Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up

by Des Barres, Pamela

  Just recently I was digging around in Mom’s cedar chest still full of faded paper dreams and frothy lace dresses Aunt Bert sent me from Dayton in 1956. I was trying to locate my floor-length Flying Burrito dress, the checkered purple one I wore to all their Palomino shows, when Mom and I came across a beribboned stack of Daddy’s storm-tossed letters from the the middle of the Pacific, where he was serving his country during World War II. I scanned a couple of them; they were factual, homesick, full of longing for his young wife but resolute and unafraid. Mom and I took turns reading some of the most endearing passages, and when we closed the cedar chest, she left the stack out so she could climb back into 1944 after I left. Nick spent the night with her, so I could go to the Palomino to see the band I manage, wearing that Burrito dress, and when I came back to pick him up the next day, Mom seemed far-off, like her eyes were seeing right through me. “Your daddy spoke to me last night,” she said quietly, sort of awestruck by his reappearance after such a long absence. We had assumed he was so far away he wasn’t able to make contact anymore. I was beside myself to find out what he had to say. “All he said was, ‘Hi Sweetie,” but I had the feeling he wanted to get something through to you,” Mommy told me as she took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket, “and since he spoke to me in the bedroom for the first time, I felt like he wanted me to find something to show you.” She said he led her to the pile of Navy letters and among them she found a note he had written to me while I was doing that dumb soap in New York. She handed me the letter and I looked at it with wonder, like it had floated down from the farthest heavenly realm. It was from a hotel way down in Apatzingan, Mexico, where he was scavenging for gold, and here’s what it said:

  Hi sweetie,

  Just a little note to you. I’ve really had a rough time the last month here, so much walking and working in the rain, have lost so much weight that friends here in town didn’t hardly know me after being gone for five weeks. I’ll have to get smaller clothes, mine are mostly wore out anyway, am back to my coal-mining days, with a 30-inch waist. I feel real bad about the hard times I have caused you and your dear mother, and if hard work will make them better, then they soon will be. I see you most everywhere I go; one picture up here at the hotel, one up in our house at camp, and one up in my favorite restaurant. I tell them you will soon be famous, so don’t make a liar out of me. No one understands my Spanish so good, so they tell everyone you already are, so keep doing the best you can. I hope one day you will be as proud of me as I am of you.

  Love,

  Ol’ Dad.

  He found a way to let me know he had been proud of me then and was proud of me now. I held the letter and cried a whole bunch of grateful tears, blessing his soul for reaching down to show me that there really is such a wondrous thing as undying love.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I

  Now that Daddy was gone, I mentioned to Mom, “Maybe I should start writing that book I’ve always talked about.” The one about the glorious heyday of rock and roll, traipsing around love-ins with barely any clothes on, my all-girl band, Girls Together Outrageously, touring with Zeppelin, taking psychedelics on the Sunset Strip—the book Daddy wouldn’t have been able to accept. She nodded. “Yes, dear, I’ve always thought you were a very talented writer, go ahead.” Go ahead. Did she know what she was saying? Uh-oh, I had been given the ultimate permission. Still, it would be a whole year before I got the mammary glands to search Mom’s garage for the bargain typewriter that Daddy had gotten cheap after some Sun Valley storage building burnt down to the ground in 1976. After I got a new ribbon, the thing worked great, but it always had a slightly sooty odor.

  Very soon after my daddy died, Michael got a threatening, lunatic call from his mother telling him his father had also passed away and was about to be buried in a “pauper’s grave.” After borrowing the money for a trip to London from Danny Goldberg, Michael set off on his harrowing journey. I worried if he would be able to keep a handle on his newfound sobriety under these hazardous circumstances, dealing with the unstable Irene, attempting to get the funds from his father’s estate to give him a decent burial. He checked in with me every few days, completely sober, praise God, but under such a grotesque strain, my mind boggled. I longed to comfort him, but it was way beyond my capacity. His father’s body sat in a room for days and was finally interred in a pauper’s grave. There was nothing Michael could do. His mother thought her only son had come to town to get his hands on Philip’s estate and had actually called him “Judas” before turning her back and disappearing forever. Through the entire ordeal Michael kept a journal—calling it Treasures of Every Sort—and it saved his sanity.

