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Winnipeg Free Press
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Cultural history of late-'60s rock hits some sour notes
There's a depth and richness in rock 'n' roll that, at its best, rivals other art forms. But to reveal it, the music has to be placed in the broader texture and framework of culture and politics. John Einarson is the Winnipeg author of more than 20 rock-music music biographies. His past subjects include Neil Young, Randy Bachman, John Kay, Ian & Sylvia, The Byrds and Buffalo Springfield. From Born to Be Wild to Dazed and Confused Despite his literary output, he allows his crowning epitaph to be that 'he opened for Led Zeppelin' as the 17-year-old guitarist of local band Euphoria at the Man-Pop Festival at Winnipeg Stadium in August 1970. He's clearly a rock-music musicologist of the first order. And he also knows the tech stuff inside out. As a former rock musician, he writes knowledgably about guitar makes and models, tunings, chord progressions and amplifier manufacturers and sizes. But his focus this time round is conceptual, and much more ambitious than a rock bio. It's a cultural history, viewed through the lens of rock music in the late 1960s. He's set himself a tall order — one he doesn't fill, and which is handicapped by a dubious editorial choice in the book's format. Einarson traces the evolution of rock 'n' roll from psychedelia to heavy rock to heavy metal. Each of the three years he principally treats of — 1967, '68 and '69 — is introduced by a 'Timeline of Significant Events,' multi-page month-by-month one- or two-sentence bulleted lists of significant historical or musical events of each year. It's the kind of pedagogical aid Einarson, a former schoolteacher, might employ for instructing middle or high school students. But it has no business in a cultural history about rock music. Some of the timeline potted summaries also surface in the chapters that follow. But far better if more of them were integrated into the music-driven narrative, and the bulleted lists nixed. The net result: the music isn't fully and seamlessly placed within the larger context of the times and shaping historical events. The book's title encompasses two songs Einarson considers signal recordings for the birth of hard rock — Steppenwolf's Born to Be Wild, released in 1968, and Led Zeppelin's Dazed and Confused, released in 1969. But he begins the narrative in 1965, with the rise of psychedelic music. He charts how psychedelia's gentler, more experimental ethos gave way through 1966-67 to a louder, heavier and more visceral sound, pioneered by the Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience and Jeff Beck. It finally crystallized in the likes of Steppenwolf and Led Zeppelin, he maintains. He links the evolution of psychedelic-cum-flower-power rock into a darker, heavier rock genre due to worsening geopolitical events — the Vietnam War's Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, increasingly violent student and civil-rights protests, the presidential election of Richard Nixon. This heavy rock, often today dubbed 'classic rock,' in turn gave way to a host of successor imitators, collectively known as heavy metal. Heavy metal music's intellectual quotient is near zero. It's a kind of a soma, loudly lulling its fans into ignoring real-world issues. Both early and later practitioners (Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Megadeath, Metallica) are weak derivatives of the pioneers of heavy rock (Jeff Beck, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf). What heavy metal imported was more overt sexual content, dilettantish dabbling in the occult, mysticism and Satanism, and adolescent proto-anarchism. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. But Einarson renders neither a critical judgment nor an endorsing defence of the genre, remaining pretty much mute on its merits or lack of same. This is an intelligent record of rock music's evolution in the late 1960s. But while it's an interesting chronicle, there's a dearth of considered scrutiny. The music's interaction with politics and geopolitics is thin. The music's interaction with contemporary books, movies, plays and television is negligible to non-existent. The broader context of the music is too often missing. As cultural history, it's criticism lite. Douglas J. Johnston is a Winnipeg lawyer and writer.
