Pamela Des Barres on music history and women's writing (2025)

Pamela Des Barres on music history and women's writing (1)

(Credits: Far Out / Pamela Des Barres)

Music

Lucy Harbron

@lucyharbron

‘Groupie’ is a painfully misunderstood term. Too often thought of as nothing more than someone chasing an obsessive fantasy or a girl in the crowd throwing herself at the band, the idea of a groupie has always been more than that. To be a groupie is a time-honoured tradition. To the girls that reclaim the title, wearing it like a badge of honour as they buzz around local music scenes, it’s a moniker that embodies excitement, spontaneity and power. Dusting away the tired slut shaming that too often lingers around the term, a groupie is an icon, and that’s all thanks to Pamela Des Barres.

People don’t understand the term. They think of it as a slutty term, and it’s so not that all, it’s the opposite of that. It’s just love,” Des Barres tells me. “It’s really another word for love and the love of the music and the people who make it.”

I greet Des Barres on a transatlantic Zoom call and soon my face aches from smiling as I listen to her affectionately, like a guru, as the window on my screen slowly acquires the essence of Miss P. First published in 1987, I’m With The Band is the groupie bible. Growing up in California, she graduated from her teenage Beatlemania years into the realm of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa and The Doors. Brushing shoulders and locking lips with the artists we’ve come to herald as music’s greatest, lucky for us, she kept a diary.

The book is an incredible read, full of anecdotes that no one else could tell, written in the moment as Miss P navigated the 1960s music scene. And for so many women in and around music, like me, it was life-affirming. Since picking the book up in 2019, I’ve been almost equally obsessed with Miss P as I am with the people she writes about, and in turn, she motivates me to keep writing. Now, having the chance to interview her, I can’t hide the delight on my face. When I told my friends I talked to her, they couldn’t hide their excitement either, as Pamela Des Barres lords over our girl group like a God.

When I tell Miss P that very idea, she laughs, “See! There are still plenty of groupies; it’s not over, it’s never going to be over. As long as someone gets up on a stage, someone is going to want to meet them.”

But what’s so special and enduring about Des Barres’ cultural standpoint is the fact that she did more than just meet these people. I’m With The Band is a historical document, a vital piece of archival material. Beyond being a friend, girlfriend and groupie to these icons, Miss P was writing about them and capturing moments that no one else could have. In some ways, Pamela Des Barres is the ultimate music journalist.

“I’d always kept my diaries since being a girl,” she says of her writing, “but when I got involved with the people and was hanging out with them in these incredibly rare experiences I was having, I knew that people would be interested.”

I’m With The Band feels like music writing at its rawest, most exciting, and most passionate. Not only was Miss P obsessed with the people around her, but she knew documenting it would be important to the world: “I knew sometime people would be interested because of the music that was being made,” she said. “I knew then it was revolutionary.”

“The innovation of the music, from The Stones, Zappa, Beefheart, and all those people I knew,” she continues, “I just knew they were pioneers. I knew they were opening doors. With the music they were making for all the people that came after.“

But unlike the reports you could get from Melody Maker, Creem or any other music magazine of the time, Miss P’s storytelling has the gripping advantage of being wildly personal and told with her own insight, spark and humour. Forget Cameron Crowe, Des Barres is what would’ve happened if you handed Penny Lane a pen and paper.

Throughout I’m With The Band, Miss P writes about some of the most extreme moments in 1960s music history from her unique vantage point by the rockstar’s side. “I was there at Altamont,” she tells me, referencing the tragic 1969 Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway Free Festival, where the Hells Angels provided security and Meridith Hunter was killed during a possible attempted assassination of Mick Jagger. “Backstage after the show, it was just me and Michelle Phillips and a couple of other people,” she adds. “So I was in a situation only I could write about. I think that’s why the book still resonates with people, and I keep getting new fans all the time.”

But Miss P is humble; she believes it’s the ‘60s, the moments she lived through and the people she met, that keep her readers coming back for more: “It still resonates with people because of the era being so dramatic. There was so much going on. Socially and spiritually. There was feminism, sexual, social and musical revolution,” she says, adding, “I just lucked out to be who I was, where I was, when I was.”

All of this is why Pamela Des Barres needs people to pay attention to groupies, determined to ensure they get the respect they deserve and are remembered for their own important role in music history. In fact, Miss P plays a role in history both behind and on the stage. As well as being the queen of the groupies, spending time with Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Graham Parsons and more, “taking them thrifting, finding them interesting clothes to wear, putting their makeup on them, ironing their shirts” and so on. Miss P and her friends also had their own rockstar era, as a girl group called The GTOs, which Stanley Booth wrote could mean “Girls Together Outrageously, Orally, or anything else starting with O”.

“The fact that actually happened is still crazy to me,” she laughs. “We were doing something that hadn’t been done, really. We were really performance artists before the term existed. It was a real freaky situation. And it all had to do with Frank Zappa.”

In the mid-60s, Miss P existed in the California scene as Frank Zappa’s nanny. Along with her groupie friends, Miss Mercy, Miss Cynderella, Miss Christine, Miss Lucy, Miss Sandra and Miss Sparky, Frank Zappa wanted to turn the girls’ passion and energy into something bigger. “He saw that we had something to offer the world, which was pretty incredible at the time for a bunch of teenage girls just hanging out in Laurel Canyon,” she says.

The band only performed together a handful of times but once opened for Alice Cooper. Their only album, Permanent Damage, was produced by Zappa but had a full cast of big names: “We were in the studio with Frank, and Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart, even Gram Parsons came and tried to be on the album,” she says. “It was just an incredibly special experience.”

While lost to history, we might get to hear the GTOs again soon as Miss P smiles and excitedly tells me, “We’re trying to get the record out again. The Zappa people are going through the archive, and I get to hear all the stuff that wasn’t on the record.” Talking about her lost friends, with Des Barres being only one of three surviving members, her face is lit up with love. “One of the outtakes is an interview Frank did with all us girls; it’s gonna be amazing to hear those voices again.”

But now, with her rockstar days behind her and so many of her old friends, boyfriends and objects of obsession either sadly passed or busy touring the world’s biggest stages, Miss P is assured in her calling. “My purpose is holding these writing workshops because it helps women,” she says confidently, talking about the classes she holds in LA, Canada and now in London. I’m signed on to join her November workshop and can’t help but shuffle in my seat with excitement as she talks about it.

“I’ve had women that have been coming to my classes for 13, 14, 15 years. Some people have actually stunned themselves by the things that they write. It’s stuff they thought they’d always keep inside, stuff that becomes a nasty little sticker in your body if you don’t release it right,” she says. A woman who has given so much to the community of women in and around music, that has given a voice to our obsessions and desires, Miss P now helps her followers find their own voice. “The fact that they feel connected to me and open up so freely around me, that’s my calling.”

Miss P is as charming in person as she is on the page, sharing her wisdom and experiences so effortlessly with the natural charm of all the best journalists and writers in the world. “So final question,” I put to her, “what is your biggest piece of advice for all the girls and groupies out there, trying to meet the band and write the book and do the music and do it all, just like you did?”

“It’s all about loving and trusting yourself,” she responds. “You have to believe in yourself. Jesus said, ‘Love thy neighbour as yourself’, Right? And most people forget the ‘yourself’ part. I think that has to happen before you can truly love someone else. So I would just say you gotta trust and love yourself and do things. Stop judging people and, and certainly stop judging yourself. Just let yourself be. That’s my advice.” Amen, Miss P.

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