A conversation with Bebe Buell instantly transports you to another era — one that holds a mysterious glamour for those who lacked an all-access pass to the wonderland that existed beyond the velvet rope.
Buell moved to New York City in 1971 at the age of 18 to work as a fashion model under famed agent Eileen Ford, going on to front multiple bands and eventually date a veritable pantheon of rock gods — Mick Jagger, Elvis Costello, David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Todd Rundgren, Steven Tyler. It was with Tyler that she had a child, actor and model Liv Tyler. But it was always about the music for the Virginia-born Buell, whose earliest memories are of porch jams with her tobacco-farming grandparents.
"My grandfather played banjo, my grandmother played the comb, and after a hard day of working, they would let it out at night on the porch," Buell, 60, recalls. "Everyone would play music and sing. I was exposed to the joy of all that very early in life."
The joy of music is what drove Buell to relocate to Nashville after spending most of her adult life in the Northeast. She visited Nashville in May 2012 to sing on Plowboy Records' Eddy Arnold tribute album, You Don't Know Me, and the pull of Music City brought Buell and her husband, musician Jim Wallerstein (Das Damen, Vacationland), back here last year. On Mother's Day, she'll play her debut full-band show at The Bluebird Cafe, where she'll be backed by Wallerstein, Jon and Sally Tiven, Shannon Pollard, Harry Stinson and Beth Hooker.
"It was a big risk, I guess," Buell says. "I'm not a young girl coming to compete as a singer-songwriter. I've been writing songs for 40 years, and I finally think they might make sense here."
Like most American girls who grew up in the '60s, Buell was enraptured by the bands of the British Invasion. In seventh grade, she asked the nuns at her boarding school if she could play tambourine during "folk mass," in which two of her classmates played guitars while the rest sang.
"Mick Jagger was my inspiration, so I was strutting and doing all that, and I'll just never forget the nuns' faces," Buell laughs. She says she already stood out as the tallest girl in school and the only alto in a sea of sopranos.
Buell also stood out in the sea of young models traipsing around New York City in the early '70s, working with legendary photographers like Francesco Scavullo and Richard Avedon and fashion and beauty brands including Halston, Avon, Revlon and Wella. Posing for Playboy in 1974 got her fired from Ford, but she signed with Wilhelmina and developed her career in Europe.
"I always had a mother that pushed independence, so I kept on doing as much modeling as I could when I wasn't screwing it up because of my crazy rock hours," Buell says. "I probably could have been a much more successful model if I had not been such a rocker. But if I had a chance of working for Glamour magazine or running off to see The Rolling Stones, I think we know which one I took."
Buell was one of the inspirations for Cameron Crowe's Penny Lane character in the 2000 film Almost Famous, although Buell was never traded to another band for a case of beer (if you want to know the real story, it's outlined in her 2002 autobiography Rebel Heart). But she always harbored dreams of making her own music.
"I kept flirting with the music thing, but the modeling thing kept consuming me, and then I would get in these relationships with men that were extremely big personalities," she explains. "They required a lot of attention; you sort of got wrapped up in their world."
Encouraged by then-boyfriend Costello, Buell released her debut EP Covers Girl in 1981, produced by Rick Derringer and The Cars' Ric Ocasek. She subsequently formed The B-Sides and later The Gargoyles, opening for The Ramones and selling out CBGB. But when her daughter's paternity was revealed in the late '80s — Buell raised Liv as Rundgren's daughter, as Tyler wasn't sober at the time — she turned the focus back to family.
"I knew that I wasn't going to be able to sign a recording contract and make an album and then go on the road for two years," Buell explains, noting that her daughter remains close with both Rundgren and Tyler. "I knew that if I did that, I would lose my baby. I was afraid that she would not process this right."
Today, Buell is focused on her own craft, and enjoys a creative working relationship with her husband, who is also her co-writer and producer. She hopes to release an album, or at least an EP, by fall, and while her raspy alto voice still has the bite of what she calls her "metalbilly" days, the snarl has softened — not unlike Marianne Faithfull's later work — on these Southern rock-tinged songs. She calls her latest work "Amereclectic" and plans to debut some of the new material at her Bluebird show.
"I don't just stand up there and sing; I bring the audience in with me," Buell says. "I get in their face, I ask them to sing with me sometimes, I tell stories, it's like a one-woman show mixed with music."
And while you may think nothing would impress a woman who's had Mick Jagger send a private jet to pick her up, she's enthralled with her new hometown's music scene. She's planning to write with one of her favorite songwriters, Grant-Lee Phillips; she adores Jack White; and she loves catching live music around town.
"Isn't one of the biggest bands here called Diarrhea Planet?" Buell asks. "I think I've figured it out; you kind of get diarrhea of creativity here. Maybe that's what they mean?
"I wrote 18 songs in the first two months that I arrived in this town; there's just something about the air!" Buell continues. "I'm here. This is where I'm going to die."
Email Music@nashvillescene.com.
