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Were here because of the music, she explains.
We dont have intercourse with these guys.
We support the music.
We inspire the music.
Were here because of the music!
What a pussy line!
And pussy in a bad way.
Its not that Des Barres dislikesAlmost Famous.
It was a positive look at the groupie-muse, Des Barres says.
And Ive been trying to redeem the word groupie for most of my life.
I was actually dumbstruck, she says of seeing the movie for the first time.
Because that character was basically more me than Bebe Buell or Pennie Trumbull.
She looked way more like me.
But then I saw him a few years ago, and he sort of apologized.
He actually said, What can I do to make it up to you?
I said I should have been a consultant.
(Appropriately, this all took place at a Duran Duran concert.)
I was hanging out with Zeppelin.
I was always hanging out with them, even after Jimmy and I broke up, she recalls.
He was writing his first piece on them.
He saw me in action.
I was very, very close with Robert Plant.
And I was invited to everything.
This is another tendency of Des Barress.
She likes to remind you of all of the people she knew and slept with.
Part of her appeal is the bedrock of Crowes film.
Des Barres really wasalmost famous.
And we all want to be close to fame.
Whatwouldhave happened if she were on the bus?
Well, I was a groupie before there were bus trips.
I was on jets, she says.
On the one hand, Des Barres understands Crowes sterile, PG-13 treatment of the early 70s.
On the other hand, its also a naive fantasy skewed by Crowes gender.
This, at the end of the day, is Des Barress most significant qualm.
In response, Penny Lane runs off and nearly kills herself after taking too many quaaludes.
So much for being a Band-Aid for the music and the inspiration.
That doesnt sit well with Des Barres.
This character, the groupie like shes portrayed, is pathetic.
I knew all the main groupies in the heyday of groupiedom.
None of them would have done that.
There was always someone else coming to town.
That really turned me off.
No actual music-loving goddess-groupie would do such a thing.
Des Barres is no stranger to misogyny.
But Des Barres has always insisted it was never that way.
I was always of age.
I was always taken care of.
I was always treated well, she says of her sexual pursuits.
Everyone I was with was wonderful to me.
[But] sometimes they were completely stoned out of their mind.
And that was feminism to me.
By the end of our conversation, its still hard not to see Penny Lane in her.
Or, more correctly her in Penny Lane.
They were both blessed with the power of magnetic attraction, able to woo and impress and entertain.
Asked if rock and roll can save the world, Miss Pamela replies, It already has.
