I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie

by Pamela Des Barres

I’m with the Band is the ultimate inside look at the most revolutionary time in modern music, making Pamela Des Barres one of the most unique and important rock historians of our time.

Not only does the reader get a fascinating peek at the lives of such entertainers as Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, and, of course, Michael Des Barres, but a personal and intimate account of these relationships during a divinely decadent time.

I don’t believe this book is just a sexy tell-all. It’s the story of a young girl coming of age in the best of all possible worlds. It was a time of religious and sexual confusion, drugs, danger, and ecstasy.

1 LET ME PUT IT IN, IT FEELS ALL RIGHT

Robby’s manly manliness;

I started writing porno things in my diary for the first time: “Someday I will touch and feel him, I know it. Mick, my dear, dear PENIS!” I brazenly created in pink and red oil colors my concept of what his balls might look like. I turned it in to Mr. Gifford as a modern-art project and got an A.

I showed my affection for the opposite sex in those days by giving them head, and I was very popular indeed. I tried not to think of myself as being cheap or easy or any of those other terms that were used to describe loose, free, peace-loving girls; I just wanted to show my appreciation for their music, for their taste in clothes, for their heads, hands, and hearts.

There I was, in what was about to become my favorite position in the world, hanging on to the hand of an English rock star.

He was freshly famous, and very happy to be in America where girls were ripe for the sticking.

behind long black drapes, like the phantom of the porno opera.

I gazed, amazed, as this goofy-looking goateed genius led his team of Quasimodos through their brilliant paces, punctuated by the hurling of severed baby-doll heads into

the crowd of gaping groovers. You either adored him or abhorred him, and I adored him beyond the breaking point.

That particular night turned into fiasco city. Before we could even get up onstage, some matronly box-shaped matron dragged me into a little office and pointed to the pink edge of nipple that peeked out from under my bib.

I ate his name for breakfast, and I couldn’t eat lunch or dinner because my stomach ached from wanting him so bad.

I’m in a type of void; between agony and ecstasy.

My mom confessed to me last night that she was worried about my pervertedness.

Chris Hillman acknowledged me with a nod and I was a puddle of artichoke butter seeping into the ground.)

Some dildo with a double first name shot Robert Kennedy, and any vague political interest I might have conjured up disappeared with his toothy grin.

Led Zeppelin live in 1969 was an event unparalleled in musical history.

there I was in Las Vegas, breathing the same air as Elvis Presley, sitting between Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, completely and entirely beside myself.

I had an orgasm every minute, and each one was a different flavor.

I had taken some very intense mescaline,

It was with this attitude, and with chastity belt attached to my 1930s pink-satin tap panties, that I found myself face to face, body to body, with Mick Jagger.

I had a real short dress on and he slobbered all over my thighs, chewing me up real good. I was breathing in heaving gasps and he inched higher up my thigh, leaving a sticky trail like a snail had been crawling into my panties.

Groupies in Los Angeles are crass, supercilious, pretentious, beautiful beyond description or reason, freakish, cultish, aggressive, mad and young. Groupies in Los Angeles are extreme. The GTO’s epitomize an international groupie type, The Freak.

He gave new meaning to giving head, which did not surprise me in the slightest; those lips!!! Please!!

But looking down and seeing Mick Jagger between my legs kept me from surrendering with the wild-animal abandon I had anticipated.

I was very impressed with the perfectly carved penises that lined the many alcoves, and since I couldn’t feel any remaining Satanic vibrations, I gave this beyond-description mansion my stoned seal of approval.

He loved me a lot, and the swell part of him intended to be faithful, but the rotten-to-the-core part wanted to spread venereal diseases throughout the entire country of England. These two sides were in a constant battle, and he was often cold and distant to me when we weren’t in the sack.

He hugged Mercy and ushered us into his Hollywood bachelor pad where many a burgeoning actress had been successfully seduced. It reeked of male conquest and female acquiescence.

I went to the movies to see Harold and Maude, and I knew, without any doubt, that I would know the star, Bud Cort, in a very real way.

I went to see Last Tango in Paris by myself. Me and a bottle of Kahlua. It was better than any of my wet dreams ever were and I massaged my pubic area while Marlon unwrapped the butter. I ached to have it melt in my underpants and puddle under my thighs while he pulled his polyester pants down just far enough so I could feel the crack of his ass.

He spent Christmas with me and my parents, and since he and Daddy were both from North Carolina, they got along like a hotel on fire.

We were making out fervently—hearts beating fast, heavy breathing, the whole bit—when the phone shrieked and stopped my trembling hand in mid zip-down.

Lane wouldn’t come near me when I had my period, and Michael turned into Dracula. The difference between Lane and Michael was like night and Des Barres.

He gave me scabies and I didn’t care, even though my family doctor wagged his head in sorrow

that I could have sunk so low. Michael and I rubbed the smelly kill-cream into each other and took the infected sheets to the Laundromat with hysterical glee. I knew I was in love,

I could have sat beside the King, but I wanted to sit on the face of my prince.

Woody Allen and I had become pen pals, so when I came back to

New York we got together.

Keith Moon might as well have stuck a lance through his own heart. He didn’t think he deserved to be alive, so he died in the same

shitty way that Jimi Hendrix, John “Bonzo” Bonham, and Mama Cass did. He mixed too many drugs and booze, passed out, and choked on his own vomit.

I wish I knew what happened to all my boyfriends.

Our little boy, Nicky, is living a very different kind of life than I did. The phone rings and he calls out, “Daddy, it’s Ozzy Osbourne!”

When I was out on the road, taking the book from TV show to radio show to bookstore, I had my own groupies.

I miss Miss Christine. I miss Lowell George, Brandon de Wilde, Gram Parsons, Keith Moon, John Bonham, and beautiful Beverly.

I’m a journalist these days, still traipsing around with various rock stars—some up and coming, some coming back, some in their prime and full of themselves. I find them all fascinating.

When I carried my precious diaries around with me during the Sunset Strip heyday, I knew for certain I was dancing through an earth-shattering era.