BeBe Buell: The Girl with the Windex Eyes

The infamous Bebe Buell stopped by the Sirius XM studios to hang out with host, Ron Bennington on the Ron and Fez Show recently.  She’s known for many things, including being Liv Taylor’s mom, dating some of the top Rock Musicians of the 60s and 70s, and being one of the women who inspired the film “Almost Famous”.  Some call her the mother of Rock and Roll.  She and Ron talked a bit about her unique life as one of the original muses of Rock and Roll.  

Below are a few excerpts from that conversation.

Bebe On Rocker, Joey Ramone:

Bebe Buell: You know, I get very emotional when I do “Black Angel”, my song for Joey Ramone. And sometimes um, I lock in with the audience when I do that one live sometimes. I think it’s very emotional.

Ron Bennington: Joey was very important to you.

Bebe Buell: Extremely. He was…you know the thing about Joey that a lot of people don’t understand was..he was in The Ramones and yes he was a punk rocker, but he was also so respectful and in awe of our industry. And he loved the pomp and circumstance. I wish he had been alive to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Because he just would have loved that.

Bebe On Punk Music:

Bebe Buell: Well you know, I just don’t think they really understood it. I think they thought it was cool to despise it. One thing I did not like about punk post ’77 was that it became real posey. Because the real punk rock to me was The Stooges, The MC5, Alice Cooper, that was punk rock. I mean that was like dangerous stuff. I mean you really like feared for your life when you went to one of those shows. (laughs)

Ron Bennington: And people, you know, it’s very funny because Alice gets forgotten about I think sometimes when people are doing the history of it. But if you play some of the early Alice stuff and then the Sex Pistols stuff, musically it’s almost the same exact spot.

Bebe Buell: Yeah well the Sex Pistols to me was just Chuck Berry with a funny singer.  I mean I went to lots of Sex Pistols gigs when I was over in England in ’77 and I saw them and saw The Clash and X-Ray Specs and all those bands and there was an excitement definitely, but it seemed to be more based on fashion. You know, like the way they dressed and that all was sort of born through Malcolm McLaren and him coming to New York and seeing Richard Hell’s ripped up shirt, the New York Dolls all dressed in women’s clothing.

Ron Bennington: It was strange that you even got into punk because you were hanging out with the biggest bands in the world and then the punk bands were playing such little clubs.

Bebe Buell: You know I didn’t pick who I hung out with or what genre of music. I don’t just pick people that way. I mean punk to me is just more of an attitude.   I mean I consider myself…I think I was a punk in high school. ‘Cause I was listening to The MC5 and The Stooges and turning my friends that were into Creedence. I said “That’s great, but listen to this” so I had that attraction. I mean I remember going to see The Stooges at Max’s and..I mean I could barely contain myself I was so excited. ‘Cause I was finally going to see The Stooges.


Bebe on Elvis Costello:

Ron Bennington: So after Elvis Costello, and you thought that was going to be maybe it for you. 

Bebe Buell: I don’t know when you’re that young..You have to remember how old I was. I was 24, 25 years old. I mean I think we all think ‘this is gonna be the one.’   I look back on all of that now and I kind of cringe that I hope I didn’t act inappropriately or ridiculous. There’s nothing more disgusting than a lovesick person (laughs).

Ron Bennington: But even on the other side, wasn’t Elvis Costello writing a bunch of songs about you, even when you two were together?

Bebe Buell: I get into trouble when I talk about this stuff because, you take away the sanctity.  Fans of people like Elvis and Bob Dylan, you know those kind of writers, people think they own that stuff.   The audience….they don’t want anybody telling them what those songs are about. I mean let’s just put it this way. During that period, Elvis wrote me a lot of letters. Stacks of them. And a lot of them contained lyrics. We’ll just take it..we’ll just say that.  But I don’t like to say “oh yeah, he wrote that about me” or “he did that’ or “I informed this”. I don’t like to boast. I don’t think it’s important. I think songs belong to everybody. And I think people should be able to find whatever they want to find inside of them. And somebody like Elvis, I mean he’s so stubborn. Once you’ve figured out what the song’s about, he’ll switch what it means. I mean he’s a lot like Dylan. He’ll take it back and say “No, I wrote this about so-and-so.

Ron Bennington: Right, but you know over the course of your life, you were the muse of a lot of these songs. It’s crazy when you start to think about it.

