Sex, Drugs & Rock 'N Roll
Podcast Transcript Season 3 Episode 50
Interviewer: Liz Goldwyn
Illustration BY Black Women Animate
This special episode pays homage to rock’n’roll of the 60s and 70s with legends Bebe Buell and Pamela Des Barres. Pamela and Bebe are icons who have written groundbreaking, NY Times bestselling memoirs about their wild times loving, and leaving, some of the biggest rock stars of our time. This week, Liz talks to Pamela and Bebe about the free-love innocence of days gone by for this special episode on sex, drugs and rock’n’roll!
The following is a transcript of the interview from the episode:
Hello, and welcome to The Sex Ed podcast. I’m Liz Goldwyn, your host and the founder of The Sex Ed, your #1 source for sex, health, and consciousness education. On our website TheSexEd.com, you can read original essays written by our network of experts, watch live talks and videos, listen to past episodes of this podcast, and sign up for our weekly newsletter. You can also follow us on Instagram @TheSexEd.
The Sex Ed is postively orgasmique to be partnered with GUCCI for your listening pleasure on this season of this podcast. That’s right, oh yes, GUCCI baby! We’re so grateful to GUCCI for sponsoring this episode and helping us answer everything you wanted to know about sex, but were afraid to ask.
One of my favorite genres to read are rock bios. The juicier, the better! If there’s sex, drugs and rock n roll, there’s a high probability it’s on my bookshelf. I find myself turning to the same few titles over and over again whenever I need an escapist, comforting story of decadence and debauchery in days gone by. Two of my favorites are Pamela des Barres’ I’m With The Band and Bebe Buell’s Rebel Heart.
Pamela des Barres is an author and educator whose written several NYTimes bestsellers. She hosts a podcast called Miss Pamela’s Pajama Party, and also runs a writing workshop. In the 1960s, she and her friends formed a band under guidance of their mentor, Frank Zappa. They were called the GTOs, or the Girls Together Outrageously. The GTOs were a massive influence on bands like Alice Cooper, and their album Permanent Damage is considered a cult classic.
Bebe Buell is a renowned musician currently based in Nashville, TN. She was discovered by modeling agent Eileen Ford and worked as a model for decades before becoming a best-selling author. Bebe has worked on music with the likes of Ric Ocasek of the Cars, John Taylor of Duran Duran, and Rick Derringer, and has released several records with her bands The Gargoyles, The B-Sides, and under her own name.
Pamela and Bebe’s fabulous and vulnerable accounts of their wild times in the 1960s and 70s include them loving and leaving some of the most infamous musicians of all time: men like guitarist Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Rod Stewart, David Bowie, Jim Morrison of the Doors, Todd Rundgren, Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler - the father of Bebe’s daughter, Liv Tyler - and many more.
However, Pamela and Bebe are much more than arm candy to their previous paramours—these ladies are icons in their own right, and their stories make me long for a bit of free-love innocence of days gone by. I was thrilled to interview both of them for this special episode on sex, drugs and rock’n’roll - 60s and 70s style!
Liz:
So you're from Los Angeles.
Pamela:
I was born and raised here and I'm back in the Valley, I was raised in the Valley when it was Leave it to Beaver time. It was just perfect here. It kind of still is. I feel pretty safe back in Reseda. I've been here for three years now again after living all over the L.A. area.
Liz:
I know you were really instrumental in the scene back in the day when the Sunset Strip was really burgeoning with the Whisky a Go Go and you and the GTOs which was your band of muses and artists, the Girls Together Outrageously.
Pamela:
Yeah, and people tend to forget we were kids as well. We were literally children, frolicking around half-naked at love-ins and on the Strip and at parties and dances and clubs. The ages of the GTOs were 17 to 19, so we were kids. People also ... It cracked me up. People tend to say, "Oh, Jim Morrison and all these ..." They were kids, so they put so much weight on everything that a lot of us said back then and did and often been emulated and we were just children. Looking back at it 50 years ago, that's what it feels like.
Liz:
I love all those pictures of you all with Miss Mercy and Miss Christine and Cynderella. Were you guys the inspiration for the girls in Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe's movie?
Pamela:
Well I certainly was. In my fourth book, Let's Spend the Night Together, has a chapter on Cameron Crowe and he always felt bad that he didn't include me in that film as a consultant or something. I deserved it. Instead, he gave me a big long interview for my fourth book. He tells all about it in that book in great detail. He says the Kate Hudson character was created based on myself, Bebe Buell and the actual real Penny Lane who he had a relationship with back in the day. He combined the characters even though she looks way more like me than the other people. She told me, Kate Hudson, that she modeled the character after me. Yes, it was based around me more than anything else.
Liz:
The word groupie, when it first came about in the sixties, what did it imply then?
Bebe:
In the late sixties when I first heard the term, I was just a girl in high school that loved music. And when I saw the first pictures of the GTOs, I thought that they had a great look and everybody was extremely festively dressed and I resonated to it. But I was a girl that wore jeans and embroidered tops. So I didn't really want to dress like that, but I certainly appreciated the art. But that was about all I thought of it. I never even really thought about the word groupie until I got called one.
Liz:
When did you get called one? When did you first get called a groupie?