Chicago Tribune
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: Hubbard Street Dance closes season with hopeful optimism — and Fosse
Hubbard Street Dance Chicago's season finale coinciding with Beyoncé's Chicago dates is perhaps just a happy accident. But as last night's freaky dust storm tapered off and audiences settled into their seats at the Harris Theater, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon's 'Sweet Gwen Suite' was a most poetic opening to the evening. The third of this trio of juicy morsels created for 1960s television specials is 'Mexican Breakfast,' which Beyoncé reimagined in her 'Single Ladies' video. It was a move that kicked off an existential conversation about artistic license, inspiration and ownership. She'd do it again in the 'Countdown' video. And again in 'Lemonade.' (Some say she plagiarized, but it's deeper than that.) In their Fall Series at Steppenwolf, we were forced to wait until the show was three-quarters finished to see dancers Cyrie Topete, Dominick Brown and Aaron Choate emerge in silhouette, hats tipped just right, puffs of cigarette smoke perfectly timed, bedazzled charro suits on point — all images now synonymous with Fosse. That program began with resident choreographer Aszure Barton's contemplative 'Return to Patience,' a tease in hindsight. But as a fitting bookend to Hubbard Street's 47th season, Fosse goes first, making it easy to follow instructions given at the top of every show by artistic director Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell: 'Get your whole life together.' Here, Barton goes last, with a revival of her 2002 'Blue Soup.' The point is, this program doesn't creep or simmer, it goes from zero to 60 and pretty much stays there the whole time. The night's only world premiere, Matthew Rushing's 'Beauty Chasers,' expands on a section of another of his works called 'Sacred Songs.' Rushing created that piece last year as an extrapolation of Alvin Ailey's 'Revelations' — the signature work of the late choreographer's eponymous company, led by Rushing for the past two years. For it, he excavated spirituals used for the original 'Revelations' that got cut as the hour-long ballet was shortened for ease in touring. Where 'Revelations' and 'Sacred Songs' express facets of the African American experience, 'Beauty Chasers' seems a kind of prequel — opening on Topete (who was simply extraordinary the whole night) in a pool of light, wearing flesh-toned underthings. Shota Miyoshi takes a turn, too, elegantly writhing in his own pool of stark white light, then Bianca Melidor. Rushing has said 'Beauty Chasers' loosely references the Holy Trinity from Christianity — the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. For me, it's more like Genesis. In the beginning, there was (designer Jason Lynch's) light, then man. And then there was jazz. And it was good. The piece really begins to cook as a recording of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders' 'Journey to Satchidananda' drops in, a celestial arrangement for keys, flute, bass and drums. The trio of dancers gradually dresses each time they re-enter the scene, increasingly noticing, accepting and literally leaning on one another. 'Beauty Chasers'' hybrid score (arranged by sound designer Dante Giramma) and costumer Dante Anthony Baylor's final look — red, white and black palazzo pants and matching beaded necklaces — beautifully complement Rushing's blend of modern, afro-contemporary and traditional West African vocabularies. To be sure, it's something new for Rushing, well outside his comfort zone. Thus, the underbelly feels raw and vulnerable — the rewards worth all the risk. A one-act behemoth closing the show, 'Blue Soup' has many hallmarks of what we've come to know of Barton's catalog, enough to make me wonder if this is where it all started. There's a signature tension between the literal and the imagined, moments of authenticity layered with sarcasm and vaudevillian veneer. There are just a few clues the piece came early in Barton's career — mainly in how 'Blue Soup' wears its influences on its big, blue, shoulder padded zoot suit sleeves. Created a year after David Lynch's 'Mulholland Drive,' 'Blue Soup' borrows images from the film, though not quite as literally as Beyoncé borrowed from 'Mexican Breakfast.' Choate appears alone, a vision in a blonde