Bebe Buell: Well, you know, it was a very um..traumultouous, is that the right word I’m looking for?

Ron Bennington: Yeah, you can use that word.

Bebe Buell: It was a crazy time. You know, it was a wild passionate love affair. It was very Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda. (laughs) It was!  It was just one of those…and I think he fueled that, that’s how he gets his fuel I think. He likes drama.

Ron Bennington: And yet there would be so many albums coming out so fast. I don’t know.

Bebe Buell: Oh yeah, he had what I call you know “diarrhea of the lyric”. I mean he just couldn’t help himself. I remember we’d be sleeping in bed at three in the morning and the lights would go on and he would leap up and the pen and the paper. He was one of those people, when he got an idea, it was down on that paper quickly no matter where he was.

Bebe on Mick Jagger:

Ron Bennington: You’ve been around so much genius your whole adult life. Jagger, Jimmy Page…you just go through these people, everybody. Now did you notice that these people tend to work the same way or they all work differently?

Bebe Buell: Oh I think everybody works differently. I don’t think you can really compare any of the great artists. I think the only thing that they really have in common is that they’re very fueled by love and by drama. There’s always a lot of drama around people like that. The only person that kept things kind of drama free was Mick. ‘Cause he was always a very astute business man and very very in control.

Ron Bennington: And then the funny thing though about Mick Jagger is supposedly there’s all this drama on the outside of him, right?

Bebe Buell: Swirls around him.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, it swirls around him, but he’s kind of a calm person in the middle of it all.

Bebe Buell:  He’s always been one of those kind of people that’s really in control. That’s one of those things that I really respected about him. He could be at a crazy party, but he always knew when it was time to go home or when it was time to stop.  He was very…I’ve always admired him. I still do.

Ron Bennington: Then the interesting thing too is for him to be in that partnership with Keith, when Keith is almost the opposite of that, right?

Bebe Buell: Sort of, but there’s a man in there in Keith that’s filled with depth and wisdom. One of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in my life. And one of the best conversationalists and very very deep. Very spiritual. Keith has an incredibly broad perspective, you know, on things that you would never expect. You know, he’s very philosophical and quite interesting.

Bebe on Todd Rundgren:

Ron Bennington: Well you brought up Todd. And I know that you even got him into producing some other bands too, right?

Bebe Buell: I don’t think he would have done Grand Funk Railroad if my high school teenage self hadn’t got down on my knees and kind of begged. Because I mean, I loved Grand Funk Railroad. In high school…(singing) “I’m your captain”…I mean forget it..I mean I loved every single…I mean I used to wait at the store for the next Grand Funk Railroad record. To be first in line to go buy it, you know? And to smell the vinyl and whooo. And so, when Lynn Goldsmith presented that project to Todd… believe it or not, Lynn Goldsmith, the photographer, was the one that sort of presented that project to Todd. At first, Todd was like “I don’t want to do that, you know”.  And I was like, “oh please!!”   I was like on my knees. Same with The New York Dolls. I got down on my knees like a little kid and said “you’ve got to, you gotta do this record, you’ve got to produce them”.

Ron Bennington: What was he looking for? Was he so much into his own head that, I mean I would imagine that if you…

Bebe Buell: Todd’s mysterious.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, if you had Todd Rundgren’s mind, I’m sure it would be hard to get out of it every once in awhile and see what other people are doing.

Bebe Buell:  Todd was extremely..um..oh gosh..I don’t know how to explain Todd. Because I mean, he was my first boyfriend so I really don’t have anything to base it on.  He definitely had his own ideas about things and he was a genius. I mean he could play every instrument and I remember we had a computer in our house, I think around ’76? I don’t think anybody had computers in those days (laughs) I know we had a computer and I just remember there would be all these screens that had these swirly things going around..I mean this was happening in the seventies, Todd had a video studio, I think before anybody. And he spent all that money up in Bearsville, building that Utopia Studio and blah blah blah before there were videos.

Bebe on Steven Tyler:

Bebe Buell: I missed going to The Scene. Even though Tyler says in his book that he met me in The Scene..uh Steven, darling..when your attorney called to ask me to help fix all the mistakes in the book. (laughs) I reminded them that The Scene had been closed for about 7 years by the time you and I began dating, but I…we didn’t meet at a club. We didn’t meet at a rock club. We actually met at the CBS convention.

