Bebe Buell Quotes

1. I did Playboy in '74, which was unheard of. I'd been in Vogue and when I did Playboy no fashion model had ever done that, and I don't think any girlfriend of a rock star had ever done it, either.


2. (about her daughter, Liv Tyler) It's so beautiful to watch her 'cause she loves every second of performing and just glows. She's so brilliant.

3. To have a promiscuous image when I'm not a promiscuous person has been difficult for me.





4. Eric Clapton played Madison Square Garden and invited Todd to come up and jam at the end of the night. I met Mick that night. It was on. It was, like, instant flirting.

5. My reputation is so overblown. I can count the number of men I've dated on two hands. It's just that you recognized their names, so it looks beefier, it looks more. But most of my friendships with musicians are platonic. I always laugh at the sexual image I have because I've never been known for my prowess in the bedroom. I'm sure that a couple guys even broke up with me because I was so bad in bed.

6. It was always about the music for me. Some of the wives, they never really like the road. They felt very threatened by all the women and the lifestyle. But I wasn't one of those. People have to stop being so judgmental. If I'd been Todd's wife, maybe things would have gone totally different. But there was no ring on it. I was a free agent. And I was a very independent, successful girl. I did my own thing, I made my own money, I bought my own airline tickets. When I got a paycheck, I went to Bergdorf and I bought my own clothes. There were no rock stars buying me my clothes.

7. I think songs are poetry to some people like Patti Smith who started out being a poet, before she became a musician; but, I think for me when I think of a lyric I think of song more than I think of a poem. When I was young I wrote a lot of poems, I think most young kids do that. For me a lot of those lyrics are just moments of songwriting. 

8. (on Steven Tyler) Steven's my best friend. I love that guy.

9. I'm also one of those people that even when I have a backstage pass, I like being in the pit with the people. Yes, I've watched it from behind the soundboard, I think even from the ceiling a couple of times. I maybe even hung from a chandelier or two. But I think the best place to see music is from the vantage of the audience, where you're supposed to see it. If you come to a show, you'll see that the front is always filled with 20-year-old girls.

10. I was once at a table at some restaurant in New York with Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and Eric Clapton. At this point I had dated both Jimmy and Mick, and Rod fancied me big-time, but I hadn't snogged him, so there was a flirtation going on. Woody had a little crush on me from when I had stayed at the Wick. So there was a lot of tension: Everybody just wanted me dead. I swear to God. I felt like Lillie Langtry, because I was the only woman sitting at this table. Woody felt very territorial, because he thought of me as his little girl, and he was keeping an eye on me. He pulled me aside and whispered: "You know, you can't date all of us." "Why?" I said. "You guys date all of us. What's the difference?"

11. These are very uncomfortable questions, to be honest. As you get older and you live your life and you look back on things your ideas change hugely! Men like Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren have very personal and extreme fan bases so it's best to let them have their own ideas about what the songs say. 

12. I was on tour with Aerosmith in Europe, pregnant and hormonal, with a lot of crazy crap going on and jealous, mean rock wives around me. Only one, really. I actually like all the other wives. Joe Perry's first wife, Alyssa, was a monster. She was a horrible, horrible person. And Steven says that in his current book and I say that in my book. It's common knowledge. Billy Perry I love, Joe's wife now. The first wife, she was not very nice. And it's just…I got frightened. I was 22 years old. And Todd felt a certain responsibility for me, since we'd been together forever and he took me back. We decided that we were gonna be the parents together. Steven was just in no shape. But bless him, he finally got sober and realized that. He tried very hard to make up for all of that. I do not punish him. I forgive him. We all do. I mean, Liv turned out great. I did my job. 

13. My mother met him (Iggy Pop) and thought he was smart. She thought he was weird-looking, but she thinks everyone I bring home is weird-looking.

14. I didn't take a lot of drugs, like everyone else. I'm not going to say I never did drugs. I just wasn't a drug addict. I never shot up heroin. But I tried psychedelics and I smoked weed. Believe me, I became a vegetarian from being a teenager in the meatpacking district. Back in those days, there were cows going by on hooks. And if you're tripping on good acid and you see that, you'll never touch meat again.

15. (about her daughter, Liv Tyler) She is my proudest life achievement: She and I have always been great friends, and I simply adore her. I'm her biggest fan, as she is mine.

16. I think every little girl would like exclusivity. But it just wasn't like that in the seventies. You sort of had to roll with the punches. I just figured if he was gonna date, I was gonna date, too. I think I had lovely boyfriends. I think for your first three boyfriends to be Mick Jagger, Todd Rungren, and David Bowie, I think that's okay. I can't imagine why anybody would have a problem with that.

17. I think I acquired a lot of my young audience from Liv. I think some of her fans come to see me because of curiosity, just like they go to see her dad. And then they never leave. But also I play rock music and it's dangerous. This is not a fluffy act. You're not gonna come to my show and get flowers thrown at you. My influences are Iggy Pop, Mick Jagger, the New York Dolls, the MC5s. 

