Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies

by Pamela Des Barres

  Along with venting in her diary, live music temporarily freed Amanda from her hazardous predicament. "I was standing at the front of the stage like I was worshipping at an altar. I felt it intensely at fourteen. I think young girls feel music in a way nobody else does. It made me feel part of something. I've always felt I'm living in a postapocalyptic musical world. Meeting Robert was the coolest moment, and that night was epic for me, but why couldn't I have seen Led Zeppelin when they were Led Zep pelin? If only I'd been born earlier-I would have been right there with you. I wish the word `groupie' still meant something more than just girls who have sex with guys in bands. I always thought it did mean something more: an appreciation and love for music."

  Along with a pack of girls from school, Amanda went to the Roxy and finally made her first rock star acquaintance. "Some boys from our grade formed a ridiculous high school punk band. When they got offstage, another band came on, and their singer was a cross between Kurt Cobain and Mick Jagger. He was all dripping wet with long black hair-and I was like, `Oh, my God!"

  The girls with Amanda were content to sigh over this skinny treat, but when they decided to leave, Amanda stayed put. "They said, `We can't leave you here! How are you gonna get home?' and I'm like, `I'll figure it out-go away!' I went up to the singer and said, `I think you're beautiful and I'd like to smoke a cigarette with you.' I didn't even smoke cigarettes at the time! He's like, 'OK.' I don't even remember his name, but I know he was English. It was the first time I was backstage at the Roxy, and while we were sitting on this nasty couch making out, I thought, `This isn't very glamorous!"'

  When the Roxy closed, Amanda dragged the rocker to a place she considers "magical." "We walked around the Beverly Hills Hotel like we were big somebodies. We sat in the little enclaves, kissing, and someone finally said, `What are you doing? You need to leave!' I must have been drunk because I said, `Don't you know who you're talking to? This is Mick Jagger!" When the singer gallantly offered to drive Amanda home, she was suddenly embarrassed. "I didn't want him to take me to Bel-Air because it made me seem square."

  This taste of rock glory fanned Amanda's pubescent fire, and she began spending more time at the clubs.

  "Everything revolved around getting away from my house. Mema sure didn't like it. `I found a beer under your bed, Amanda. You smell like a boy's cigarette!"' Beer and cigarettes were the least of it. "I was taking far too much acid for someone my age. I'll bet I took more LSD than my parents and their friends combined during the entire '60s and '70s. I'd drop it and go to math class. I was a mess!"

  Amanda demanded that I watch Ondi Timoner's outrageous rock doc DIG!, about the rivalry between the lead singers for the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, before regaling me with her Anton A. Newcombe tales. "You'll be entranced with him," she insists, "but at the same time it's clear that he's an asshole."

  Anton is the hell-bent front man for Jonestown and I did watch DIG!, alternately enthralled and repulsed, seeing this obviously brilliant maniac systematically destroying himself and his band-over and over again. But I could also see the attraction.

  "A lot of bands are coming up now because of DIG! Brian Jonestown, the Warlocks, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club ... and Anton Newcombe inspired all of it. When I was fifteen, my mom started going out of town, and I had this awesome house at my fingertips. I'd take a lot of drugs and throw giant parties; the most outrageous and insane people would show up at my house-musicians, artists, photographers, designers, writers, every L.A. band in the scene, and all the weirdos that came with them. It was very throwback to the '60s and '70s. The music was vintage, the vibe was classic; it just didn't feel like the present. One night my mom came home during a chaotic party. People were saying, `Amanda, we're out of margaritas! Hey, somebody's throwing up in your living room!' I was trashed and couldn't handle all these yahoos with my mom home, so I laid out in the middle of my swimming pool, looking up at the stars. Anton came up to me and I could see in his eyes that he was completely E'd-out. He said, `Amanda, listen. I wanted to meet your mom and get to know her. I've been in her room for two hours and we've been talking while she showed me your baby pictures. I think the problem between you two is that she misses you since you're not in the house much anymore.' I said, `You're insane, Anton. You were talking to my mom?' And he's like, `I'm trying to make things better for you, honey. People listen to me.' I was like, `Who is this guy?' I got to know him around town, and he's like Charles Manson, but in a good way. He has an army of girls and he's the most intense person I've ever met."