Ron Bennington: So with Steven Tyler, he was already established by the time that you met him, right? I mean Aerosmith was…

Bebe Buell: When I first met Steven, like the first handshake thingy, was when they flew Todd and I up in a private helicopter to Boston to see them. They were looking for a producer for “Rocks” and I think that he was on a short list and they wanted Todd to see the band. And they flew us up and it had been raining and we missed the show. And there was just all this mud and I was wearing Espadrilles and a white dress. And being all girly and Todd was a little mad at me because I wouldn’t step over the mud. So Steven..hmmm..Mr. Tyler comes leaping over, throws his coat down, does the thing like they do back in the old days, “oh walk on my coat madam” and God only knows what made him do that. So there was like this instant tension. ‘Cause Todd was sort of like “would you stop being so silly and just walk. Who cares if you get mud? Take your shoes off”. You know, they were about this high. And I was  I was young and kind of upset and then Steven saw that and I think he…I think we, you know, immediately were attracted to each other. And he sort of felt sorry for me and I think he wanted to be the chivalrous rock star and take me over the mud. And boy, I’ve never seen myself get thrown back on a helicopter faster than that. (laughs) So that didn’t last. And you know that was that. I never saw him again, but I thought about him a lot. I thought…I used to tell my girlfriends, he smells so good. Because he wore some sort of strange scent like amber or something. And I just remember smelling that and thinking of it all of the time. So then it was years later when I was at the CBS convention in LA with my friends Liz and Rick Derringer who were like my parents. They were…Liz was my best friend and Rick was like my dad. He took me to the studio too when I went in with Ric Ocasek, it was the two Ricks. And then Steven was there at the CBS convention and ironically we were the only people in the room wearing leopard. And it was just sort of like..and he was all like “You! You! grrrr” And he was like “Are you still with that asshole?” (laughs) Talking about Todd.

Ron Bennington: Poor Todd. Poor Todd.

Bebe Buell: And I’m like “Steven, he’s not an asshole”. He goes “Yes, he is”. And you know, I was like Okay! So we saw each other again and then Rick Derringer was opening for Aerosmith. So there was a night in New York in ’76 in the summer where I had to get Liz Derringer to Philadelphia to a show. So we rented a car and I drove 90 miles an hour to get her there in time. And that’s when I saw Steven again. And that’s when things started to heat up.

Ron Bennington: So that’s when it all kind of started between you two?

Bebe Buell: Yeah ’cause Todd was on the road a lot and he had a female road manager and I knew they were..they were um..they were practicing all this crazy yoga, kundalini, this and that and you know wrapping their legs around their head and I was just a kid and I was like what the hell? You know, what are you doing? Kundalini rrrrrrr. You know I was…I just felt very threatened because this woman was incredibly spiritual and you know, knew all the terms. You know, Todd was very on the quest then.

Ron Bennington: To find something.

Bebe Buell: Yeah he was really searching and so she was older and she knew all that stuff. So I felt extremely threatened and I knew then…I wasn’t married to Todd. I always try to remind people..we…there’s was no ring on it! We were living together. If I had been his wife maybe things would have been different. But I wasn’t his wife and we had one of those sort of crazy seventies relationships where we lived together, we loved each other deeply, but there were moments of estrangement.

 Bebe on John Lennon:

Ron Bennington: You knew John Lennon…

Bebe Buell: Very well.

Ron Bennington: Always acted kind towards people..

Bebe Buell: Always. Always.

Ron Bennington: Even when drinking?

Bebe Buell: No. (laughs) No. I was there for the famous “kotex on the head” stunt.

Ron Bennington: Oh is that right? On the Smothers Brothers show?

Bebe Buell: No that was at the Rainbow Bar & Grill. He was there with Harry Nilsson and all these people in the upper tower. And Todd and I were there. And I think uh what’s his name was there too? Brian Wilson.

Ron Bennington: Well that’s strange.

Bebe Buell: And boy, they were all tying it on. Let me tell you. And John put that kotex on his head and boy, Todd went ballistic. And then he made those comments to the press and John wrote him back a letter in the new musical…and it turned into this whole big feud.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, then he decided, I think, didn’t he even say Todd was ripping him off somehow?

