PAMELA DES BARRES – I’m with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie (Omnibus Remastered)

RELEASE YEAR: 2025
BAND URL: https://omnibuspress.com/products/im-with-the-band-confessions-of-a-groupie

Another legendary and timeless piece of work that was recently added to the Omnibus Remastered series and published is the infamous I’m with the Band by Pamela Des Barres, which has often been characterized as a groupie’s memoir but which in fact is so much more than that. It is a story about teenage lust and coming of age, of embarking on a journey of spiritual growth, of finding one’s true identity, and of discovering beauty in an unpredictable world. Perhaps most of all it is about being positively inspired and in turn inspiring others along the way.   

Though the term “groupie” undoubtedly sounds less than flattering to some ears due to it having transformed and mutated quite a bit since its inception, it was anything but a derogatory word back in the swinging sixties and hard-rocking seventies. Des Barres’ account of what it was like to become infatuated with music on a profound and deeply moving level in the heydays of late fifties and early sixties rock ‘n’ roll to such an extent that she devoted her life and lifestyle to it almost defies description, yet it will strike a chord with many a reader who has ever experienced pure, unadulterated passion. One can only marvel at how driven and inspired the songs of The Beatles and the Rolling Stones made her, and those are just a couple of examples. That fire burning within her soul made her want to become one with the compositions, their content, and by extension the ones who penned and/or performed them to rapturous audiences. She eventually got there, thus obtaining her goal of coming closer to unraveling the mystery and understanding the magic of those tunes and their authors. That need to penetrate the layers and barriers surrounding the arts loomed large and shaped her perspectives on the world, and the vividly told narrative that stretches across these 352 pages embodies an atmosphere that moves back and forth between the surreal and dreamlike at one end of the spectrum and the stark, gritty reality of having loved and lost along the way at the other. A pronounced rawness informs the overall account, and every single paragraph exudes an unfiltered honesty due to the author’s unique and consistently evocative prose.

From her childhood years in Reseda, California where she was raised by loving and understanding parents to the intimate moments she shared with the likes of Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Robert Plant, Don Johnson, and Jim Morrison as a young woman and further on to her marrying and becoming a mother (and eventually also a writer), there is much to discover and enjoy throughout. Her work with the GTOs, which ties in with Frank Zappa, is fortunately also covered and discussed in great detail and serves as a highlight of the book.   

Des Barres’ creative outlets have been many and diverse over the years, but what unites them is the same thing that has propelled her forward in life, namely desire. Memoirs are rarely as candid as I’m with the Band Is. If you have never read it before, now is the time.