Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (7 page)

After a four-day, whirlwind drivathon, with only one major stop to swoon over the glory of the Grand Canyon, I got back just in time. Michael had been getting used to living the bachelor life, thriving on it, basking in it, and I felt like a cowgirl, inept with a lasso as I tried to corral him back into my devoted, adoring heart.

June 1, 1975
—
It was real weird the first couple of days home, uncomfortable even. He’s just so used to being on his own
—
I felt like an intruder, but I’m working on it. I see no signs of drugs, but a few mumblings here and there tell me he’s been indulging during my absence. He’s kind of into himself and withdrawn
—
even from me. We found a pad today, a pink and green old Hollywood bungalow right above Franklin Avenue on El Cerrito Place. It’s so lovely, lots of bamboo, plants, and sunshine, lots of cooking in my big yellow kitchen
.

The other side of the perfection surfaced in the diary a few weeks later:

July 28
—
I really wish at times that I was with a normal-formal guy and didn’t have to worry about competing with music and drugs. I don’t mean to sound negative, because everything is coming along beautifully. Michael’s new band, Detective, has just signed to Swan Song. I always knew we had a link with Peter Grant and the lads, for better or for worse. But even if it’s looking real good now, I know that Led Zeppelin are a hazard in my life
.

Detective—the new HEAVY, cranking band Michael put together—signed on to Zeppelin’s exciting label Swan Song and started tons of rehearsals for the first record. The band consisted of Michael singing lead; the tall, lanky pouf-haired Michael Monarch, ex-Step-penwolf, on lead guitar; Jon Hyde, a true redheaded health freak with pale, white porcelainlike skin, on drums; Tony Kaye, the elegant ex-keyboardist from Yes, on piano; and a soul-brother bass player, Bobby Pickett.

The Zeppelin liaison was a mixed blessing in disguise. I was in Hades-torment, knowing their wretched excess would tempt my fiancé into his usual oblivion, but being signed onto the new label Zep had conjured up with Atlantic Records was extremely prestigious as well as frighteningly hip. I would have to grin and bite it.

Detective had to work a lot with the VP of Swan Song, a young loooong-haired, brainiac hipster, Danny Goldberg, who turned out to be a true long-lasting friend and an instant ally for me. Once a full junkie, Danny had reformed, gotten sober, and was attending the same spiritual Hilda meetings in New York where I had found such helpful solace. I now had one more hip straight person to add to that short list that included Frank Zappa and Woody Allen. “Danny doesn’t get high and he’s cool,” I announced with semi-regularity, but even though Michael adored Danny, he kept on going right down that familiar path of disrepute.

One evening Jimmy Page called to say he would like to come by and meet the whole lineup, and while Michael rounded up the madmen, I made impromptu hors d’oeuvres to pass around while they brainstormed about Detective’s future in the limelight. Jimmy was in one of his humble, gallant moods and asked the band to open for Zeppelin on their next U.S. tour. He went so far as to announce his intention to produce the Detective record himself! Many cocktails were consumed and toasts made, laughter and euphoria abounded. Jimmy still called me “Miss P.” and kept giving me warm, memory-laden glances, which made me feel good. It has always been important for me to remain friends with my ex-loves. Why slather so much time, attention, and energy on someone only to have them disappear into the void with bad feelings?

Zeppelin had moved into Malibu Colony planning to rehearse for their tour in Los Angeles and, as usual, the town was buzzing. A big meeting was set up for Detective to sign the Swan Song contracts, but at the last minute it appeared the contracts had been slightly rearranged by Zeppelin’s bizarre lawyer Steve Weiss. The champagne
got warm while my Michael and Michael Monarch had the contracts surreptitiously checked out across town. I sat on the humongous lap of Peter Grant, cajoling, cavorting, and attempting to keep his mind off the fact that the two Michaels were exceedingly late for the major moment. Even Danny Goldberg started getting grim. I was the sole entertainment while time ticked, t-i-c-k-e-d slowly by. Steve Weiss kept drunkenly checking his Rolex, and I was wearing see-through thin when the Michaels finally burst into the room with pens poised. Michael told me later that he would have signed the back of Peter Grant’s bald head to get his green card. “If somebody asks what musical direction Detective is taking,” Michael said ruefully, “I’ll tell them our only direction is straight to the bank. This is green-card rock and roll at its finest.” When it was all over, I was so relieved I almost sobbed when I could alight from the lap of the world’s most gargantuan and influential rock-and-roll manager.