18. Drugs? No, I'm not attracted by anything that's going to hurt me - except maybe a man.






19. (on Iggy Pop) I had a fling with him. But we have remained friends through many decades.

20. Now fidelity and marriage and commitment are very important to me. I've been with my husband (Jim Wallerstein, a.k.a. Jimmy Walls, who produced Hard Love and plays lead guitar on it) for twelve years. I couldn't even imagine that lifestyle. And I'm not saying it's perfect. It's painful when you see your boyfriend flirting with some girl or you know he's been with somebody on the road. I was a young girl and had brilliant suitors. I sort of had that fantasy of being one of the muses of Paris and hanging out with Toulouse Lautrec and Picasso. I just followed my heart, you know? I never went looking for boyfriends or anything. I was just, I guess - what do you call me? - a Forrest Gump of rock and roll. I happened to be in the right place at the right time.

21. Being involved with Elvis Costello was probably the most romantic thing that ever happened to me. 

22. I tried not to focus on sexism, and I consider "groupie" a sexist term. I think it's a misused term. I've seen Jerry Hall called a groupie in the English press, and this is a girl who gave Mick Jagger four babies, and how many years did she spend with him? When people just decide that every woman in rock and roll is a groupie because she dated a rock star or two, tha's when I draw the line. A groupie was the girl that came backstage offering the blow jobs to the crew or this or that. I was a rock girlfriend.

23. I can't imagine rock stars in politics. I mean, they crack now under just a little pressure.






24. I think the first time someone asked me if I was a groupie, I either punched them or I kicked them in the balls.

25. I'm a Stones girl, but it was as soon as I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show. I was 9. The whole British invasion sort of changed my life. It made me want to move to New York.

26. Every time my heart gets broken, it motivates me to do ten more projects.

27. I toured with Led Zeppelin. Once I went in first class with them from L.A. to New York. I can't even recount how insane that was. I had my South American raccoon with me and the raccoon was supposed to go under the plane with the dogs. But Jimmy Page bought the raccoon a first-class seat and it ran amok around the cabin and two of the stewardesses…I mean, we didn't even have stewardesses. They were in the bathroom with the band most of the time.

28. I have Goddess Blood and Mensa DNA!

29. Labeling. I think it sucks. You never see it happening to men. And if you do, it's rare.

30. Eileen Ford had seen a picture of me when I was a lot younger, but she wanted me to finish high school. My mother sent her my graduation photo and next thing I knew, she was calling the house and we were on an airplane. I remember she made me spin around, she measured me, and she made me stand on the scales - very old-school - and then she gave me a contract. 


31. People dated many people in those days. If you had a sensitivity about that or if you had a jealous streak, that wasn't your era. You know what I'm saying?

32. (David Bowie) We made one feeble attempt at having sex and we ended up in a heap of laughter. We just didn't have that kind of relationship. We would play with makeup and go see the Rockettes and he would ask my opinion of clothes, you know what I mean?


33. If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything!

34. Debbie Harry I love. She's one of my oldest friends. Chrissie Hynde has been a girlfriend of mine since I met her at the Portobello Hotel when I was a young model and she was a maid. This was before the Pretenders. When Patti Smith was still writing her wacky poems, she and I would get hairbrushes and put on Stooges records and pretend to be rock stars in front of the mirror. And they're all still going! I just saw Debbie last week, she blew the roof off the place! When you go see Tina Turner, you don't go: "Hmmm, that woman's old." You go: "That woman kicks my ass!" I want to carry the freak flag with them.

35. I would never date two guys in the same band. Why is it so important to you, sweetie? Woman to woman? Why are these rock star guys so important? I'm just curious. Don't you think it's weird to ask about them when somebody hasn't dated rock stars in, like, 30 years? Isn't it time to put it to bed? That was my life in the seventies. I've been with three men since 1985 and I married two of them. Nobody has ever been a conquest for me. I like relationships. When I've ever had a fling in my life, which was maybe three times, it was because that person worked better as a friend. Maybe my crush on them or their crush on me might have resulted in attempted scrunching.

36. The problem was that everything was too easy - modeling, traveling, partying - and I forgot my original desires and beliefs. I started to fall into the pattern of going the route that was the most fun. And when I was young, I thought it would last forever. I thought that I would always be twenty-one and a size six and the flavor of the month. Certainly I wasn't as focused or driven at twenty-one as my daughter was. I was still trying to figure out stuff, like a clumsy colt stumbling around in my platforms. I would go from wanting to be a rock star one day to wanting to be Lauren Hutton on every Vogue cover the next. Or I'd want to be the perfect rock and roll wife one minute, then wish I were a mother. And - God help me - at one point, I wanted to be a music mogul. I had all kinds of desires and there were all kinds of obstacles to fulfilling them. I wanted to be a sexual, free-spirited Brigitte Bardot/Jane Birkin type, but inside I was a frightened little girl with sexual hang-ups that thwarted that ambition.


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