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HER flings with rock ’n’ roll royalty earned her the reputation of Queen of the Groupies – with Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page among her conquests.
But for Pamela Des Barres the groupie lifestyle wasn’t just about bedding band members — it was a celebration of music culture in Hollywood and female empowerment.
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Known as Miss Pamela, she was a central figure in the 1960s Sunset Strip music scene, embracing its spirit of cultural revolution and the new-found sexual freedom in the era of accessible birth control.
For her, being a groupie was about the music and connecting with Hollywood’s most iconic band members, both in and out of the bedroom.
“We were wearing our hearts all over our bodies,” says Pamela, now 76. “And it was sincere.”
Her trailblazing 1987 memoir I’m With The Band, based on her diaries, lifted the lid on a fascinating world of sex, creativity, and rock and roll — and enshrined Pamela in music folklore.
Speaking to Dylan Tupper Rupert on the podcast Lost Notes: Groupies, Pamela says: “We wanted our freedom. I took my birth control pill on the Strip. I made sure people saw me do it. I didn’t think of it as a statement even or anything, I was just living my life.
“There were really no rules about what women could do in Hollywood at that time, but I grew up in the Fifties watching my mother take care of my dad. And I wanted to do that.
“I wanted to ‘take care of some guy’ — but he had to have a guitar in his hands or a mic in his face. That’s how I felt about it.”
So how did a girl from the Valley become Hollywood’s groupie queen?
Born Pamela Ann Miller and later known as Pam, she recalls being “obsessed” with music from an early age — and had a designated room for dancing, called the Bop Room.
She played Elvis Presley’s track Treat Me Nice “endlessly” trying to decipher the lyrics. “I was too young to figure that out,” Pamela tells Dylan on the podcast.
“But I got it sooner than later — and I wanted to treat musicians nicely, like Elvis wanted.”
Teenage Pam was a Beatlemaniac, performing nightly seances so Paul McCartney might fall in love with her.
She even had her first orgasm alone in the Bop Room — while listening to I’m Alright by the Rolling Stones.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, what the heck is going on?’” she recalls.
As a high school senior, around 16 years old, Pam befriended the musician Victor Hayden, known by his stage name the Mascara Snake, after he visited her high school.
He introduced her to his cousin, Don Van Vliet — aka Captain Beefheart — and she began watching their shows at the Hollywood Palladium.
Nightly seances
Pamela says: “Don saw something in me — he looked me up and down and said, ‘You’re a gas, I wish there were more people like you’. That was a huge moment for me.”
The musicians — who have both since died — began calling Pam “Pamela”, which she recalls being “a transformation”, signalling that she would not be “stuck in the Valley”.
In 1965, Don took her to see the Rolling Stones, who he knew.
After the gig, the band invited them to go out partying with them.
Lusting after Mick Jagger at the time, Pamela summoned the courage to knock at his bungalow.
“He opened the door naked,” she recalls on Lost Notes: Groupies.
“And I was so startled, I just ran into the night. I wasn’t ready for Mick yet.”
Pamela began hanging out at LA’s infamous Sunset Strip, a 1.7-mile stretch that became a cultural paradise for music fans.
In 1965, a tiered licensing system meant under-18s could get into most local clubs, and flocked to see bands including The Byrds and The Beach Boys.
It was a place to see and be seen.
Pamela says: “You could see Jim Morrison staggering down the street, a couple of Buffalo Springfield . . . whatever British guys were in town . . . it was thrilling to be near these guys, and you could approach them, you could talk, you could hang out.”
In the late 1960s, Pamela met bohemian artist and musician Vito Paulekas — the so-called king of Hollywood’s “freak” scene — at his 54th birthday party. “He was very, very naughty,” she recalls, adding that she rebuffed his advances.
But she became part of his “wild” friendship group, and in 1966 bagged an invite to the memorial of comedian Lenny Bruce after his death aged 40 from a morphine overdose.
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According to Pamela, the memorial was “the hippest place to be” with guests including Frank Zappa, Phil Spector and Dennis Hopper.
“Amazing things happened to me there,” she explains. “I got discovered by someone who tried to put me in a movie, and they were talking about radio . . . all of a sudden I was like, ‘Oh my god, I could be somebody’.”
