So what did Al do last Tuesday? (Warning: Slightly adult subject matter.)
Oct. 13, 2005
Rock's groupie queen tells all -- once again
By Chris Morris
The other day, Pamela Des Barres' name came up in conversation with a friend who asked, "Wasn't she a ... uh ... a roadie or something?"
Well, no, she was a groupie. The role confusion was somewhat understandable, though, since both of these rock 'n' roll workers handle important and, if one is to believe their claims, outsized equipment.
"Miss Pamela" -- as she was known in her '60s heyday, when she was a member of the Frank Zappa-produced groupie consortium the GTOs -- bagged the big game of her time: Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Jimmy Page. She told her tale in the 1987 book "I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie," which the music-friendly Chicago Review Press has just brought out in an updated edition.
Des Barres notes with no little pride that her unblushing memoir has retained a cultural resonance that transcends its sex-and-drugs-and-rock 'n' roll subject matter. "I'm not considered a groupie slut -- I'm considered a chronicler of a time," she says, adding with a bawdy laugh, "Well, some may consider me a groupie slut."
She celebrated the book's republication with a Tuesday signing at Book Soup on the Sunset Strip, not far from her old nightclub stamping grounds. About 100 people crammed into the store's tiny annex to hear readings by a diverse crew that included "Weird Al" Yankovic, Berlin's Terri Nunn, the Knack's Doug Fieger, Zappa's widow Gail and actor-musician Michael Des Barres, who called his ex-wife "the Mary Magdelene of the Electric Church."
In the '60s, she was Pamela Miller, a sweet young thing attending Cleveland High in Reseda, Calif. Mad for music and enraptured by rock stars, she dove into the countercultural vortex a-swirling in Hollywood in those pre-velvet rope days and became the consort of a long succession of musicians, from the unknown to the infamous.
"We were doing it because it was there to do," Des Barres says. "But I knew it was historical, and I kept my diairies. I took them everywhere -- in the back of the limo with Jimmy Page, everywhere. I'd climb out of bed with whoever and write."
"I'm With the Band" has been kicking around in Hollywood for some time. Writer Alexandra Seros ("The Specialist," "Point of No Return") is working on a screenplay based on the book.
For a time, Drew Barrymore and Christina Applegate, now too old to play the teenage Miss Pamela, were mentioned as possible stars of a film version. "I think Anna Paquin could do it," Des Barres says. "I think Evan Rachel Wood could do it."
Des Barres notes in the new edition of her book that actresses and models have supplanted old-style groupies as the musician's arm candy of choice today. She's planning a deeper look at groupiedom in her next tome, "Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies."
She has been traveling the country, interviewing both musicians and groupies. Among her subjects: Russ Meyer actress Tura Satana ("She was with Elvis -- she taught Elvis some very important things," she says); Cassandra Peterson, better known as horror hostess Elvira ("She was a very big groupie girl, and proud of it"); and actress and close friend Patti D'Arbanville ("She was wild -- her story about Cat Stevens is beyond belief").
Des Barres adds, "Some girls don't like to be called 'groupies.' It's a tarnished word, and I'm trying to redeem it."
