Bebe Buell continues to be around the music scene to this day and we enjoyed a glorious walk in the Nashville area together, telling stories of Todd Rundgren, The Stones and much more. Bebe is a lover of country, rock punk and more. A true storyteller and a great soul
Taking a Walk.
I have the energy of twelve wild bulls, and I think I got that from Mick. I exercise the same way he does. I put myself into a big empty room with a mirror, and I just move and I go crazy, and I lock it in, I lock it out.
I go up, I go down, I go round, I go round.
Welcome to the Taking a Walk podcast Music History on Foot. Join your host Buzz Night for a walk and talk near Nashville, Tennessee with American singer, model, and New York Times best selling author Bb Buell. Bb has been around so much music history, and you'll just love the conversation as it happens. Next on Taking a Walk with Buzz Night.
It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.
Yes, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I know, doesn't it feel like that?
It goes bbe.
We have to keep it a secret where I live. But it's magical. We can say that much.
We're in a magical spot, uh, somewhere. We're in a Nashville suburb, somewhere near Nashville, Yes, very close to Nashville. Yes, And I'm so glad that we got to take a walk in person.
I can't tell you how excited.
We just walked past somebody that plays with Reeba McIntyre.
Oh, there you go.
You're going to see a lot of country people and a lot of rock stars in this neighborhood. But that's all right.
Well, thank you for taking a walk. I'm so grateful.
I'm happy to be taking a walk with you.
Finally, yeah, we we had a date on the books at one time, kind of and I think you were you were playing in your band at that point.
And got a little rockus.
I think, right, well then, I I actually, when I saw all the wonderful cool people you've interviewed, I'm like, I better get my butt.
On that podcast because it's a awful cool.
Well, so let's talk about some of those folks because they intersected in your world.
First of all, this wonderful.
Photographer named Bob Grewin was on the Taking a Walk podcast.
Yes, well, Bob Grewin was one of the first people I met in New York City when I was first dating Todd.
He had just gotten this brand.
New le May gold suit from Granny Takes a Trip that he wanted Bob to photograph him in sort of looked like an Elvis Presley kind of suit, except tailor tighter. And went over to and he brought me along, and Bob ended up taking the first picture ever taken of he and I that was published.
It was a picture of me on the floor hanging onto his leg.
And gosh, and I wasn't dressed up right, I didn't have any makeup on. But the pictures are pretty awesome. They're all over the internet if you ever wanted to see it.
Was that in the West Village, Yes, yeah.
And then.
You know, because I lived in New York City, I would see Bob grewing everywhere.
He was a part of the fiber. Yeah, he was New York City as far as I was concerned. And he knew everybody, and everybody knew him and loved him.
Yeah.
He was one of those guys. He could kind of be invisible.
He wasn't in the way ever, And that's why everybody always let him come backstage, and he was always a part of everybody because he had, as my mother would say, he had perfect etiquette.
Yeah, yeah, I could feel that about him. Just the time spending and as we were walking in that West Village area, there. You know, he'd walk by people and you know somebody, Hey, Bobby, you know, I mean he knows everybody.
Well, yeah, he's only lived there for fifty years.
I mean, my god, hass been in the same place since I met him?
Yeah, and he took me by that first place that he ended up running into. I guess you know John and Yoko when they lived there. Yeah, that little spot, which, by the way, even if you've seen it lately, it looks it doesn't look like anything special, that place in the West Fourth area where John and Yoko lived, it's.
It's kind of dilapidated.
I wonder what that is. Boy, there's something going on in there. Yeah, I wonder who it is.
But so we had Bob on and then there's another gentleman. I think you probably crossed paths with. We walked in the village as well.
Danny Fields.
Oh my god, are you kidding? Yeah, you saw that.
Danny Fields gave me I think probably the most ultimate quote anybody has ever given to a publication about me for.
The New York Times.
I don't know if you read that New York Times story.
On when you were when you had gone back for the promotion of r when.
