It is almost impossible to capture the remarkable life and career of Bebe Buell. Discovered by super agent Eileen Ford who relocated Bebe from her hometown of Virginia Beach, Virginia, to New York City where her passion, charisma and stellar looks propelled her into the limelight of Manhattan's music scene. After meeting musical genius Todd Rundgren, the two moved in together and began a steady relationship. When Bebe posed for Playboy in 1974, she became the first fashion model to become a Playboy Playmate (Miss November), but her controversial layout caused her to be fired by the prestigious Ford modeling agency. Affectionately called “Friend To The Stars,” Bebe earned the title because of her closeness to everyone from Jack Nicholson to Andy Warhol, and her carte blanche access to rock’s elite royalty including relationships with Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Rod Stewart, Stiv Bators, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. Bebe’s musical career jumpstarted with her first release, “Covers Girl” (1981) produced by Ric Ocasek and Rick Derringer and featured legendary group The Cars backing her on two tracks. She formed The Gargoyles; the female-fronted, hard rock unit that was ahead of its time and caught the eye of Joey Ramone who had the band open for The Ramones. Soon, offers of record deals followed. But when Bebe’s daughter Liv found out her father was actually Steven Tyler, and not Todd Rundgren, 1991 became a year of big changes. Well documented in the media, Bebe has said that she didn’t want to tell Liv who her real father was because of Steven’s heavy drug addiction at the time. Todd had known that he was not the biological father of Liv but had kept the secret in order to give both Bebe and Liv some semblance of a stable home. As Steven got sober, the news of Liv’s parentage was no longer a secret. Bebe withdrew from the public eye to focus on raising her daughter. Seven years later, after a series of live shows at famed downtown mecca Don Hill’s, The Bebe Buell Band was born. Around this time, Cameron Crowe released the film “Almost Famous” which is heavily based on certain elements of Bebe’s life. Crowe crafted some of the film’s dialogue from Bebe, which he remembered during their friendship on the road with Todd Rundgren in 1973. Released in 2001, Buell's autobiography “Rebel Heart; An American Rock And Roll Journey” (St, Martin’s Press) was a New York Times Bestseller. For almost 20 years she has been married to Jim Wallerstein of Das Damen and Vacationland fame. A musician, mother, muse, model, celebrated lover, manager, best selling author, and pop culture icon, music has always held her deepest passion. Boy Scout talked to Bebe about and spirituality, sex, and Patti Smith.
Boy Scout: If you arrived in New York City in 2019 filled with great ambition, how might you ascend to your artistic summit?
Bebe Buell: I can't even imagine being a kid in 2019, there's just way too much stimulation. The stimulation that I got as a young person was through art, through music.
Now we have smartphones, and we have computers, and all the other instant gratification fixes that, in some ways, has become the new drugs. And the reason why I think people are hooked on opiates is because we have to turn that out of our minds. I'm not hooked on opiates but I'm talking about the people that are in the epidemic that we're having in our country.. I've learned to turn my mind off through meditation. If I was a young 18-year old kid, like I was back in 1972, coming to New York City, I would want to know where the artists gather. Where do they gather? That's probably what I would seek, is finding like-minded people, finding my tribe. That's what I would aspire to. If I was lucky enough to be coming to New York with a scholarship or. going to NYU, or going to a fabulous art institute, or something, then I would make sure that I lived in a dorm so I could meet everybody.
Boy Scout: The late Harry Dean Stanton believed “Everything is predestined. Nothing is important. Life is an illusion. It’s all a movie. Nobody’s in charge” which is lovingly referred to as his Appreciation of Nothing. Do you have a guiding life philosophy that keeps you on the path?
Bebe Buell: I'm still leaving my mind open. I still want to know if there is a possibility that we can have a part in the change of destiny, but I think we choose our bodies, and our lives before we even arrived here. I think we choose our you know our destiny, and it whatever reflects our karma, I think we have to come here and we have to fix it. We have to work on it. We have to learn from it.
I was told by a psychic when I was 20-years old that I was a man in my last life and I broke many hearts (laughs). You know, it's just a revolving a revolving circle, and we have to learn to acknowledge and see what is being given to us. It's a gift this learning process, this universe, the synchronicity of it all. I definitely think it's all one big thing but I don't think it's death that we experience when we are finished with our birth experience. I think it's just onward to the next experience that our karmic choices has given us.
Boy Scout: From the outset you have lived hand to heart running with some of the biggest names in Rock'n'Roll rebellion. Can you describe what this kind of music means to you?
Bebe Buell: The Rolling Stones were the one that really tapped me when I was 10-years old along with The Beatles. There was something about the British Invasion all of that it just touched me it moved me, perhaps it's an association from a previous life? Who knows why we know so early in our lives who our people are, or where our souls belong, but there's just a message that gets sent and we know, we just know. It just didn't seem at all unlikely to me when I was 10 that I would be having tea with Mick Jagger. I assumed that was just going to happen. There was there was no getting around it.
And then when I was in high school, my girlfriend Claire, played me the M5 "Kick Out The Jams" and you know, changed my life. Hearing "Raw Power," hearing The Stooges, there was something about that sound that represented my need to get out of Virginia and be in New York City. It just represented where my spirit was. I guess you could call it my Rebel Heart? I knew. I just knew that I would somehow be there. But it was the music that touched me and I connected with. Once I got to New York, I became interested in all kinds of music ... I loved The Raspberries. I still put that concert at Carnegie Hall in the early 70s as one of my favorite shows of all time. I was one of those lucky people that got to see real rebels. People like Alice Cooper who gave the first real rock extravaganza with props, it was staged, everything! It was extraordinary. And then people just started to become more visual. It spoke to me. It just did. But now, I'm sort of a connoisseur of new, I love classical music. I love Enya, I love everything. There's just something in everything that I find beautiful. But there's nothing like being on an island and listening to Bob Marley. There's nothing like it. There's something to be said for beautiful soundtracks. One of my favorite soundtracks is the Stealing Beauty from the Bertolucci movie.
I think rock and roll and rebellion go hand in hand for eternity. I don't think there was ever a stop or start time for that. It's a soul journey! We're all on a different journey. And some people look at rock'n'roll as entertainment. Me? I look at it as a religion.
Boy Scout: New York. Asbury Park. Nashville. What feelings do these cities elicit in you?
Bebe Buell: New York City, Asbury Park, New Jersey. and Nashville. Tennessee have been my cocoon headquarters. Each one of those cities gave me opportunities to do things, artistically, that I only dreamed about. And respected me, and did not judge me, and did not hang labels on me, and allowed me to be an artist ---which is what I really am--- and that's the pulse of my soul.
You can be an artist and even be somebody that gives your art to another person. You can be a patron of the Arts. There's many-many levels of artistic integrity. Asbury Park it was just this wonderful sense of community. But I have felt a connection to that area since the first time I went there with Todd Rundgren when he had a show at Convention Hall. There was this wonderful boardwalk and amusement park. It was funny. I kept flashing back to being, with a parasol and then a beautiful full fancy lace dress, and I thought gosh did I live here in the 1920s? But my love affair with Asbury started the instant I smelled the air. In the instant I was in that that area. It was a connection that's been profound in my life. And with Asbury Park, I'd like my ashes to be spread off the Jersey Shore... Not all of them. I'm going to save some for another spot that's undetermined at this point.
It's not easy for me to explain how you take these detours in your life, or why these areas come back into your life. But New York, I've done so many different projects in New York. and so many different things. that I will always think it's my home Even though I'm not living there right now, my soul will always be housed there in some capacity. But Nashville, it was like a rebirth, or reentry, into another phase of my journey. I found that I wanted to live here when I was 59-years old and I moved into my new house here on June 6 2013. I turned 60 the next month and I looked upon this is it being represented of a new decade, a new era.