Bebe:
I think it happened first in the seventies. And I just remember feeling like, "Why is somebody calling me that? Or why would they call anybody that?" And I understand that there's some people that find the term endearing and want to support it and bring it back. But I'm sick and tired of women having labels thrown on them. And it would be different if men got equal mileage out of the term because, I guess everybody is a little bit of a groupie. But the word is so unkind. It's not sweet like it should be. Relationships of coveted, united, spirits should have a more attractive word. I don't know how it got negative, but it did. It's just supposed to mean a person, not just a woman but a person who likes to be around groups. I think that would define about 85 to 90% of the population.
Liz:
So you prefer to be called a muse instead of a groupie?
Bebe:
It's a much nicer word. It's a prettier word.
Liz:
It's a prettier word. But I mean I've been called a muse before and I have a bit of problem with it. Maybe you feel this way, that it implies that your only purpose on the earth is to inspire other people. And it's mostly a word that's applied to women inspiring men that gives the sense that you yourself have no intellectual or artistic capability to put out your own stuff. Like where are all our male muses, where all the men that are our muses?
Bebe:
Mick Jagger is my male muse. And he's been my male muse since I was old enough to understand what makes a person feel like they've met their tribe when I was about 10 years old. So I don't know. I think words are going to have different connotations and different meanings for everyone. Sometimes when I get called a muse, I feel like well, who deserves that term? But sometimes you don't find out about your own musedom, until well after you're dead. Because a lot of times, like in the case of Edie Sedgwick, Bob Dylan wrote a slew of songs about her and then turned around and denied it afterwards.
Liz:
That's one of the other books I've been turning to yet again in quarantine for comfort. Even though it's a pretty dark story,
Bebe:
It's dark, but it's factual. And I find that my life and a lot of other women, I certainly don't feel exclusive in this... That famous saying, good girls never make history or whatever. People just love the naughty girl. They're going to celebrate her forever and ever and they're going to want to drag her in the mud and kick her. But as soon as they feel like she's gone, they're going to celebrate her again, and they're going to resurrect her and bring her back. It's just the way it's been for centuries. Or you can go back and read stories in the Bible and you'll get this.
Liz:
What do you think of the term groupies? I know your book I'm with the Band is subtitled Confessions of a Groupie.
Pamela:
Yes, well I was going to call it Memoir of a Groupie because I've never... Well, there was a short period of time where I was ashamed of that word because it had become such a negative jeer, but I reclaimed it, a long time ago I reclaimed it. Gene Simmons, my friend from Kiss, told me that I should call it Confessions because it would make it more intriguing for people so that's why I called Confessions of a Groupie. He was right, it became a best-seller right away, and I think it surprised a lot of people. Women didn't talk much about their sexuality at that point, certainly in books. It was pretty breakthrough in that way and now of course it seems tame considering all the books that have come afterwards that are much more salacious.
Liz:
Well I think it's quite juicy, I love it. As you said it's rare for women to be writing so openly about their sexual experiences so it's fun, it's such a great read for those listeners who don't own a copy, I highly recommend it.
Pamela:
Thank you.
Liz:
Your book Let's Spend the Night Together, wow. I love the detail you go into in the way that you describe sex. Again it's not that usual that you read such detail in books that are outside of the genre of erotica.
Pamela:
It was the time we were all young and we were all experimenting. It was a time when you could experiment and be very free as a woman and yeah. Pretty thrilling time to be able to express yourself in that way. It's changed a lot since then. It became ... Like you mentioned earlier, there was an innocence about it. There was an innocence in the sexuality at that time because it was based on love and freedom.
Liz:
Some of these guys had sort of their road girlfriends and then their baby mamas or girlfriends back home, right?
Pamela:
Some, but we didn't know about it. We just didn't know that people were married. Led Zeppelin, the people in Led Zeppelin we knew because you could read about their wives, same with The Beatles' wives and girlfriends but not everybody. You couldn't find out these things about people as easily back then. Jimmy Page wasn't married. He was the one that wasn't married in Led Zeppelin.
Liz:
Jimmy Page was one of your big loves, right?
Pamela:
Yes, I mean it seemed so at the time, in retrospect I look back and I really only had a handful of true loves. At the time I certainly felt like he was one of the big loves in my life. I was a kid, I was 20 years old when we were together. 20, 21, and he was 25, 26. I stress that because people tend to forget how young we were. It was just kids frolicking around in a very wonderful time to be able to frolic around. It was thrilling being with these people that you admired so much and opened your heart musically and yeah, it was a very exciting time. As you mentioned earlier, I had my own group of girls. We made our own record and we did gigs and so bands would come to town and want to meet us. They would look us up.
Liz:
Jimmy Page had a reputation for being pretty kinky, right? He was into BDSM back in the day.
Pamela:
I guess so. He never laid that on me. I knew about it because I... I always called it the groupie tom-toms, you'd hear through the airwaves that he'd been very, very naughty but he was never that way with me. With the girls he really cared about that he saw more than one or two times, he wasn't that way with them.
Liz:
You would see the whips coiled up in his suitcase?
Pamela:
Yes, he had whips and he threw them away one day for me in a very dramatic, wrapped them around his arm and put it in the wastebasket to show me that he really cared about me. Oh boy. Those were the days, huh?