wig, sky-high stilettos, satiny blue robe and leotard — azure blue. Choate awkwardly lip syncs at an old-timey microphone. It's 'Sh-Boom' by The Chords — a bop, to be sure. It's far more ridiculous than 'Mulholland Drive's' 'this is the girl' screen test, a sort of blending of that and the film's darker sections. As the lens opens, the full company joins, facing upstage for what seems like a long time until Angelo Badalamenti's 'Jitterbug' drops in — another nod to 'Mulholland Drive.' Admittedly, 'Mulholland Drive' is canon to me, a very particular film released as a very particular moment in this critic's life. I am thus programmed to adore 'Blue Soup,' but you needn't know any of Barton's tongue-and-cheek references to see how the piece points at the rot underneath the shimmer of Hollywood and the fallibility of a dream. Then there's all this incredible dancing — highlights too numerous to list, though Choate in that blonde wig is certainly one. Another: Andrew Murdock in a phenomenal solo dancing between four downstage circles of light, a kind of washed-up showman torn between what's real and what's imagined. And another: Jacqueline Burnett, back on stage after a long absence as though no time has passed, in the piece's most authentic moments, joined briefly by Elliott Hammans, who somehow supports her from the exact opposite corner of the stage. Despite a big, rousing group dance set to Paul Simon's 'Pigs, Sheep & Wolves,' complete with unhinged, stomping diversions and a fair amount of well-timed hip thrusts, the piece ends rather unsatisfyingly before the company bows. But fear not, you will leave the theater satisfied. You see, unlike 'Mulholland Drive,' 'Blue Soup' is more shimmer than rot, appearing hopeful by comparison — maybe big, rousing group dances just do that. So does text by Maya Angelou ('Sounds Like Pearls' to be exact). Where Lynch gave Barton permission to be weird, Angelou lent Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Spring Series (4 stars) When: Through Sunday Where: Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph St. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes with one intermission Tickets: $46-$121 at 312-334-7777 and
Chicago Tribune
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Steppenwolf Theatre play ‘Purpose' wins the Pulitzer Prize for drama
'Purpose,' a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that was commissioned by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, has won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for drama, the Pulitzer board announced Monday. The fictional work debuted in Chicago in 2024 and moved earlier this year from Steppenwolf to Broadway, where it currently plays with most of its original Chicago cast. Directed in New York and Chicago by Phylicia Rashad, it's loosely based on the family of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. This marks the first time a play first seen at Steppenwolf has won the prestigious prize since Tracy Letts' 'August: Osage County' in 2008. In a joint statement to the Tribune, Steppenwolf artistic directors Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis said that the 'Purpose' win 'underscores our company's time-honored commitment to developing ensemble-driven, new works.' The play was also nominated for a Tony Award last week, along with several members of its cast. The 2025 winners of the Pulitzer Prizes, presented annually by Columbia University, include nine winners across eight arts categories for books, drama and music. Awards for journalism were also announced Monday. 'James,' by the novelist Percival Everett, won for fiction. The book, which previously won the Kirkus Prize and a National Book Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, used Mark Twain's 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' as its starting point, reworking the story from the perspective of Jim, now James, Twain's escaped slave. It was a risky kind of bestseller from a longtime author and professor of English at the University of Southern California, whose previous breakthrough 2001 novel 'Erasure' was later adapted as the Oscar-nominated movie 'American Fiction.' Critics felt Everett more than lived up to his source, both honoring Twain and deepening the 1885 original. Everett told the Tribune last year, 'I think people assume because I am revisiting Twain, I am correcting. I love Twain's novel. It doesn't arise from dissatisfaction. if anything, I am flattering myself thinking I am in conversation with Twain.' Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. Tribune writer Christopher Borrelli contributed to this report. 2025 Pulitzer Prize winners in the arts FICTION: 'James' by Percival Everett (Doubleday) DRAMA: 'Purpose' by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins HISTORY: 'Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War' by Edda L. Fields-Black (Oxford University Press) 'Native Nations: A Millennium in North America' by Kathleen DuVal (Random House) BIOGRAPHY: 'John Lewis: A Life' by David Greenberg (Simon & Schuster) MEMOIR: 'Feeding Ghosts: A Graphic Memoir, by Tessa Hulls (MCD) POETRY: 'New and Selected Poems' by Marie Howe (W.W. Norton & Company) GENERAL NONFICTION: 'To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement' by Benjamin Nathans (Princeton University Press)
Chicago Tribune
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
2025 Tony Award nominations: Steppenwolf's ‘Purpose' and ‘Death Becomes Her' both score big
Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company woke up Thursday morning to boffo Tony Award news as plaudits landed on its world premiere production of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins' drama, 'Purpose,' a bold play very loosely based on the family of political activist Jesse Jackson Jr. and now playing on Broadway. 'Purpose' scored a Tony nomination in the category of best play. Nominations for ensemble members from 'Purpose' include Jon Michael Hill in the best actor in a play category and Steppenwolf artistic director Glenn Davis for best featured actor in a play. Other nominees from the Broadway production, by lead producer David Stone, include LaTanya Richardson Jackson for best actress in a play, Harry Lennix for best actor in a play and Kara Young for best featured actress in a play. The longtime Chicago director David Cromer was nominated for his work on the musical 'Dead Outlaw.' Chicago lighting designer Heather Gilbert, a frequent Cromer collaborator, was nominated (with David Bengali) for her work on Cromer's production of 'Good Night, and Good Luck,' and former Steppenwolf artistic director Anna D. Shapiro's Broadway production of 'Eureka Day' was nominated in the category of best revival of a play. Screen actor George Clooney was nominated for leading actor for 'Good Night, and Good Luck.' 'Death Becomes Her,' a musical that tried out in Chicago, scored a formidable 10 nominations, including an all-important nod for best musical, as well as nominations for both of its stars, Jennifer Simard and Megan Hilty. 'Boop! the Musical,' which also began in Chicago, missed out on the best musical category but saw Tony nominations for star Jasmine Amy Rogers, choreographer Jerry Mitchell and costume designer Gregg Barnes. And yet another Chicago tryout, 'A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical,' earned a Tony nomination for its star, James Monroe Iglehart. Three Broadway shows stood out in the list of nominations — 'Buena Vista Social Club,' 'Death Becomes Her' and 'Maybe Happy Ending,' each earning 10 nominations Thursday. Some 29 shows were recognized across 26 categories. The 2025 Tony Awards will be presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League in a ceremony at 7 p.m. June 8 at Radio City Music Hall in New York, hosted by 'Wicked' star Cynthia Erivo and broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. Nominations in the top categories for the 78th annual Tony Awards. BEST MUSICAL 'Buena Vista Social Club' 'Dead Outlaw' 'Death Becomes Her' 'Maybe Happy Ending' 'Operation Mincemeat' BEST PLAY 'English' 'The Hills of California' 'John Proctor Is the Villain' 'Oh, Mary!' 