continued...
Was Frank Zappa like something of a father figure to you?
"Well, he wasn’t that much older than I was, but he was always very wise and mysterious, and whenever I was around him I was nervous. No matter how many years I knew him, he always made you feel a little intimidated and like he was scrutinizing you, and I’m sure he was. So he wasn’t really a father figure, more of a mentor and kind of an idol, really. Even though I wound up living in the house for years I still felt that way. He would disappear down into the basement for hours and hours and days on end and he was even an enigmatic figure in his own house sometimes. So it was all his vision, he saw us as a group and that’s how that came about."
So, we’ve established that you attracted groupies of your own as a member of the GTOs, but did you find aspiring musicians pestering you for sex just for the kudos of bedding Miss Pamela like proper rock stars?
"Oh, believe me, there were. There was one guy who shall remain nameless who said one time after we made love ‘I got in there so deep I think I saw Jimmy Page’. But it was great, it was said out of reverence, there was nothing nasty intended in it or anything he just liked to be in the same place where those people have been, and you know what, I don’t mind."
They wanted to play the same venue, as it were...
"Dave Navarro, who I had a little thing with, wrote a book that didn’t come out because a lot of people got annoyed that he was telling tales on them, and he said something like that in there, and we never consummated our thing so that’s what upset me, because it wasn’t true, but he thought the same way. His heroes had been around me and if that’s why he wanted to hang out with me, fine, I had a good time with him."
Were people terribly offended when you snubbed them?
"I didn’t snub anybody, I don’t think. I’m not a big snubber, but I didn’t just jump in bed with anybody that was hot for me. I had to really care about the people. But, yeah I had the groupies following me around, but they were mainly girls who just wanted to be around me and the GTOs because we knew the right people."
And you were also ahead of your time in being a strong, empowering, ballsy, all-girl rock’n’roll band before the concept had even been considered elsewhere.
"Yeah, our girl group was the first of its kind, and that’s why Frank is such a great innovator for thinking to bring us together in that way, and of course we jumped on it; ‘Wow, what an opportunity’, to do our own record at that time in 1969, was really amazing. And a lot of it was recorded as early as late ’68 and we were in the centrefold of
Rolling Stone and that kind of thing which was huge."
Are there any current musicians that catch your eye, do any of them cut the same dash as the Morrisons, Pages, Jaggers or Stewarts used to?
"No, none of them are quite that dashing, because those guys came first that’s all, they were the pioneers and so rarely can they be matched, certainly no new Dylan has come along, and there won’t be one. But there are bands that I really like, I’ve got to say Audioslave because I’m a Chris Cornell slave and, sure, the hot guys still get me hot. Ryan Adams also sends me, he’s a friend, and I do still usually befriend these people, but I haven’t yet met Chris Cornell, and it’s unusual that I don’t get to at least be friends with my heroes."
Why did you decide to write I’m With The Band?
"Because I kept diaries and I knew they were important when I was writing them because of the amazing life I was living and I knew the music would be revered forever, I just knew it. I knew it was going to stick around, and of course The Doors and Hendrix do sell more now than they ever did then, and how about Zeppelin? Straight to number one in America with a three CD set? It’s awesome, huge... So I just knew it was important and it followed on from a series of events, I figured I’d try to be a singer, try to be an actress, but I always figured I’d fall back on writing. So I’ve now written three books, I’m on my fourth, I write screenplays, I have a column, and it just was the right time to write it, I was 33, 34 when I started writing it and it had a lot to do with Stephen Davis, who wrote
Hammer Of The Gods, he interviewed me and he said ‘you shouldn’t even be telling me this stuff, you should write your own book’. So that really encouraged me."
It’s amazing that you had time to write the diaries because you were leading some kind of a social life back in the day.
"I carried them with me, they were with me at all times, and I think the book works well because of the immediacy of those diary entries. I was actually sitting writing my thoughts while in the back of a limousine waiting for Jimmy to finish his encore with Led Zeppelin, so they are very immediate and that helped."
Did you leave anything out to spare blushes?
"I only left things out that would hurt somebody, I’m not into hurting anybody, there is one passage at the end that I left in took out, left in, took out, and in the end I did leave it in and I do regret that because I know Jimmy Page got upset about it. It was the scene where I wasn’t seeing him anymore, but we were friends and I was visiting him and he was crawling across the floor to get the bag of drugs. He didn’t like that, even though it was so true. But I did leave a lot of other stuff out like that. But I think we’ve made up now, last time we talked he was fine."
Too many of the people that you talk about in I’m With The Band are no longer with us; Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Frank Zappa, Jimi Hendrix, Gram Parsons and most recently, Noel Redding.