LG VO:
Both Pamela and Bebe had love affairs with Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Here’s a particularly juicy passage from Bebe’s book, Rebel Heart, about one of their encounters:
“We spent the whole time in bed, making love, talking, eating, and tripping our brains out on some very good mescaline. When you’re tripping, an erection looks even larger than it is; it takes on a whole other dimension. I was afraid to have sex with him for a minute, because I was hallucinating that his penis stretched to the other side of the room. I needed to pull myself together and realize that it was an average-size penis. Jimmy was very sexy. I think that he was having fun, enjoying a very pure exchange with a woman. I was different. Most of the women he knew were wilder and expected the macabre from him. I think if a woman had wanted her ass spanked and her hair pulled, he would have gladly delivered. If a woman had wanted to be beaten with whips, he would have obliged. If a woman wanted a cigarette put out on her chest, he would have done it.” (Rebel Heart, page 95).
Liz:
Didn't you take a pet monkey on the Zeppelin plane at one point?
Bebe:
No. Well a coatimundi which is a South American raccoon. Yeah, it was an exotic animal. It was Todd's, and Todd left it with me when he went up to San Francisco after our argument when I was left at the Hyatt Hhouse and that's how I hooked up with Jimmy. He sort of came to my rescue as you would put it, in the knight in shining armor language. But I was all of 20 years old.
Liz:
How was it compartmentalized? The sort of road girlfriends, versus live in partners, or baby mamas, and wives? Did everybody just sort of know about each other and was fine with it?
Bebe:
I don't know if they were fine with it, but some women chose to look the other way. That was what they chose. They chose to be the wife and they were going to hang on to being the wife no matter what it took. So those were the ways of the West. Especially in rock and roll, I found that a lot of the guys, yes, some of them enjoyed being a rock couple, being with their spouse and having that kind of union where the wife traveled everywhere with them et cetera. And then mostly with the English bands, they left their wives at home, and they had people that they dated in America or vice versa. I don't know, it's always been very confusing to me.
Bebe:
I was told more than once, “Oh, I'm not married,” or “Oh, I'm separated,” or “my wife and I have an arrangement.” There was all kinds of stories. There was every angle in the book. But I always thought to not ever have to stress out about that. And to be married to my husband, my beautiful Jim for 20 years, and to have that piece where I don't have to worry that he's cheating on me. I don't have to worry that I have to accept this, or that, or the other thing. I know that he is my partner and I can trust him.
Bebe:
And trust wasn't really a very big thing back in those days. Nobody trusted each other. It was a lot of arguing, a lot of fighting, a lot of heartbreak, and a lot of double standard. Men could do what they wanted on the road, but as soon as the person they had at home did what they did, it was an enormous eruption.
Liz:
You write in the book about your relationship with Todd Rundgren and you're together. He was your partner for quite a long time, and you were saying that you didn't like that he would be with other people on the road. And so you sort of felt like you had to do the same.
Bebe:
I think when you're 18 years old, your brain isn't even fully formed until you're 25. I think the things that you worry about and that you focus on when you're 18, are going to be very different than when you look back and reflect. And I think when we were that age, because we didn't have to worry about sex equaling death like the generation that came in the eighties. It's very frightening to think, "Oh, you can have sex with somebody and you can die or you can get a disease or you can get violently sick." And it just, it was a time of innocence.
Bebe:
I never attended an orgy or a love in or a be-in or any of that stuff. I mean, I might've been around in the room when something crazy took place. But I myself as an individual, I dated one person at a time. But I certainly didn't understand ... The implications can live on your soul as you get older. Because you look back sometimes with regret and you feel sad because you feel like, Oh my God, was I really that mean to that person, or did I really break that person's heart so bad that they have to write about me so cruel in their book? You start to question-
Liz:
Wasn't there a lot of overlap though? Like you describe Iggy Pop showing up at the apartment you shared with Todd when he was going off on tour.
Bebe:
He was going to San Diego to visit a friend and I knew when he went to visit that friend, that he had his own indiscretions. It wasn't like he was going off to work the field. He was going to visit a friend to take exciting fun, psychotropic drugs and maybe have sex. So when I let Iggy into our home, I did it because I genuinely liked him. He was a genuinely brilliant, fascinating, blubbering fool and I adored him, and I'm glad I let him in the house.
[LIZ VO]
Another rock star lucky enough to be with both Bebe and Pamela was Mick Jagger. In her book, I’m With The Band, Pamela writes:
“November 3… Mick tried his best to seduce me last night, and somehow I held on to my sanity throughout his thrilling caresses. AAACH!! My body was hurting, aching for him [...] Still, I didn’t relent and at first he was pissed off, but he returned, saying, “You’re really too good, aren’t you? What do you think Jimmy is doing right this minute? You’re a GTO, remember? Not some school girl from Oklahoma.”
I had a real short dress on and he slobbered all over my thighs, chewing me up real good. I was breathing in heavy gasps and he inched higher up my thigh, leaving a sticky trail like a snail had been crawling into my panties. Devouring my legs like they were edible, he left one massive swollen bruise on my right inner thigh and I excused myself and fled wildly into the night. I hoped hard that I wouldn’t be classified as a prick-tease, and I prayed the hickey would heal before Jimmy got a load of it. (I’m With The Band page 172)
Liz:
You really gave your heart to a lot of these men. That really comes through in your writing. I mean you were very openhearted and you got your heart broken more than once.