I played the National Arts Club. Well, Danny, you can go back and read it. He said something that just I was so touched. Yeah, Danny was also one of the first people I met when I came to New York. But it was It's funny because the first time I met Danny was just at Max's, you know, just casually. And then when I met him again, we were Todd was looking to trip on something, you know, he wanted to try tripping, and we were sort of told that Danny had the best stuff and that he had the real stuff, the Timothy Leary you know kind of stuff, and and and.
Todd's like, oh no, no, I don't want to take acid.
I I want to you know, take psilocybin or.
Something like that.
And so I went over there and I got it and we.
Did that trip.
That was something that was the day too, that Todd found that artist on Fifth Avenue, because we we literally walked all the way from the village to the park, that's how high we were. But but in a joyous, wonderful way. It was just so much fun. And there was this gallery and Todd. Todd was like, oh my god, look at these paintings.
They were so surrealistic.
So we wandered in and got to know the artist and he ended up doing a Wizard of True.
Star the cover.
Wow, that crazy cover that shows him face and if you look at it another way, the side view it as well. It plays an optical illusion with your eyes.
Oh god.
Yeah, so it's it's awesome.
So yeah, I just I miss New York because it's not the New York I loved anymore.
Right.
So then there's one more person that we had for sure that we had on the podcast who I know, you know, and he's terrific, and it's a Richard Baron.
Oh well, of course I adore him.
Yeah, but a special guy.
He's extremely What I love about Richard is he's extremely positive, upbeat. He just doesn't let the chips get him down. He keeps on trucking, you know, keeps on staying out there, and.
He's such a student of what's going on around obviously the music scene. I love his book that he wrote, and obviously he's trying to pass it on to well.
Yeah, he is very, very devoted, as is Bob Grew and to staying in that community and keeping it intact. Whereas I get the bug, I get itchy. I need to try other things, you know, I need to experience other scenes. And that was one of the things I loved about Nashville back when I first came here in twenty twelve. It was so exciting. It reminded me of New York City, that same energy and vibrants and bands and everybody hanging out together and country people and rock people mixing. And I can't stand Kid Rock though, but we don't have to talk about him.
That's cool.
I know people think about Kid Rock when they think about rock people in Nashville, but trust me, he's not our favorite rock guy.
By any stretch of the imagination. We've got Peter.
Frampton, We've got all kinds of amazing rock stars.
In Nashville, and they aren't Kid Rock.
You know. I'm sorry, dear Lord, but I don't like to ever feel that way about a person. But you know, he's just a little too extreme for me, a little too so.
Paint a picture of what a typical night at Max's Kansas City was when we were hanging around there.
Well, if you were a model like I was, you know, you have you had to get your work done.
You would work and get done around four or five, go home and sleep. Then you get up around ten and get ready, and you didn't get to Max's until eleven or twelve, and then you would stay there until four five in the morning, then rush home, get a few hours of sleep's do it all over again.
It was just every night.
And of course there were those nights where when you're young, you need more sleep, and I, you know, I would sometimes just not be able to function the next day because I'd be so tired.
But yeah, a typical night.
At Max's was you get there, It depended on who you were sitting with or what the vibe was, where you could eat because Mickey was very, very generous and all of us could eat whatever.
We wanted, and.
Alice Cooper always picked up to check. Yeah, he was so sweet. He would just buy everybody dinner and drinks all the time. And I think he was one of the first people I ever met that had a credit card. And I think he was one of the first people that they issued one two in his business anyway, because credit cards weren't common until later in the seventies. Yeah, people just I remember several rock stars when they got their first credit cards. I was there when I was Costello got his first credit card, but that was in England, and I remember he propped.
It up.
Against his records and sat on the couch and just looked at it and he said, Babie, look I've got a credit card. I said, congratulations. I said, it means you, you know, you're doing well enough that the banks think that you should.
Have one of these things.
You've arrived.
Yeah, so it's funny how things have changed. And also, you know, we did hi there. We also didn't have answering machines and cell phones, and when you wanted to get through to somebody who had to write them a letter, and if you were super fancy, like a Jimmy Page or somebody like that, you'd send a telegram, you know, get a telegram.