"I know, I was heartbroken, I stayed in touch with Noel all the way, I saw him just five months ago, he was in town doing a Hendrix birthday tribute and he seemed like he had just had it, you know, it was so great to see him and we just kind of hung onto each other – he clung onto me for dear life actually – and I was all ‘Oh, Noel doesn’t seem too well’, but I knew that his mother had died shortly before he did and that was very tough on him because they were very close."
It is tragic that so many of your peers have succumbed to an early grave, but living the high life doesn’t seem to have done you much harm – you’re looking as fit as a fiddle.
"I know, isn’t it great? I must have good genes, I guess, but I eat really well and I’ve never been addicted to anything, I’ve certainly had my stages of being as high as a kite, sometimes way too much, so if I have any regrets it might be that. Where I got so stoned I forgot things, even better things than went in the book that I couldn’t remember actually. Later on some of my girlfriends reminded me of things that went on that I didn’t put in the book purely because I couldn’t remember them, where I got too stoned. But I’m not addictive, so it didn’t stick, I could go ages without doing it, you know... But, I wouldn’t trade my acid trips for anything."
What made you throw it all in with Michael Des Barres?
"I just fell in love again, and this time, he fell in love back and he was ready to commit... even though he’d been married three weeks to some one else. He didn’t tell me he was married until after we got engaged, and by then it was too late, he was mine."
Did you have many wives who wanted to scratch your eyes out?
"I never went with married men. Other than Waylon Jennings and I didn’t know he was married, and he certainly wasn’t about to tell me."
I think Bianca Jagger was more than a little adamant that you stop phoning Mick after they were married, wasn’t she?
"Yeah, but I didn’t know about her. I was in Europe and when I came back I called Mick to get back together with him and she answered the phone, and of course I didn’t bother him after that. I really respect relationships and I wanted my relationships to be respected, not that they were all that much, but that’s what I wanted."
So would you recommend the groupie lifestyle to a young lady in search of career guidance today?
"It’s not there anymore, you can’t have that kind of lifestyle, now I always say just get in the business. If you are desperately in love with musicians, just become a photographer, be a DJ, work at a record company, start your own band or do what you do."
God forbid that I should ever sleep with Metallica, though. Do you ever regret ones that you missed – Jim Morrison, for instance?
"Well, I made out with him, that’s almost as good. And I was a virgin then and he was actually a gentleman about it, he didn’t force the issue. He was so sweet, he was a mess when he got ****ed up, but this was around the time of the first album, so he was the most beautiful person next to Elvis that I have ever seen, still to this day. Johnny Depp’s coming close, but he was the most beautiful man. Looking up at that face and knowing he was just about to kiss you was pretty great, and he was a one-woman man so not a lot of people can say that, he was really dedicated to that woman, Pam, and I always respected her too."
So, no regrets?
"No, the only regrets I have are things that I did not do. One, could have gone to see Elvis that night, and the other that I could have ****ed Jimi Hendrix but I was just too shy, and I was a virgin, and I just couldn’t do it. It would have been cool if he was the first, and he could have been, so I have a slight regret about that. I went off with Noel instead, so he would have been the first, I had not been laid when I did the Jimi Hendrix video. I’m the ‘Foxy Lady’, you know, and I was 17, how great is that?"
People do seem to forget just how young the rock fraternity were in those days, nowadays you’re luck if your hot, young hopefuls are under 30, but in those days you were genuinely kids? Zeppelin and the Stones misbehaved? Of course they did, they were rutting bucks with loads of wedge and the keys to the chemist’s shop...
"I know, we were kids, people try to get real serious about it, I was a kid. The people I was seeing were kids, when I met Mick he was my son’s age, a kid. How about Robert Plant was 19-years old, what the hell would you expect them to do other than what they did? My God?"
So here you are, a rock historian, a one woman Smithsonian, did you ever think it would end this way?
"Well no, it’s certainly not ending yet, but I never once thought that I would be the person that people came to for all this knowledge. It is amazing, and I’m still here because I’ve always meant enough to myself not to put myself into precarious situations, and the best thing of all is that I simply don’t care if people sneer."
© Ian Fortnam, 2002
http://www.rocksbackpages.com/article.html?ArticleID=5878&SearchText=pamela+des+barres
and it's super cool that bebe has a song about joey ramone, they were good friends, so i think it's an amazing way to honor him.
I am so excited because I am going to see her play LIVE tomorrow night (Tuesday May 19th) in NYC at The Fillmore @ Irving Plaza. That is located at East 15th St. and Irving Place. Between 14th and 16th Sts.