'Purpose' BEST LEADING ACTRESS IN A PLAY Laura Donnelly, 'The Hills of California' Mia Farrow, 'The Roommate' LaTanya Richardson Jackson, 'Purpose' Sadie Sink, 'John Proctor Is the Villain' Sarah Snook, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' BEST LEADING ACTOR IN A PLAY George Clooney, 'Good Night, and Good Luck' Cole Escola, 'Oh, Mary!' Jon Michael Hill, 'Purpose' Daniel Dae Kim, 'Yellow Face' Harry Lennix, 'Purpose' Louis McCartney, 'Stranger Things: The First Shadow' BEST LEADING ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL Jasmine Amy Rogers, 'Boop! The Musical' Megan Hilty, 'Death Becomes Her' Audra McDonald, 'Gypsy' Nicole Scherzinger, 'Sunset Boulevard' Jennifer Simard, 'Death Becomes Her' BEST LEADING ACTOR IN A MUSICAL Darren Criss, 'Maybe Happy Ending' Andrew Durand, 'Dead Outlaw' Tom Francis, 'Sunset Boulevard' Jonathan Groff, 'Just in Time' Jeremy Jordan, 'Floyd Collins' James Monroe Iglehart, 'A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical' BEST DIRECTION OF A MUSICAL Saheem Ali, 'Buena Vista Social Club' Michael Arden, 'Maybe Happy Ending' David Cromer, 'Dead Outlaw' Christopher Gattelli, 'Death Becomes Her' Jamie Lloyd, 'Sunset Boulevard' BEST DIRECTION OF A PLAY Knud Adams, 'English' Sam Mendes, 'The Hills of California' Sam Pinkleton, 'Oh, Mary!' Danya Taymor, 'John Proctor Is the Villain' Kip Williams, 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' BEST FEATURED ACTRESS IN A PLAY Tala Ashe, 'English' Jessica Hecht, 'Eureka Day' Marjan Neshat, 'English' Fina Strazza, 'John Proctor Is the Villain' Kara Young, 'Purpose' BEST FEATURED ACTOR IN A PLAY Glenn Davis, 'Purpose' Gabriel Ebert, 'John Proctor Is the Villain' Francis Jue, 'Yellow Face' Bob Odenkirk, 'Glengarry Glen Ross' Conrad Ricamora, 'Oh, Mary!' BEST FEATURED ACTRESS IN A MUSICAL Natalie Venetia Belcon, 'Buena Vista Social Club' Julia Knitel, 'Dead Outlaw' Gracie Lawrence, 'Just in Time' Justina Machado, 'Real Women Have Curves' Joy Woods, 'Gypsy' BEST FEATURED ACTOR IN A MUSICAL Brooks Ashmanskas, 'Smash' Jeb Brown, 'Dead Outlaw' Danny Burstein, 'Gypsy' Jak Malone, 'Operation Mincemeat' Taylor Trensch, 'Floyd Collins' BEST PLAY REVIVAL 'Eureka Day' 'Our Town' 'Romeo + Juliet' 'Yellow Face' BEST MUSICAL REVIVAL 'Floyd Collins' 'Gypsy' 'Pirates! The Penzance Musical' 'Sunset Boulevard' BEST BOOK OF A MUSICAL 'Buena Vista Social Club' 'Dead Outlaw' 'Death Becomes Her' 'Maybe Happy Ending' 'Operation Mincemeat' Originally Published: May 1, 2025 at 9:48 AM CDT
Metro
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Pamela Des Barres reveals how Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page rank as lovers
If the wisdom of retrospect makes books like Patti Smith's Just Kids a moving portrait of an era, then it's the naivety of the present moment that makes Pamela Des Barres's I'm With the Band equally profound. Based on the diaries she kept throughout the 60s and 70s while in the inner circles (and beds) of rockers like Mick Jagger, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, and Jimmy Page, Pamela's 1987 memoir about the rock scene cemented her as the most well-known groupie in the world. She followed the success of her first memoir with more best-selling books, and its even widely believed that Cameron Crowe drew from her memoirs to create the groupie character Penny Lane in his film Almost Famous. But before all that, Pamela was just another 18-year-old in a mini skirt hanging out on the Sunset Strip trying to meet the stars she idolised. It's this sense of wide-eyed giddiness that makes her – and her writing – so appealing. In fact, as Pamela tells me, she was a groupie before groupie's existed – and she's happy to continue to carry the moniker that made her famous. 'Being a groupie always only meant the love of music and the people who make it,' she insists on a video call from her California flat. 'That's all it's ever meant. I was doing this long before the word – the G-word, I call it – came into being. It was a British journalist who first called us groupies, and I had already been hanging out with The Doors and the Byrds for years.' Now 78 years old and as free-spirited as ever, Pamela talks as easily about her love for rock music as she does about her love for sleeping with the men who made it. 'I'm very brutally honest in it,' she says of her speaking events, which blend stories from her book with off-the-cuff reminiscences. 'There's a Q and A after and I'll answer anything. The only thing I don't ever say is who was the best in bed, or who is the biggest. ..people want to know that. Everyone. Well, usually it's a man who asks,' she says, laughing. Beyond that one hard line, she's happy to discuss the nitty gritty details of her famous lovers, claiming that she remembers them all with equal warmth. 