Michele Myer booked the Starwood, the lowdown club of the decade, and Detective decided to put on a show for their enigmatic, soon-to-be-legendary bosses. The guest list was ours, because dear old Mack truck Shelly was in charge, so the place was teeming with rock puppies ready to ravage. I took turns petting Michael backstage and casually lounging in the front corner booth with Jimmy Page, Peter Grant, and road manager Richard Cole, trying to hide my jitters with lots of ha-has and anecdotes about the good ol’ days back in ’69. Jimmy didn’t have much to say and kept slipping off into a little nap. Hmm. All the hipsters downstairs kept peering up at the booth that housed the holy, but a soiled version of Mr. Clean stood guard in front of the red velvet rope, so there was no chance of intruding worshipers. I once saw Richard Cole kick a fan’s teeth right out of his head at the Rainbow Bar and Grill for approaching Robert Plant from behind. The bicuspids and molars flew through the squalid air, but the person removed from the premises was the worshiping intruder, and I am not kidding.

There was some trouble with the soundboard at the Starwood that night, and Peter alternated between nudging Sleeping Beauty and checking his gigantic gold watch, which resembled a small grandfather clock. I happened to be backstage when that most wondrous and protective of all roadies, Mr. Cole, came to warn the band not to ask Jimmy to jam because he was “very sleepy” tonight. Uh-huh. Okay, Richard, no problem. I sat between Jimmy nodding and Peter nudging, watching my darling husband attempt to be heard, trapped within the screeching wall of noise. Take out your Detective badge,
honey, and arrest those fuckers! After a few numbers, Jimmy nodded his approval and staggered on to smaller and worse things, with Peter assisting his mega-mega-megastar past the velvet rope and into the Hollywood night.

Even if Michael felt like he was selling out for various shades of green, excitement was still high, but a few weeks later Robert’s five-year-old boy Karak died of some mysterious intestinal disorder before Robert could even get to him, which threw the whole Zeppelin camp into a nightmare of despair. Shortly after Robert returned to England, he drove his car into a ditch and had to have his leg rebuilt. Eerie whispers about their much-blabbed-about-but-never-proven pact with the devil started to surface again, while the other three members holed up in the exclusive Colony in separate seaside homes. One night after Michael talked to Jimmy on the phone, I asked how old J.P. was holding up, and the Des Barres wit shimmered through the seemingly hopeless situation, “I’m sure someone’s on either side of him, taking care of that,” he snickered forlornly. Shaking his head, he stared out into space where question marks bobbed up and down. “He just asked me not to give John Paul Jones his phone number.”

Detective rehearsals completed, the band chomping to get into the studio, the old rock-and-roll waiting game continued. Jimmy became unreachable, and Peter Grant kept putting Michael off, telling him Jimmy was “preparing” for the project. We had gotten gloriously chummy with Danny Goldberg, but even he was kept in the dark. As the days went on and on, Michael exuded a gloom that descended over the bamboo, plants, and sunshine that left me weak in the thighs. Detective needed Jimmy Page to produce the record because of the high-impact jolt of publicity that would attend the proceedings, besides the fact that Jimmy “understood” the music, having been pretty much the originator of the heaviest of all metal. How could I help my darling fill his empty waiting days? I tittered around him, full of ideas, attempting to make him happy about being alive even though he was trapped in rock-and-roll limbo. I overcompensated with a smiley-smile until my face cracked, empathized and sympathized until I became invisible.

He was up all night, passed out ’til noon, and after plotting all kinds of hopeful, hypeful cliches, aching to rouse him from that blue, blue mood where thunder cracked and it stormed all the time, I tiptoed into the bedroom with a stunning plate of eggs. “Oh, God,” he moaned, seeing me there like Tinker Bell in an apron. “It’s not
worth it, honey, it’s just not worth it.” He rolled over and faced the wall. Insomnia was eating his brain stem. Platitudes poured forth from me like sickly sweet sap from a Vermont maple: “Everything will be okay, sweetheart!” “It all happens for a reason!” “Something better will come along!” “Have faith, Michael, trust in your higher self!” “Let’s go to Disneyland, and everything will be just fine!” He peered out from his mourning place, wanting to yank out my tongue, but suffering had worn him down. He snapped like a vicious turtle instead, so I suffered the slings and arrows of his outrageous misfortune, bobbing and weaving, hoping to escape from his fancy English boarding school, finely honed verbal onslaught. Pamela Miller, human dartboard. “You’ll never come close to understanding what goes on in my mad head,” he told me, and it hurt to be left out of his turmoil, but I understood that he had to take it out on someone, and I knew that he loved me, so I kept on doting, catering, and smothering him with cupid’s bazookas until the storm was over. His pain was louder than mine, so it always took precedence—but I knew love would prevail, and I could deal with anything as long as I had my heart safely entwined in his.

