I'm With the Band

Pamela Des Barres grew up in the 1950s and 1960s as an adored only child in Reseda, a suburb in California's San Fernando Valley. Her father, O. C. Miller, a former Kentuckian nicknamed "Hollywood," worked at a Budweiser plant and disappeared on weekends to dig for gold in Mexico. Her devoted mother tolerated every phase of her daughter's obsessive personality. By fourteen, Pamela was intensely boy crazy, soundtracking her emotional life with Top 40 hits. When a local rock band began rehearsing in the garage across the street, she received her first French kiss from the lead guitarist, fusing boys and rock and roll into the defining pattern of her life.

Beatlemania arrived at exactly the right moment. Pamela fell for Paul McCartney with devotion bordering on religious practice: She wrote daily letters to England, performed nightly rituals, and formed a tight circle of friends organized by which Beatle each girl claimed. She attended the Beatles' 1964 Hollywood Bowl concert and camped outside their Bel Air rental house, only to be removed by police. A fleeting glimpse of John Lennon's sorrowful face through a limousine window sobered her, but her obsession with pop stars only deepened.

Her first serious boyfriend, Bob Martine, was a Brooklyn-born greaser whose bad-boy swagger she found irresistible. Meanwhile, a nonconformist classmate named Victor Haydon introduced her to Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and his cousin Don Vliet, known as Captain Beefheart, a wildly unconventional musician. These influences shattered her teenybopper identity. She transformed from "Pam" to "Pamela," adopted bell-bottoms, got expelled from school for looking absurd, and let Bob go when he could not keep up with her evolution.

The Sunset Strip became her new world. She participated in the 1966 riots protesting the demolition of Pandora's Box, a beloved rock club, and began frequenting Ben Frank's coffee shop, the scene's social hub. She developed an obsessive crush on Chris Hillman, the Byrds' bass player, and befriended Vito Paulekas, an older sculptor whose troupe of uninhibited dancers drew her into full bohemia. She formed an intense bond with Beverly, a stunningly beautiful girl whose underlying despair eventually led to heroin use.

At Bido Lido's club, Pamela saw the Doors for the first time and was transfixed by Jim Morrison, their lead singer. A brief encounter at a friend's Laurel Canyon house ended when Morrison's girlfriend ordered her out, but a backstage session at the Hullabaloo Club led to a passionate kiss. Morrison did not pursue a deeper relationship, though he persuaded her to quit Trimar, a hospital anesthetic she had been using recreationally, by throwing her bottle away.

Pamela's closest girlfriends coalesced into a group: Sparky (Linda Sue Parker), Miss Lucy, Sandra, and Christine Frka. Frank Zappa, a musician and producer who had moved into a log cabin in Laurel Canyon, suggested they form a group called Girls Together Only, or the GTO's, a name they later expanded to include "Outrageously." He encouraged them to write songs and recorded their album, Permanent Damage, on his Bizarre Records label, with contributions from the Jeff Beck Group, including a young Rod Stewart. The GTO's performed at the Shrine Auditorium and landed a Rolling Stone centerfold, but the group eventually lost momentum.

At nineteen, Pamela lost her virginity to Nick St. Nicholas, a German bass player, but the encounter was anticlimactic. She found genuine sexual pleasure with Noel Redding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and rebounded from heartbreak over Chris Hillman into a brief affair with the actor Brandon de Wilde. She also grew close to Gram Parsons, the country-rock pioneer who co-founded the Flying Burrito Brothers with Hillman, babysitting his daughter and singing on the Burritos' album The Gilded Palace of Sin.

The most consuming romance of her early twenties was with Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin. He gave her a turquoise ring, called her "Miss P.," and promised a future together. She traveled with the band and attended an Elvis Presley concert in Las Vegas with the group. But after Jimmy returned to England, his calls grew sporadic and his promises to send for her went unfulfilled. At the airport in San Francisco, he told her he did not deserve her.

Throughout this period, Mick Jagger, lead singer of the Rolling Stones, pursued her repeatedly. She refused him several times out of loyalty to Jimmy, but when Jimmy's indifference became undeniable, she finally slept with Mick, fulfilling a long-held teenage fantasy. She later attended the disastrous Altamont free concert, where a concertgoer was killed in front of the stage, and comforted a shaken Mick at his hotel.

To support herself, Pamela took a job at Danceland, a dance hall where she earned eight cents a minute dancing with lonely men. She began a relationship with Marty, co-owner of Granny Takes a Trip, a fashionable London clothing store, and followed him to England. His compulsive infidelity gave her the beginnings of a bleeding ulcer. When he ended their exclusivity, she traveled through France, Italy, Austria, and Holland with her friend Renee, selling keef, a cannabis product, to fund the journey.

Frank Zappa cast her in his film 200 Motels, where she met Ringo Starr of the Beatles and Keith Moon of the Who. She returned to Los Angeles, worked as governess for the Zappa children, Moon and Dweezil, and watched the GTO's officially dissolve. She then met Don Johnson, a struggling actor, and they moved in together. His explosive temper and relentless criticism kept her anxious. When fourteen-year-old Melanie Griffith, the daughter of actress Tippi Hedren, appeared on the set of Johnson's film The Harrad Experiment, the two grew closer. A painful confrontation followed Pamela's own indiscretion with Keith Moon, and Johnson confirmed his involvement with Melanie. Pamela bowed out, grieving but standing up for herself.

A period of loss followed. Brandon de Wilde died in a car accident. Gram Parsons died of a drug overdose at the Joshua Tree Inn; his manager stole the body and attempted to cremate it in the desert, fulfilling Gram's wishes. Christine Frka, known within the group as Miss Christine, died alone in a Boston hotel room from a prescription drug overdose. Pamela deepened her spiritual practice under the guidance of Chuck Wein, a filmmaker she called "The Wizard," studying karma, vegetarianism, and meditation.

On the set of Wein's film Arizonaslim in January 1974, Pamela met Michael Des Barres, the lead singer of the glam-rock band Silverhead. He adored everything about her that previous men had tried to suppress: her groupie history, her flamboyance, her past. She discovered he was secretly married to a woman in London, but he explained the marriage was already over. The decisive moment came when Elvis Presley's hairdresser invited her to the King's house and she declined, because she was in love with Michael. He arrived in Los Angeles with five dollars and a hair dryer in a paper bag, having left everything behind to start a new life with her.

They married four and a half years later in a Laurel Canyon backyard, and their son, Nicholas Dean Des Barres, was born shortly after. Michael's drug and alcohol addiction became the central struggle of their marriage, with Pamela quitting all substances to set an example. After years of worry, Michael achieved lasting sobriety. In updates written years later, Pamela reported that she and Michael had separated but remained close. She became a journalist and creative writing teacher. Don Johnson achieved fame with Miami Vice, and Pamela, Michael, Don, and his partner Patti D'Arbanville became close friends; Pamela also reconciled with Melanie Griffith. She finally met Paul McCartney, her fourth and final Beatle, backstage after a concert, presenting him with a copy of this very book.