Yeah, of course I got.
I've gotten several telegrams in my life, and I've sent a few. And that was sort of like the sexiest way you knew somebody really liked you if they sent you a telegram. And but I remember too when we first got our first answering machines and they they basically would just be a cassette that you put into this machine. And yeah, well I've saved every single cassette.
You wouldn't believe some of the messages I have.
Oh my god, Now have you mastered them so they can still exist?
No, actually they're They're still in their cassette form, but they're in my temperature controlled room.
Oh yeah.
I mean, I'm not sure if I would ever, you know, invade the privacy of some of the people who's but I've got messages from Mick Jagger, I've got messages from everybody, and David Bowie, I've got all kinds of very excited all my modeling agents.
Bibe, you're late, you know, get to Reno.
I've got all that, and you know, and my mother, Bibe, did you do Playboy?
H you know, but this was.
This was you know, later because in seventy four when I did Playboy, we didn't have answer machines. But later I did it. I did another little picture.
For them, and when my mother heard about it, she called me up. And so I've got all that.
But you really had to be be creative when you recording somebody in those days. So you really knew somebody liked you if they did a telegram or they sent flowers, or they would send a.
Car for you, you know, to come.
I want you to come to my show, I'll send a car and it would be a limousine, you know, it wouldn't be just a car, it would be a lemo.
And uh, did anybody ever send a plane for you?
Yes? I have had a plane send for me.
Probably more than once, twice.
Only twice, only twice. But yes, I have had that pleasure. Do you.
Can you reveal who?
Well, Mick Jagger once invited me out to mon Talk and I took a small plane that he arranged from Teeterborough and that was a thrill. And I thought for sure somebody else would be on the plane, you know, but I was the only one, and so that was exciting. And then when I got there, it was so funny.
You know. We were we were.
Sort of we were really good friends. We sort of dated. We it was our relationship was strange. But he was seeing a mayor married woman over the hill. I'm not going to say who, because they would sneak off. And so when I got there, I wasn't really there as his date or his girl. I had my own little cottage because Andy had all these little separate, little guest houses all on the property and what's his name arrived.
Oh he was so sweet. I loved him.
He was a keyboard Billy Preston. Billy arrived and he was next to me, and it was just a rehearsal, rehearsals.
So I was like the only.
Person there with Billy Preston as the other guests, and the Stones would rehearse in the big front room and Andy's estate in Montalk and that was very very And the other person that ever that sent me playing with Stephen And yeah, Stephen.
Had his own plane.
Mick used to check art of them, but Steven always had his own claims. Mm hmmm, these boys, I'll tell you silly things.
Right, You'll be right back with more of the Taking a Walk podcast. Welcome back to the Taking a Walk Podcast.
So you have this unique trait that you've found a way in your life to make everybody feel comfortable and you know, just get a great vibe from you because of who you are.
Who taught you that, Well, I'm.
Not sure you can be taught that, but I was taught etiquette and manners and cordiality from my mother and my grandparents. It's just a tradition in my family, politeness, education if I'm gonna have, like when I was young, if Mick Jagger would invite me to some extravagant dinner, or Brian Ferry or somebody invited me to a dinner where I knew there was going.
To be royalty or.
Politicians, or I would really study up on what was going on in the world so that I would know what I was talking about when I was spoken to.
I was prepared, you know.
I understood what the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King meant, whereas a lot of people my age didn't even care. So I understood the Vietnam War because my stepfather went to Vietnam. I understand that I understood living on military basis because my stepfather was in the military, as was my father. But I think it becomes for me about karma. You reap what you sow. I just believe that. So if you have to treat people the way you would want to be treated, and even people I don't like, instead of being mean to them or shunning them, I just tell them directly that I don't care for them, you know, And I don't say it in a mean way or I just say it's best we just stay away.
From each other. We don't click.
You know.
I think that keeps you.
It keeps whatever karmic bond you might have left over from a previous lifetime.
You can tear up that contract. I believe that. I believe you can get away.