More than two months passed before Michael was finally summoned to Malibu by Peter Grant. We allowed ourselves to get edgily excited, hoping the ambiguous Mr. Page was ready to produce the Detective record. Michael had arrived home one morning at 3
A.M
., having stayed too long at some drug geek’s house in Laurel Canyon, bombed and complaining that he needed one more song for the album. I had been so relieved to see him but pissed off at the same time, so scrawled out a song called “Recognition” in about ten minutes, just to prove it could be done. Michael loved the lyrics and had them in his pocket when he leapt confidently into the Zeppelin limo.

As I paced around praying the meeting was going well, day turned to night and night to day again. It was the first of uncountable nights I would spend alone while my husband was out rampaging through town. The phone sat mute. He didn’t even call. Was he celebrating without me? Snorting reams of coke? Swallowing handfuls of various multicolored capsules? Swigging Jack straight out of the bottle? The fear inside me was alive. I could see his liver disintegrating, his heart stopping,
ka-bump, ka——bump, ka
— The sun was fully up when he staggered in, and in one instant I knew all was not right with the world. His eyes spun black in their deep sockets, he twitched, he sniffled, he looked crazed-high, but I was afraid to confront him
because the wacked-out look on his face broadcasted bad news. Before he crashed out for the next day and a half, he told me how a forlorn Peter sat him down, pointed to Jimmy, who was nodding out in a corner, and told him Pagey wasn’t able to produce the record because of his heroin problem. Poor Jimmy, poor Peter, poor Michael. Poor ME!!! When Michael came out of his self-induced stupor twenty hours later, I lured him back to the world with Nutty Orange Marmalade Chicken and a fabulously healthy salad topped with toasted sunflower seeds and golden raisins. He washed it down with half a dozen bottles of Chablis.

With Mr. Page backing out of the picture for heart-cracking personal reasons, Danny finally found a replacement to produce the Detective project. Since the new producer’s first name was also Jimmy, when the album came out everybody thought it was Mr. Pagey being cagey, and Michael let them think what they wanted.

Detective’s sound was big and bold, thunderous and blatant. Michael wrote the lyrics, guitarist Michael Monarch wrote the screaming licks that strained to be melodies. The deafening volume hurt your ears real good, but Michael’s arteries popped halfway out of his throat, smarting to be heard. He woed to me that he felt like a heavy metal puppet in a hellhound lip-sync parade. The greedy bastards. It’s a holy roller miracle he doesn’t have to wear double hearing aids like Pete Townshend.

Detective was on the final edge of megaton metal and had a raucous, loyal following; local gigs were packed full of raving metal dogs and spandex-clad girls with ratted, dyed black hair who gazed up at Michael wantonly, tongues lolling. Half-disrobed tarty babes hit on him as if I were invisible— “What are you doing later, Michael? Want to get together?” He acted as if he had never seen the teased beauties before, brushing them aside like annoying wasps. I was always with my man, hanging on tight, my eyes blazing at those naughty girls with lingering glances. I even elbowed one of the most brazen right in her billowing mammaries, but as far as I could tell, Michael didn’t even notice these rampant females, and I believed he was devoted to me, body and soul, so when Detective played San Francisco, that loopy city where everybody seemed anesthetized, I stayed home to paint the kitchen pink.

A few days later I went out to get the mail, and there was a letter addressed to Michael that the record company had kindly forwarded to El Cerrito Place. I examined the obvious girly handwriting with big, fat, loopy vowels, and before I could even hand it over to Michael he grabbed it and dashed down the back stairs. My heart screamed. I stood there, stuck in the kitchen, staring at the dirty dishes until he reappeared, musing out loud, “Isn’t that odd, the envelope was empty.” Mr. Innocence shrugged, and I pushed the rising rancor deep down inside and tamped it flat. I studied his face for a fib and couldn’t admit I saw one.