Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies by Pamela Des Barres Page B
Authors: Pamela Des Barres
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her during the next few hours.
Gail's nuclear physicist father, Jack, was a captain in the U.S. Navy, and the Sloatman family traveled hither and all over yon while she grew up. He ran the Office of Naval Research in London, and while living there in the mid-1960s, teenage Gail encountered profound new possibilities when she attended a shindig for an up-and-coming rock group.
"I went to a party for the Rolling Stones and they were all in jeans-a very raw band. I remember thinking, `Oh, this is interesting.' Not knowing anything about their music, I definitely saw something different going on. They were young people who were making up their own lives, and that's what got me interested. I didn't know what I wanted to do; I thought I had some idea but figured my options were extremely limited considering I had no money. But here were these people with nothing-you could see they weren't making a fashion statement-jeans were what they legitimately found to wear. I thought the Beatles were new and fantastic and different; they didn't sound like anything else I'd ever heard, but it was slick and polished and commercial. The Rolling Stones didn't seem to be like that, and yet they figured they had a shot as well."
Since I have known Gail, she's had an eerily prescient sense of the looming future, which apparently manifested early on. "I had psychic visions on an oddly consistent basis," she admits. "Because my family was on diplomatic passports when I was just barely eighteen, I got my first job in London working for the American Embassy. And I'll tell you this: on March 16, 1964, I was working away and this prophetic poem came to me straight out of nowhere. So I had to type it up, and the reason I know the date is because it was my father's birthday. I came to understand from this piece of poetry that I was somehow protected. All I had to do was wait and this important person was going to come along. I knew this so strongly: he was out there and he would show up. I didn't follow any particular passion because I knew I would meet this person, and my whole life would be unimaginable compared to what it was then."
While she waited for a certain illustrious composer to happen along, Gail decided to experience the burgeoning free-love movement firsthand. "I said, `Fuck this, everything in the world's all about sex. Everyone I know has had sex and I can't allow this to continue. So I got on a train going to London one day and said, `I'm gonna sleep with the first guy I meet.' And I did."
Gail was going to the movies with a girlfriend and her date brought a pal along, and it turned out to be his lucky day. After that initial encounter, Gail continued experimenting. "I had flings-I flung myself around quite a bit, actually. But I wasn't influenced by what other people did or what they thought. I kept to myself and my visions. I trusted my internal check and balance, and suspected from an early age that my personal experiences were different from everyone else's." She didn't feel she could discuss her unique gift with her folks, and Gail felt like an outsider. "I felt I was out of the time I was supposed to be in-actually a step ahead of it. In fact, when I first heard the Stones' song `Out of Time,' I thought it must have been written about my dilemma. I was seeing everything before it happened, waiting for it to catch up: silly stuff, like my father will come through the door and say `X,' then he comes in five hours later and says X: It finally got to the point where in some instances I had a choice in the matter: if it played out the way I had seen it, it was dependant on me responding in a particular way at a particular time. I would fall into trances in school and have visions of things that didn't have anything to do with me; I'd see major world events before they happened."
Gail tells me that this unusual capability eventually waned, but seems to be back on the upswing. "Some things stay with you, events you know are going to
Gail's nuclear physicist father, Jack, was a captain in the U.S. Navy, and the Sloatman family traveled hither and all over yon while she grew up. He ran the Office of Naval Research in London, and while living there in the mid-1960s, teenage Gail encountered profound new possibilities when she attended a shindig for an up-and-coming rock group.
"I went to a party for the Rolling Stones and they were all in jeans-a very raw band. I remember thinking, `Oh, this is interesting.' Not knowing anything about their music, I definitely saw something different going on. They were young people who were making up their own lives, and that's what got me interested. I didn't know what I wanted to do; I thought I had some idea but figured my options were extremely limited considering I had no money. But here were these people with nothing-you could see they weren't making a fashion statement-jeans were what they legitimately found to wear. I thought the Beatles were new and fantastic and different; they didn't sound like anything else I'd ever heard, but it was slick and polished and commercial. The Rolling Stones didn't seem to be like that, and yet they figured they had a shot as well."
Since I have known Gail, she's had an eerily prescient sense of the looming future, which apparently manifested early on. "I had psychic visions on an oddly consistent basis," she admits. "Because my family was on diplomatic passports when I was just barely eighteen, I got my first job in London working for the American Embassy. And I'll tell you this: on March 16, 1964, I was working away and this prophetic poem came to me straight out of nowhere. So I had to type it up, and the reason I know the date is because it was my father's birthday. I came to understand from this piece of poetry that I was somehow protected. All I had to do was wait and this important person was going to come along. I knew this so strongly: he was out there and he would show up. I didn't follow any particular passion because I knew I would meet this person, and my whole life would be unimaginable compared to what it was then."
While she waited for a certain illustrious composer to happen along, Gail decided to experience the burgeoning free-love movement firsthand. "I said, `Fuck this, everything in the world's all about sex. Everyone I know has had sex and I can't allow this to continue. So I got on a train going to London one day and said, `I'm gonna sleep with the first guy I meet.' And I did."
Gail was going to the movies with a girlfriend and her date brought a pal along, and it turned out to be his lucky day. After that initial encounter, Gail continued experimenting. "I had flings-I flung myself around quite a bit, actually. But I wasn't influenced by what other people did or what they thought. I kept to myself and my visions. I trusted my internal check and balance, and suspected from an early age that my personal experiences were different from everyone else's." She didn't feel she could discuss her unique gift with her folks, and Gail felt like an outsider. "I felt I was out of the time I was supposed to be in-actually a step ahead of it. In fact, when I first heard the Stones' song `Out of Time,' I thought it must have been written about my dilemma. I was seeing everything before it happened, waiting for it to catch up: silly stuff, like my father will come through the door and say `X,' then he comes in five hours later and says X: It finally got to the point where in some instances I had a choice in the matter: if it played out the way I had seen it, it was dependant on me responding in a particular way at a particular time. I would fall into trances in school and have visions of things that didn't have anything to do with me; I'd see major world events before they happened."
Gail tells me that this unusual capability eventually waned, but seems to be back on the upswing. "Some things stay with you, events you know are going to
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