From certain situations because you know, you know how I feel.
I don't believe that this is our only.
Life, and I believe I've been here many times.
Oh my lord, And what.
Gives you the most joy now in your life?
The most joy? I think it's a combination of things.
I can't pick one thing, but I think it's enjoying being able to live.
Like I lived. I've earned this.
I've worked my whole life for this, as my husband, who I've been with for twenty four years. My daughter is very successful. I think the joy I get from watching the productivity and the success for people I love, and.
Especially my daughter.
But mostly I get from animals and from cooking food, you know, being having people in my home cooking for them.
Joy.
I get it just from joy. Surprising me every day brings me joy.
That's something you didn't expect.
Yeah, Yeah, I enjoy reading.
I enjoy my Instagram page. I love what it's done for my ability to reach my fans.
Because I'm an eclectic taste, I'm a cult figure more than I am a household name, and Instagram has helped me reach more people. And I've noticed it in the last couple of shows I've played. They're sold out, They're packed, and I think that I owe that to social media.
I think so yeah, But you.
Know there's a double edge to that sometimes, right in terms of.
Oh yeah, But I keep away from that element.
I balance.
I don't spend a lot of time on Facebook where people get into those disgusting arguments. And as far as Twitter goes, I've still got the account. But he took away my blue check as he did, everybody didn't want to pay him. I just replaced it with a little blue heart and a few people followed suit.
I keep that page because of.
Some of my fans that are there, but I really don't dip into I don't chat, I don't do any of that.
So a lot of music has brought you joy through your life and continues to bring you to.
Well, it's the Rolling Stones for me, forever and ever and ever. That's the band that will always make me the happiest. If I need my mood elevated, it's the Rolling Stones. If I need melancholy, it's the Rolling Stones. If I need to feel peppy, it's the Rolling Stones. I'm just I'm just a Rolling Stones girl. And you know Mick Jagger. I remember seeing a picture of him the first time when I'm nine to ten. So I look at the Stones and the Beatles. They're part of my life. So if I had been born at any other time in history, I wouldn't be connected to these people. So I think I chose when I was going to be born, and I think I knew when I was very young who my friends were going to be. I think I've been a patron of the arts in every life that I lived. But I've also been an artist. So I've been a patron and I've been an artist. I've been both. And I think that they hold hands.
Yeah, it's beautifully put. It really is. Let's taunt you a little bit more sure.
Yeah, you know, people listen to the podcast sometimes and they go, well, it sounded like when you were walking that you know, they say it to me, you were, you know, uh.
Breathing heavily and because we're walking. So we are walking.
Yeah, right, Well, we'll try not to breathe heavily.
I didn't mean it that way.
Well, no, I mean even though you're supposed to supposed to be we're supposed to go when you walk. Oh, there's a I'm not going to say the name of it, but see that farm. That's where you go to get your pumpkins and all your fun stuff.
So back to the Stones.
Yeah. Do you remember the first time you saw them perform like live? Yeah, and at Sullivan Oh well, I mean like a concert wise.
Oh, when I was twelve, Oh really going on thirteen. It was July fourth, nineteen sixty six. I turned thirteen ten days later. It was at the Allen B. Shepherd Convention Center or the Dome as they used to call.
It in Virginia Beach.
Oh wow, with my.
Best friend Joni Gross.
We met in the fifth grade and we bonded over the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.
And uh so I was home from boarding school that summer.
I did sixth, seventh, and eighth grade at Villa Maria Academy in Lynchburg, Virginia.
So that summer.
Then I turned thirteen, was the summer that changed my life. But I saw them way before that on TV, sure, and I had every record, of course.
And when you see a concert like that and it's so.
Okay, how doy?
When you see a concert like that, that changes you.
It alters your DNA basically, right, or or it ignites whatever your DNA was that was connected to it in the first place, right.
Right, So you were hooked then, you were hooked before, but you were really hooked after that work.
Well yeah, well, I.