I think one of the things that I love about Nashville, is the no BS. You come to this town, you throw your stuff against the wall, if it sticks it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But here, the thing that's beautiful is when you throw your stuff, people either catch it... you don't need to worry about the wall or if it's going to stick. They either catch it, or they let it fly by them and they let the person behind them catch it. Because, there is a musical divinity here. It's almost like a vortex. I can see why people come here and they can't leave. Because the inspiration is off the charts, and the camaraderie, and the community is beautiful. It reminds me of the early 70s in New York. But I caution those that think they can come here thinking that it's going to be an instant band-aid, or an instant fix, to a life that they might feel stuck in. Because Nashville is not for everybody. You have to sort of be called here. I know that it might sound a little wacky to people but I don't think you choose Nashville, I think it chooses you. I was invited to come down here in 2012 and sing on an Eddie Arnold tribute album and it was at that moment that I knew that this was where I needed to live. I don't know if it was the smell of the Magnolia that brought me back to my childhood, because I'm a southern girl, I grew up in Virginia, North Carolina, people don't realize that. A lot of people think I'm a New Yorker, but, I sort of am... It's wild. I don't think we can just stick ourselves in a corner of where were you born.
I'm an "Nash-Yorker" that's what I see. I'm a little bit of both.
Nashville has been incredibly healing for me. I had to take a lot of slings and arrows when I was a young girl, and I always have to be reminded of that. So when I came here. nobody really cared about it about that. It sort of reminded me in the 70s when I posed nude, I couldn't get work in America anymore except for Cosmopolitan and sexier magazines, until my agent Wilhelmina, sent me to Europe. She said "Oh, they don't care about nudity in Europe" and instantly, I was working for Vogue.
There's something to be said about the harsh judgments of others that make us make our left or right turn, and what we have to learn is to just not be detoured by somebody else's anxiety. For me, Nashville has been a big, big band-aid. So, I had all these epiphanies and all these incredible fingers that were going okay, "this is where you need to go." So, you have to learn to listen to your finger. If it points a certain way there's a reason and if you're too scared to try it, research it, and maybe it'll trigger something in you, that will make you know inside if you need to go there or not. I had friends tell me I was nuts. Nobody could believe that I was going to move here on a lark like that just because my inner voice said do it, but it was the best move, one of the best moves I've ever made.
Boy Scout: Punk, which crystalized in New York, was angry, hilarious, incisive and immediate. Much like your sense of fashion. What does personal style constitute for you?
Bebe Buell: I've always wondered myself where it comes from? How we want to dress, how we want people to perceive us, how we want to present ourselves? I've always wondered where that comes from but I guess it just boils down to either, you have a sense of style or you don't have a sense of style. Either you're a trendsetter, or you're a trend follower. One or the other is going to apply to every single person on earth, and I think we've all been a little of both. But, you know, I witnessed people like David Bowie walking into the back room of Max's Kansas City, looking like something that none of us had ever seen before. Richard Hell, holding his shirts together with safety pins because he didn't have the money to buy more shirts. The thing about fashion, and about where it comes from, it's got to be real. It's got to be authentic. It's got to come from who you are. You know, what do you see in a store that makes you want to go for that as opposed to this other thing that 20 people might go for? With me, I always liked something that made me feel comfortable, and of course you always want to look attractive, you want to look attractive to others. But it always blew my mind when I would show up in a pair of little lace gloves, maybe 12-years before other people, or when I would wear corsets-- although, I'm certainly not the first one-- I mean, I saw Cherie Currie in a corset when she was sixteen! There are certain things we wear that, we might do them first, but it will take a Madonna to make it something that is universal.
As we know, Madonna is the master at taking all the street ideas and homogenizing them into something that's commercial. Some people might be angered by that, or might think :Why is she getting the credit?" but it's always been that way. It has always been that way as far back as Van Gogh. The fashion is "What you can afford," basically. Fashion is how do you feel when you put your clothes on? And some people go to extremes. Some people want to wear tons of makeup and wear costumery outfits. There's movements... but the bottom line? Punk rock was all about what can you afford. So, here come the English, and Malcolm McLaren, and they take the essence of punk, which I think real Punk is Iggy Pop, The MC5, Alice Cooper, that that's the real punk rock to me. The second wave of punk is what came to New York City... The Ramones, which to me were just one of the greatest rock and roll bands. I don't know if I really even think The Ramones were punk? The Dead Boys. Blondie (that really wasn't punk to me).... but I think what happened was, that a whole scene got tagged as punk. And then the English, they took it to the fashion place, I think because in New York everybody was just wearing, once again, what they could afford and they got creative.
Debbie could make an outfit out of garbage bags and look gorgeous. Debbie Harry that is. Patti Smith learned very early, all you need is a good pair of black jeans, an incredible black jacket blazer, and a couple of cool shirts, and you are a rock star. It doesn't take a whole lot Then you get the English and they created the fashionable part of it. The Malcolm McLaren part. The part where everybody was very, very very flamboyantly dressed. And then I started to think to myself "Is this as inexpensive as it was on the Lower East Side?" I wondered if these kids were spending all of their money on clothes?
So, back to the original thought: Personal style is what it is, either you've got it or you don't.
Boy Scout: From the Bowery Boys to Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Johnny Rotten, there is something innately important about troublemakers who aspire. In finding your way with little in your pockets, was desperation ever a great motivator for you?
Bebe Buell: I immediately was working as a model and I also met Todd Rundgren not long... I think it was a few months after I moved to New York City. I just never felt a sense of desperation. Some of my friends did who didn't have families and who didn't have moms and dads. There was a lot of people that like in New York City in the early 70s. The "homed homeless," they were to me. They were people with homes, but they were homeless because they had no connections. I've always had a very close family, what it represented anyway. I didn't grow up with my father. My parents were divorced when I was two. So, I had my mother and my cousin Annie, who's 10-years older than I am, who was raised as my sister, were sort of my anchors. I had a strong grandparent presence in my life too, until I was eight, but my grandmother died when I was very young, so I lost all that very young.
So, I had to start my own tribe. My own family. But desperation? I don't know. I think I ever felt that way. I think the only time we ever feel desperate is if we are frightened and we don't know what's going to happen next to us... and I never knew what was going to happen next, but I am grateful that I always had people I could turn to when I was frightened. I never turned to heroin, or needles, or ugly, unattractive, disgusting drugs to make me feel safe. That was the common thing that all my friends that did those kind of drugs, they would say to me. That it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket and I just didn't get it. I'm very grateful that I didn't get it. That I never went down that path. I never understood it. And those that are that were part of that, are they're dead now. Are not alive. They're gone. And I just want to be alive. I want to live for as long as I can.
And if there were ever desperate moments in the future, I would not be afraid to seek some kind of grounding, and some kind of help. I'm just lucky. I have a wonderful husband. I have an incredible daughter. I'm not trying to sound like my life is all bright and perfect because I've had incredible losses in my life, and I've also had a lot of cruelty thrust at me, and I have had to learn how to maneuver it. I've had to learn how to rise above it and make it be fuel for my art.
Boy Scout: Anthony Bourdain’s wrenching “Parts Unknown” finale takes place in New York’s lower East Side where a good deal of your history resides. In that episode, Lydia Lunch says: “People were beautiful, doing things because they had to do it—not because of any other grand idea. Happiness was not the goal; satisfaction was the goal, as it still is. . . . We had to do something because we were burning; our blood was on fire.” Lunch made very clear that in the present day, she wastes no time pining for that bygone time—but Bourdain seemed a little more wistful. As a cultural significant, are you ever wistful for an older, grittier New York?
Bebe Buell: I don't think we even noticed that it was gritty in the early 70s. We just walked down the street in our platform shoes and boots and went to Max's and wherever we went.... I really wasn't a frequenter of the early CBGB's. I didn't really start going to CBs until I started my own band, when Hilly and Louise invited me to play. So, really I didn't start going to CBs and playing at CBs until the early 80s. Eighty or Eighty one, around that timeframe. I went a couple of times in the late 70s, and I went one time in the early 70s but it was by accident because somebody just pointed me to go peek in this dog-poop-ridden club where these really great bands were playing. I remember the stage was over on the other side, if I can vaguely remember. It wasn't where eventually became located. I remember seeing The Ramones one time and just walking away from that experience thinking that "Wow, that was amazing, that was exhilarating, that was like you having a beautiful dinner, or getting a giant Christmas present." It just made me feel great inside. I don't know what it was exactly, and of course Joey (Ramone) went on to become one of my best friends, and one of my lifelong friends, until his untimely passing.