Pamela:
Yes, that's true, but we all do, right? I just happened to get my heart broken by very famous, amazingly creative, brilliant people. Everyone should be so lucky because we all get our hearts broken.
Liz:
That's true. Who was the first ... Was it Noel Redding who was the bass player for The Jimi Hendrix Experience? Was he sort of your first big rock star love affair?
Pamela:
No, it was Nick St. Nicholas from Steppenwolf. He was my first lover and then Noel, yes, you were very close there, and then Chris Hillman who I had been trying to get with for years before I actually did. Yeah. Those are my first three, were bass players.
Liz:
I mean, not many people can say that they were with Mick Jagger in the 1960s when everybody wanted to be with Mick Jagger.
Pamela:
Nope, not a lot of people I don't think. It was one of the most thrilling relationships I ever had and fun, very lighthearted. I never was in love with him and I just knew it was going to be one of those fun relationships and it was, it was a whole lot of fun. I saw him in L.A. and London and we laughed a lot, had just hysterical times. Very sexy, yeah. Yeah, incredibly exciting to be with him.
Bebe:
Mick is a lot more traditional than one would suspect. And it's not all about sex, sex, sex with him. He's a very, very brilliant man and conversation is extremely important. Conversation and knowledge. And he likes to teach. So I took advantage of him teaching me everything I could learn about wine, about what goes with what, why Pinot was the best red, et cetera. I took advantage. I learned from him, I allowed myself to be sort of a pupil. But at the same time, I was a Southern girl and he hadn't met a whole lot of them. He went on to meet Jerry Hall, who's the ultimate Southern girl. But he was very, very intrigued by the people that lived in the South. I was from Virginia, North Carolina. But it's funny my memories of people... When I think about my relationships with people, especially now when I see when he's in the news, that I always get cited as the woman he was having a two year affair with when Bianca filed for divorce. That's how I'm remembered in folklore.
Bebe:
But for me, when I think about Mick, I think about our friendship that went on beyond our affair. And just the wonderful meals I had with him, and the sweet things that he would do in his sweetness, the sweet little presence that he would give. He was an incredibly frugal man, but in his own way, incredibly generous. I could go on and on, but as far as sex goes, yes Mick is one of the most physical creatures on earth. I mean, look at him dance, look at his... he has his own sense of rhythm as an entertainer. Which I think the same with Iggy Pop. They have their own sense of rhythm, which makes them really unique entertainers.
Liz:
Tell me a little bit about Angela and David Bowie. I'm so fascinated by that whole story.
Bebe:
Well, they were just a very progressive married couple, but she doesn't get enough credit for what she did for his career. I mean, she's an astounding artist herself. And the fact that she created a lot of what you saw, and she would test out the look first to give him courage. She's the one that shaved her eyebrows and cut her hair off before he did. So Angela had a lot of power at that time in her life. She was very magical. She really knew how to make things happen and make things come together. But when I met them, they seemed more like friends than actual lover lovers, and they seemed to really live their own lives. She seemed to have whatever partner she wanted. He had what he wanted. They were definitely living that lifestyle that was very common in those days.
Bebe:
And my relationship with David was... Angela went back, I think it was to England because they had their son with them. Because I remember at the room, at the Gramercy Park when I would visit we would all hang out, and Suzi Ronson would be there. She was always the one that helped them get dressed, and ready, and had all the fabulous clothing and everything. And there was a crib, but suddenly Angela just wasn't there anymore. And he was sort of on his own in New York. And so we became friends, we would pal around. He wanted to go sightseeing and things. So I took him to the Empire State Building and to the Jersey Shore, and things like that. So by the time it would have naturally happened that two people might have sex, we had had too much fun as friends and the sex thing just never really clicked. We made a feeble attempt one time and it really was feeble because we ended up… we bothstarted laughing our asses off. That wasn't meant to be.
Liz:
It's super interesting in your book and other books of this period. There's kind of a fluidity, a sexual fluidity around a lot of the relationships that these men have with each other. For example, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Rod Stewart even, of men being intimate with each other, men giving each other oral sex but not defining themselves as gay.
Bebe:
People try things, people find out what they like best. I have a girlfriend that for the longest time she only dated women. And then suddenly one day, she fell in love with this man, and they had a child. And she tells me that she doesn't even really relate to the days of being a gay girl. So I think sexuality is something that has a lot of layers, a lot of dimensions. It's not cut and dry.
Bebe:
And if Mick Jagger kissed David Bowie, I never witnessed it. Everybody thinks I did, because of some interviews I've given. And then by the time they're edited and they're made to look like they look, that makes it sound like I was there or I witnessed it. I did get some funny phone calls, sometimes at three and four in the morning from the two of them. Up to antics uptown at The Plaza Hotel or The St Regis or somewhere great or The Pierre, one of those hotels that they loved to frequent, but ... And I lived all the way downtown on Horatio Street, so it wasn't like I jumped in the cab at 3:00 in the morning to run up there to be part of what was going on. It was... I don't make judgements. I just have no opinion. People can do whatever they want as far as I'm concerned.
