The wedding bells rang for Michael and me four and a half years later. The happy event would have taken place sooner, but it took Michael that long to get a trans-Atlantic divorce. We had a lovely ceremony in Catherine James’s backyard in Laurel Canyon. (She and I made chummy long before this blessed occasion.) Michael showed up at the wedding ten minutes before the appointed hour, wearing a crumpled white tux, bombed out of his mind. He said he had spent the night reminiscing with his bass player. Oh, yeah. A tall, skinny guy who had gotten his minister’s diploma in the mail married us, and eleven months later our son, Nicky Dean Des Barres (after James Dean, of course), was born after a mere four and a half hours of hard labor. All the yoga I did finally came in handy. I started dribbling baby water at Moon Zappa’s birthday party while she was opening her gifts, and Gail had to drive me to Hollywood Presbyterian in her Rolls-Royce. All the way there she chanted, “You’re going to have a baby today.” She was pregnant with her fourth. After Moon and Dweezil came Ahmet Rodan, and finally, sweet little Diva.
Most of the first year of my relationship with my would-be husband was spent without him. He had been in L.A. less than a month, and we were still getting used to each other, when I landed a part in a soap opera that shot in New York. I was thrilled to be working, but crazed about leaving Michael behind. All the money I made on the show was spent on airplane tickets. It was a really dumb role—a Polish premed student named Amy Kaslo who was in love with her best friend’s fiance”. They kept changing my hairdo and my character until I was just reporting plot lines and consoling everybody. John Heard played my bespectacled boyfriend, Michael Nouri played my brother, and Morgan Fairchild was a bad-girl neighbor who kept winding up behind bars. All I cared about was my darling Michael, who was getting a new group together and crashing on his manager’s couch in the Hollywood Hills. The aforementioned manager was also a big bad coke dealer, so I chewed my fingernails worrying about the white powder eating away at Michael’s membranes. I became obsessed with his addiction, always listening for the telltale sniffle. I wanted to believe him so much when he said he had a bad cold. He always had a bad cold. I couldn’t concentrate on my lines, and I worried all the time. My prince was a fucking drug addict. This unsavory fact became the bane of my life. I hadn’t taken any drugs for two ages and I swore off chemicals for eternity so that I could be a shining example to my loony lover. I wouldn’t even go near an aspirin.
Woody Allen and I had become pen pals, so when I came back to New York we got together. He had his limo driver park two blocks away and he huddled, crouched, and covered up for the little walk to and from my pad. I had learned a lot of stuff from Woody, and I wanted to tell him in person I was engaged to Michael. He wasn’t amused. We had dinner and I never saw him again, except in the movies.
Search for Tomorrow and I didn’t agree, so after six months I was cut loose and slammed back into Michael’s life. I was just in time too, because he was getting used to taking the old solo flight. Dangerous. I got another car and an apartment with soap money, and we started our life together in Hollywood with no holds Des Barred. There was nothing in the way, except for drugs and booze. He formed a new band, Detective, and signed with Jimmy Page’s label, Swan-song. We saw a lot of Zeppelin, and they were not aging gracefully, except for Robert, who still had his shoulders thrown back. Jimmy wore a Third Reich costume, made the Heil Hitler! gesture, and had to be propped up by two flunkies at all times. I saw him take twenty minutes to crawl across the room to get to a black bag full of pills. He kept toppling over, and everyone else in the room pretended not to notice. Or maybe they really didn’t notice. Maybe he was doing it for effect, who knows? I saw Robert not too long ago, and he’s clean and sober and gorgeous. Bonzo died a drunken horrible death and Jimmy and Charlotte broke up. I hear their daughter, Scarlet, wants to join a convent. I don’t know what John Paul Jones is up to. I know all his redheaded daughters are teenagers now.
