The adrenaline is pumpin’,
people are telling you how great you are,
and it’s lonely on tour.” ~ Karen Lamm
And Dennis beat up on Karen.
He fractured her sternum in three places
and then dumped her for Fleetwood Mac’s Christine McVie.
“Dennis had the deepest, most caring heart.
He was in a lot of pain because he was supersensitive”.
Hurt people hurt people
and like a lot of folks,
I wasn’t impressed to hear when Heather Mills
poured a glass of water over Paul McCartney’s head
during their divorce proceedings.
It’s a National Enquirer/Jerry Springer type of thing
that makes me cringe.
But assholery drives otherwise well-mannered human beings
to react poorly and inappropriately.
Does anyone out there honestly think Paul McCartney
isn’t capable of being an asshole?
Perhaps it’s just easier to blame the woman.
After all,
as the Godfather of Soul has told us many times...
“this is a man’s man’s man’s world”.
The roadies of the Sex Pistols once had to
rescue a girl from Sid Vicious
after finding him spewing diarrhea
and vomiting all over her,
while she was giving him a blow job.
Sid eventually stabbed Nancy Spungen to death
before killing himself in a New York hotel room.
The late Stevie Ray Vaughan,
during his recovery from alcohol and cocaine abuse,
told a writer,
“There were a lot of things I was running from.
I was scared that somebody would find out I was scared.
And now I’m realizing that fear
is the opposite of love.”
Rick Nelson,
the squeaky clean son of Ozzy and Harriet was
“a walking dichotomy, living two,
maybe three lives at once.
Uncertain if people liked him for any real reason,
caused him to become increasingly remote
and withdrawn,
yet at the same time naively trusting”.
This description of Nelson causes me deep thought.
Ricky perished in a 1985 plane crash.
I could write endlessly about the dark side of rock.
Lord knows there’s ample material to draw from.
But I haven’t had the chance to read
the book of Life by Keith Richards yet.
The headlines at the time of its release
screamed of more rock and roll assholery to me.
Keith and the Stones are great of course,
but of all things Richards could say about Jagger,
did the size of the man’s penis
have to be the focal point?
Some say hitting below the belt was for the publicity,
but I don’t for one second believe that any man,
let alone Mick Jagger with all his bags of money,
would willingly allow his glimmer twin
to tell the world he has a small dick.
I haven’t forgotten the hurtful Rolling Stones events
that led to the demise of their founder Brian Jones, either.
Based on Pamela’s book,
Let’s Spend the Night Together,
VH1 released a brand new rock doc in Dec 2010
and it’s called
Confessions of Rock’s Greatest Groupies.
I haven’t seen it yet, and I really want to,
but I don’t exactly like how the trailer announces
the size of Peter Frampton’s manhood, either.
When Marvin Gaye’s singing partner
died from a brain tumour
(some say it was from a beating to the head
by a jealous lover),
Marvin saw Tammi Terrell as a victim of love.
Gaye’s turmoil over her death drove him
to seclusion with thoughts of suicide.
Marvin also had an addiction to hookers.
He told the French magazine Acuel,
“Passions are dangerous.
They cause you to lust after other men’s wives.
Prostitutes protect me from passion”.
Gaye re-emerged with the critically-acclaimed album,
What’s Goin’ On,
but was later shot to death by his own father.
Badfinger had several hitsbefore the music business chewed them up
and spit ‘em out.
Pete Ham hanged himself
in 1975,
leaving behind a note that said the band’s manager was
“a soulless bastard”.
Pretty heavy huh?
I believe this is yet another example of an asshole who drove an otherwise good person to react poorly.
Ham’s partner tried to carry on, but eight years later,
Tommy Evans was found by his six-year-old child,
also hanging,
from a tree in the backyard.
“Rock and roll bands are horribly political.
We can be sick, awful people,
particularly in the way we treat each other.
Over the years we’ve resorted to all manner of in-fighting,
head games and mind-fucks
to assert ourselves,
and take the music where we wanted it to go.
In our time, we’ve stolen girlfriends,
manipulated loved ones
and told the most horrible lies about each other.
We’ve gone through long stretches of deceit and cowardice
in order to protect ourselves, and guard our egos.”
~ Dave Bidini, On a Cold Road
And anyone who’s seen the film The Rose
will remember the manipulating manager who helped
nail her coffin shut in the film’s dramatic finale.
Currently in the news,
Elton John offers tough love toward
the substance abuse of Billy Joel,
and Phil Collins,
singer songwriter of Against All Odds,
talks openly about his suicidal tendancies.