Liz:
You had a period where Iggy pop and Lou Reed and David Bowie were in Berlin, and were experimenting with each other. And Please Kill Me goes into detail about Lou's relationship with Rachel who's a transsexual-
Bebe:
Rachel was gorgeous. I knew Rachel. When I met Lou, he was with Rachel.
Liz:
So this kind of stuff... like now people would make a huge deal about it. And what I find interesting is that in all of these stories that I read about rock and the sixties and seventies, you have these huge icons of rock sleeping with each other. And everyone's very laissez-faire about it.
Bebe:
See, but I don't know if that's true or not. I'm not sure they were sleeping with each other. I never saw that. I'll be honest with you, I saw a lot of boys playing around, and posturing, and loving to ham it up for the camera, and to start rumors, and to make people think they were like that. But the only person that was openly gay were the people that you knew were openly gay, like Elton John, etc. But even most of us didn't know he was gay right away until he announced it.
Bebe:
So I don't know how to explain it, but I personally never saw David and Mick having sex. Now Angela claims that she did, but I never saw it. And I was in a room with the two of them a whole bunch of times for many years on end. And they would sort of go mwah mwah mwah and fool around. And I think they enjoyed having threesomes or whatever with other women. And maybe... I don't know, I wasn't there. So I really hate to speculate. I really don't know for sure. I try to sometimes think it was just really clever marketing. I'm not sure it was real.
Liz:
Did you ever feel pressure to be more sexually liberated than you were at the time?
Bebe:
Of course I did. I wasn't really looked at as a sought after sex partner, as much as I was looked at as a sought after friend, sidekick. Someone to hang with, someone to get tips on getting dressed from, somebody to tell me which songs are good, I felt more like a friend. And when I would fall in love and have a relationship, sometimes it would be too many in a row, because I was on this endless quest for love and what I thought was going to be a perfect thing. And I think I was just allowing myself to let my hormones and my true affection for people bleed over into my behavior.
Bebe:
If I was going to talk about sex honestly, sometimes when I was young I felt like more from... not from my rock friends, but from the fashion crowd and from people in other businesses that I was a part of as a model. I felt more pressure from them to be sexually kinky and crazy. Everybody just let me be myself, my rock and roll friends anyway.
Liz:
What was the reaction, or the impact on your mainstream modeling career when you posed for Playboy?
Bebe:
Well, it had a horrible impact on it as a matter of fact. The only magazines that would book me after that world were like Cosmopolitan, Viva, for me to do Vogue and Harper's and the more considered A-list fashion magazines, I'd have to go to Europe where they just don't care about nudity at all. As a matter of fact, nobody even cared that I had been in Playboy. And as soon as I got off the airplane, I was working for Vogue in the UK and France, in Italy. It was only in America where I was given... I was really, really shamed for it. It was quite weird because, really it was just a modeling job.
Bebe:
And ironically it was a woman who photographed me, Lynn Goldsmith, and it was the pictures that she took of me and she showed them to Playboy that encouraged Playboy to put me on an airplane and bring me to Chicago. I did a test shoot with this photographer named Richard Fegley. It was all very professional. Hair, makeup, people, the crew, everybody was either a woman or gay. You never felt like men were staring at you, or lechering on you, or anything. I think they planned it to make the girls very comfortable. It was one of the most professional jobs I ever did, quite frankly. And I tested for a couple of days, flew back to New York and I didn't hear anything for several months. And then I finally got the call one day that I was chosen to be Miss November, and they were coming to New York to take more pictures. And then I did one other or two other photo shoots and that ended up being the material for the actual centerfold.
Bebe:
So I think it quickly... I think being in Playboy, what it did was it immediately gave me a stigma and it made men in rock and roll... because Todd was in the story with me and it was obvious that I was a rock and roll spirit... It made those men want to sleep with me I guess, I don't know. Although my relationships with people like Bowie and Iggy and Mick came before my Playboy centerfold. I'm talking about things that happened after Playboy, pre Playboy and post Playboy.
Liz:
Rod Stewart was post-Playboy.
Bebe:
Yes. But Rod was also somebody that I had known for years. I first met Rod in ‘74, when I was a guest at Ron Wood's house The Wick in Richmond Hill. And I knew he was with Dee Harrington at the time, and Rod and I had many laughs together. Our personalities really clicked and we were mates for years. And as soon as we tried dating, that's when everything went south. I wished to this day that I had never dated him and just stayed friends with him. Because I still to this day, adore him. I think sometimes dating spoils it. Sometimes, you should just forget that part and just stay friends.
Liz:
Yeah. In the book, you talk about feeling like a little bit used as a PR stunt.
Bebe:
Well, Rod loved being photographed with beautiful women and especially when they were A list and when they ... And I think he really liked the fact that I had a little bit of a rebel spirit. I wasn't just a model or an actress. I had an edge, and I had my own identity, I had my own celebrity and I think that he liked that. And I found that yes, there was a lot of times when they just wanted to put a camera on me and have me walk out a door with him or go to an event with him. And I bucked and kicked a little, I've always been a little bit of a rebel girl, but I cared for Rod. I really did. I think that if things ... It could have been different, I don't know. But I think like with Bowie, if you start off as friends and you go for so long as a friend, sometimes moving to the next level can be a beautiful, very wonderful thing. Or moving to the next level can be a mistake.
Liz:
What kind of drugs were you all taking back then? Was it mostly like marijuana and LSD?
Pamela:
Yes. In the 60s, it was all about finding God, going deep within, experiencing life to the fullest so yes, it was psychedelics and marijuana at that time for the most part. Yeah. For me. Cocaine came in in the 70s and it kind of wrecked a lot of things. You get really in your head with that stuff instead of in your heart and your body.
Liz:
It seemed like a real time of experimentation and freedom and from a lot of the things I read about this period, there was a lot more fluidity too with men and some of these very famous men having love affairs with each other but not labeling their sexuality or giving each other oral sex. I mean famously you read about like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, David Bowie.
Pamela:
It was a very fluid time, yes. The GTOs hung out with a lot of boys we called the BTOs. They were Boys Together Outrageously and they were either gay or bisexual. A lot of the GTOs spent a lot of time with gay and bisexual boys and we never thought anything of it. It was just our lives. It wasn't like, "Oh look it's me, I'm with some gay boys." It was not like that at all. It was very natural. We would just dance with them and float around, love-ins with them and yeah, labels were not so important back then.
Liz:
Tell me a little bit about Cynthia Plaster Caster, especially for those people who aren't familiar with this icon of rock history.
Pamela:
She is an artist and she wanted to meet bands and it wasn't that easy a lot of the time. She created an idea that she thought would appeal to rock stars and a way to meet them and she learned how to make plaster casts of their penises and she... She shows them as art, she's an artist way ahead of her time but that was her way in to meet the bands and they were always very curious about it. Not all of them would do it, but Jimi Hendrix certainly did. That's her pride and joy, her Jimi Hendrix cast.
Liz:
What was he like? Did you ever meet him when you were hanging out with Noel Redding?
Pamela:
Of course. I was in the Foxy Lady video. I was the Foxy Lady in that video. I spent ... Yeah, a lot of quality time around Jimi. He was a very quiet person. He was very introverted, even when he was real high. That whole band would take any drug anybody handed them, and Jimi was a very spiritual person. He really believed in angels and aliens. He was wildly out there and a very deep person.
Liz:
You lost a lot of these friends very young.
Pamela:
Yes, it was incredibly sad every time that happened of course. It's pointed out unfortunately that a lot of the freedom and a lot of people took it too far. I wasn't one of those people. I'm 71 years old and I'm still dancing, not right now because of the virus of course, but I dance up a storm, I dance for hours when I go out and hear music and I still have a very upbeat joyous lifestyle. I'm not letting age get me down, that's for sure.
Liz:
It was so interesting in your book Let's Spend the Night Together, all these stories of other legendary groupies and people that you interviewed. One of them who I remember hearing about in another material was Sweet Connie.
Pamela:
Yeah, Connie was on the extreme side of groupiedom if you want to put it that way because she enjoyed just being with the bands, any member of the band or anybody who worked with the band, the sound guy, the guitar tech, it didn't matter to her, she just wanted to be there. Yes, she distilled favors to these people and I never see anything wrong with it. It's so weird how people think... Give someone head, who cares? Who cares? Enjoy it. Both enjoy it. My god. That's Connie. She just went all the way with it.
Liz:
Is Sweet Connie still around?
Pamela:
She's alive. I haven't heard from her in a while. She's quite a character.
Liz:
What age do you think that someone like Sweet Connie, they stopped living that lifestyle of blowjobs for roadies?
Pamela:
I don't think she stopped until probably in her fifties. She still wanted to be among all that what she considered... What made her want to live, get through the day was music. She just took it to the extreme, but you know, I have no judgment on people. I don't judge people. I just don't, because I was judged so much for just being who I am and my lifestyle which has completely turned around thank goodness since I've written all these books and tried to convince people that nothing's wrong with sex, nothing's wrong with enjoying each other's bodies, I mean, come on. What is the big deal? That's how we all got here.
Liz:
How did you all deal with sexual protection back then? During this time of free love? Whose responsibility was that?
Pamela:
I wanted to take responsibility for that so I took the birth control pill. I took it very early on. I took it out in the open. I was really proud. I felt like a really strong feminist even though of course groupies were considered submissive, we were not. Yeah, I took care of it myself because I took the birth control pill then and there was no... You couldn't die from having sex at that stage in life. That's what I did. I took the pill.
Liz:
These rock stars that are traveling around and sleeping with potentially different women every night. They weren't carrying condoms.
Pamela:
None of the ones I was with and I never got any infections or any diseases or anything from anybody and I never gave anything to anybody. People think it was a lot scarier than it was. I was before metal bands and hair bands and when it got really crazy. My groupie lifestyle, I invented it basically. Me and my cohorts. It was not as flagrant as it later became.
Bebe:
Nobody used condoms in the 70s. Condoms didn't come back in style again until the 80s after AIDS. But before that, no condoms were not... But I have to be honest, I was extremely lucky, but I was also extremely selective about who I slept with. And I can count my lovers on two hands, I'm trying to understand why my girlfriends can count their lovers on both of their feet, and every hair on their head, and everybody thinks that they're the good girls. I never quite understood that. But I think when your lovers are visible or are public people, it tends to make it look like more. Even if you've been with less, it makes it look like more.\
Liz:
So if people aren't using condoms back then, if that's not the real practice and it's not really-
Bebe:
It was the pill.
Liz:
It was the pill?
Bebe:
The pill and I think I used the coil. The IUD was my choice after I had Liv. But before, it was the pill. Definitely.
Liz:
So there wasn't a lot of STDs that you were aware of?
Bebe:
Not in my world. I never got one. I was very lucky. I never got any of that stuff. And the couple of times that Todd got it, I have to say he was a gentleman about it. He told me the truth. It was usually after he'd been on the road, and he would come home, and he would just tell the truth. He would just say, "Look, I got a little dose of the clap." And he would have his little pills or his little drink that he'd have to take. And it was gone. And it was one of those things that he never passed on to me. And I never got any of those little crawly things either. The crabby things. So I was just really lucky. I guess the men I went out with took good care of themselves and were healthy.
Liz:
Was there any rivalry between the West Coast groupies and the East Coast groupies?
Pamela:
Yeah, there was some kind of rivalry but we never really... I mean occasionally we'd meet up if we went to each others' cities but it wasn't like... No one scratched each others' eyes out or anything like that. We just knew about who each other were and I remember once getting into Creem magazine because Jimmy took me to New York and that was a very big deal. That's when you become a super groupie when your significant other takes you on the road because like you mentioned, they had girls at every port, like Ricky Nelson's Travelin' Man song. It wasn't anything new. But yeah, we knew about each other.
Liz:
There were some girls in Los Angeles that were coming up after you like Sable Starr and Lori Lightning who were pretty young, they were 13, 14 years old and it seemed like there was some rivalry between the different generations of groupies back then.
Pamela:
Well talk about being children, they were just little children, and to me they were just pesky annoyances but they really were getting in the way. I mean they were getting in the way. Of course the guys were interested in the much younger girls which was fine, it was something new and different, and so that's when I ... Right around then, I said, "Okay, I've had enough of this lifestyle." It was starting to get too druggy anyway for me and that's right around when I met Michael, my ex-husband and settled down for quite some time. I mean settling down, strange term to use for marrying a musician, but you know what I mean.
Bebe:
Let's see, when I met Lori... how old is Lori now? I think I'm five years older than Lori. So Lori was 15 when I met her. Sean Cassidy was 15. I think Sable was 16. But you always met those girls and boys when you came to LA if you were with a rock and roll person, or if you came to town with somebody. In my case, Todd. Yeah, those were the people. Yeah, they were younger, but they didn't bother me. They didn't get under my skin. They were just funny. I don't know how to explain it.
Liz:
When you think about it now, and you think about these girls that were 13 and 14 sleeping with Jimmy Page or whoever it was.
Bebe:
I'm sort of seeing the list of pedophile behavior and it's heartbreaking. I mean look, Jerry Lee Lewis, it happened way before the 70s. I mean, this stuff went on a long time ago. I can't explain it. I was of age when I began dating. I was 18, so I never had sex when I was that age. I can't even imagine having sex at 14 years old if you want me to be honest, or even 15. I didn't have sex until I was 18, so I just... Would I want that for my daughter? No.
Liz:
It seems like Lori and Sable were by some standards, labeled threats. But when you really look at it, they're kids. They're just kids.
Bebe:
I don't know who they would have been a threat to.
Liz:
I think some of the other... Maybe some of the other women on the scene.
Bebe:
They were the sweetest. They dressed to the nines. They would come to greet you, they would dance around you, and go, "Oh, I worship you, my goddess." And things like that. They were awfully sweet, especially Lori. Lori is still around. Lori has a very wonderful relationship, and has a good job, and has a nice life, and a beautiful son. Sable sadly passed away, but she was working as a... What are they called? A dealer. A card dealer in Vegas. But no, they were just little girls. But they didn't really come off as immature or like little girls. They were pretty smart and savvy for such young girls.
Liz:
In light of Woody Allen and Roman Polanski and this sort of reflection on taking advantage of young girls. It's heavy to read those stories.
Bebe:
I think it happens a lot more than just those cases. I think there's a lot of people that don't come forward. I think there's a lot of people that are too scared to tell their story and they don't want to tell their story. But yes, for a long time power was an aphrodisiac. And in some cases, it's license to rape. And it infuriates me. And the couple times I have had men push themselves on me and scare me have been horrifying. And one of the times was when I was only 15 years old in Newport, Rhode Island, when my stepfather was stationed there for my freshman and my sophomore year. And my first boyfriend was Paul Cowsill who went on to be in The Cowsills.
Bebe:
And just by a twist of fate, I was in a car with this boy from my high school who began to get incredibly forceful with me. And I think he was definitely going to rape me, and I started to scream at the top of my lungs, and I pulled my body up as far as I could. And I saw coming up the boardwalk at First Beach in Newport, Rhode Island. Anybody that knows Newport will know where First Beach is. I saw Paul Cowsill and his friend Charlie, Charlie Robin coming up the boardwalk. They heard me scream, they ran to the car. Charlie pulled the guy out of the car and Paul literally came and rescued me.
Bebe:
So people kind of wonder why I was always looking for a knight in shining armor, or why I was always looking for one of those kind of honorable men. Paul Cowsill is still my friend to this day. Can you believe I've known him for like over 50 years, and he's still my friend? His sister Susan, who was eight is still my friend, but it was Paul Cowsill that saved me from being raped in a car. I mean, this is a true story. That sort of set the mindset of what I thought a man should be. And that coupled with a military father that I only saw when he was dressed in his uniform, or once in a while when he would come and see me.
Bebe:
What became my ideal man, were these larger than life heroic figures. And Paul Cowsill, the most we ever did was make out, but it still left a huge impact on me as a human being. And to still have him as a friend, and to still know that he's there, somebody that actually was my savior. But isn't it funny that he went on to be a big rock star? So I guess that was sort of in my destiny to be part of that world, I was meant to be... That was my people.
Liz:
What are you still learning about sex?
Pamela:
There's nothing left for me to learn about it. I had the best sex there is in the world. That's another thing. I think, "You know what? I have had some ridiculously hot experiences and maybe that's enough. Maybe it is." I reflect and say, "Wow, I'm so lucky to be so free, open, wild, crazy, experience anything, totally enjoy every minute of it." I'm very fortunate that way, so maybe that's enough. I don't know. Maybe the day will come where I get hot for someone again besides watching some hot guys on TV. I'm going, "Isn’t he beautiful?" No, who knows. I'm open.
Liz:
You think there's nothing left for you to learn about sex?
Pamela:
No. I really don't think there is. I have experienced every kind of possible ... No, I really don't. There's some things I can teach people about it, but I don't think there's anything I need to learn about it.
Liz:
What would you teach people? What would be Pamela 101?
Pamela:
Gosh, you know just the main thing is not to have your mind or your ego involved. Ascend during sex. I've luckily thank god had those experiences where you wind up in the jungle in Africa with this person or another planet, that's happened too. You just have to let yourself go to the extent that you're not even there, except for as a soul. Anything can happen.
Liz:
Do you think psychedelic drugs helped you ascend to that place?
Pamela:
Probably but I've certainly found that place with people without any drugs at all.
Liz:
When was the first time that you found yourself there?
Pamela:
Wow, probably with Jimmy Page, and that was with mescaline. That was with mescaline. I went wow okay, you can do this during sex, okay. I learned very early that it wasn't just a physical experience. My most important sexual experiences have been zooming around the universe with people.
Liz:
Transcendental sex.
Pamela:
Yes, exactly.
Liz:
What are you still learning about sex?
Bebe:
That it's comforting, that it's not something that you have to do or that is expected of you. It's something that it's a connection. It's something that you do to actually go to a higher place. It's... What am I still learning about it? I'm still learning that it's impossible to define. To me, sex will always be the ultimate mystery. And when somebody calls me sexy, I think it's nice and I thank them. But I also wonder if they knew what was going through my head when they look at a nude picture of me, or when they look at this or that. I wonder if they only knew that I was more worried. "Do I look okay? Am I doing this the right angle?" I was trying to be professional when I did those photos. I wasn't thinking, "Oh, I'm a sexy beast."
Liz:
Does sex get better as you get older?
Bebe:
I just think is as you mature, and you find your partner, or your soulmate, if you're lucky enough, it becomes more like something you do. It's almost like yoga, it's almost like meditation, it's more like something you do not only to have an orgasm, and to feel that wonderful release, but it's also something that you do to stay centered and sane and fulfilled. So I just think it's hard to define. I think sex at every single phase of a human's life is different and interesting. And the secret is to try to embrace that. And I feel sorry for people that feel like sexual performance is the most important thing. Because it's really not.
Bebe:
I just think as we get older and wiser, I think everything starts to make better sense.
LIZ VO OUTRO
That was my conversation with Bebe Buell and Pamela Des Barres. A HUGE thank you to Bebe and Pamela for taking the time to reflect on their remarkable lives with me!
Bebe’s book, Rebel Heart, and Pamela’s books I’m With The Band, and Let’s Spend the Night Together can be found wherever books are sold.
Bebe’s music can be streamed and purchased on all platforms, and she can be found on Instagram @RealBebeBuell and Twitter @BebeBuellBand. That’s B E B E B U E L L.
For information about Pamela’s writing workshops, rock tours, and more, you can visit her website, PamelaDesBarres.net. Her podcast, Miss Pamela’s Pajama Party, is available wherever you stream podcasts. Pamela can be found on instagram and twitter @PamelaDesBarres. That’s D E S B A R R E S.
Once again, a huge thank you to GUCCI for sponsoring this episode. You can find all things GUCCI via their website, GUCCI.com, and on instagram, @GUCCI.
Until next time, you can read exclusive content on TheSexEd.com, follow us on instagram @TheSexEd, and listen to past episodes anywhere podcasts are streamed. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us wherever you listen to podcasts.
The Sex Ed is hosted by me, Liz Goldwyn. This episode was recorded and edited by Jeremy Emery and produced by Chloe Cassens. Lewis Lazar made all of our music, including the track you’re listening to right now.
As always, The Sex Ed remains dedicated to expanding your orgasmic health and sexual consciousness.