Thinking of taking a Hollywood and Laurel Canyon music tour with the famous author, actress, and groupie Pamela Des Barres?

Then you absolutely should!

Taking Pamela’s rock tour on my most recent trip to Los Angeles was an absolute highlight. Although I had already met Pamela and read her book, I’m With the Band, this tour taught me so much about the Los Angeles music scene in the 60s and 70s,

In this article, I’ll go over why you should take a Hollywood music tour, how to book with Pamela, and so much more. Ready to see Laurel Canyon and Hollywood landmarks firsthand?

*Please note that I am not the tour provider. If you want to take this tour, then contact Pamela Des Barres via Facebook or her website – pameladesbarresofficial.com.

Hollywood and Laurel Canyon Music Tour with Pamela Des Barres

Why You Should Take a Pamela Des Barres’ Hollywood and Laurel Canyon Music Tour

Do you love 60s and 70s music, style, and stories? Do you love learning groovy history from a first-hand perspective? Do you consider yourself a lover of life and want to soak up as much of it as possible?

Great! Then you should take a Pamela Des Barres tour through Hollyweird and Laurel Canyon!

This tour is for everyone who has read Pamela’s books, is interested in the Los Angeles music scene, wants to learn more about the 60s and 70s music in California, and has a passion for meeting like-minded people.

👉 On this tour we visited sites related to/such as:

• Frank Zappa
• The Riot House
• John Lennon
• Music Studios
• Whisky A Go Go
• Jim Morrison
• The Byrds
• Steppenwolf
• Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
• The Flying Burrito Brothers
• And SO many more!

📚 Read More: On Pamela Des Barres, A Lifetime of Stories, and Being a Doll

How to Book a Hollywood and Laurel Canyon Music Tour

To book a Hollywood and Laurel Canyon rock tour, you’ll have to go through Miss P!

Pamela regularly lists upcoming tours on her website, or, if you know you’ll have a large group interested, you can always reach out to her through her website contact info and see what’s available.

What to Expect on Pamela Des Barres’ Tour

About four hours long, this Hollywood music tour includes a lunch stop at a local taco restaurant (the food isn’t included), safe transportation in a van, stories from both Pamela and her friend Kip Brown (who is also the driver), and access to Hollywood and Laurel Canyon’s top music history locations.

You’ll have a few fellow attendees on the tour with you, and everyone is encouraged to pipe in and share their personal experiences with rock n roll at any time.

On the tour I took, we indulged ourselves in sweet, sticky nostalgia for all afternoon, the ones old enough to have actually been there unleashing their rose-colored memories onto us younger folk.

Not only was Miss P’s rock tour an amazing way to see Los Angeles for the first time, but it was also an incredible way to hear about the freewheeling ways of trailblazing rock stars from someone with first-hand experience.

We went to the fountain in which Keith Moon decided to pour an entire box of Tide, to the doors of the venue where Miss P rolled around backstage with Jim Morrison while loaded on Trimar, to the studio where John Lennon insulted her by repeating her name over and over until it sounded like mush, and to the remnants of Frank Zappa’s infamous log cabin… among so many others.

My Personal Connection to Miss P and the Dolls

The day I picked up Pamela’s 1987 memoir “I’m With The Band: Confessions of a Groupie” is very vivid in my mind.

This was back in 2012 when I was a kid in university studying the music business, trying to soak up absolutely everything I could about rock n’ roll.

I knew almost nothing of Pamela at the time, and so when I stood in the rock memoir section of the bookstore perusing my options, it was pure chance that I noticed her book. Over the next couple of days, reading the memoir and hearing her stories of being a groupie in 1960s–1970s Los Angeles set my brain on fire.

Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, and Nick St. Nicholas of Steppenwolf made up only some of her sexual adventures of the time. Not to mention her wild experiences at Frank Zappa’s log cabin babysitting Moon Unit and recording music with the GTO’s.

As soon as I finished her memoir I looked her up online, and the front page of her website told me that she taught memoir-writing classes and that she was coming to Toronto (where I lived) for the very first time in just a month.

Kismet? Absolutely. Cosmic intervention? 100%.

Before the class, I was so nervous that I sat in my car for a good ten minutes mustering up the courage to walk into the host’s house. I’d say the nerves were an equal summation of being about to meet one of my idols, reading my writing in front of a group of women, a fear of the unknown, and knowing my life was about to change forever.

There were about twenty other women who had signed up, none of whom I knew, but many of whom knew each other. For four hours we sat around in a circle, wrote stories for exactly twelve minutes prompted by topics Miss P gave us, and then read our stories aloud.

The topics varied from writing a letter to our sixteen-year-old selves, to picking one person in history to have dinner with, to describing our very first love interests. It was an experience akin to staring into a stranger’s eyes for three minutes straight and falling in love.

I walked out of class that evening having met people I now call my best friends. Written in the loosest meaning of the phrase, finding her book, going to her workshop, and meeting some of my favorite people felt like it was “meant to be”.

My life from that point forward took a very steep curve into uncharted, magical territory. Including four years down the road when I took Pamela’s tour through Hollywood and Laurel Canyon.

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That’s it for my guide to taking a music tour led by Pamela des Barres in Hollywood and Laurel Canyon! For more USA music, check out What to Expect at the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame & Museum in Cleveland!

Enjoy your Hollywood and Laurel Canyon music tour!

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