It's hard to say "do I longed for it" because I try not to do that. I try not to sit around and pine for the way things were. I try to find situations that make me feel like those situations made me feel, then. Or, I get that Lydia would say we were "always on the quest for the next"... I forgot what word she used. I think that my quest was a little different and that's the beauty of the Lower East Side, is that everybody's Lower East Side is a different Lower East Side. There were no two Lower East Side's that are alike. For me, I think I was always looking for love. I always just wanted to be loved. I wanted to find that love that was not going to hurt me and that I wasn't going to hurt. That it was not going to become like a basketball game.
One might think "Wow! it's kind of crazy to look for love in New York City, or on the Lower East Side, or in the rock'n'roll world." Yup, I suppose they're right. But love? Everybody wants love, so there's going to be a way to find it.
Boy Scout: In a time of faltering news platforms, transient facts and generations who opt for digital currency over great literature, how will the stories of those that came before us survive?
Bebe Buell: I'm in the process right now of writing my next book and I have decided that it's so important to make sure that part of history doesn't get pushed in the back room, so as it were. I mean some people look at the 90s, like we look at the 70s and that's insane to me. I I'm like "No, no, no... you have no idea what it was like in the 70s!" That's never going to be duplicated. Never, never, never. Maybe on another planet, but here, it's just not going to be duplicated. I felt a sense of relief when I walked into Max's because I met my tribe, or a lot of it anyway. I met people that thought like I did. Going over to Patti Smith's house the first time. She put on a record and I remember we started dancing around the room. And I picked up her hairbrush and used it as a microphone, and she picked up something and used it as a microphone.... and I thought to myself "Gosh! Wonder how many more of us there are they get up in front of the mirror with our hair brushes...?" and this was before she became a singer, when she was a poet.
So, I think it's important that storytelling, and songwriting, and folklore exists. The thing that's so funny about rock'n'roll is stories, by the time they go down the pike, they've been told so many different ways, that the only way for the outcome to come, is back to the truth. There's always going to be storytellers. As long as we've got storytellers we're going to be able to keep all the historical value, the value of the era, the value of everything. I just don't want any of this to be lost. None of it.
I feel I can still be excited by the "now." I went to see The Struts a couple of weeks ago and they were so good, and it was so inspiring, and it just made me realize that there's always going to be something great. There's always going to be a needle in a haystack, you just have to find it. The stories, they'll survive. They'll survive through people like me.
Boy Scout: The last couple of years has seen a country divided. Has the current political climate inhibited or infused your sensibility?
I feel like it's the Fall of Rome. This guy's like Nero, playing the fiddle. I'm sucking it all in. I'm watching it all. I'm in awe of those that are brave, and they get on the internet, and really fight this. I just think that this is leading to the end of all of this kind of way of thinking... I don't think we're going to have fossil fuels in another 20 years. I don't think we're going to be killing a billion cows a week in another 10 years. I think that all of this is changing. This is the apex of the change. It had to come to this, I guess. This is our Armageddon. This is our part of the Bible where the shit hits the fan. It's going to be the battle of good versus evil. I firmly believe that and I believe the good wins. I think we're going to beat this.
People like Donald Trump, they aren't going to be making any decisions for anybody in 10 years. So, ease your mind. Just know that. Know that a change is coming, it's exciting. I feel it, I feel the change coming. I think people are becoming more spiritually enlightened. More people are becoming vegan and vegetarian. More people want to stop using these horrible fossil fuels that are killing us, destroying our planet. Why would we want to drill in the only pure place left on earth where he just said it was ok to drill? The whole thing is frightening. It's scary. but I look at it this way. I'm alive. I'm witnessing this. I was alive at the same time Prince was alive, that David Bowie was alive, even Picasso was alive when I was a little girl.
So, I look at being in a part of history, and in the part of time, that is magical. Im so thrilled that this was the time that I lived in. All of this. All. I hope I get to live to be very old. I really want to see how this all turns out because I know it's going to be magnificent. I want to take one of those shuttles to Mars, I'm looking forward to it.
Boy Scout: Has your bravery grown through the ages?
Bebe Buell: I think when you're younger, you dive into things headfirst. Some people might think "That's brave! Oh, gosh! That was really brave of her. She just burst through that door!"
So, I think it's how you define bravery. I think what happens, as you live your life, is that you start to not care as much about other people's bitterness, or other people's negativity, or people saying bad things about you. You just have to remember the old saying "whatever they're saying about you is really a reflection of themselves." Look at bravery as being able to carry on. Just keep going! People kill themselves over things, of about pain issues. I mean we were talking about Anthony Bourdain, killing himself, it's so tragic. Just stick it out. I want to tell people "Don't take your life! Life is a precious gift. You chose this. You chose to be here. See it through. Even in the worst point, see it through. See it to the end. Try to be a healer." That to me is what bravery is, not being afraid to be a healer. Taking the slings and the arrows, taking it on the chin, not letting it ruffle you, and moving on.
Boy Scout: In a media mad world, can sincerity still be a virtue?
Bebe Buell: Sincerity can only be a virtue in person, and through the pen, and poems, and prose. When you read something Patti Smith writes, for instance, it's sincerity. it's sincere. I don't know if you've read her book "Just Kids," but it's probably the best bio ever written about the early 70s in New York, in my opinion. But sincerity in the media? Yes! There's Rachel Maddow, there's Chris Cuomo. We've got sincere people in the media.
Boy Scout: Abraham Lincoln said: “To summon up our better angels.” What are the words you live by?
Bebe Buell: The words that I live by change every single day.
When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I say myself is "I've got to get through this day but I've got to do something good for somebody else, and I've got to do something good for myself." These are the two goals. They say you're supposed to put yourself first but you have no idea how much happier you become when you do something for somebody else first. It puts an entirely different slant on the day for you, when you do introspection, or when you do your meditation, or whatever. It puts a different slant on your perspective. On what you need to do to become better. That's basically it for me. It's just each day becoming better. I guess that's it! That's my that's my "BB," my "Becoming Better," B & B.
Boy Scout: What is your greatest fear?
Bebe Buell: Dying without making amends with certain people, or having them die without making amends with me. That, and the death of our oceans, our selfishness towards our planet, the extinction of beautiful animals. Those are my top fears, right there.
Boy Scout: How would you like to be remembered?
Bebe Buell: I'm hoping that I will one day be remembered for a book I've written that has helped people or change their lives.
Well, in a case like mine, people are always going to think you're the person you were in 1972. It's just inevitable, and of course that's impossible. When we're 18 our beauty is at its apex, our hormones are at their apex, are our actions are their most selfish. Youth is fleeting and youth is wasted on the young, I think we know that.
I think I'm always going to be remembered as "girlfriend of...," Playboy... certain things that are going to always come up. And it's okay. When you look at somebody like Jane Goodall, she spent her entire life in the jungle fighting for the great ape. Fighting for chimpanzees, fighting for these animals and so that's what she's going to be remembered for. I just don't even know how to wrap my head around the past anymore. Because sometimes it hurts. It's very painful. Because you have to you have to be around people that don't tell the truth about you. You have to be around the public scrutinizing you, saying bad things... and I'm not a real famous person, I'm only moderately famous. So, I can only imagine what it's like for somebody that's extremely famous. You just have to just have to look at the source and try to understand why they're hurting.
