 |
||||||||
| I’m With the Band by Pamela Des Barres Chicago Review Press Book Soup The Sunset Strip, West Hollywood October 11, 2005 By Victoria Joyce SugarBuzz Magazine |
||||||||
| A lot of vinyl classics are being reissued on CD. Here’s a paper classic reissued on, what else? Paper. With Dave Navarro sitting in yet. Subtitled “Confessions of a Groupie,” Pamela Des Barres’ classic, “I’m With the Band,” is out again in paperback and Miss Pamela is doing a book tour. Hey, it all started on the Sunset Strip, just a few doors down from the Viper Room and across the street from the Whiskey. Tonight she has gathered some old friends and family to read and sign her new baby at Book Soup. “This is funny, ‘cause two years ago, I was walking down The Strip and stopped in here to see how my book was doing…and found out it was out of print! So this is where this started.”
Who hasn’t read this book? Well, me, I’m embarrassed to say. And I should be. This catchy title to this SCANDALOUS and now sweet book that came out in the eighties has been required reading for every self-respecting rocker walking. Not reading it is like not having The Ramones first album. But ya know what? I didn’t have to read it. It was so talked about in its day; you were there without being there. If that makes sense. |
||||||||
 |
Like we said, Dave Navarro (who also just did his own book “Don’t Try This at Home) wrote the intro to this updated edition and types his name three times. Get it? He wants his name in the same book with Des Barres’ other romances. And that list is almost every amazing gorgeous guy who picked up a guitar between 1966 to almost now. Chris Hillman, Noel Redding (she loved bass players!) Jim Morrison, Jimmy Page, Gram Parsons, Ray Davies, etc. Also, chronicling the clubs on The Strip, the concerts, the parties and stories from the road that are Rock History Gold.
Now, get it right, Pamela is not a Mata Hari, Dragon Lady or Femme Fatal. She is still the same teenage sweetheart that fell in love with music and musicians (stung by a Beatle) who was in |
|||||||
| the right place at the right time with the right smile. Sewing her own hippie chick dresses too. Top that off with being a cancer survivor and looking great. It’s great she is still around and no embittered burn out. No way. A loving lover who went on to make a nice career as a writer and journalist. Miss Pamela has several other cool rock books out there; “Rock Bottom,” “Take Another Piece of My Heart,” and a cookbook with Dick & Dee Dee that we have got to get.
“A brilliant writer!” is how old friend, Doug Fieger of the Knack, described her before he read his pages about Keith Moon telling tales of blonde wigs, bubbles in the hotel fountain and way too many pills. What can you say other than insane and heartbreaking. The subtitle ‘confessions’ implies sin but it just ain’t so. It’s all about love and romance, with sex, drugs and rock and roll nicely rounding out the top five. Pamela herself kicked the evening off with her own reading of her early Beatlemaniac days relating stories of her John-friend, her Paul-friend and her George and Ringo-friends. Jelly Babies, anyone? Mr. Des Barres aka, Michael the actor, also read a few pages about Hippie days in Laurel Canyon along with Weird Al Yankovic reading about next door neighbor, Jim Morrison. She got stuck in traffic and was fashionably late, but Terri Nunn positively became Pamela pining for Jimmy Page with her pages and our favorite, the Widow Zappa aka Gail (and Pam’s best friend) who read about the GTO’s (Girls Together Outrageously) a much overlooked all-girl group, side project of the genius, Frank. Gail especially got all misty goin’ down Rock’s Memory Lane. |
||||||||
| What's that old saying? If you can remember the 60’s, you weren’t there? Well, she does and she was, she was, she was! Thank you Miss Pamela. www.6767.com (Mr. Navarro’s website) |
||||||||
 |
||||||||