  One consolation for Michael was his new band, Chequered Past. And the band members’ pasts were checkered, indeed. Blondie had dissolved a few months earlier, so Clem Burke and Nigel Harrison joined him, along with my old flame, Tony Sales (who had recently recovered from a humdinger of a car accident where the gear shift had gone right through his chest and he had to learn how to walk, talk, and read all over again), and an exhilarating newcomer to Los Angeles, Steve Jones, the guitar player from the earth-altering Sex Pistols. A mere five years earlier the Pistols had stormed through the soporific, stale music world and pounded it flat, injecting pissed-off poison darts and a heavy load of jagged nuts and bolts into the humdrum banality that was passing for rock and roll. They reminded the right people that rock and roll should never, ever be safe. And that was rockin’ good news.

  When the Sex Pistols dismantled, Stevie had roamed around London in rude and sullen confusion, getting into trouble with the law, which ultimately led him to the sunny Southern California shores where he met up with Michael and slid into Chequered Past. They already had a slick, tongue-in-cheek, hard-rock, soulful sheen, and Steve gave the band the required balls and thumping danger element it needed to compete in the snarled-up, crippled music industry. Hugely overproduced bands like Journey, Asia, and Styx topped the charts while the post-punk, new-wavers continued to redefine everybody’s life-style. Hopefully there would be room for some pureassed straight-ahead rock and roll. Danny Goldberg had started his own management company and added the band to his roster. Things seemed on an upward swing.

  Since Tony and Dee Dee got married and moved away to their own private digs across the street from the Roxy, there was room for the Sex Pistol to move in. Kind of scary. For Christmas Michael and I gave Stevie a gigantic box full of the many essential items he lacked in his life: a toothbrush and toothpaste, deodorant, several bars of Dial, shampoo and conditioner, mouthwash, a few pair of underpants, and a couple sets of socks. It was as if we had spent a million bucks on him, he was so grateful and thrilled. He still hadn’t gotten a dime from the Sex Pistols; Malcolm McLaren got all of it, and it would be several more years until Steve got the dough that was owed to him. He went to AA meetings with Michael, was attempting to get legal, and seemed ready to get his life in some sort of order.

  January 10, 1983—Steve Jones has been staying with us for six weeks, and it’s so mind-blowing I don’t know where to start. He was a junkie for seven years, a thief convicted sixteen times, wanted all over England, ill educated, unschooled, but since he’s been with us he’s a new man. Tonight he told Michael he’s never been happier and how he loves us so much. He opens up more daily. I feed him every meal and give him every good vibe I can; I like to see him happier every day. He’s never had a normal life and is like a little boy in a lot of ways. I’m learning so much from him. He’s always right there with you, living in the moment, with no expectations, no bullshit. He doesn’t know how to be dishonest, I’ve never met anyone like him. It’s wild. He and Michael are writing some killer songs, and Chequered Past are doing demos for RCA next week. A deal is imminent.

  II

  With one of the Sex Pistols living in the house, I decided to become a Mary Kay consultant, one of the great dichotomies of my life. My acting career had been reduced to a dim lightbulb that was about to sputter out entir
ely, and I was so damn tired of fraudulent sales pitches and splattered toilet rims! So after nowhere near enough contemplation, I sold our rarely played, Hallmark greeting card piano and bought a massive pink Mary Kay display case full of corny American (pipe) dream promise. Stevie was kind enough to let me practice cheekbone and lip-liner applications on him until I got it right. Sometimes he resembled Margaret Thatcher in drag, sometimes he looked just like Princess Margaret on one of her better days. I hunkered down and studied all the pink-Cadillac-pledging-gung-ho literature, attended pep-rally, rah-rah meetings with cardboard cut-out ladies in pink suits showing off diamonds (I kept expecting a pink-swathed guru to toddle in and teach us to contemplate our blush-on), and started torturing all my girlfriends into having Mary Kay makeup parties right in their very own homes!