Bebe Buell: I don’t know. I don’t know…it just got so dumb. So that night on my 21st birthday when Mick took me over to hang out with John Lennon, the night John Lennon sang Happy Birthday to me, I called Todd at the studio because Todd couldn’t take me out on my birthday because he was recording.  And I put him on the phone to John Lennon and I said “work it out”. ‘Cause I just thought it was ridiculous. I thought that they should be friends. You know, philosophically they had a lot in common and I thought that they were both on such an extreme…spiritual quest. But see John was very human and admitted his faults and that’s what you loved about him were his imperfections. Where as Todd, he looked at himself sort of as a super being and I don’t think was as up front about his faults.   So he wasn’t as likeable when he made a mistake. When Todd made a mistake people would get incredibly shocked and oh the almighty Todd, he’s made a mistake.

Bebe on Lindsey Lohan:

Ron Bennington: You got some press recently…

Bebe Buell: Uh-oh.

Ron Bennington: …over the Lindsay Lohan stuff. Did that kind of get blown out of proportion?

Bebe Buell: You’re making my nose run. It did. Because sometimes the spoken word takes on a whole different meaning. When you can’t hear a person’s inflections and humor. A few of the things I was saying I was saying in jest. I was joking but once it comes out in the written word…I mean the Orange Oprah is after me now.

Ron Bennington: The Orange Oprah. (laughs)

Bebe Buell: I don’t know…I’m toast. I’m toast now. I’m gonna have Madonna and both of them boiling me in oil. The new oil over at Burger King is Bebe oil. (laughs)

…Yes, all I said about the Orange Oprah was that I didn’t agree with the way that the career was being handled. But who am I to judge? I mean my parenting, the way Liv was raised and the way all that went down was certainly not traditional. I am not here pointing a finger or judging. But the way it came out in the written word…

Ron Bennington: But also when you see what this kid Lindsay Lohan is going through, you know…

Bebe Buell: I would abduct her. I mean is that bad to say? I would abduct her. And she would not..I just would not let her out of my sight. I mean..and I know she’s older and she could probably…you know, she’s not underage…but I just don’t think it’s right to go drinking with your kid or to go to parties with your kid or to kiss your kid on the lips and do all that kind of stuff for the camera if there’s any kind of controversy surrounding.   ‘Cause there’s a big talent here. There’s a girl that should be winnng Oscars. I mean she’s brilliant. I’m sorry. I love Lindsay Lohan as a talent. She’s even got a great voice. She’s like a young Ann Margret to me.

Bebe on Performing:

Bebe Buell: And December 15th, I’m doing Irving Plaza. And that’s a tribute to Don Hill. You know, the beloved Don Hill whom we lost so tragically.

Ron Bennington: So many people, I guess, over the years for you huh?

Bebe Buell: Oh man. Well, Don was my mentor, you know? Don and Joey, they were the two big mentors of my musical career. I mean Ric Ocasek was too, but he’s still with us. But losing Joey first of all, ’cause I really…I don’t think I would have ever gotten the recognition I got in The Gargoyles and the recording contract I was offered in 1990 if it weren’t for Joey. Joey really fought hard for me. And he just really believed in what I do. And he would just…when people would go “oh isn’t she Playboy?” And he would always go “Aw Bebe could eat Playboy for lunch, you gotta come see her, she’ll kick your ass” (laughs) He would do that for me. And he would get people that maybe would be skeptical and maybe not want to come.  He gets ’em down there to see me and he would sort of say “you you gotta do this for me, you gotta go down there and you got to see this”.

Ron Bennington: How do the people that did not know you as being on stage, people who knew you as, oh you’re with Todd or whoever, is that weird for them to see you now in this stage of your life?

Bebe Buell: I think I’ve been doing this over 30 years now and I think people are really starting to get kind of used to it. And when I’m done with my residency at The Cutting Room..I’m going to do a residency at The Cutting Room. We’re looking like the month of January for that. I’m just gonna play once a week at The Cutting Room and anybody that hasn’t seen me yet, they’re welcome to come down there and I will personally put a little boot up their butt for them. And make them feel loved.

 

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You can hear the full interview in its entirety on Ron Bennington Interviews on Sirius XM Satellite Radio.  Don’t Have Sirius XM yet?  Click here for a free trial.

For more information on Bebe you can follower her twitter @bebebuellband or visit her website.

Bebe has a new album out, you can check it out by clicking below, and to find her tour dates, check out her myspace.