New York Times bestseller,
I'm With The Band hit bookshelves in 1987. It has been translated and reprinted all over the world. This memoir is a remarkably stylish, exuberant, and sweetly innocent tale of the most famous groupie of the 60s and 70s. You might want to dismiss this book as a salacious, sensationalized tell-all, but that would be because you haven't read it. It's widely understood that Miss Pamela was the inspiration for Penny Lane, the groupie character in Cameron Crowe's
Almost Famous movie. It's also been reported that Kate Hudson, who acted the role, kept Des Barres's pictures pinned all over her dressing room during the shoot.
Growing up, Des Barres idolized the Beatles and daydreamed about meeting and dating Paul McCartney, her favorite Beatle. In her own way, the wispy young girl turned Beatles fandom into a new type of devotion: that of a groupie. As soon as Pamela Des Barres graduated from high school in 1966, she left the San Fernando Valley, headed for the Sunset Strip. Over the next ten years, she befriended rock idols and plunged into the drugs, danger, and rapture of the free-spirited 60s.
She hit the road with Led Zeppelin; cohabited with Don Johnson; rejected a date with Elvis Presley; and befriended Robert Plant, Gram Parsons, and Ray Davies. Her list of affairs included Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Waylon Jennings, Chris Hillman, Noel Redding, Jim Morrison, and more. She was often a trusted advisor and pal, helping design stage-ware, standing by them through drugs and alcohol use and abuse, retaining friendships beyond break-ups and later relationships. She was in the thick of the most revolutionary renaissance in the history of modern popular music.
Warm, witty, and sexy, this kiss-and-tell–all stands out as the perfect love story of a girl's love affair with the music and the men who created it during one of rock 'n' roll's most thrilling eras.