Detective put a couple of albums out and went on lots of tours. I kept trying to get acting jobs, finally getting a part in Paradise Alley, a Sylvester Stallone bomb. I played a hooker and I had a big scene with Armand Assante, which got cut out. It killed me. I also played a hooker in a Jack Lemmon movie. It also got cut out. I died another death, but I took the Nestea plunge and made a lot of dough. I also did lots of plays in cruddy little theaters. Even after Nicky was born, I dragged him to rehearsals and he gurgled through all my big scenes. When I decided to quit acting a couple of years ago, I thought I would feel like an arm or a leg had been hacked off. Instead, all I felt was a glorious relief. I dumped all my pictures and résumés into the garbage and waited for the tears to flow. I couldn’t even push them out. Still, whenever I pick up Hollywood Reporter I find myself looking at “What’s Casting.” I still pay my SAG dues—I guess The Dream never dies.
I lost a lot of friends the way I lost Gram and Miss Christine. The last time I saw my beauteous Beverly, she was tumbling down the stairs at the Rainbow, her golden hair flying. Even though she landed with a precious thud, she was feeling no pain. She looked up at me from her cockeyed position on the stairs and whispered, “I love you.” She gave herself a fatal injection a couple of weeks later in her gray frog palace on Honey Lane. It wrenched my heart, but I wasn’t surprised. Speaking of heroin, my Granny Takes a Trip boyfriend, Marty, was found dead of an overdose in his dad’s bathroom in Brooklyn not too long ago. I heard rumors the last time I was in London that he had started getting high with his idol, Keith Richards, and nobody could have kept up with him. Lowell George, the marijuana smoking Mother, wore his big body out and had a drug-induced heart attack. Keith Moon might as well have stuck a lance through his own heart. He didn’t think he deserved to be alive, so he died in the same shitty way that Jimi Hendrix, John “Bonzo” Bonham, and Mama Cass did. He mixed too many drugs and booze, passed out, and choked on his own vomit.
For years I worried that my darling Michael would wind up one of these pathetic statistics. He used to say that all great artists got high and died—F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Barrymore, Monty Clift, even James Dean had a self-destructive bent. He said ALL great rock and roll artists got high and I couldn’t think of a single example to toss in his face—except Frank Zappa. When the King kicked the bucket, he said, “See what I mean?” I told him all these people were miserable and pointed out that Woody Allen was a genius and he didn’t get high. You should have seen the look I got. I tried to make up for the abuse his body was forced to take by loading him up with vitamins and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables. I told him he had a son now and should become a shining example. When I almost ruined my health by worrying about his health, I kind of closed off and gave up on the idea of cleaning him up. There was nothing I could do. Sometimes he stayed out for three days, and then I didn’t speak to him for another three. One morning after I hadn’t seen him for a few days I woke up and saw him looking out the window. He looked wasted and resigned. That night, he went to an AA meeting with a friend he used to get high as a kite with, and, miracle of miracles, he hasn’t had a drink or any kind of drug since. He goes to drug rehabilitation joints and talks to the kids, and has even formed an organization called RAD (Rock Against Drugs). He has actually become the shining example I dreamed about. He’s the best daddy in the world and the funniest guy alive; we still laugh our asses off about the lunacy of life.
Whatever happened to the GTO’s? Mercy married the young mulatto guitar player Sugie Otis, the son of Johnny Otis, who is now a frenzied downtown preacher. Johnny had a hit with “Willie and the Hand Jive” when Sugie was a toddler. Mercy and Sugie had a son, Lucky. (She called him Jinx at birth, but decided Lucky was a luckier name. I couldn’t have agreed more.) She had a stint as a punkabilly haircutter, calling herself “Ravee Rave-on,” but people complained that they couldn’t sit under the scissors for eight hours at a time. She and Sugie broke up, and she went through a rough drug-crazed phase. Somehow she and her son survived; in fact, Lucky gets straight A’s. She managed a couple of breakdancers for a while, and you could see her on the Santa Monica Pier, her magenta hair shining in the sunlight, passing the big plastic bucket around while Turbo and Puppet gyrated for the astonished onlookers. She and Lucky are living in Lake County now, where she is trying to start a blues society to enlighten the locals. If you ask her where she lives, she’ll say, “In a silver aluminum trailer right next to the lake where Johnny Burnett drowned.”
