Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon

by Pamela Des Barres, Paul Kemprecos

The dark moments of rock history fascinate and tantalize like the pathos of Greek tragedy. The bottom sinks lower, the air seems colder, the bad endings - when they are bad - seem beyond bad. The unlucky practitioners of our most thriving form of communal experience seem to hit rock bottom in ways only the most glamorous among us can - publicly. The stories remain obscure, half-seen in the shadowlands. In her familiar style, Pamela Des Barres shines light on the people whose art remains the background music to our popular culture.

Des Barres asks, "What comes first, the addiction or the rock and roll?" The first apparent rock-and-roll death occurred on Christmas Eve 1959, when Johnny Ace blew his head off in a game of Russian Roulette between shows. Buddy Holly's four-seater plane crashes. Marvin Gaye's father shoots his son. Kurt Cobain puts a gun to his head. The headlines tell it all: Rock Singer Faces Manslaughter Charge, James Brown Addicted to PCP, Bassist for Band Hole Found Dead.

The messed-up lives, the burned-out golden boys and girls, the violence, the route toward rock bottom - Des Barres has a line on the souls of the public figures who lived desperate private lives to entertain us all.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Pop Culture, History, Biography Memoir, Rock N Roll

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Pamela Des Barres aka Miss Pamela (born Pamela Ann Miller on September 9, 1948) is a former rock and roll groupie, author, and magazine writer.

Des Barres was born in Reseda, California. Her mother was a housewife and her father worked for Anheuser-Busch and occasionally worked as a gold miner. She idolized the Beatles and Elvis Presley as a child, and fantasized about meeting and dating her favorite Beatle, Paul McCartney.

A high school acquaintaince introduced Pamela to Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart, a musician and friend of Frank Zappa. Vliet in turn introduced her to Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, which drew her to the rock music scene on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. She started to spend her time with The Byrds and other bands, and when she graduated from high school in 1966, she took various jobs that would allow her to live near the Sunset Strip and pursue relationships with rock musicians. She famously paired up with Nick St. Nicholas, Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Page, Chris Hillman, Noel Redding, Jimi Hendrix, Waylon Jennings, Ray Davies, David Gilmour, Frank Zappa and actor Don Johnson.

She was also a member of The GTOs, an all-girl singing group formed by Zappa. The group started out as the Laurel Canyon Ballet Company, and began performing as an opening act for Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The group's act was performance art, a mix of music and spoken word, since none of its members could sing or play an instrument. They released an album, Permanent Damage in 1969, backed by Zappa and Jeff Beck. The group dissolved a month after the album's release because some of its members were arrested for drug possession.

In the 1970s Des Barres decided to pursue a career as an actress, and acted in a few movies, including Zappa's 200 Motels, commercials, and a year acting on the soap opera Search For Tomorrow in 1974. After a downturn in her acting career she went to work as a nanny for Zappa's children, Dweezil and Moon Unit.

On October 29, 1977, she married Michael Des Barres who had been lead singer for the first band signed to Led Zeppelin's Swan Song label, Detective, Silverhead and, briefly, for Power Station. They have a son, Nicholas Dean Des Barres, born on September 30, 1978. The couple divorced in the summer of 1991, due to Michael Des Barres' alleged infidelities.

Des Barres wrote two books about her experience as a groupie, I'm With The Band (1987) and Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (1993), as well as two non-fiction books, Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon and Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (Chicago Review Press, 2007). She currently writes articles for online and print publications. (from Wikipedia)"

Reviews

[Winter Sophia Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, Witty & Informative! I Loved This Interesting Read!

[Lisa Brandt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the dark side of fame. Des Barres is a really good writer and she peppers some of the stories with her own anecdotes about the artist. (For her colourful history, see "I'm With the Band".) An enjoyable and educational read for any music fan.

[Nat K · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting vignettes.

[C'lestial · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by Pamela Des Barres, one of the queens of the groupies back in the 60s,and author of other r&r themed books, this a collection of short stories about the sex, drugs, rock & roll and the untimely deaths of many famous singers of mostly the 60's and 70's. Included were Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones, Keith Moon, Kurt Cobain, Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, Janis Joplin and many more, along with final chapters on a couple who are still alive but the debauchery such as Chuck Berry, was bad enough to warrant inclusion in this book. The book also has many photos.
Some of the artists she personally knew,(some QUITE well), others she was able to interview those close to them to get the dirt on what really happened. She leaves pretty much no stone left unturned; all the good bad and ugly are portrayed about each person.
The book was pretty good, some of the stories were interesting; a few were rather lacking in the detail I wish they'd had.
All in all, it was a pretty good read, much different than Hollywood Babylon; more with a more personal touch to it.
The book would be more interesting to those who were around in this era, even though some in the book are still well known, others have somewhat faded away for a younger audience to appreciate.
This book is good to have around to read a chapter here and there when you are not wanting to just sit and read a few hours.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a tough one to get through on many levels. Miss Pamela is a gifted biographer, and she sprinkles each chapter with her own recollections where they are pertinent (hence both a biography and a memoir). But she's also unflinching, showing us the seamy side of the music business in these stories.