Think that I've been connected to music and art and every lifetime I've ever lived. So all it did for me was confirm who I was, and I started to have glimpses into who I was, my spirit, my soul, why I'm here, etc. And it just.
Rock and roll music. I don't just love rock and roll I love everything.
I love classical music, I love Indian music, I love Eskimo.
Music, I love all music.
I just love There isn't a genre that hasn't got something that appeals to me.
What is it about music? What is it? Why is it do this to us? How does this happen? In your view? Well, I think it's it's supernatural.
It's all vibrations.
I think that we all live on frequencies, and I think that everything is a frequency, including the earth spinning. The earth is a living being as we all know, and I just believe that everything has life and frequency. And I think music is probably throughout the entire universe. Wherever there's other life, I'm sure music exists in some form. Uh. I just think that music is part of the vibrational connection that the human element, because we're only human for a short period of time and then our spirit either comes back again or continues upward.
Into the realm. Oh gosh, I know this isn't it. I know that that this you know, this isn't the end.
I just wish they didn't wipe your memory between lifetimes, because you go back, you do all this work, and you do all this studying on the other side. You learn so much, and then you choose to come back to work on stuff again, and then as soon as you get here, you you you you're drawn to certain people because of your karm contract and connection to them. But it's just incredibly mysterious to me how you know that somebody is connected to you.
When you meet them.
You know immediately I know that person, or you can feel comfortable with somebody like I'm just meeting you right now, but I feel comfortable comfortable with you. Who knows, maybe two lifetimes ago we had dinner together, or we weren't the same gathering, or you were doing this job.
Then who knows a phone?
Right? Thank god I wasn't then.
Well, but I'm just saying that I agree.
I agree with everything you said and how it all comes back to vibration and what you feel.
It's all just energy that I'm a big Dolores Canon person. She is a spiritualist and a hypnotist. She died in twenty fourteen. I was lucky enough to meet her and be regressed by her. You know, I grew up in Virginia Beach Too, which was Edgar Casey Territory. My house was literally I could ride my bike to the Edgar Casey Center and we used to be so infatuated with the place because people would talk about past lives. And that started with me when I'm six seven, eight years old. That stuff made perfect sense to me. And that's why my next book that I'm writing is about animal reincarnation, because I believe that we have connections to our pets that are much deeper and more profound than we give credit for.
But I just.
I feel that, I feel like I still have so much to learn in this life. I would like to be here for at least another twenty five year. I'd like to make it as far as my parents. You know, I don't want to.
Make a quick exit.
But when you get to be seventy, you start to realize, Wow, you don't think about so much what you've done. You think about, oh my god, I've only got this much time left, this or that much time?
Who knows?
But who are some of.
The mentors that have been important to you?
Oh?
Well? It started with Oscar Wild, Lily Langtree, Albert Einstein. I was obsessed with him, his hair, I thought it was the best. And Edgar Allan Poe, these were this was child stuff. And then as I've gotten older, Patty Smith, you know, Debbie Harry, of course, Mick and Keith.
My god, they're like the Monk and the Friar to me.
And I love, love, love, Dolores Cannon, the woman we're talking about. Gosh, Stephen Greer, he's another person I want to meet. He's a ufologist, And uh.
I think what happens.
Is you stop thinking about people as mentors and you start thinking about them as kindred spirits.
You know.
Well, so Rick Darringer was a kindred spirit, right of course.
But I haven't seen Rick in a thousand years. And his wife, his first wife, not his current. Liz is still one of my best friends.
Yeah, you were with her in New York when you Oh.
Yeah, I mean.
We've been friends since nineteen seventy two. But Rick driger you know, he lives a whole different life now. I mean, I think he still plays, but I think he found Christianity, got married and lives that life.
I think he still plays live.
I think so too.
Oh yeah, all those people. Everybody I know is a kindred spirit I feel.
So what bands or artists do you think are underappreciated?
Well, I mean that's a question I could have answered differently, maybe ten or fifteen or twenty years ago. But with social media, I have found that most bands that I like eventually do get attention.
I love Star Crawler, I love the Struts.