'Nick St. Nicholas [Steppenwolf bassist]was my first, and him I was in love with, but all of them, through Jimmy [Page] and Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Moon] all these people. They were the best in bed, because I was with them at that time. I was there for it in the moment. I was immersed right? I'm immersed in whatever I do.' Her other most asked question, she says, is, 'What was Jim Morrison really like?' She laughs when she reads on my face how badly I want to know the answer. 'He was a poet. I knew him early on,' she says, indulging me. 'Actually, I knew him the whole time, yeah, but he changed. You know, he was this exquisite Adonis poet to begin with. And rock and roll ate him up. He was a he was very – not fragile – but sensitive. He carried his poetry book around and he thought being a rock star was funny. It's not what he intended ever.' A natural storyteller, audience members can expect Pamela to go even deeper into questions like these, as well as stories of doing Mescalin and making love to Jimmy Page after seeing Elvis in Vegas, her raunchy fling with Mick Jagger, her close friendship with Gram Parsons, and all of the debauchery she got into with Keith Moon. After a sold-out show during her last visit to London, Pamela is returning on May 2 to the West Hampstead Arts Club to meet fan demand. People keep buying tickets to her shows, as she puts it, 'because of the mythology around these people, whether they're alive or dead. I bring them back to life in a way.' Chris Hillman – original bassist of the Byrds Dated in the 60s, Pamela calls him 'her first real love' Mick Jagger – lead singer of the Rolling Stones Pamela says sex with him 'wasn't a disappointment' Jim Morrison – lead singer of The Doors Pamela says they 'hung out a little bit' Gram Parsons – singer songwriter, member of the Byrds Pamela says they dated a bit Jimi Hendrix Pamela turned him down for sex when she was 16, remembers it as one of her biggest regrets Noel Redding – Jimi Hendrix's bass player Pamela says: 'He made me realise that sex was going to be a lot of fun in my life and I was going to have a good time with it.' Frank Zappa – solo artist and member of Mothers of Invention A mentor to Pamela, Zappa was responsible for creating the GTOS Jimmy Page – Guitarist and leader of Led Zeppelin Pamela says: 'My other true love that I thought I was really, really in love with.' Keith Moon – The drummer for The Who One of Pamela's long term lovers, she remembers him as brilliant but troubled Robert Plant – Lead singer of Led Zeppelin Still one of Pamela's close friends Don Johnson – Miami Vice actor One of Pamela's long-term boyfriends Buy a ticket to An Intimate Evening With Pamela Des Barres on May 2 at West Hampstead Arts Club here. But Pamela – who was also a member of the GTOs, one of the world's first girl rock groups – isn't just a groupie. She (rightfully) positions herself as just as much a part of rock history as any of the men she dated. 'It wasn't just sex,' she explains, 'at that age, there's a lot of sex involved, but it was a whole scene, you know, and I felt that I was equal to these people.' She gives a lot of credit for that feeling to the legendary Frank Zappa, who first formed the GTOs and 'who put us girls as equals to him. You know, he never, I mean… we saw him as our mentor and everything. But he treated us as equals. So that helped me realize I'm as important as anyone else.' Still, it's not lost on her that her free-love take on sex is received very differently because she is a woman, in a way it wasn't for her male counterparts – I'm With The Band was originally met with quite a lot of pearl-clutching from the wider public. But people misunderstood what she was looking for in the first place. 'I was chasing my highest self, like we all are. Everybody wants to touch the divine,' she claims. 'And of course, you know, sex – in this world – is the closest we're going to get. La petite mort. You know that French statement? An orgasm is total bliss, right? So we're all searching for that.' Did she ever find what she was looking for? Yes and no. Reflecting on her famous fling with Jimmy Page, she says: 'I thought we were in love and that he was going to take me to England and all that, because he said so. And I tended to believe my Prince Charmings back then. But, you know, we were off and on for a couple of years, and we had a great time. Same with Keith Moon, same with all my early rock stars, I didn't live with them, sure. 