  The first patsy was my sweet mom, who corralled all the aunties and little local ladies into her kitchen where they sat uncertainly around her maple table, before them their pink plastic pallettes full of dibs and daubs of color, selected by me, the Mary Kay Consultant, just for them. “Oh! Aunt Edna, that’s your color!! Opal, just look what that shade of peach does for the shape of your face! Mommy! You’ve never looked so beautiful! Has she, Joanie?!” After smearing globs of goop on their faces and accenting brows that had been neglected for forty years, nobody purchased any products except Mom, and she bought way too many pink-cased items from her only child.

  My next party for was for Eddie Begley’s wife, Ingrid, and it went A-OK; so well, in fact that one of her guests, Patti Goldblum, wanted a facial bash at her place the following week. I arrived at a big pale pad in the San Fernando Valley hills with my corpulent case and was met at the door by Patti’s husband, the unique, very tall actor Jeff Goldblum, who hovered around the creamed-up ladies all afternoon, offering bits of odd makeup advice along with the nicely prepared finger sandwiches. Jeff was such a swell guy—so attentive and interested in the frothy female goings-on—that I felt really bad for Patti when he ran off with Geena Davis, but I sort of understood, because he and Geena were just about the same size, and Patti was a tiny little woman. Then a few years later Hollywood’s tallest couple broke up, so I guess size isn’t everything.

  I had my five Mary Kay parties within the allotted time frame and received my Perfect Start pin in a convention room at the Bel Air Sands Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. As the higher-up, many-pinned, pink-decked lady presented the tiny gold-dunked trophy, I was caught up in waves of thunderous pink applause. It was somehow unsettling. Did I deserve to bask in this overwhelming ovation for selling somebody a mauve eyeliner? I received another gold-plated pin for bringing poor Ingrid Begley into the Mary Kay fold as a new consultant. I apologized to her later.

  I flubbed around with the products for another short chunk of time, accepted the sorry fact that I had made a blunder and could never be that normal (thank the Lord), and sold the pink case full of corny promise to a cute chicana at my next yard sale. I told her the hefty case of cosmetics cost me five hundred big ones, and she got herself a nice, hearty laugh. I got fifteen dollars.

  What ever happened to my acting career? My agent never sent me out, and when she did, I was either too young or too old, too short or too tall, too cute or not cute enough. I could no longer afford to spend countless days and nights doing plays that didn’t pay, so it seemed that my life in front of the footlights was basically over. Tragic, but true. I made a chart featuring the pros and cons of continuing to take rejection on the chin. The cons outweighed the pros by sixteen tons.

  Acting Pros

  1. It feels undeniable when you are actually doing it.

  2. I’ve invested many years and untold energies toward acting.

  3. I have trained to be an actress and it’s what I do best.

  4. Camaraderie on projects.

  5. The elation I experience when I do a good job.

  6. My respect for the craft. (puke)

  7. Nothing else exists when you’re into it.

  8. I don’t want to have to admit failure to my far-reaching childhood dreams. (not that I believe in failure)

  Acting Cons

  1. I haven’t made any money in acting for three years.

  2. I haven’t acted at all in over five months!

  3. I’ve plugged away for fifteen years and am still totally unknown!

  4. In order to “continue” my career, I would have to put a scene together and send photos to agents and casting people—actively seek a new agent. (very difficult)

  5. I signed with my “new” commercial agent in October and have been out only four times. No callbacks, no contact with agency, no respect from agency.

  6. Almost thirty-five years old—not a time to “start” a career in acting. (all over again!?) Do I still feel the urgency?

  7. In order to do a play, there’s about five nights a week rehearsal, a lot of baby-sitters, then I work four nights a week and make no money for the work.

