I'm With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie

by Pamela Des Barres

He was cracking my contrived persona for my own good.

Jimmy told me tales of Charlotte and little baby Scarlet. They haven’t gotten married, and have lots of disagreements. Oh well, he could have had me. I saw Robert on the way out, and he said, “I was a fool to have passed you up.”

rock’s golden Adonis must have had third thoughts, because he never called back with flight information, and then I was relieved and mortified at the same time.

Stanislavski’s

Donnie Wayne Johnson.

Miami Vice Don Johnson?

his Hollywood bachelor pad where many a burgeoning actress had been successfully seduced. It reeked of male conquest and female acquiescence.

Mu tea.

channel healing light

Reiki?

He gave me EVERY line in the book; very beautifully done, very romantic and full of promises, but I presume he was full of shit because he didn’t call today,

Desi Arnaz Jr.

Jack Nich...

Whenever I was talking to a guy for too long, he would scoop me up and pull me into a hal...

Lucille Ball’s living room.

Liza Minnelli,

I had been in love before, but not like this.

Donnie didn’t call me for three days, and it was bad timing, because the Who came to town, and Keith Moon crashed into my life with firecracker force,

Donnie told me he loved me. I told him I loved him too, and after the big announcement had been made, he started the creative process of molding me to meet his specifications.

I wanted to be what he wanted me to be: perfect.

I HAD to be with Donnie, so I gave the best boss on earth, Gail Z., two weeks nanny notice, and she was kind enough to understand my desire for unceasing endless hours with Mr. Johnson.

Terrible idea

Donnie got depressed. He needed to work. I felt like he took it out on me. I cried. I wrung my hands and moaned. I felt impotent. I was trapped in a demanding, total love affair, neglecting any creative urge that cropped up in favor of kissing Donnie’s perfectly shaped royal ass. I enjoyed it.

Each one he didn’t get made him more pissed off, and he would become silent upon his bed of thorns,

This was the first time I had ever moved in with a man, and what a man!

The one scary thing in my way was his humongous bad temper, which came out of nowhere like a clap of thunder

My creativity was spent adoring him,

Sometimes it wasn’t enough, and sometimes it was too much.

Don let me have it. Nothing about me pleases him; I’m letting myself go, I’m annoying him. Sometimes I just don’t feel domestic, even though I really want to be, and if I forget something or make a little boo-boo, it’s hell. He forgets the things I remember and remembers the things I forget.

Nope nope nope

I dreaded going to the set, but I thanked God that I could, because I didn’t want Donnie to be alone with her.

Donnie continued to reprimand me for my incompetence.

I reveled in the fact that he thought my caliber of mind was worth reprimanding. He had me in a swirling state of turmoil at all times, trying to mend my magnified flaws.

We came dragging my things back to mom’s. I don’t know how she copes with it all.

the Stones’ party,

bowed out ungracefully. I crawled off into the dismal evening with my tail between my thighs, but I knew I was standing up for myself, and it made me feel like staying alive.

luckily Led Zeppelin charged into town and I drowned my sorrows in Jimmy’s big available bed.

had never lost a loved one before, and when I remembered all the real important stuff, the stuff that Really Mattered, it helped me start the slow repair process on my ripped-up heart. I found I could stand it after all.

When he played me all his new songs, I knew he thought of me as a real person,

I ran to call my mother so I could tell her I had just seen someone on the screen that would loom large in my legend . . . “Mark my words, Mom.” She was used to this kind of outburst and said, “I’m so happy for you, honey.”

I would love to know her moms story

Ray Davies

Marlon Brando

got his home phone number and started leaving semipornographic/spiritual messages on his answering machine.

I got his address from the very same source, and sent up a dozen partially clad candids of myself with enticing messages written on the back. He didn’t write back. Hmmm.

He had been living all over the place, but was still very much involved with “sweet young Melanie.”

Keith Moon came to Hollywood to castrate a few TV sets by tossing them out of the Beverly Hilton’s sliding glass doors.

He was happy being anybody but himself.

Keith Moon

Albert Grossman,

Trying is a limbo state

I realized how desperate for attention and affection I was when good old Led Zep came to town and I flopped around with Jimmy again. The first night was wonderful, even though he had started to imbibe many harmful substances, but the second night he left me stranded in front of the Whiskey like a floundering, faded Jezebel while he sleazed off with a thirteen-year-old nymphet called Lori Lightning.

They’re like all pedos

Sable Starr.

I believed the GTO’s had paved the way for these infant upstarts, and I thought they should show me some kind of respect, or at least recognition for my groundbreaking Strip-walking efforts. Needless to say, they didn’t show me jack-shit.

Robert Plant did an interview in Rolling Stone that put these puppies in their place: “It’s a shame to see these young chicks bungle their lives away in a flurry—to rush to compete with what was in the good old days, the good-time relationships we had with the GTO’s . . . when it came to looning they could give us as much of a looning as we could give them.”

Ruben and the Jets