Pamela Des Barres in NYC 2007
Pamela Des Barres aka Miss Pamela (born Pamela Ann Miller on September 9, 1948 in Reseda, California) is a former rock and roll groupie, author, and magazine writer.
Early life
Des Barres was born in Kentucky. During elementary school, her father moved the family to southern California.[1] Her mother was a housewife and her father worked for Anheuser-Busch and occasionally worked as a gold miner. She idolized The Beatles and Elvis Presley as a child, and fantasized about meeting and dating her favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney.[2] Later, upon discovering the Rolling Stones, she daydreamed of Mick Jagger, while growing up in Los Angeles in the early 1960s.[3]
Rock music groupie
A high school acquaintance introduced Des Barres to Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, a musician and friend of Frank Zappa. Van Vliet in turn introduced her to Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, which drew her to the rock music scene on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. She started to spend her time with The Byrds and other bands, and when she graduated from high school in 1966, she took various jobs that would allow her to live near the Sunset Strip and pursue relationships with rock musicians. One high school art class assignment was to visualize an object that showed both texture and color. Having fantisized about Mick Jagger's male genitalia, it was the subject of her painting, which earned her an "A" grade for the assignment.[3] After securing a position as the babysitter for Zappa, she at last found herself a few years later finally finding multiple opportunities to compare the drawing with the real object.[3] She famously paired up as a friend Jim Morrison, and future sexual targets Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon,[3] [4] Nick St. Nicholas, Noel Redding, Chris Hillman, Gram Parsons, and actors Brandon de Wilde, Michael Richards and Don Johnson.[2]
Music career
She was also a member of The GTOs, an all-girl singing group formed by Zappa.[5] The group started out as the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company, and began performing as an opening act for Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The group's act was performance art, a mix of music and spoken word, since none of its members could sing or play an instrument. They released an album, Permanent Damage, in 1969, backed by Zappa and Jeff Beck. The group dissolved a month after the album's release because some of its members were arrested for drug possession, and the GTOs were still something of an enigma, rather than true musicians, as she wrote in her diary.
Acting career
In the 1970s Des Barres decided to pursue a career as an actress, and acted in a few movies, including Zappa's 200 Motels, commercials, and a year acting on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow in 1974. She continued to work as a nanny/babysitter for Zappa, who urged her to continue to keep up with the ongoing diary she had begun in high school, in which she had faithfully recorded the important details of her life. When her acting career stalled, she continued to work for the Zappa family as a nanny for Zappa's children, Dweezil and Moon Unit.[4] Thus in that sense, she still considers Frank Zappa an important mentor in her life.
Family life
On October 29, 1977, she married Michael Des Barres who had been lead singer for Detective (the first band signed to Led Zeppelin's Swan Song Records label), Silverhead, and, briefly, for Power Station. They have a son, Nicholas Dean Des Barres (GameFan magazine's Nick Rox), who was born on September 30, 1978. The couple divorced in the summer of 1991, due to Michael Des Barres' alleged infidelities.
Memoirs
Des Barres wrote two memoirs about her experience as a groupie, I'm with the Band (1987) and Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (1993), as well as two other non-fiction books, Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon and Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (Chicago Review Press, 2007). I'm with the Band was re-released as a "updated edition" in 2005.
Des Barres currently writes articles for online and print publications and teaches in Los Angeles. Her students have become known as "Pamela's Girls," and have achieved their own notoriety in the music industry. She has also become an ordained minister and performs weddings. She is a breast cancer survivor and yoga devotee.[6]
References
- ^ "I'm With the Band", Pamela DesBarres
- ^ a b Nobody did it better...", BBC
- ^ a b c d Des Barres, Pamela (1987). Chicago Review Press. ed. I'm With the Band. 1 (5th ed.). Chicago Review Press. pp. 320. ISBN 1-55652-1-589-2. http://www.amazon.com/Im-Band-Confessions-Pamela-Barres/dp/1556525893/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1232420827&sr=1-1. Retrieved on January 19, 2009.
- ^ a b Harris, Sarah (2007) "Pamela Des Barres: Her latest book celebrates the outrageous, unsung exploits of her fellow 'band-aids'", The Independent, 23 September 2007
- ^ Templeton, David (2002) "Groupie Hug: The world's most famous rock 'n' roll muse sizes up 'The Banger Sisters'", Oakland's Urbanview
- ^ "Nardwuar Vs Pamela des Barres", Nardwuar.com
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