There's a lot of exciting energy, and you know, those bands all did well. And I love Lawrence Rothman and who's become quite the producer DuJour here in Tennessee now.
He worked with Amanda Shier.
Yes, with Amanda and Jason and and Margot Price. And so it's funny because I knew him when he was in Living Things, when he was a singer in a band, and this transformation that he's gone through, well I don't I think he likes to be called they, so I probably shouldn't say he that this transformation that they have gone through, I appreciate that if people wish to be not identified by a certain.
Gender, I'm fine with that.
Right.
He's got a beautiful wife, he's got a beautiful daughter, he's got some beautiful dogs.
But Lawrence is quite.
A special talent and he spends a lot of time in Nashville now.
And how do you discover music these days?
Just through friend recommendations or your own discovery.
Just from being present.
If I get invited to something, I try to go, but also from.
Playing my own shows.
Usually the band'll get to open for me or the kids I meet that come to the shows. The thing about my following that's so interesting is that they're very young, and I don't think that they've really put it together yet. That I'm seventy, I don't think they've connected that. But I am not seventy.
When I hit stage, I have.
The energy of twelve wild bulls, and I think I got that from Mick. He inspires me to keep those exercises, those movements going. I exercise the same way he does. I put myself into a big empty room with a mirror, and I just move and I go crazy, and I lock it in, I lock it out. I go up, I go down, I go round, I go round. You know some people, oh, do you do pilate?
You know, I do rock, I do the I.
Just get in there and do I mean, I'm sure he does lightweights as well. You can tell by the way he's built that he doesn't do extreme weightlifting. He just does the sensible weights stretching. He's got the yoga body that we all envy. But you know, he's always been like that. Mick though, he's always been smart about taking care of himself, but.
He's never been traditional about it.
Ever, He's invented his own his way to exercise, and the Jagger jog I call it.
I mean, it's like, okay, that's that's my exercise. I do the Jagger job.
You go.
So I guess the Keith kick.
So you mentioned earlier about learning, So what is it that you haven't learned that you would like to learn?
Patience?
And and I would I would like to be less judgmental. You know, as far as uh myself goes, I'm very hard on myself. I'm harder on myself than I am on others. So what I'd like to learn is how I can take everything I've learned spiritually take it with me when I leave this realm and if I come back again. I would like some possible way to have a memory. But I think your memory start to come back as you live. I think they wipe you clean when you when you're the baby. Then you come here, and I think it's up for you, up to you to figure it out, you know. I guess what I want to learn is uh why.
I'm so grateful that we got to take this time, and I'm most grateful of it in that we sort of found each other, discovered each other organically.
Really, nobody else puts this together.
Well.
As soon as I saw your eyes, I knew you were a Pliodean. I think I'm from the Pleiades star cluster.
I definitely do and when I meet people, I can sort of see, oh, you're from the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. There's I think there's seven planets within the Pleiades, and I think that they're all connected, and I think a lot of the people on Earth are part of that star cluster.
And I think we come back.
If Dolores Canon is right, this is the learning planet. There is no other planet like Earth in the entire universe. There might be other planets with life, but we are the only one that has hell and heaven and everything in one place. And a lot of souls that come here can't cope. I think some of them were in the twenty seven Club. They come here and they've never seen hatred and violence in their other previous incarnations. And you come to Earth and you get a real eye opening because one minute you can be sitting in a field like it's paradise, and in the next minute you're looking.
Into the face of war.
And I think that that is why Earth is such a challenging place.
Delores Canon says, those of us that.
You to come to Earth are brave, and we are looked at from other people in the universe that are connected as very brave to come here and take on this challenge. And if I have to come back again, I will. I just hope by the time I come back that we have stopped killing cows and pigs.
And just.
Have a more sophisticated palate. We don't have to kill so much. A lot of killing going on on this planet. Too much killing. We kill too much, kill everything, including the forest, and it's got to stop.
Just agree. Thank you for being I'm taking a Walk.
Oh you're welcome. Let's do it again.
I love it.
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