Usually, when people are mean, they're hurting. They're hurting and they want to hurt you back. I get a lot of that. I get a lot of that. Especially since I've moved to Nashville. A lot of people from my past. People focus on that stuff because that's the glitz and the glamour, but I also like to remind people that we flock with those of like-minded spirits. We're brought into the universe of those that are like us. I never looked at myself as somebody "tagging along" or "somebody just there...." The thing is, about that, that's painful is that Todd was my boyfriend and I probably wouldn't have had that second, third, or fourth date if I had been in what was considered "a real relationship." Because I loved Todd. I don't want people to think I didn't love Todd. People think "Oh BB, she didn't love him, she was running around" but Todd was not faithful to me on the road. He wasn't a faithful boyfriend, either. I think it's amazing that society doesn't even look at the behavior of the man. They just look at the behavior of the female... and I just reacted to the situation I was in. I was an 18-year old girl. I might have been a little in over my head. I might have been in in a world that I had channeled and visualized since I was 10. So quickly, that I didn't have all the tools to do everything perfectly. I was a competitive basketball player in high school. So, if a guy hurts my feelings, I'm going to like get him back. Not in that mean kind of way, it's like meaning like "Okay! If you're going to date on me, I'll date on you!" You know? It's so childish and horrible how we think when we're young, before we learn, to take it to a higher place.
And sometimes, I often wonder what "Would life have been like if I had been the suffering girlfriend that never looked at another man?" Would Todd eventually have married me or would we have had children? Would he have become faithful? You know, there's so many questions that we ask ourselves, but at the same time, all the pressure is put on the women for that type of reflection, all of it: "The man" he gets to either sport his trophy, or tell his tale of woe, or be pat on the back for dating a beautiful woman. I'm sort of longing for the day when somebody pats me on the back and goes "Wow! You had great taste in men when you were young," Breaks my heart that nobody seems to give a damn that I have had a successful marriage to one man for almost 20-years. A beautiful talented, gifted man with his own history, and its own background of fabulousness. Everybody just wants to focus on the early 70s. Which is fine. I know it's going to be one of my banners to bear for the rest of my life. And thank God I loved the era, and thank God there was so much more that happened to me during that time, besides who I dated. They'd rather just shame me. And shaming another person -- for me, I know that when I'm shamed--- it just makes me want to go and write another chapter of my book. It just makes me want to strive harder to be good. It just makes me want to work harder. It just makes me want to write another song. It just makes me can't wait to get back on stage again.
Whenever I'm stabbed in the heart, it just makes me want to keep fighting.
I don't know if I would have had an opportunity to date Mick Jagger, or David Bowie, or Iggy Pop, if I hadn't just been a young pretty girl kicking around in the right place at the right time. I could have been anybody. The point is, that I left an a lasting impact on some people's lives, and they on mine. One of the things about Bowie, and I that I'd like to make very clear, is that he was not my lover. We did not have sex. You know, we were more just buddies that liked running around New York together, and going to the top of the Empire State Building. By the time the opportunity did come up for us to have sex, we had been kicking around as buddies for so long that .... well, so long? Ten days maybe...? That, it just seemed kind of funny, I know this might sound hard for people to believe, but if they know new David they'd understand, we just started laughing. I mean here we were, naked, and we realized we don't really, even really... Do we really want to do this? I mean, David was having girls come in and out five times a day. He didn't need more sex. And I was living with Todd, and there was that part of me that, you know, didn't want to have sex with other men... There was, you know, there was that part of me that really just saved sex for my true passion. I had to feel something deep. I had to be in love. I wasn't one of those people that could just "Oh! Let's go have sex!" that was never ever the way my heart worked, or my body.... and so David and I ... it's one of my favorite moments with him, and I'll treasure it forever. I've still got a Polaroid that I took of him that day. And we were at the Gramercy Park Hotel, and I remember him going "Ah, let's put on silk robes and play with makeup!" So that's what we did. We put on silk robes, and we put makeup on, and played with different ideas on our faces for like four hour. So that was my big sex with David Bowie.
I just wish people would take that moment to look a little deeper into people's lives. If they're going to categorize it, or make a laundry list of humans that have come in and out of your life. I don't like the people that I've loved, or had experiences with, being put on a list like they're, you know, an inventory or something. Every single experience I've had, good or bad, has had a reason, and a profound impact on my life, and it's not something that I can look at lightly.
Boy Scout: Your 2001 autobiography, Rebel Heart, which was a NY Times bestseller, catalogues a life immersed in downtown New York’s music and fashion scenes. Fantastical friendships with Salvador Dali, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, photography sessions with Franceso Scavullo and Richard Avedon. Your relationship with Elvis Costello. How Rick Derringer and The Cars Ric Ocasek produced your debut EP Cover Girl. How does your past inform your present?
Bebe Buell: I should have written "Rebel Heart" by myself. I should have written it alone, like I am the book I'm writing now. I am more than capable. It was Marilyn Manson that said to me "Good art is either loved or hated, there's no in-between" and that's the way it was with Rebel Heart, people either loved that book, or they hated that book. There was no "Ah, that book was okay." There was none of that. There was no "It's okay." It went straight to the bestsellers list and it probably would even climbed higher if 9/11 hadn't happened, I mean that was the tragedy of that time frame in the horror of 9/11. I'm going to finally tell a lot of stories, but I'm also going to share a lot of the wisdom that I've accumulated through this life of mine. Spiritual inspirations, I'm hoping that it'll be a book that people can turn to in a time of need, I don't want it to just be a story about me and a bunch of fabulous people, everybody on earth knows fabulous people. Fame does not make you fabulous. I'm ready for this book. I am so glad that I've got this opportunity to share what I've learned, more than who I've known, I want to share what I've learned. Because what I've learned is so important, so important.It will help so many young girls get those tools they need for their toolbox.
Boy Scout: Your grandfather played the banjo. Your grandmother played the comb. Music has driven you to relocate to Nashville after spending most of your life in the Northeast. How does it feel to bring the spirit of music alive through performance?
Well I I've always been a performer... and I think when I was 18 and I was dating Todd, I was a bit of a performer even then because I had to look like a grand royal lady on his arm, you know? I was living in the era of the rock golden couple. Mic and Bianca, Todd and Bebe, Angie and David, Alice and Cindy. I had to learn pretty early how to present myself, and as a model I had to learn how to sell a garment, or sell makeup... and it was always people that I was very close to that had heard me sing. It was always, you know, my boyfriend's,bor my girlfriend's "BB, you really should make a record you. You've got such an unusual voice." It was Ric Ocasek and Rick Derringer that finally said we're going to take you in the studio. I will even get the tracks and it all started to play itself out. I think what happened with me is that people got to know me so well as the ornament, as the girl on the arm. They got to know me so well as the fashion statement, as the trendsetter, or whatever. They got to know me so well as that... so when I finally started to show everybody who I was, it made my road very difficult. Even though it showed that I had good taste in covers, or that Ric Ocasek had a good idea with a cover, "Little Black Egg", people wanted to know "We'll, can she write?" So then, I started writing my own songs, and I was I had been writing poetry most of my life. So a lot of the very first songs I wrote were bits and pieces, and scrapes and scraps, of all my poems, and then I just started to actually live that life.
Once the 80s came, you didn't hear so much about me on somebody's arm. Then when Joey Ramone took me under his wing in 1989 and I moved back to New York City again, after having moved to Maine for several years. Everything just took a big turn. And the spotlight on me again as an artist. And it was a really good feeling. It was a good feeling to finally just be me. To be who I was....
And then, suddenly, out of the karmic side-street, out of the wormhole, came the issue of Liv (Tyler's) paternity... which I wasn't certain was ever going to be something that I would have to face, one day. But I knew the day could possibly come. And it changed everything. It took my chance of being an artist again, which I don't regret, I'm not saying that with bitterness, I'm just saying that the recording contract I could have signed with The Gargoyles, suddenly had no legs. Because, I had my big meeting and when they told me I was going to be on the road for the next three years after making an album, I knew that I couldn't abandon Liv. I knew it. I just knew that if I walked away from her at that moment, when she's just figuring out who she is, and her identity is being formed, and then she finds out that her father is not this man, but this man ... it was important to me to keep her healthy through that. I had to keep her healthy because my childhood trauma was not something I wanted to see on anybody else, even though I came from a close, beautiful family, I did have a lot of childhood trauma which I don't want to get into. I don't do the #Metoo thing. I fight my own things, privately.
But here we are in a situation where I had to make a choice because I didn't make perfect choices when I was a 22 year old kid. So here was my chance to do exactly what I should do, and that was be the best mother I could be, see her through this, help her to love both of them. I wanted Todd to feel loved, and I wanted Steven... I wanted them both to feel loved, by all of us. I wanted everybody to feel loved. Sadly, Todd wasn't on the same path with me and he was very angry at me. Very, very mad that I would ever tell... that I would ever reveal... because he felt that I had made a promise to him when Liv was born, and he signed her birth certificate at the hospital, that I would never tell that Steven was her father. I was supposed to never tell, well, I told. And I'm going to pay for that for the rest of my life from Todd. I am going to pay for that. But at the same time, I'm willing to, because I did, in my opinion, I did what was best for Liv. I did what was best for Liv and I'm sorry that I didn't do what was best for Todd. I did what was best for Liv.
So, I carry a lot of pain, as well, along with the imagery that people have created, there is that little girl in me that might even have to stop talking right now because I feel like I'm going to cry...
To learn more about Bebe Buell, visit her here
Photograph of Bebe Buell by Mark Weiss Photography | Artistically reimagined by Marcel Mutt for Boy Scout Magazine
Bebe Buell: I can't even imagine being a kid in 2019, there's just way too much stimulation. The stimulation that I got as a young person was through art, through music.
Now we have smartphones, and we have computers, and all the other instant gratification fixes that, in some ways, has become the new drugs. And the reason why I think people are hooked on opiates is because we have to turn that out of our minds. I'm not hooked on opiates but I'm talking about the people that are in the epidemic that we're having in our country.. I've learned to turn my mind off through meditation. If I was a young 18-year old kid, like I was back in 1972, coming to New York City, I would want to know where the artists gather. Where do they gather? That's probably what I would seek, is finding like-minded people, finding my tribe. That's what I would aspire to. If I was lucky enough to be coming to New York with a scholarship or. going to NYU, or going to a fabulous art institute, or something, then I would make sure that I lived in a dorm so I could meet everybody.
Boy Scout: The late Harry Dean Stanton believed “Everything is predestined. Nothing is important. Life is an illusion. It’s all a movie. Nobody’s in charge” which is lovingly referred to as his Appreciation of Nothing. Do you have a guiding life philosophy that keeps you on the path?
Bebe Buell: I'm still leaving my mind open. I still want to know if there is a possibility that we can have a part in the change of destiny, but I think we choose our bodies, and our lives before we even arrived here. I think we choose our you know our destiny, and it whatever reflects our karma, I think we have to come here and we have to fix it. We have to work on it. We have to learn from it.
I was told by a psychic when I was 20-years old that I was a man in my last life and I broke many hearts (laughs). You know, it's just a revolving a revolving circle, and we have to learn to acknowledge and see what is being given to us. It's a gift this learning process, this universe, the synchronicity of it all. I definitely think it's all one big thing but I don't think it's death that we experience when we are finished with our birth experience. I think it's just onward to the next experience that our karmic choices has given us.
Boy Scout: From the outset you have lived hand to heart running with some of the biggest names in Rock'n'Roll rebellion. Can you describe what this kind of music means to you?
Bebe Buell: The Rolling Stones were the one that really tapped me when I was 10-years old along with The Beatles. There was something about the British Invasion all of that it just touched me it moved me, perhaps it's an association from a previous life? Who knows why we know so early in our lives who our people are, or where our souls belong, but there's just a message that gets sent and we know, we just know. It just didn't seem at all unlikely to me when I was 10 that I would be having tea with Mick Jagger. I assumed that was just going to happen. There was there was no getting around it.
And then when I was in high school, my girlfriend Claire, played me the M5 "Kick Out The Jams" and you know, changed my life. Hearing "Raw Power," hearing The Stooges, there was something about that sound that represented my need to get out of Virginia and be in New York City. It just represented where my spirit was. I guess you could call it my Rebel Heart? I knew. I just knew that I would somehow be there. But it was the music that touched me and I connected with. Once I got to New York, I became interested in all kinds of music ... I loved The Raspberries. I still put that concert at Carnegie Hall in the early 70s as one of my favorite shows of all time. I was one of those lucky people that got to see real rebels. People like Alice Cooper who gave the first real rock extravaganza with props, it was staged, everything! It was extraordinary. And then people just started to become more visual. It spoke to me. It just did. But now, I'm sort of a connoisseur of new, I love classical music. I love Enya, I love everything. There's just something in everything that I find beautiful. But there's nothing like being on an island and listening to Bob Marley. There's nothing like it. There's something to be said for beautiful soundtracks. One of my favorite soundtracks is the Stealing Beauty from the Bertolucci movie.
I think rock and roll and rebellion go hand in hand for eternity. I don't think there was ever a stop or start time for that. It's a soul journey! We're all on a different journey. And some people look at rock'n'roll as entertainment. Me? I look at it as a religion.
Boy Scout: New York. Asbury Park. Nashville. What feelings do these cities elicit in you?
Bebe Buell: New York City, Asbury Park, New Jersey. and Nashville. Tennessee have been my cocoon headquarters. Each one of those cities gave me opportunities to do things, artistically, that I only dreamed about. And respected me, and did not judge me, and did not hang labels on me, and allowed me to be an artist ---which is what I really am--- and that's the pulse of my soul.
You can be an artist and even be somebody that gives your art to another person. You can be a patron of the Arts. There's many-many levels of artistic integrity. Asbury Park it was just this wonderful sense of community. But I have felt a connection to that area since the first time I went there with Todd Rundgren when he had a show at Convention Hall. There was this wonderful boardwalk and amusement park. It was funny. I kept flashing back to being, with a parasol and then a beautiful full fancy lace dress, and I thought gosh did I live here in the 1920s? But my love affair with Asbury started the instant I smelled the air. In the instant I was in that that area. It was a connection that's been profound in my life. And with Asbury Park, I'd like my ashes to be spread off the Jersey Shore... Not all of them. I'm going to save some for another spot that's undetermined at this point.
It's not easy for me to explain how you take these detours in your life, or why these areas come back into your life. But New York, I've done so many different projects in New York. and so many different things. that I will always think it's my home Even though I'm not living there right now, my soul will always be housed there in some capacity. But Nashville, it was like a rebirth, or reentry, into another phase of my journey. I found that I wanted to live here when I was 59-years old and I moved into my new house here on June 6 2013. I turned 60 the next month and I looked upon this is it being represented of a new decade, a new era.
I think one of the things that I love about Nashville, is the no BS. You come to this town, you throw your stuff against the wall, if it sticks it does. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But here, the thing that's beautiful is when you throw your stuff, people either catch it... you don't need to worry about the wall or if it's going to stick. They either catch it, or they let it fly by them and they let the person behind them catch it. Because, there is a musical divinity here. It's almost like a vortex. I can see why people come here and they can't leave. Because the inspiration is off the charts, and the camaraderie, and the community is beautiful. It reminds me of the early 70s in New York. But I caution those that think they can come here thinking that it's going to be an instant band-aid, or an instant fix, to a life that they might feel stuck in. Because Nashville is not for everybody. You have to sort of be called here. I know that it might sound a little wacky to people but I don't think you choose Nashville, I think it chooses you. I was invited to come down here in 2012 and sing on an Eddie Arnold tribute album and it was at that moment that I knew that this was where I needed to live. I don't know if it was the smell of the Magnolia that brought me back to my childhood, because I'm a southern girl, I grew up in Virginia, North Carolina, people don't realize that. A lot of people think I'm a New Yorker, but, I sort of am... It's wild. I don't think we can just stick ourselves in a corner of where were you born.
I'm an "Nash-Yorker" that's what I see. I'm a little bit of both.
Nashville has been incredibly healing for me. I had to take a lot of slings and arrows when I was a young girl, and I always have to be reminded of that. So when I came here. nobody really cared about it about that. It sort of reminded me in the 70s when I posed nude, I couldn't get work in America anymore except for Cosmopolitan and sexier magazines, until my agent Wilhelmina, sent me to Europe. She said "Oh, they don't care about nudity in Europe" and instantly, I was working for Vogue.
There's something to be said about the harsh judgments of others that make us make our left or right turn, and what we have to learn is to just not be detoured by somebody else's anxiety. For me, Nashville has been a big, big band-aid. So, I had all these epiphanies and all these incredible fingers that were going okay, "this is where you need to go." So, you have to learn to listen to your finger. If it points a certain way there's a reason and if you're too scared to try it, research it, and maybe it'll trigger something in you, that will make you know inside if you need to go there or not. I had friends tell me I was nuts. Nobody could believe that I was going to move here on a lark like that just because my inner voice said do it, but it was the best move, one of the best moves I've ever made.
Boy Scout: Punk, which crystalized in New York, was angry, hilarious, incisive and immediate. Much like your sense of fashion. What does personal style constitute for you?
Bebe Buell: I've always wondered myself where it comes from? How we want to dress, how we want people to perceive us, how we want to present ourselves? I've always wondered where that comes from but I guess it just boils down to either, you have a sense of style or you don't have a sense of style. Either you're a trendsetter, or you're a trend follower. One or the other is going to apply to every single person on earth, and I think we've all been a little of both. But, you know, I witnessed people like David Bowie walking into the back room of Max's Kansas City, looking like something that none of us had ever seen before. Richard Hell, holding his shirts together with safety pins because he didn't have the money to buy more shirts. The thing about fashion, and about where it comes from, it's got to be real. It's got to be authentic. It's got to come from who you are. You know, what do you see in a store that makes you want to go for that as opposed to this other thing that 20 people might go for? With me, I always liked something that made me feel comfortable, and of course you always want to look attractive, you want to look attractive to others. But it always blew my mind when I would show up in a pair of little lace gloves, maybe 12-years before other people, or when I would wear corsets-- although, I'm certainly not the first one-- I mean, I saw Cherie Currie in a corset when she was sixteen! There are certain things we wear that, we might do them first, but it will take a Madonna to make it something that is universal.
As we know, Madonna is the master at taking all the street ideas and homogenizing them into something that's commercial. Some people might be angered by that, or might think :Why is she getting the credit?" but it's always been that way. It has always been that way as far back as Van Gogh. The fashion is "What you can afford," basically. Fashion is how do you feel when you put your clothes on? And some people go to extremes. Some people want to wear tons of makeup and wear costumery outfits. There's movements... but the bottom line? Punk rock was all about what can you afford. So, here come the English, and Malcolm McLaren, and they take the essence of punk, which I think real Punk is Iggy Pop, The MC5, Alice Cooper, that that's the real punk rock to me. The second wave of punk is what came to New York City... The Ramones, which to me were just one of the greatest rock and roll bands. I don't know if I really even think The Ramones were punk? The Dead Boys. Blondie (that really wasn't punk to me).... but I think what happened was, that a whole scene got tagged as punk. And then the English, they took it to the fashion place, I think because in New York everybody was just wearing, once again, what they could afford and they got creative.
Debbie could make an outfit out of garbage bags and look gorgeous. Debbie Harry that is. Patti Smith learned very early, all you need is a good pair of black jeans, an incredible black jacket blazer, and a couple of cool shirts, and you are a rock star. It doesn't take a whole lot Then you get the English and they created the fashionable part of it. The Malcolm McLaren part. The part where everybody was very, very very flamboyantly dressed. And then I started to think to myself "Is this as inexpensive as it was on the Lower East Side?" I wondered if these kids were spending all of their money on clothes?
So, back to the original thought: Personal style is what it is, either you've got it or you don't.
Boy Scout: From the Bowery Boys to Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Johnny Rotten, there is something innately important about troublemakers who aspire. In finding your way with little in your pockets, was desperation ever a great motivator for you?
Bebe Buell: I immediately was working as a model and I also met Todd Rundgren not long... I think it was a few months after I moved to New York City. I just never felt a sense of desperation. Some of my friends did who didn't have families and who didn't have moms and dads. There was a lot of people that like in New York City in the early 70s. The "homed homeless," they were to me. They were people with homes, but they were homeless because they had no connections. I've always had a very close family, what it represented anyway. I didn't grow up with my father. My parents were divorced when I was two. So, I had my mother and my cousin Annie, who's 10-years older than I am, who was raised as my sister, were sort of my anchors. I had a strong grandparent presence in my life too, until I was eight, but my grandmother died when I was very young, so I lost all that very young.
So, I had to start my own tribe. My own family. But desperation? I don't know. I think I ever felt that way. I think the only time we ever feel desperate is if we are frightened and we don't know what's going to happen next to us... and I never knew what was going to happen next, but I am grateful that I always had people I could turn to when I was frightened. I never turned to heroin, or needles, or ugly, unattractive, disgusting drugs to make me feel safe. That was the common thing that all my friends that did those kind of drugs, they would say to me. That it was like being wrapped in a warm blanket and I just didn't get it. I'm very grateful that I didn't get it. That I never went down that path. I never understood it. And those that are that were part of that, are they're dead now. Are not alive. They're gone. And I just want to be alive. I want to live for as long as I can.
And if there were ever desperate moments in the future, I would not be afraid to seek some kind of grounding, and some kind of help. I'm just lucky. I have a wonderful husband. I have an incredible daughter. I'm not trying to sound like my life is all bright and perfect because I've had incredible losses in my life, and I've also had a lot of cruelty thrust at me, and I have had to learn how to maneuver it. I've had to learn how to rise above it and make it be fuel for my art.
Boy Scout: Anthony Bourdain’s wrenching “Parts Unknown” finale takes place in New York’s lower East Side where a good deal of your history resides. In that episode, Lydia Lunch says: “People were beautiful, doing things because they had to do it—not because of any other grand idea. Happiness was not the goal; satisfaction was the goal, as it still is. . . . We had to do something because we were burning; our blood was on fire.” Lunch made very clear that in the present day, she wastes no time pining for that bygone time—but Bourdain seemed a little more wistful. As a cultural significant, are you ever wistful for an older, grittier New York?
Bebe Buell: I don't think we even noticed that it was gritty in the early 70s. We just walked down the street in our platform shoes and boots and went to Max's and wherever we went.... I really wasn't a frequenter of the early CBGB's. I didn't really start going to CBs until I started my own band, when Hilly and Louise invited me to play. So, really I didn't start going to CBs and playing at CBs until the early 80s. Eighty or Eighty one, around that timeframe. I went a couple of times in the late 70s, and I went one time in the early 70s but it was by accident because somebody just pointed me to go peek in this dog-poop-ridden club where these really great bands were playing. I remember the stage was over on the other side, if I can vaguely remember. It wasn't where eventually became located. I remember seeing The Ramones one time and just walking away from that experience thinking that "Wow, that was amazing, that was exhilarating, that was like you having a beautiful dinner, or getting a giant Christmas present." It just made me feel great inside. I don't know what it was exactly, and of course Joey (Ramone) went on to become one of my best friends, and one of my lifelong friends, until his untimely passing.
It's hard to say "do I longed for it" because I try not to do that. I try not to sit around and pine for the way things were. I try to find situations that make me feel like those situations made me feel, then. Or, I get that Lydia would say we were "always on the quest for the next"... I forgot what word she used. I think that my quest was a little different and that's the beauty of the Lower East Side, is that everybody's Lower East Side is a different Lower East Side. There were no two Lower East Side's that are alike. For me, I think I was always looking for love. I always just wanted to be loved. I wanted to find that love that was not going to hurt me and that I wasn't going to hurt. That it was not going to become like a basketball game.
One might think "Wow! it's kind of crazy to look for love in New York City, or on the Lower East Side, or in the rock'n'roll world." Yup, I suppose they're right. But love? Everybody wants love, so there's going to be a way to find it.
Boy Scout: In a time of faltering news platforms, transient facts and generations who opt for digital currency over great literature, how will the stories of those that came before us survive?
Bebe Buell: I'm in the process right now of writing my next book and I have decided that it's so important to make sure that part of history doesn't get pushed in the back room, so as it were. I mean some people look at the 90s, like we look at the 70s and that's insane to me. I I'm like "No, no, no... you have no idea what it was like in the 70s!" That's never going to be duplicated. Never, never, never. Maybe on another planet, but here, it's just not going to be duplicated. I felt a sense of relief when I walked into Max's because I met my tribe, or a lot of it anyway. I met people that thought like I did. Going over to Patti Smith's house the first time. She put on a record and I remember we started dancing around the room. And I picked up her hairbrush and used it as a microphone, and she picked up something and used it as a microphone.... and I thought to myself "Gosh! Wonder how many more of us there are they get up in front of the mirror with our hair brushes...?" and this was before she became a singer, when she was a poet.
So, I think it's important that storytelling, and songwriting, and folklore exists. The thing that's so funny about rock'n'roll is stories, by the time they go down the pike, they've been told so many different ways, that the only way for the outcome to come, is back to the truth. There's always going to be storytellers. As long as we've got storytellers we're going to be able to keep all the historical value, the value of the era, the value of everything. I just don't want any of this to be lost. None of it.
I feel I can still be excited by the "now." I went to see The Struts a couple of weeks ago and they were so good, and it was so inspiring, and it just made me realize that there's always going to be something great. There's always going to be a needle in a haystack, you just have to find it. The stories, they'll survive. They'll survive through people like me.
Boy Scout: The last couple of years has seen a country divided. Has the current political climate inhibited or infused your sensibility?
I feel like it's the Fall of Rome. This guy's like Nero, playing the fiddle. I'm sucking it all in. I'm watching it all. I'm in awe of those that are brave, and they get on the internet, and really fight this. I just think that this is leading to the end of all of this kind of way of thinking... I don't think we're going to have fossil fuels in another 20 years. I don't think we're going to be killing a billion cows a week in another 10 years. I think that all of this is changing. This is the apex of the change. It had to come to this, I guess. This is our Armageddon. This is our part of the Bible where the shit hits the fan. It's going to be the battle of good versus evil. I firmly believe that and I believe the good wins. I think we're going to beat this.
People like Donald Trump, they aren't going to be making any decisions for anybody in 10 years. So, ease your mind. Just know that. Know that a change is coming, it's exciting. I feel it, I feel the change coming. I think people are becoming more spiritually enlightened. More people are becoming vegan and vegetarian. More people want to stop using these horrible fossil fuels that are killing us, destroying our planet. Why would we want to drill in the only pure place left on earth where he just said it was ok to drill? The whole thing is frightening. It's scary. but I look at it this way. I'm alive. I'm witnessing this. I was alive at the same time Prince was alive, that David Bowie was alive, even Picasso was alive when I was a little girl.
So, I look at being in a part of history, and in the part of time, that is magical. Im so thrilled that this was the time that I lived in. All of this. All. I hope I get to live to be very old. I really want to see how this all turns out because I know it's going to be magnificent. I want to take one of those shuttles to Mars, I'm looking forward to it.
Boy Scout: Has your bravery grown through the ages?
Bebe Buell: I think when you're younger, you dive into things headfirst. Some people might think "That's brave! Oh, gosh! That was really brave of her. She just burst through that door!"
So, I think it's how you define bravery. I think what happens, as you live your life, is that you start to not care as much about other people's bitterness, or other people's negativity, or people saying bad things about you. You just have to remember the old saying "whatever they're saying about you is really a reflection of themselves." Look at bravery as being able to carry on. Just keep going! People kill themselves over things, of about pain issues. I mean we were talking about Anthony Bourdain, killing himself, it's so tragic. Just stick it out. I want to tell people "Don't take your life! Life is a precious gift. You chose this. You chose to be here. See it through. Even in the worst point, see it through. See it to the end. Try to be a healer." That to me is what bravery is, not being afraid to be a healer. Taking the slings and the arrows, taking it on the chin, not letting it ruffle you, and moving on.
Boy Scout: In a media mad world, can sincerity still be a virtue?
Bebe Buell: Sincerity can only be a virtue in person, and through the pen, and poems, and prose. When you read something Patti Smith writes, for instance, it's sincerity. it's sincere. I don't know if you've read her book "Just Kids," but it's probably the best bio ever written about the early 70s in New York, in my opinion. But sincerity in the media? Yes! There's Rachel Maddow, there's Chris Cuomo. We've got sincere people in the media.
Boy Scout: Abraham Lincoln said: “To summon up our better angels.” What are the words you live by?
Bebe Buell: The words that I live by change every single day.
When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I say myself is "I've got to get through this day but I've got to do something good for somebody else, and I've got to do something good for myself." These are the two goals. They say you're supposed to put yourself first but you have no idea how much happier you become when you do something for somebody else first. It puts an entirely different slant on the day for you, when you do introspection, or when you do your meditation, or whatever. It puts a different slant on your perspective. On what you need to do to become better. That's basically it for me. It's just each day becoming better. I guess that's it! That's my that's my "BB," my "Becoming Better," B & B.
Boy Scout: What is your greatest fear?
Bebe Buell: Dying without making amends with certain people, or having them die without making amends with me. That, and the death of our oceans, our selfishness towards our planet, the extinction of beautiful animals. Those are my top fears, right there.
Boy Scout: How would you like to be remembered?
Bebe Buell: I'm hoping that I will one day be remembered for a book I've written that has helped people or change their lives.
Well, in a case like mine, people are always going to think you're the person you were in 1972. It's just inevitable, and of course that's impossible. When we're 18 our beauty is at its apex, our hormones are at their apex, are our actions are their most selfish. Youth is fleeting and youth is wasted on the young, I think we know that.
I think I'm always going to be remembered as "girlfriend of...," Playboy... certain things that are going to always come up. And it's okay. When you look at somebody like Jane Goodall, she spent her entire life in the jungle fighting for the great ape. Fighting for chimpanzees, fighting for these animals and so that's what she's going to be remembered for. I just don't even know how to wrap my head around the past anymore. Because sometimes it hurts. It's very painful. Because you have to you have to be around people that don't tell the truth about you. You have to be around the public scrutinizing you, saying bad things... and I'm not a real famous person, I'm only moderately famous. So, I can only imagine what it's like for somebody that's extremely famous. You just have to just have to look at the source and try to understand why they're hurting.
Usually, when people are mean, they're hurting. They're hurting and they want to hurt you back. I get a lot of that. I get a lot of that. Especially since I've moved to Nashville. A lot of people from my past. People focus on that stuff because that's the glitz and the glamour, but I also like to remind people that we flock with those of like-minded spirits. We're brought into the universe of those that are like us. I never looked at myself as somebody "tagging along" or "somebody just there...." The thing is, about that, that's painful is that Todd was my boyfriend and I probably wouldn't have had that second, third, or fourth date if I had been in what was considered "a real relationship." Because I loved Todd. I don't want people to think I didn't love Todd. People think "Oh BB, she didn't love him, she was running around" but Todd was not faithful to me on the road. He wasn't a faithful boyfriend, either. I think it's amazing that society doesn't even look at the behavior of the man. They just look at the behavior of the female... and I just reacted to the situation I was in. I was an 18-year old girl. I might have been a little in over my head. I might have been in in a world that I had channeled and visualized since I was 10. So quickly, that I didn't have all the tools to do everything perfectly. I was a competitive basketball player in high school. So, if a guy hurts my feelings, I'm going to like get him back. Not in that mean kind of way, it's like meaning like "Okay! If you're going to date on me, I'll date on you!" You know? It's so childish and horrible how we think when we're young, before we learn, to take it to a higher place.
And sometimes, I often wonder what "Would life have been like if I had been the suffering girlfriend that never looked at another man?" Would Todd eventually have married me or would we have had children? Would he have become faithful? You know, there's so many questions that we ask ourselves, but at the same time, all the pressure is put on the women for that type of reflection, all of it: "The man" he gets to either sport his trophy, or tell his tale of woe, or be pat on the back for dating a beautiful woman. I'm sort of longing for the day when somebody pats me on the back and goes "Wow! You had great taste in men when you were young," Breaks my heart that nobody seems to give a damn that I have had a successful marriage to one man for almost 20-years. A beautiful talented, gifted man with his own history, and its own background of fabulousness. Everybody just wants to focus on the early 70s. Which is fine. I know it's going to be one of my banners to bear for the rest of my life. And thank God I loved the era, and thank God there was so much more that happened to me during that time, besides who I dated. They'd rather just shame me. And shaming another person -- for me, I know that when I'm shamed--- it just makes me want to go and write another chapter of my book. It just makes me want to strive harder to be good. It just makes me want to work harder. It just makes me want to write another song. It just makes me can't wait to get back on stage again.
Whenever I'm stabbed in the heart, it just makes me want to keep fighting.
I don't know if I would have had an opportunity to date Mick Jagger, or David Bowie, or Iggy Pop, if I hadn't just been a young pretty girl kicking around in the right place at the right time. I could have been anybody. The point is, that I left an a lasting impact on some people's lives, and they on mine. One of the things about Bowie, and I that I'd like to make very clear, is that he was not my lover. We did not have sex. You know, we were more just buddies that liked running around New York together, and going to the top of the Empire State Building. By the time the opportunity did come up for us to have sex, we had been kicking around as buddies for so long that .... well, so long? Ten days maybe...? That, it just seemed kind of funny, I know this might sound hard for people to believe, but if they know new David they'd understand, we just started laughing. I mean here we were, naked, and we realized we don't really, even really... Do we really want to do this? I mean, David was having girls come in and out five times a day. He didn't need more sex. And I was living with Todd, and there was that part of me that, you know, didn't want to have sex with other men... There was, you know, there was that part of me that really just saved sex for my true passion. I had to feel something deep. I had to be in love. I wasn't one of those people that could just "Oh! Let's go have sex!" that was never ever the way my heart worked, or my body.... and so David and I ... it's one of my favorite moments with him, and I'll treasure it forever. I've still got a Polaroid that I took of him that day. And we were at the Gramercy Park Hotel, and I remember him going "Ah, let's put on silk robes and play with makeup!" So that's what we did. We put on silk robes, and we put makeup on, and played with different ideas on our faces for like four hour. So that was my big sex with David Bowie.
I just wish people would take that moment to look a little deeper into people's lives. If they're going to categorize it, or make a laundry list of humans that have come in and out of your life. I don't like the people that I've loved, or had experiences with, being put on a list like they're, you know, an inventory or something. Every single experience I've had, good or bad, has had a reason, and a profound impact on my life, and it's not something that I can look at lightly.
Boy Scout: Your 2001 autobiography, Rebel Heart, which was a NY Times bestseller, catalogues a life immersed in downtown New York’s music and fashion scenes. Fantastical friendships with Salvador Dali, Patti Smith, Andy Warhol, photography sessions with Franceso Scavullo and Richard Avedon. Your relationship with Elvis Costello. How Rick Derringer and The Cars Ric Ocasek produced your debut EP Cover Girl. How does your past inform your present?
Bebe Buell: I should have written "Rebel Heart" by myself. I should have written it alone, like I am the book I'm writing now. I am more than capable. It was Marilyn Manson that said to me "Good art is either loved or hated, there's no in-between" and that's the way it was with Rebel Heart, people either loved that book, or they hated that book. There was no "Ah, that book was okay." There was none of that. There was no "It's okay." It went straight to the bestsellers list and it probably would even climbed higher if 9/11 hadn't happened, I mean that was the tragedy of that time frame in the horror of 9/11. I'm going to finally tell a lot of stories, but I'm also going to share a lot of the wisdom that I've accumulated through this life of mine. Spiritual inspirations, I'm hoping that it'll be a book that people can turn to in a time of need, I don't want it to just be a story about me and a bunch of fabulous people, everybody on earth knows fabulous people. Fame does not make you fabulous. I'm ready for this book. I am so glad that I've got this opportunity to share what I've learned, more than who I've known, I want to share what I've learned. Because what I've learned is so important, so important.It will help so many young girls get those tools they need for their toolbox.
Boy Scout: Your grandfather played the banjo. Your grandmother played the comb. Music has driven you to relocate to Nashville after spending most of your life in the Northeast. How does it feel to bring the spirit of music alive through performance?
Well I I've always been a performer... and I think when I was 18 and I was dating Todd, I was a bit of a performer even then because I had to look like a grand royal lady on his arm, you know? I was living in the era of the rock golden couple. Mic and Bianca, Todd and Bebe, Angie and David, Alice and Cindy. I had to learn pretty early how to present myself, and as a model I had to learn how to sell a garment, or sell makeup... and it was always people that I was very close to that had heard me sing. It was always, you know, my boyfriend's,bor my girlfriend's "BB, you really should make a record you. You've got such an unusual voice." It was Ric Ocasek and Rick Derringer that finally said we're going to take you in the studio. I will even get the tracks and it all started to play itself out. I think what happened with me is that people got to know me so well as the ornament, as the girl on the arm. They got to know me so well as the fashion statement, as the trendsetter, or whatever. They got to know me so well as that... so when I finally started to show everybody who I was, it made my road very difficult. Even though it showed that I had good taste in covers, or that Ric Ocasek had a good idea with a cover, "Little Black Egg", people wanted to know "We'll, can she write?" So then, I started writing my own songs, and I was I had been writing poetry most of my life. So a lot of the very first songs I wrote were bits and pieces, and scrapes and scraps, of all my poems, and then I just started to actually live that life.
Once the 80s came, you didn't hear so much about me on somebody's arm. Then when Joey Ramone took me under his wing in 1989 and I moved back to New York City again, after having moved to Maine for several years. Everything just took a big turn. And the spotlight on me again as an artist. And it was a really good feeling. It was a good feeling to finally just be me. To be who I was....
And then, suddenly, out of the karmic side-street, out of the wormhole, came the issue of Liv (Tyler's) paternity... which I wasn't certain was ever going to be something that I would have to face, one day. But I knew the day could possibly come. And it changed everything. It took my chance of being an artist again, which I don't regret, I'm not saying that with bitterness, I'm just saying that the recording contract I could have signed with The Gargoyles, suddenly had no legs. Because, I had my big meeting and when they told me I was going to be on the road for the next three years after making an album, I knew that I couldn't abandon Liv. I knew it. I just knew that if I walked away from her at that moment, when she's just figuring out who she is, and her identity is being formed, and then she finds out that her father is not this man, but this man ... it was important to me to keep her healthy through that. I had to keep her healthy because my childhood trauma was not something I wanted to see on anybody else, even though I came from a close, beautiful family, I did have a lot of childhood trauma which I don't want to get into. I don't do the #Metoo thing. I fight my own things, privately.
But here we are in a situation where I had to make a choice because I didn't make perfect choices when I was a 22 year old kid. So here was my chance to do exactly what I should do, and that was be the best mother I could be, see her through this, help her to love both of them. I wanted Todd to feel loved, and I wanted Steven... I wanted them both to feel loved, by all of us. I wanted everybody to feel loved. Sadly, Todd wasn't on the same path with me and he was very angry at me. Very, very mad that I would ever tell... that I would ever reveal... because he felt that I had made a promise to him when Liv was born, and he signed her birth certificate at the hospital, that I would never tell that Steven was her father. I was supposed to never tell, well, I told. And I'm going to pay for that for the rest of my life from Todd. I am going to pay for that. But at the same time, I'm willing to, because I did, in my opinion, I did what was best for Liv. I did what was best for Liv and I'm sorry that I didn't do what was best for Todd. I did what was best for Liv.
So, I carry a lot of pain, as well, along with the imagery that people have created, there is that little girl in me that might even have to stop talking right now because I feel like I'm going to cry...
To learn more about Bebe Buell, visit her here
Photograph of Bebe Buell by Mark Weiss Photography | Artistically reimagined by Marcel Mutt for Boy Scout Magazine
