Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up by Pamela Des Barres, Michael Des Barres

Zeppelin sizzled into town and my dear, old friend Robert Plant sent a limousine to Bleecker Street so I could enjoy their show at Nassau Coliseum in style. They splintered the place as usual and afterwards took me to a dastardly bash, way out of town at a creepy old guy’s house in the sticks. There was no lighting, no refreshments, no ambiance, and very few party-goers in attendance, and I was confused until it dawned on me that the grotesque old fellow was a notorious, drug-scum-dealing dog. Rod Stewart was there in one of the dingy, darkened rooms, Mick Jagger was hovering. Keith Richards loomed around in the gloom like a storm-cloud warning. I sat on Robert’s lap, trying to make small talk with Jimmy Page’s momentary doll, while these rock giants paid respectful, dutiful homage to this bald troll.
    Mr. Page had undergone several transformations since he tossed his naughty whips into the trash for my blushing benefit so long ago. I still had chaotic, tangled feelings about my ex-shame-flame. Thegooey soft spot I had for him remained but was slowly eroding. It scared me to think that he had never been who he seemed to be. What was lurking under those ebony ringlets and cherubic petal face? His beauty was even fading. Going, going. . . He told a girlfriend of mine that the idea of blood mixed with semen excited him. She didn’t spend the night. Poor old Bonzo was always stoned-out drunk morose. He even slugged my friend Michele Myer in the jaw for absolutely no reason and got himself kicked out of the Rainbow Bar and Grill, his Hollywood home away from home. It was sad, sad, sad. When Zeppelin went on the road, it was as if they had been given permission to pillage, rampage, cut loose, and poke holes into millions of eardrums with that unprecedented, massive chunk of top-heavy metal. But when I tried to picture them at home in front of a glowing fire, sipping a nice cup of tea with their wives, the image was hard to conjure up. Robert was still majestic, John Paul Jones, silently enigmatic, but their glory days were crunching, blaring, grinding gradually to a halt.
    Even though I had just danced with the demonic Led Zeppelin darlings and decided to stay away from rock madness, I dolled up my skinny self a few days later and went to an Alice Cooper show at Madison Square Garden to revel with my old friends in their success. Alice, the prototype for several copycat ghoul rockers, had opened for the GTO’s at the Shrine back in ’68, and seven years later he was being called a legend already. Pretty extreme. It shows you how rocky the rock world had become. We were having a grand old time backstage after the show, and I was feeling vivacious and sparkly when Bebe Buell strutted by, took in the scene and exclaimed, “Miss Pamela! You look so
good
! I hope
I
look as good as
you
do when I get to be
your
age!!” I was twenty-six and she was twenty-three. There was a stunned hush and Neal Smith, Alice’s tall, blond drummer admonished her tacky rudeness, which she, of course, pretended to know nothing about. “Did I
say
something? What did I
say?”
Her eyes were glittering fraud. Bebe had been Jimmy Page’s concubine after appearing as a
Playboy
Playmate, and I considered her to be one of the new breed of groupies who created a nasty disturbance just to be noticed. I thought it was sad that you couldn’t trust the new groupie girls. There was no camaraderie, no girlfriend affection: It was every bitch for herself. Bebe later lived with Todd Rundgren and had several notorious flings with people like Elvis Costello and Stiv Bators. We get along fine today. Why not? You have to let go of old crap, or it will become a layer of slimy scum blocking your vision.
II
     
    My most major ex, Don Johnson, and the girl who pulverized my heart harder than anyone else ever had came to stay with me for a couple of weeks on Bleecker Street, and luckily my United roommate was up in the friendly skies somewhere. They slept in her bed,