  8. The rejection barrier that has to be put up like a wall when they don’t call back. Repeated rejections can kill someone.

  9. The consistent feeling of being an “out-of-work” actor. “Have you been working?” The constant “No”s. The feeling of worthlessness at your craft because you’re unable to do it most of the time. Very few people take you seriously.

  10. So many times I’ve wound up “on the cutting-room floor.” It makes me feel like quitting each time.

  But I wasn’t quite ready to relinquish my star-stacked hopes. Even though those repeated rejections could have killed me, I decided to carry those anvils around on my shoulders for a little while longer by joining a theater group for the handicapped. I thought I could kill two Byrds with one Stone (what happened when Mick Jagger’s limousine ran down Roger McGuinn and David Crosby? Ha. ) and keep up my skills while possibly doing some cosmic good.

  My first scene was from Coming Home, the tear-dripper that starred Jane Fonda and Jon Voight as a paraplegic Vietnam vet. My partner was a quadriplegic car-accident victim who happened to be an amazing actor. In fact, I saw him on some TV docudrama just the other night, and he was top-notch. When we rehearsed in the donated high school gym, I had to turn the pages of the script for him until he learned his lines, and when we did the scene for class, I heard people sobbing and sniffling all the way through. They actually cheered when the imaginary curtain came down, and I was overcome with a satisfaction more complete than any I had gotten from taking my own bows—that rare feeling that life is a gift, a new, special present to be opened every day, wrapped in happy paper and tied with rah-rah ribbon.

  I had always kept a fearful, respectful distance from the “handicapped” or “disabled,” intimidated by all they had to deal with, and now I was seeing firsthand how bright and shining strong the human spirit could be—against all odds in a big way. My next scene was with an adorable, incredibly upbeat blind girl named Vicki. We played a couple of sisters on a sib-style rampage, even though she was black and I have been called white trash more than once. Vicki had moved away from some Midwestern state with her magnificent guide dog Daisy and into a pretty rotten neighborhood downtown, but she never seemed to notice. Not only was she blind, she had diabetes and had to inject herself twice a day. I watched her make her way around the itsy-bitsy apartment, where she cooked dinner for me one evening after we rehearsed. She made Campbell’s Vegetarian Vegetable just for me, and spread mayo evenly on the white squares of bread before placing the turkey slices just so. I watched her make the sandwiches with awestruck amazement, like she was doing a perilous sky dive from two hundred feet. She told me how it felt to go blind, how the light got dimmer, like a shade being pulled down a tiny bit each day, until she was forever in the dark. She said she tried to hold onto the final fleeting images, but all she remembered were multicolored lights and her mother’s face. I listened to her argue with her mother on the phone from that faraway Midwestern city. She wanted her daughter to come home, but Vicki wanted to be a star. After I left the acting group, I he
ard that Vicki had passed away from her diabetes. I remembered her blazing desire to succeed, to wage battle with her “handicap,” to make her life into something daring and special, and I sent a bolt of love to her sweet soul.

  I learned all kinds of things about the strength of the human spirit but at last felt I was ready to give up on acting, which seemed to already have given up on me. I pondered the decision incessantly for several long days before taking all my head shots, resumes, Dramalogues, Hollywood Reporters, commercial composites, and scene-study books and dumping them into the garbage in a lonely, solemn ritual. I actually put a match to the mess because I wanted to make sure I wouldn’t be able to change my mind. I read the list of “Acting Cons” aloud while the trash can blazed. I wept. Jesus wept. After everything was ashes, I sat on the porch expecting to feel like an arm had been severed, like a weakling failure without an Oscar nomination, but instead I felt such a surprising, delicious relief surge over me that I wept again with joy and laughed and felt those sixteen tons slip off my shoulders and turn into feather boas. My many hours of preaching positive thinking and erasing negative thoughts were paying off. I thought about how Dr. Bitzer at the Church of Religious Science would see what I had done. I was making room for something new—not failing at anything! I was letting go, not giving up! Bully, bully, bully for me! But where was my standing ovation?