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Pamela Des Barres had the giants of rock’n’roll in the palm of her hand, as her candid memoir reveals
Barely 30 seconds in and Pamela Des Barres has not so much name-dropped as chucked her diary on the table. I compliment the author of I’m With the Band – one of the all-time classic rock’n’roll memoirs – on her ornate necklace, and she says it used to belong to Psycho actor Janet Leigh. When I ask if she still has the jewellery gifted to her by Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, she replies, bereft: “No, it was stolen, by a kleptomaniac married to one of the Beach Boys.”
Then, as we scan the menu in the rapidly busying Friday night dining room of an in-crowd Hollywood hotel, I idly enquire as to her dietary habits. “I haven’t eaten red meat for 45 years. I went with Don Johnson, one of my dudes,” she says of the then-future star of Miami Vice, “to the first vegetarian restaurant in LA. And I saw on the back of the menu how we get the red meat. And I was so appalled that I stopped that day.”
I’m With the Band, the classic confessional of Des Barres’s sexual and romantic escapades with a cacophony of rock stars, is republished in a 30th anniversary edition this month. In bracing detail, the woman born Pamela Miller in Reseda, California, details her high jinks on the Sunset Strip of late-60s and early-70s Los Angeles.
Led Zep, the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, the Kinks, the Who… These were many of the greatest acts of the cultural revolution, and Pamela – who turned 20 in 1968 – knew them all. She alchemised adolescent Beatles fandom into a new type of ardour: that of the groupie.
A groupie is someone who loves the music so much she wants to be around the people who make it
“A groupie is someone who loves the music so much she wants to be around the people who make it,” she explains. “A fan is content with an autograph or a look from the stage, or a selfie. A groupie takes the next step. And that takes a lot of courage....