And the most recent documentary release I’ve seen,
There But for Fortune, the story of Phil Ochs,
is about the famed troubador
who couldn’t face his humiliation either,
and fell apart tragically in the end.
Phil Ochs was a cheerleader for the underdog,
but if he came back from the dead today,
he’d be extremely disappointed to find
many of the battles he fought in the 60s,
are still raging.
Pamela asked groupie Patti Johnsen
if she ever got her heart broken by a rock star.
She replied, “Taime (Downe, Faster Pussycat)
would throw me down
and fuck me like the whore I am.
But ultimately I realized
I was the only one being exclusive.
When I asked him about it,
he seemed sad
like he didn’t want to hurt me.
And then he said, quite honestly,
‘I never said you were my girlfriend’.
We had the sweetest breakup
and we’re still friends.
Because after we stopped sleeping together,
he would sing my praises and occasionally announce...
'she gave great head’”.
Live Music Head loves rock and roll;
loves listening to it, seeing it live,
buying it, sharing it, talking about it,
promoting it, reading about it, analyzing it,
and having sex with it,
Over Under Sideways Down.
When ... will... it... end?
And it definitely goes without saying,
she likes to write about it.
But these days,
the music I love the most,
hurts me the most.
My passion runs deep,
and so does the hurt.
And I don't think my depression is a sign of weakness.
Rather it’s a sign of trying to be strong for too long.
Many people these days talk about being happy no matter what.
But for some people,
there aren’t enough masks.
And some people need to leave the mask off,
to express the pain.
And when we do,
we shouldn’t be judged, criticized, or told to “get over it”.
These three words are necessary at times,
but they should be used carefully.
Because they can sound incredibly dismissive to someone in pain,
especially after they’ve drummed up enough courage
to seek an ear in the first place.
“When the truth is found to be lies
All the joy within you dies.
Don’t you want somebody to love?
Don’t you need somebody to love?”
Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love” ~ Jefferson Airplane
Following a viewing of two back-to-back Bee Gees dvds,
I learned how the Brothers Gibb,
top shelf writers of the most moving love songs ever,
were driven apart.
At the end of the 60s,
Barry, Maurice and Robin couldn’t stand one another,
and didn’t communicate for years.
But when they finally did hook up again,
the song they released was
How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?
Sometimes you can’t.
I believe a human being can die from a broken heart.
I believe it’s what took The Man in Black.
When Johnny Cash decided to cover a song by Nine Inch Nails,
he made it his own.
After viewing the video of Hurt,
you can see why.
"I hurt myself today
To see if I still feel
I focus on the pain
The only thing that's real"
Cash, an impossible man with a tortured soul,
made things rough on himself,
and seemed happier when things didn’t always go so right.
He was also a man who stood up for the little guy.
Nowhere is this best evidenced than in the
Bestor Cram documentary At Folsom Prison,
which goes into great detail
the relationship Cash had with inmate Glen Sherley.
Johnny would likely have departed this earth long before he did,
if not for June Carter, the love of his life.
Otis Blackwell wrote a lyric in 1956,
and not only do the words serve as great advice,
but they were delivered to the world by none other than
the King of Rock & Roll himself...
“Don’t Be Cruel... to a heart that’s true”.
And from a musician who lives closer to home;
the one who’s Gotta Have Pop...
this to what he had to say:
“In the old days,
groupies were called road angels;
back when I was on the road
twelve weeks solid.
And once when I was in Michigan,
I’d had it.
I was living a horrible existence.
Somebody had to write down what city I was in
and put it on my monitor.
Another time,
I opened the window of my hotel room
and didn’t know where I was.
I went to look for a phone book,
but there wasn’t one.
I asked for a local newspaper,
but they sent me the New York Times.
It was pathetic having to call the front desk to ask,
“Can you tell me where I am?”
As it turned out,
I was in Providence, Rhode Island.
The road was horrible.
Then, along comes this girl.
She took me by the hand,
put me in a Volkswagon with my luggage,
took me to her house,
lit candles, bathed me,
and cooked a homemade meal.
But most important of all,
she did my laundry.
She saved my life.
People look down on groupies,
but let me tell you,
if it weren’t for them,
this industry would have been dead long ago.”
~ Bob Segarini (On a Cold Road by Dave Bidini)
Pamela de Barres dedicates
Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon
to the first ever groupie,
Mary Magdalene.
Pamela des Barres website...
http://www.pameladesbarres.net/
http://www.pameladesbarres.net/
Let’s Spend the Night Together:
