All Photos: Alan Mercer Lighting: Eric Venturo Make-up: Giddle Partridge
Bebe Buell is a well-known singer/model with stunning looks and glamorous appeal. She has long been considered an authority on Pop Culture. Bebe began her career as a model at the age of 17. She eventually became a Playboy Playmate and was well known as a personality dating several top rock stars of that time such as Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Jimmy Page and Steven Tyler. She is also famous for being the mother of Actress Liv Tyler.
In 2001, she wrote an autobiography (with Victor Bockris) entitled 'Rebel Heart: An American Rock and Roll Journey.' It hit the New York Times Bestseller list and the paperback was then issued in 2002.
Buell's mother, Dorothea, sent her pictures to the Ford modeling agency, and received notice that the agency was interested after only three days. She began modeling professionally at the age of seventeen, and moved to New York City in 1972.
She was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for the November 1974 issue.' She was one of the first top-line fashion models to pose for the men's magazine, although it cost her the contract with Ford. She was promptly signed to Wilhelmina in the USA and Models One in the UK. Even after the Playboy appearance affected her career in the States she was still in demand in Europe appearing in British and French Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, and Cosmopolitan to name a few.
When Bebe came to Los Angeles recently to promote her latest release 'SUGAR' and for a knock-out performance at the Roxy, she spent an afternoon being photographed by me and Eric Venturo. It's hard to describe how exciting it was to be able to work with Bebe Buell. She was one of the top models when I was young and only dreaming of taking glamorous photos. She has been photographed by all the leading fashion and beauty photographers of the time. I was elated when she told me she wanted to work with me. She first appeared on this blog last February when she called me on the phone from her home in New York City. We planned our photo session then.
AM: Everybody cares what you think and what your opinion is. Isn't that wonderful?
BB: Everybody cares what I think? Do you mean on Facebook?
AM: I mean everywhere for the past thirty years.
BB: You know it finally got interesting when I got called a Pop Culture Historian. I felt then at that point my life had made sense. I think even my Mom was finally proud when I got called a Pop Culture Expert. There's validity in being a part of musical, cultural and artistic trends. There's something to be said for being a part of that. I've experienced and witnessed all the different changes.
AM: You really have been a part of all of it.
BB: I was really fortunate to be born in the fifties. I was young enough to experience Elvis but not quite old enough to appreciate him. For all the people that went crazy over Elvis Presley I was the one who went crazy over Mick Jagger. Just like every other ten year old I was watching the Beatles when they were on Ed Sullivan. It was an amazing thing to witness, but when the Rolling Stones came along it defined me. I found my niche. Later I got into Astrology and it linked up with everyone in my life at that time. I did all my boyfriends charts. Astrological compatibility can seem kooky to some people.
AM: Does Astrology help you fundamentally and logically understand people better?
BB: I got interested in Astrology from a friend of mine, who has since passed away, named Jeanne Theiss who worked for Robert Stigwood during the 'Saturday Night Fever' time. She wouldn't even get on a plane until she did a chart. Whenever anything would happen in my life she would say let me look up what's going on.
AM: Did you start relying on her readings?
BB: I became very dependent on her readings. She never predicted the future for me. We had a deal that if she told me something and it happened I could tell her after the fact. She would give me warnings sometimes that I would often heed. Now I don't like to get tarot readings anymore. I don't like any of that stuff anymore.
AM: Why not?
BB: I think that it can affect the mathematics, the synchronicity that's already created in the Universe. We live in a three dimensional world but there is a lot more going on than we can see. We just don't know it here on Earth. Dream state is a perfect example.
AM: How much importance do you give your dreams?
BB: I think it's another place. I don't look at dreams as an extension of my brain doing things. People say your brain picks up what you've been thinking about or what you've seen that day. I think it's all possible but I think your brain is a big battery that picks up what's really going on everywhere.
AM: It seems like it's all a point of view.
BB: I think everything that is said, be it positive, negative, true or false all has some kind of validity. Even if someone is blatantly lying to me and they think they're fooling me and I know they're lying, I won't tell them I know. I let them continue to lie to me and then I conduct myself around what they just said. I don't think it's always necessary to let somebody know everything you know. It's not important to have that showdown.
AM: You should write a book around these topics.
BB: Well my ADD is so bad and I don't take any medication and I'm not going to. Some people can look on that stuff as a curse.
AM: Is it hard on you?
BB: The only thing that's difficult about it for me is that I have trouble focusing. Music is the only thing I can really focus on when I write, rehearse and perform. You are going to see a whole different person on stage. I don't even know who that person is. I swear I don't know her. I guess I know her because she is a part of me but I swear to God that is not who I am. How many people say this? I feel like an old cliché because every artist says this.
AM: Well if it applies...
BB: It's the truth. I don't know that girl on stage. I like her but I think she's more of a boy than a girl. I think my energy on stage is much more masculine. I almost feel flat chested. I almost feel like a man on stage. I'm channeling something that is much more male. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I equally love men and women. For some weird reason my art channels male energy. Yet I write a lot of my lyrics for women. I feel a lot of compassion and love for women.
AM: Sometimes people mistakenly call you a groupie. How do you react to this?
BB: People get upset with me because they think I get offended when someone calls me a groupie. I always say, "Because I'm not a groupie." If I were I would be very proud and flaunt my stuff. The thing is I was called a groupie because of the boys I dated. I've always had a job and always had my own identity, always paid my own bills, always bought my own airline tickets and always did my own thing.
AM: How are groupies different?
BB: Most of the girls that I knew who were groupies lived for the musicians and not for themselves. That's why I never related. I never understood the doormat mentality. I never understood giving yourself over to people and letting them hurt or use you.
AM: It didn't make sense to you?
BB: No it didn't. I've already started my next book. The outline is finished and I'm trying to hone it down. I've been working on it steadily.
AM: Why did you pose for Playboy back in a time when it wasn't considered a smart thing for a fashion model to do?
BB: I was taking my frustration out on my sexual inabilities by posing nude for Playboy. People considered it self-sabotaging. Why would a fashion model from the magazine covers go and be a Playboy centerfold? I didn't even think about it like that. I thought, "Oh Jayne Mansfield, Marilyn Monroe, Bettie Paige, Stella Stevens!" Did you know that Diane Lane's mother was a centerfold? There are only twelve a year. It's kind of an honor. Back then it was very hard to be a Playmate. Now they can airbrush you and of course the girls can get fake breasts. In the seventies you had to be perfect!
AM: I remember it was always a big ordeal to find twelve girls perfect enough!
BB: They were not easy to find and nobody had fake tits back then. That didn't happen until the eighties.
AM: I understand why it was an honor as opposed to now.
BB: Standards of beauty have changed. Hef wanted us to be wholesome and fresh with an all-American quality, but have a touch of exotic. His order was tall and he would go over the pictures with a magnifying glass. When you look at my centerfold you can see my pores.
AM: Was it an easy photo session for you to do?
BB: I took the pictures and I didn't know if I would ever be a centerfold or not. I never thought about it again and one day they called me up and said you're Miss November. They sent me my check and I went to Bergdorf's! (laughing) Then I went to London and hung out with the Rolling Stones for a month! I'm just one of the boys. We weren't having sex we were just friends.
AM: So different than most people think of you.
BB: Back then people were doing so much coke there was very little sex. It's all myth. In the true Rock n' Roll circles where people were doing a lot of chemicals everyone just sat around and talked all night.
AM: What does sex mean for you?
BB: Sex for me is a feeling you get when you really fall in love. You have to really feel a connection with a person. I'm a Cancer and I want stability and one partner. I always found myself in situations where I was with men who would never settle for one partner in my wildest dreams. I always set myself up to be hurt.
AM: You did go to the most extreme opposite you could go!
BB: When I went out with my daughter's father it was several months and I remember when we had one of our first fights and he told me, "I have been completely faithful to you and I have never been completely faithful to anyone else!" (Laughing) Back then men used to really consider it an accomplishment to remain faithful. You sort of had to keep up with the boys back then. It was either be a doormat or fight back! I would just go out with whoever I wanted to go out with. I figured I wasn't married to Todd. We lived together for six years and adored each other, but we weren't man and wife. He traveled and I traveled. I explored relationships with people.
AM: I read a lot about all this in your book 'Rebel Heart.'
BB: The thing I don't like about 'Rebel Heart' is the publishers were trying to make me have a more confident tone. The word narcissistic keeps coming to mind. My voice in the book is more narcissistic than I am. The voice in the book is not completely me. It's me mixed with a very dominant male voice who was Victor. He was not my ghost writer. Ghost writers are different. They don't reveal their voice. Victor used his voice and entwined it with mine. I don't come off humble at all. I come off too cocky in the book.
AM: I don't think you come off cocky in the book, but it's hard to know what is you and what is Victor.
BB: Well in an autobiography you have to talk about yourself. Then people say, "She's so conceited!" The next book I write will be one hundred percent by myself. I'm already writing it in pieces. Every time I get inspired I keep track of my inspirations. I'm keeping track of all my one line quotes that friends on Facebook find so inspiring. I get letters from women all the time telling me I've helped them and changed their lives. I'm feeling very good about all that. If I can take all this knowledge I have after all these years and share it allowing people to benefit from it, that will bring me a lot of joy.
AM: That's what you're here for, besides your music. You are shifting into a much more important person!
BB: I went to this spiritual retreat in Arizona called Inner Path. My life coach there, who can also channel Angels, took me to be with a horse. You don't know what's going on but you get there and they tell you to pick a horse. You go into a ring and have an interaction with the horse you picked. They don't tell you what all this means until after you've done it. They don't reveal anything to you. After you have the interaction your Angel coach tells you what just happened.
AM: Why did you go in the first place?
BB: I went to Inner Path because I was suffering. I internalized everybody else's stuff so much that I was starting to really be affected! I was really not in a good place. Anyway back to my point. I picked a horse that nobody else liked. I figured if nobody likes you, why?
AM: Was there something different about him?
BB: He was white and not as big as the other horses. I watched some of the other girls go into the ring and watched their horses buck away from them and they couldn't control the horse. There was trauma. One girl went in and had an effortless experience where the horse went around the ring with her. So I get out there with my horse and he looked me right in the eye and he kneeled down in front of me.
AM: What did you do?
BB: My instinct was to kneel too. I was thinking we're going to go down real low so I got down low with him. I felt like I wanted to put my face on his nose.
AM: How did the staff react to this?
BB: I could see everybody panicking. They were afraid he was going to rear his head up and I was going to have my face knocked off.
AM: Weren't you afraid?
BB: For some weird reason I wasn't feeling that energy from him at all. I just put my face right down there and started rubbing him. We kept our faces nose to nose for three minutes. It brought me to tears. We just stayed like that. There was zero movement. Finally he stood up and looked me in the eye again. It was scary because he was really looking at me.
AM: What was your coach doing now?
BB: My coach was absolutely affected by this. Tears were streaming down her face and I didn't know what was going on until we got back to the class. It turns out that this horse was horribly abused and was a rescue horse. He was not very nice often. He never hurt anyone but he wasn't an easy horse to communicate with. Most people found their experience with him awful!
AM: Can you describe why?
BB: He could be feisty and violent with his physical movement. That's why they were all afraid. I asked my life coach what that meant. She told me that I was reading his heart and he was reading my heart. She also told me that I would definitely work in service one day and that I would be doing what she does one day! I've decided when I'm done with music, though I'll never be 'done, done' with it, and I get into my sixties that's what I want to do. I want to work with animals and people to be a healer.
AM: You mean officially because you are already a healer.
BB: I feel bad to get paid for that sort of thing but it is a living. When you go to one of these places it costs money. You don't get to go for free and I wish it was free. I wish everybody just thought it was part of life. Wouldn't it be nice if it was like learning your ABC's. I started teaching my daughter all that stuff immediately from the minute she could understand. Everything happens for a reason.
To learn more about Bebe Buell check out her web site http://www.bebebuell.org/
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