The last time I saw Sandra, she was having lunch at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax with her carpenter husband and three children. After much hugging, she told me they had been saving their money and were finally going to Italy.
I haven’t seen Cynderella for years. When she and her husband, John Cale, broke up, I heard a rumor that she sold his piano and he was irate. I spoke to her mother on the phone when I was trying to find her, and she told me her darling daughter Cindy was living in Las Vegas, looking for a job in “communications.” Hmmm. I saw her once, many years ago, hanging on to a rotund old guy in Westwood. We pretended we didn’t see each other. Herb Cohen tells me she came into his office a few months ago wearing bib overalls, looking like a clean-cut farmer’s daughter. She was always full of surprises.
Sparky married an actor from Hair and they had a son, Santo, who goes to the same junior high that we used to go to. Can you believe it? The marriage didn’t last too long, and after years of waitressing she decided to become a cartoonist and was an overnight success.
I heard a rumor a few months back that Miss Lucy had gone the way of Miss Christine, and I called her number immediately, expecting the worst. I heaved the old sigh of relief when she answered the phone. When I told her the nasty rumor that she had OD’d, she said, “Good evening, honey!” She has two sons and lives in Reno with her third husband, who is exactly half her age.
I wish I knew what happened to all my boyfriends. As far as I know, all the Rainbow Rockers are still alive. Dino went into the service, but I think the other guys play Top 40 bars in low-rent neighborhoods. I caught a glimpse of Bobby Martine in Saturday Night Fever. His hair was back in a pompadour, and he looked reeeeeeal coooooool. Victor Haydon dropped out of the world (or into it) and lives among the redwoods with no electricity. The last time I heard from him, I was doing the soap in New York. I got a beautiful letter from him telling me to join the Vedanta Society. I wrote and told him I was into Krishnamurti. His cousin, Captain Beefheart, continues to thrill me. He lives in the desert in his trailer and had an art show in New York. I read about it in Newsweek. I’m waiting for him to become a famous painter because I have a painting he did in 1962 called “Rocketship to the Moon.” Vito is still up North in Cotati, giving dance lessons to unsuspecting pupils who want to free their bodies and souls. He’s got to be seventy-five by now. He and Szou have broken up, and she is working for a lawyer. Unbelievable. I’m sure she’s reverted to plain old “Sue.” Karl Fran-zoni is still Captain Fuck, and Rickaewy Applebaum has a group called the Tattooed Vegetables. My old flame Chris Hillman has been married for seven years to a girl named Connie who wanted him almost as long as I did. I really give her credit for hanging in there. They have a cute little redheaded daughter, and live on the beach. He’s recording a country album for MCA. We’ve stayed friends for all these years, and I’m proud to be his pal. Nick St. Nicholas lives somewhere in the Midwest and owns his own record shop. I’m sure he’s the hippest resident of Somewhere, U.S.A. He’s had a couple of wives since Randy Jo, and has a couple of sons to carry on the grand St. Nicholas name. I heard Noel Redding is straight as a die and residing in Scotland, living a farmy life. (I’m glad he has one to live!) I also heard he’s writing a book. I’d like to read it. Howard Kaylan is married yet again, and he and his partner, Mark Volman, are the highest paid session singers on the planet. They sang on Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” and Howard took me to see Bruce in concert, where I got to stand onstage and receive little pellets of sweat from The Boss. I became senseless. Oooooh, I still have my idols. Howie and I are still friends and share tacos once in a while. Tony Sales has two exquisite children with Taryn Power, and Lane Caudell gave up show biz after playing a caveman in a TV movie and a brief stint on Days of Out Lives. He’s probably back home, driving the resident females of Ashborough to distraction.
We all know what happened to Don Johnson. After years of pilots, miniseries, and low-budget cult films, he’s become mega-mega-mega man. I called him every six months or so through the years, because he was The Man I Loved Most until I met Michael. When I heard he became a father, I was mightily intrigued about the mother. His ex-wife, Melanie, who had married again and finally gotten into her twenties, threw a big bash, and Donnie brought the mother of his child, Patti D’Arbanville. I made every effort to look stunning, to show my ex-love I hadn’t let myself get flubbery or wrinkled. The sight of his handsome grinning face turned me into a jellyfish. He had been sober for three weeks, so he and Michael hit it off in a big way. Kind of a soul-brother thing. After Patti realized I was very married and not out to snatch DJ, she and I hit it off in a big way. Kind of a soul-sister thing. To cut down this absurdly long story, we all became best friends and lived happily ever after.