Examining personalities as varied as G.G. Allin and Gram Parsons, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Sid Vicious, and more, Miss Pamela shows us the tragedies and suffering experienced by those who didn't handle success as well as they might have hoped. The book was originally published in 1996; some of those still living when the book was written (e.g., Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis) are no longer with us either. Some, like Axl Rose, are still around.

The book is not for the faint of heart; it deals with addiction, sexual abuse, and more. I won't be able to "unsee" some of what I read.

Still, for those who still think that the music business is all sunshine and happiness, this book is a much-needed antidote and dose of reality.

[Nešo Shonery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dama, koja je mladost provela kao grupi devojka (eto zanimljive karijere), a onda to stavila na papir, napisala je knjigu koja se ovog puta ne tiče njene živopisne prošlosti Život i smrt muzičara, većinu znam, za neke ljude sma čuo prvi put (ili nisam znao kako se zovu). Od početaka do najčešće teškog kraja. Iako su mi neke priče bile poznate od ranije, svakako sam uživao. ko voli priče o rokenrolu, sigurno će mu se svideti. Odlična.

[Richard Lehingrat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brian Jones and Janis Joplin pieces stand out. ****

[Leah Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book but a lot of disturbing events, especially in the final chapter.

[All Tomorrow’s Books · Rating 3 out of 5]

So well researched and I’ll read anything PDB writes. Some people I wasn’t so interested in, but overall it was an insightful look into the lows of the music world.

[Kimberly Brewington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book, but didn’t learn a lot of new info. Was a quick read though.

[Liesje Leest · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been reading way to little in the last few months, and to get myself back in the habit of picking up a book I decided to start with an easy read. Rock Bottom is a collection of stories about musicians (almost all of them men for some reason, I think Janis Joplin is the only woman featured in the book) who met some kind of downfall. The collection of people seem a bit odd. They are not musicians from the same era or same genres, it seems pretty random. There are a lot of things (drug abuse, domestic violence, borderline abuse) that the author doesn't seem fazed by all too much and sometimes that really bothered me. The book does make a nice quick read and I found it interesting even if I only really know the music of Kurt Cobain and Freddie Mercury, I've heard of most of the other people in the book but I'm not that familiar with their music. I don't think the book was writing too well and I think the author has some strange reactions to some things but the book was entertaining enough.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rock Bottom: Dark Moments in Music Babylon by Pamela Des Barres (St. Martin's Press 1996) (781.66). Author Pamela des Barres is well-known in the rock and roll world as a supergroupie. She has been linked to many of the most popular male rock stars of the 1960's and 1970's. This book focuses on the details of the untimely deaths (generally from drug overdose or other riotous living) of rock superstars: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, and on and on. This includes some rockers whose deaths are attributable to much more mundane causes: Stevie Ray Vaughn (helicopter crash), Buddy Holly (plane crash), and Lynyrd Skynyrd (plane crash). This is not a book for one who wishes to see their heroes on pedestals, for no prurient detail is left unflaunted in this modern-day yellow journalism. My rating: 7/10, finished 1/5/15.

[Billie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Pamela's first groupie book years ago and thought her writing was fantastic. I loved the story she told and her downright honesty about what she did and didn't do with any number of musicians in Hollywood in the 70's and 80's. That book, I gave five stars.

This one, not so much. I don't know if I changed (read: grew up) and expected more from an author, but her writing left a LOT to be desired with this book. The stories did get better - or I just got more interested - as the book moved on; some truly sickened me (Chuck Berry, GG Allin, Kurt Struebing), some made me sad (Marvin Gaye, Gram Parsons, Dennis Wilson), and some were just rehashing of stories I already knew and offered no new information (Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Janis Joplin, Sid Vicious). I wanted a quick, easy read while on vacation and this served the purpose, but I expected more from Pamela.

[Nocheevo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like the Hollywood Babylon books, Rock Bottom is a collection of voyueristic tales from the world of contempory music. Contempory in this sense refers to US-centric rock and/ or roll, and as all good rock it riffs on all the expected themes of debauchery, indulgence, vanity and failures.

Written/ collected by a 60s uber-groupie, some of the stories have a personal angle which puts the book above the "bitchiness" in Hollywood Babylon. At the close of the book though it is still trash. A quick easy read to giggle at those wacky rock star antics.

Tempted to give it an extra star for being the only book I have found with an account of GG Allin! One angry man. For the most part, crap music but he certainly was at the far end of the bell curve of humanity.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read about the dirty dark side of several players in the music business. It is a "tell all" sort of book, written by a groupie. Enjoyable, but you're not going to feel any smarter or fulfilled after reading this book

[Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

The groupies groupie's take on the dark side...

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story about Dennis Wilson is heartbreaking. Great read.

[Beverly J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the writing is good and the topic is salacious, most of these stories were just too old for me to identify with and enjoy.

[♥ tatiie ♥]

` i dont lyke thiss story at all its stupitt

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

Great book if you want to read about Pamela Des Barres.