She remained a virgin until the age of 19, when Noel Redding of the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Nick St Nicholas of Steppenwolf allegedly competed to be her first love.
She chose Nick — although “Noel got his shot” later, according to the podcast.
Pamela racked up plenty of other famous pals, such as Jeff Beck, Rod Stewart and Led Zeppelin.
“Sometimes we just hung out with them, danced with them, you know, just smoke pot,” she recalls. “I’d iron their clothes, I’d take them shopping.”
Whisk her backstage
And sometimes things went further.
Pamela allegedly once showed up at Jim Morrison’s soundcheck, only for him to whisk her backstage for a “crazy night”.
Most rock stars on the Strip came to know who she was. She recalls her second encounter with Jagger at a gig — and he recognised her.
“Mick came up to me on the dance floor,” she says. “And still, I was very circumspect. I wanted to be connected to the person I was having sex with.
“Sometimes though, like the first time with Mick, it was like, ‘OK, this is Mick Jagger on top of me’.
“After the first time, it was fine . . . eventually I became pretty comfortable with him.”
At one point, Pamela says Mick, now 81, and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, now 80, were “vying” for her.
She befriended Christine Frka, who worked for musician Frank Zappa and his wife Gail as a nanny for their baby daughter, Moon Unit.
She began hanging out at the Zappas’ log cabin home in the Hollywood Hills.
Pamela wasn’t interested in the advances of Frank — who died in 1993 aged 52 — through loyalty to Gail, who she “loved”.
By day, Pamela and Christine would listen to records at the Zappas’ home while watching Moon Unit — who’s now an actress of 57. By night, they cruised the Strip.
She and Christine befriended a number of other free-spirited female dancers, forming a crew known as the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company.
I grew up in the 50s watching my mother take care of my dad. I wanted to do that. I wanted to ‘take care of some guy’ but he had to have a guitar in his hands or a mic
Pamela Des Barres
They were once kicked off stage for being underdressed: “We had to stay in a room, a little room, for the rest of the show. We were very naughty.”
She explains: “We were always underdressed. I would make dresses out of turn-of-the-century tablecloths that you could see right through.
“We were just wild. This night in particular, we were wearing matching baby bibs that barely covered our breasts and big diapers with duck pins holding them on.” But there were dark moments too.
In I’m With The Band, Pamela recalls a musician setting her and a friend up to witness group sex with a girl she says looked too young to consent. An older pal helped them escape.
While Pamela says some individuals preyed on the crew, she adds: “I learned a lot of good things being in that dance troupe.”
When Frank Zappa founded his label Straight Records in 1969, he signed Alice Cooper and the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company, which he renamed the GTOs, standing for Girls Together Outrageously.
Each of the members adopted the title of Miss, so Pamela became Miss Pamela.
Not all were groupies, but they were all immersed in the scene. The GTOs became notorious in Hollywood, Pamela recalls — telling how bands would track them down.
Notorious dancers
“Sometimes it turned romantic or sexual, sometimes it didn’t,” she adds.
“Like with The Jeff Beck Group, we all just spent time with them. We’d go to their hotel and watch soccer and I would yawn but, you know, that’s what you do for your rock stars.”
Frank briefly dropped the GTOs after some members — not Pamela — were caught up in a drugs bust.
During the hiatus, Pamela romanced Chris Hillman of The Byrds and country star Waylon Jennings.
Frank later re-signed the GTOs and in November 1969 they put out an album, Permanent Damage.
It made little impact, and Pamela returned to the Strip and began dating The Who’s Keith Moon.
As the Sixties ebbed into the Seventies she began acting, appearing in the soap opera Search For Tomorrow.
In 1978, she married musician Michael Des Barres, and had a son. They separated in 1991.
Her website states: “Like any true soulmates, they remain beloved friends and confidantes to this day.”
Nowadays, Pamela is a successful writer and gives talks sharing her “outrageous first-hand experiences” as the original rock groupie.
According to Dylan Tupper Rupert, Pamela’s home in Los Angeles is a “human-scale memorabilia chest” decorated with “pictures detailing her own rock and roll legend.”
“It’s incredible,” Dylan adds. “Miss Pamela believes in magic — and how much of her own story sounds like a Hollywood fairy tale?”