  Amanda somehow graduated from her ultra-chic west side high school. "I was smart but hardly ever went to class. I was the only person to get arrested on the Brentwood School campus. According to the report, it was for assault and battery, but all charges were dropped."

  This unfortunate crisis occurred because Amanda's mother attempted to stop her from driving to see Matt in the desert. "She took the keys to my car, so I took the keys to her car and hid it up the street. She called the police and told them I'd stolen the car and accused me of assaulting her. Meanwhile I was the one with bruises all over my face and arms." When she arrived at school Monday, the headmaster took Amanda to his office, where the cops were waiting for her. "I thought I was about to get busted for selling cocaine and LSD on school grounds and was freaking because I had all this coke in my purse." She convinced the authorities to let her get her backpack and tossed the cocaine into some handy bushes before being taken to juvenile hall and booked. "My coppers totally liked me and let me wear sunglasses in my mug shot. I was in solitary for eleven hours before my dad came and got me out. I found the coke in the bushes the next day."

  After graduation, Amanda fled to New York and enrolled in Eugene Lang College. During summer vacations, the parties continued in Bel-Air.

  Royal Trux was Amanda's intro into the exemplary world of indie rock. "They are my favorite band of all time-a husband and wife team. Jennifer Herrema was my idol and she stayed at my house for a couple of months. We were off the hook! I was like, `Mom, this is my friend from college!' She was the most important musician of the '90s." When I admit I've never heard the band, Amanda launches into an aficionado's tirade. "Nobody's heard of the bands I really care about. You know the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion? OK, then there's Pussy Galore, Jon Spencer's band with Neil Hagerty, and Neil was in the band with Jennifer, Royal Trux. They are the cornerstone of the whole indie rock map."

  While attending classes during the day, Amanda frequented the Baggot Inn, an Irish pub that hosted a weekly bluegrass night. She had long been a country fan, but bluegrass gave her a new thrill, especially local singer/songwriter Greg Garing. She met him after following Merle Haggard around on tour for two weeks and was in a romantic country state of mind. "I've never been so moved by music before. There isn't a person who comes in contact with Greg, man or woman, who isn't in love with him. He's tragic and dark and mysterious-like he's from an ancient era. He played with Bill Monroe when he was seventeen, and Bill said that bluegrass music was made for Greg's voice."

  She became a regular on the scene and slowly built a flirty friendship with Greg. "By the end of the night, it would be just the two of us; we'd wander to another late-night bar and talk and talk." She was painfully attracted to him, but wary when he started calling her in the middle of the night. "I thought, `What business do I have with this guy? He's nothing but trouble.' There were always ten million girls around him, randomly coming out of the woodwork. Greg's life is so romantic, he seems fictional; the perfect man to fall in love with when you know you can't have him. One night the whole audience was gathered around him, and I walked in the door wearing my weird hippie wizard outfit. When he saw me, he stopped playing and pulled out a chair next to him. I thought, `Well, I'm certainly not gonna go unnoticed!' I sat there with him staring at me-so intense and insane.

  Amanda eventually spent a few memorable days with Mr. Garing. "I decided to leave New York the summer of 2004. Greg was breaking
up with his girlfriend, and one night he said, `I need someone to talk to.' So I went over and we watched television, cuddling under blankets on the floor, holding each other. We were about to kiss and I thought, `What's this gonna be like?' I won't forget that kiss for the rest of my life. He said, `I've been waiting to do this for a long time.' It was the kiss to end all kisses. Those three days were strange and awesome; he was in a sad place and it was almost too emotional to be sexual. Van Morrison's version of `It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' kept playing in my head. For some reason, that Dylan song epitomized the entire experience."

  Amanda was leaving for Los Angeles, and Greg walked her out to hail a cab. As a parting gift, Greg had given Amanda a holy relic to remember him by: his banjo pick. "I tied it on a ribbon around my neck and he said, `I'm giving it to you, but you have to bring it back to me.' He finally said, `Well, I guess this is good-bye.' I was trying to keep it together. After he kissed me, I walked down the street, sobbing. I hadn't cried in seven years. I didn't take that pick off all summer, and I didn't let anybody touch it."

  Upon her return to Manhattan that fall, Amanda attended a party for her friends in the Warlocks. "I don't know what I was drinking, but apparently I threw a bottle at an ex-boyfriend and tried to get him kicked out of the party. Sune Wagner was the person next to me absorbing my tirade. I left my phone in a cab and the next day he called my cell so many times that the cab driver answered it. Sune arranged to get my phone, then met me at one of my classes. I was like, `Who are you again?' He came into the picture during a crisis-filled time and did his best to sweep me off my feet, which he totally did. He was sweet and attentive and treated me like a queen; he was just gaga over me. Also, he was romantic and wrote me love notes. The surprise was, oops, he's a great musician in a great band! But I wasn't his groupie because I hadn't even heard of the Raveonettes."

  Amanda moved into Sune's apartment, and when she wasn't in class, they spent time in upstate New York with Sune's record producer. She went to all of the Raveonettes' shows, but felt like she was standing around wearing a sign that said "girlfriend." The bliss slowly turned into frustration and boredom.

  "He was never bad to me, but he turned out to be an awful boyfriend. He'd say something one week and the next week, he'd act completely different. I think he had a vision of what his needs were. At that time he thought he needed a girlfriend, and I fell into that role. He didn't know me at all. The qualities he said he liked about me were traits I'd never even considered, like how sweet and maternal I was, and how I'd be a good mom. That's not the way to describe the drunk girl throwing bottles at her ex, waking up in strange people's houses. And he didn't take me seriously as a person not connected to him. I had my own aspirations aside from standing around at his shows. He forgot my shoot dates for my student films, but I was expected to remember every European tour date for three months. We did go to Hawaii for ten days, but it was depressing at times because I knew he'd be away on tour for the next six months. We had fun driving around the island and drinking pina coladas. We went surfing, which he thought he'd be good at because he'd been in a surf rock band."

  The rocky relationship lasted almost nine months before completely fizzling. "I don't know what happened to the person I met. He'd go on tour for a month and be happy to get back, or come home so crazy and mean that he'd kick me out of the apartment. Two days later he'd call and say, `Where are you? I miss you.' But then he wouldn't even talk to me. I didn't know how he felt one day to the next. It became too draining. The Raveonettes were on tour when my friend called from Dallas, inviting me to Willie Nelson's July 4th picnic. I didn't know if Sune would even want me at the apartment when he got home. I finished editing my student film and booked a ticket to Dallas. He finally called when I was at the airport and I told him I was moving out." Amanda sighs, adding that she and Sune are now friends. "The Raveonettes have this song about groupies called `Love in a Trash Can.' If that song is about me, I'm gonna kill him. But I seriously doubt that it is."

  The following spring, Amanda encountered an old acquaintance. "I knew Brian Jonestown was playing the Bowery Ballroom, and even though I didn't have a ticket, I thought, `I'm just gonna do it!' She arrived a bit late, expecting the band to already be onstage. "People were lined up around the block, and I was talking to some friends from L.A. and who shows up, but Anton, and he's wasted. Of course, he's always wasted. He said, `Oh, my God. You're here! Don't you look nice tonight?' He's being this charming little dude, saying, `You have beautiful eyes! You've really grown up, haven't you?' He introduced me to some biker guys, telling me they knew my dad, and I was like, `I don't need Hells Angels friends right now.' They were fucking scary dudes. Anton got down on his knees and kissed the guy's boots and said, `There, that's how much I love you.' This giant biker didn't know how to respond."

  Just then, a security guard reminded Anton that his fans had waited forty-five minutes, and it was high time he got on stage. When Amanda told him she didn't have a ticket and couldn't get in, Anton said, `Oh, I think you will.' He pulled me through the audience-girls are throwing themselves at him. Yeah, I felt special when he took me onstage, sat me on an amp, and said, `There, now you're in,' then picked up his guitar and started playing."

  Amanda was sitting in the prime groupie dream spot: atop the rock star's amplifier in full view of the rampaging fans. "The show went on forever and by the end I was just a puddle of psychedelic feedback."

  Jonestown Massacre played so long that night, the venue pulled the plug. "Nobody would touch Anton because he's honkers, but they yanked the rest of 'em off the stage. Of course the girl sitting on the amp didn't need to be there either. When they cleared the audience, I realized Anton had vanished."

  That week Amanda kept hearing the usual rumors about Anton's dangerous misbehavior. "Apparently bad shit had been happening. He got kicked in the head at a bar and had a concussion. He tried to set somebody on fire. He was drunk here and got in a fight there. I thought, `Sounds to me like he's being Anton.'"

