Pamela Des Barres

Passions

Vocation

Family

American rock and roll groupie, musician, actor, author and magazine writer. A high school acquaintance, Victor Hayden, introduced Des Barres to his cousin 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. She famously paired up as a friend to a lot of old school rockers, as well as with future sexual partners Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Nick St. Nicholas, Noel Redding, Chris Hillman, Gram Parsons, Waylon Jennings, and actors Brandon deWilde, Michael Richards, Woody Allen and Don Johnson. Des Barres was also a member of the GTOs, which was what is believed by many to be the world's first all-girl groupie "musical" group sponsored by Frank Zappa. The group started out as the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company, and began performing as an opening act for Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. 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. On 29 October 1977, she married Michael Des Barres who had been lead singer for Detective and Silverhead, and who, in 1985, was tour vocalist for Power Station. They have a son, Nicholas Dean Des Barres (GameFan magazine's Nick Rox). The couple divorced in the summer of 1991. 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). She has written two 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). An updated edition of I'm With the Band was released in 2005. In 2013, Pamela launched her clothing line, "Groupie Couture;" she also writes articles for online and print publications. She has been teaching writing classes for several years, both in Los Angeles and in cities across the United States, and affectionately refers to her writers as her "Dolls." Link to Wikipedia biography