Well, almost a year has passed since I wrote the epilogue, and just like in anybody’s life, a big long list of things has happened. My darling husband, Michael, and I are in the middle of one of those bourgeois things called a trial separation. He hates that term because he’s an aristocrat, and it sounds like someone who lives in Reseda thought it up.
They probably did, but it kind of tells what’s going on. Michael’s living in Hollywood, and I’m still in Santa Monica. We’re trying to see if it’s what we want. After fourteen years together there’s a lot of love under the bridge, and whatever occurs, I will adore him with my whole heart for eternity. I’m with the Band had nothing to do with it. He was really proud of me for getting the freaking thing written, and was an incredible support through the whole experience. He still is.
And a trés interesting one it has been. To be on the other side of the adoration—the receiving end, as it were—has been a double eye-opener. When I was out on the road, taking the book from TV show to radio show to bookstore, I had my own groupies. They had GTO albums for me to sign, and they wanted photos taken with me. The look on their faces mirrored my own; how many times had I gazed at someone like that? I appreciated it all the more. I appreciated it wildly. I can’t begin to tell you. I get fan mail from girls and boys thanking me for sharing my mad life with them, and even though it was all very worthwhile, it becomes even more worthwhile, if you know what I mean.
I was helping my mom clean out her garage a few weeks ago, and I came across a big old box of stuff that I was saving JUST IN CASE I ever wrote that book. I sobbed my ass off. Letters—reams of letters from my boyfriends (one from Chris Hillman on the road with The Burritos that said: “I do care for you and love you. We all do, keep singing, you’re beautiful and sweet, truly an angel. Mr. Hillman.” Sighsighsigh); photos galore; telegrams from Jimmy Page; clippings, all yellow, about the riots on Sunset Strip: “The deputies swept through the crowd of bearded, long-haired troublemakers, with nightsticks flying.” You should have been there. I found a letter I wrote to my first boyfriend, Bob Martine, after Beefheart entered my life, hoping to infuse him with hipness: “Here are things people are saying out here now, honey: 1. lame (for “out of it”); 2. What’s happening; 3. Are you hep to . . . ; 4. Let me clue you in on . . .; 5. He’s hung on her. Oh honey, things have changed out here so much, you won’t believe it.”
I even found the entire program for The GTO’s extravaganza at the Shrine Auditorium. Our hopes were so high:
No one in the audience will know that we’re on stage, because we, The GTO’s, will be inside the props that everybody thinks are the Mothers’ props. MZ will introduce us as a surprise, and then the music, a sort of fluty number, will start. The bird girls, Lucy and Sandra, will pop out from the Pre-cut eggs. At the same time, the flowers—Sparky, Cynderella, Christine, and Pamela—will start growing out of huge clay pots, while the tree, who still has its back to the audience, starts swaying stiffly. The birds make high-pitched birdy pips as they move over to the flowers who are doing la-la’s to “The Teddy Bear’s Picnic.” They all make friends and GTO it up. The birds go over to the old tree (Mercy) and on the cue, start pecking at the red rubber balls attached to Mercy’s arm. The tree turns around and does her Uranus thing, and a lot of crepe-paper leaves start falling off her. The music gets fast and the birds and flowers start freaking out. Mercy says “Leave me be, I’m the tree of eternity.” A row of flares must be set up around the edge of the stage like a picket fence sometime earlier in the day.
We didn’t get the flares, the pre-cut eggs, the huge clay pots, or the red rubber balls, but didn’t they sound like a swell bunch of ideas?
I found an old interview that I did with the members of Pink Floyd, just for fun. This little gem was with Rick:
His favorite salad is vinegar and oil.
His favorite dessert is marainge [sic] with strawberries and whipped cream.
His favorite drink is sparkling rosé with a bit of gin. (Yuch!)
His favorite snack is bread and butter and chips.
The food he hates most is snails.
The most memoral [sic] part of teenagehood was the time he was crowned the May Day King.
When we asked him if he liked the girls, he said (positively), “Yes, when they’re clean.”
His favorite year is the one before tomorrow.
When he sees someone with a very bad complexion problem, he thinks, “Oh my God, I’m glad that’s not me.”
His favorite storybook character is Winnie the Pooh.
His most bizarre schoolteacher was a woman named Miss Bull.
The statement that he wants recorded is “There should be more GTOs in the world.”
I miss Miss Christine. I miss Lowell George, Brandon de Wilde, Gram Parsons, Keith Moon, John Bonham, and beautiful Beverly. I really miss all of my long-lost friends, and I’m endlessly grateful for the ones who are still around to coddle, console and comfort me. My mom is still always right there for me, and I am awestruck by her limitless devotion. Now that I’m the mom of a luminous little hunk of stuff, I can begin to imagine what she went through.
A truly cool thing happened yesterday. Robert Plant called me. I had sent him a copy of I’m with the Band, so he could see for himself that it wasn’t a Zeppelin exposé. He’s a pretty private kind of guy. I wrote him a note telling him I kissed his gorgeous ass all the way through it. Did I lie? This is one of the world’s most divine men. He made me very happy by telling me he would never have cause to worry about anything I wrote because I’m a truthful chick. (I’m paraphrasing!) He’s going to be in L.A. with his band this summer. And even though an absurd amount of years have passed, I can hardly fucking wait. I am also back in touch with Noel Redding. He reached me by writing to my publisher, and we’re pen pals again. I saved every one of his letters and now I have more to add to my collection. He lives in Ireland and has a band that plays pubs. He sent a photo, and he looks exactly the same. He sounds really happy, and I’m glad.
I just want to leave you with a note I wrote to Chris Hillman when I was seventeen. I was sitting at Ben Frank’s on the Strip, in one of my “observing humanity” moods. The reason I still have the note is because I never had the guts to send it to him:
I am here, sitting. I have just seen a ridiculous man, asking me where the action is. The action is EVERYWHERE. How can he not know that? How can one answer a question like that? I didn’t. I have realized something: the “other people” who wonder why we exist in the first place and question our sanity, are immature adults. The rest of the people, LIVING their LIVES (like you and me), are mature children. I hate to draw lines, but one is drawn.
You have a tiny goose egg, and you drop it into a bottle. It hatches. You keep it in there, feed it and keep it alive . . . The goose gets too big for the bottle. How do you get the goose out of the bottle, keeping him alive??? If you can answer that question, you won’t have any more. And I don’t have the answer. Maybe we can work it out together. Peace and love, Pamela Miller.