  Amanda's dad has cozy cabins sprinkled hither and yon, so before heading home to L.A. she invited some friends to join her in the screenwriter's upstate paradise for a couple days. They, in turn, told Anton about the secret hideaway, and two hours after her pals left, Amanda's phone rang. "It was a 213 number and I thought, `Who the hell?' It was Anton. `I heard you're leaving soon, darling, so give me a call. I'd like to hang out before I go back to my girlfriend.' All of Anton's girlfriends look like they've seen a ghost for six months running. So, I called back and said, `You're obviously not doing so well in the city-I think you need a vacation.' I picked him up at the train station at midnight. I was the only person on the platform ... pretty romantic, right? It's cold up there, but he was wearing just a blue silk shirt and layers of necklaces. Businessmen dashed off the train and he said, `What's the problem, guys? You can't face the truth?' Obviously he had gotten into a fight on the train. He said, `Tell me you've got something to drink at the cabin,' and I said, `Of course I do. Come on.' He thought it was beautiful up there. We hiked around, went to graveyards, and stayed up all night long. The guy only sleeps two hours a day. We bought these lifelike target dummies and shot at them across the meadow, pretending they turned into zombies coming to kill us."

  With so much private time together, didn't they feel the temptation to get entangled?

  "I can't lie, I'd been attracted to him the whole time. One night he was sitting in the kitchen while I cut up limes for our drinks. I had a pile of them and held one out to him, like, `Here, you want a lime?' He leaned over, kissed me on the mouth, and put the lime in his drink. I snatched the entire pile of limes from the table and looked at him as if to say, `If that's what I get for one lime slice, what do I get for all of these?' He grabbed me and we started ferociously making out. We lost our minds and went to some kind of primal realm. It was intense and crazy, like a Dionysian ritual."

  The impromptu madness in the wilderness ran its course, and Amanda drove Anton to his gi
rlfriend's house in New York, which suited her fine. "He's a cross between Manson and Jesus and every influential person combined with a bratty rock star. To me he's like an older, spiritual mentor presence." She smiles. "We were only ever friends-with a little bit of primal thrown in."

  After over four years in college, Amanda took a year off, dating, traveling, and throwing several more outrageous bashes in Bel-Air. One of her flings was with Year Long Disaster's guitarist, Daniel Davies, son of Kinks legend Dave Davies. "We drank like there was no tomorrow and wound up in Jacuzzis all over town. Daniel and I got involved romantically, in one Jacuzzi or another. Their drummer's dad was one of Led Zeppelin's producers, and when I arrived at the studio with a giant bottle of whiskey, he said, `In all my days I never met a bird who came with her own bottle. Good girl!' We all had a good time until two of them told me they were checking into a rehab clinic. I was surprised that my favorite cohorts were taking the dry road, but I wanted them to do well. It had become extreme. The week before, we busted up my car because we drank too much opium poppy tea and were blasting AC/DC along Laurel Canyon. Daniel had a scar from the bad sunburn he got when he passed out in my mom's pool. We're still great friends. The band has done much better without all the drinking. I think they'd like to see me do the same, but so far that hasn't happened."

  Perhaps Amanda's most extreme days and nights are behind her. A few months ago, during a trip to Manhattan, she says she finally "met her match."

  "I got trashed and wound up at the Willowz show at two thirty in the morning. A good friend of mine owns a record label and I was checking out bands, but I couldn't see two feet in front of me. You could have told me Elvis was on stage and I would have said `That's cool.' I thought the singer, Richie, looked like Neil Hagerty from Royal Trux. I was talking to his drummer, and he stepped between us, saying, `Hi, I'm Richie.' Since I was taking pictures of the bands, he asked me for my `contact info.' Now we joke that we can tell our kids, `When Daddy met Mommy he asked for her contact info.' When he tried to kiss me at the bar, I almost got hit by a drink his ex-girlfriend bass player threw at us. We ended up making out on the street, then drove all over Manhattan looking for a hotel room. We practically had sex in the cab, but finally wound up at my apartment. We hooked up that night and have been psyched on each other ever since. I knew the next day that he was going to be my boyfriend for a really long time. He is the best, most versatile guy in bed; he has so many personalities. He can seriously have sex for five hours and it's never boring."