'You know, I'm not Anita Pallenberg, though I could have been. But I mean I'm glad I wasn't, because I'm still here. I met Michael [Des Barres] when I was 25 and we were together 14 years. So I guess I did find love. You can say I found what I was looking for.' While Pamela remains relentlessly positive about the rock scene – a time when many women later spoke out about being victimized and exploited ('I was never mistreated or hurt in any way') – even she is willing to acknowledge the shadows that began to creep in as the 70s unfolded. 'Believe me, I was ready to meet Michael and settle down when the young groupies came along, the real young girls, because there was no way to compete with that,' she says, referring to the infamous 'baby groupies'of the 70s and 80s, underage girls who became a fixture of the rock scene. 'That was the thing on the scene at the time, these girls in these giant platforms were presenting themselves, and they didn't know any better. They were kids really. So they didn't know what they were getting into. But I didn't like it, it didn't feel right to me,' she explains. As quick as Pamela is to agree that some young vulnerable groupies were mistreated throughout this time, she also can't repress her unfaltering loyalty to the religion of rock and roll for long. 'They were so bored. People think it's an exciting, thrilling ride, and sometimes it is. Other times it's very lonely and hard,' she says of touring rock stars. 'So, so they're looking for outside pleasures, you know? And, yeah, that's just the way it was. 'It was a time of freedom and free love. And, you know, there was good and bad in that. There was, you know, just like everything. But for me, the good of that era outweighed the bad in a huge way. I was never harmed, right? I mean, my heart was broken, but that happens in any walk of life.' Reminiscing on how drugs began to change the scene, Pam says that while she 'took a lot of drugs over the years,' she was 'never addictive.' Others, like Graham Parson ('my beloved Graham') weren't so lucky. But Pam is quick to change the subject, 'It was tragic, that side of things. But I don't focus on that in my shows, because everyone knows about that, right? It was a magnificent time, certainly for women. I carried my birth control pill around with me and just took it in front of people proudly, you know. That was revolutionary.' When you listen to it told from Pamela's perspective, being a rock groupie was nothing short of a divine calling, even a feminist accomplishment. But her positivity doesn't feel like ignorance, it feels like hard-won belief in the goodness of people and the magic of music, and one can't help but want to take a peek through her rose-coloured glasses. While most recountings of the early days of rock and roll take for granted that audiences are after acknowledgement of – and even repentance for – the gritty, seedy realities behind the guitar riffs, Pamela is stubbornly insistent on painting a picture of the era's most defining characteristic: Hope. And she refuses to be anything but proud of believing in that hope enough to spend her youth hanging around dressing rooms and tour buses. More Trending She describes the mid 1960s on the Sunset Strip so vividly you can almost see the amber light shining on the Whiskey-a-go-go: 'The rockers all lived in these incredible fairy tale homes in the canyon. All the doors and windows were left open. People would go on the road and leave their homes unlocked. It was just a different time,' she says wistfully. She continues:'Yeah, even though, you know, the drugs came along and kind of f***ed a lot of stuff up, there was so much innocence in that time, incredible hope and belief in oneself, which is really dissipated right now. People are feeling lower right now. Like, lower than humanity has felt in a very long time, right? But at that time, there was, 'Wow, we could do anything.'' Buy a ticket to An Intimate Evening With Pamela Des Barres on May 2 at West Hampstead Arts Club here. Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Insane true story behind catchy EasyJet advert song you can't avoid hearing this year MORE: Shoppers go wild as retro favourite sweet from 80s returns to supermarkets MORE: The 5 best James Bond films ever made – including a record-breaking classic