Melanie and I have come a long way. I can’t believe she’s almost thirty. I never thought I would see the fucking day. She has a little boy, Alexander, and I was at the hospital with her the night he was born. I also cut his first birthday cake, which was shaped like a fire engine. When she and Donnie broke up, as the old fates would have it, I was the one who drove her to her new apartment off Hollywood Boulevard. Any minute now she’ll be winning that Oscar I always wanted so bad.
Moon and Dweezil Zappa are tall people now, and I love them so much. Gail continues to offer assistance whenever Nicky gets some weird rash or talks back to me in a particularly hideous fashion. Mr. Zappa is still Mr. Enigmatic, and I still find it difficult to call him Frank.
My big gorgeous daddy died three years ago, leaving a big empty space, but I can still hear him laughing when I fall asleep at night, and guess what? My mom still loves me, and I know she always will. There is nothing more powerful than a mother’s love. Now that I’m a mom, I know this for sure. Nicky bumped his head on the third day of school, and a knot the size of a baseball sprang up out of nowhere on his precious little skull. I had to smile reassuringly and pretend I wasn’t about to faint dead away, while Michael administered unto him.
All those high ideals I had as a flower child, the Bob Dylan lyrics imprinted on my soul, the freefreefree feeling of spinning in the sunlight at the Human-Be-In, the united oneness sitting cross-legged on the Sunset Strip, the spiritual torture I put myself through in Kentucky, have made me what I am today: one happy chick. Every morning I wake up and say “Yay!”
Two summers ago, Michael was visiting with Donnie on the set of Long Hot Summer when he got a call from John Taylor asking him to join the Power Station. Robert Palmer didn’t want to tour, and Michael took his place, fulfilling every private-plane fantasy. He did Live Aid and winked intimately into the camera at two billion people. We became chummy with John and Andy Taylor, and there I was, in the middle of the rock and roll whirlwind once again. Andy Taylor has now become “Malibu” Taylor, and one of our best friends. We call him “the rat.”
Something truly glorious happened not too long ago. Michael’s producer, Bob Rose, called from the recording studio and said, “I’m here with George Harrison, would you guys like to come over and say hello?” I’d be quite prepared for that eventuality, thank you very much. Now, many things had happened to me since that day I turned into a damp spot on the A & M blacktop; I was in my thirties, I had gone through labor pains, I had been married for many years, and I had matured into a fairly sensible woman. I would probably be able to handle a handshake with history. Correct? Yeah, sure. That face! Those ears! That voice! I had to sit down and take several deep breaths while Michael had a musical chat with the man who had called his hairstyle “Arthur.” He was so sweet and regular, however, that I soon regained my composure, and when he said, “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” I was able to say yes. Bob Rose told me later that George had admired my legs, and I felt like it had all been worth it.
Our little boy, Nicky, is living a very different kind of life than I did. The phone rings and he calls out, “Daddy, it’s Ozzy Osbourne!” In 1956, if the phone rang and Jerry Lee Lewis said, “Hi, Pam, can I speak to O.C.,” I would have fainted dead away.
Michael and I have one of the longest running relationships in rock and roll. We’re still in love. He still leaves me little mush notes when he goes on the road, and seems very happy to get back home again. I accept the fact that girls want to pull his pants off. I have seen this happen more than once onstage. When I’m around, at least, it doesn’t happen offstage. (I don’t think about what might go on while he’s in Milwaukee.) He accepts that I would like to lift a few weights with Bruce Springsteen and dance the night away with Prince. I guess I was just born that way.
I’m dying for some action.
I’m sick of sitting around here, tryin’ to write this book.
I need a love reaction.
Come on, baby, give me just one look.