You don’t hear much about groupies anymore. This is strange, since the demographics of the rock audience—ranging from about 40 to 10—suggests there ought to be more groupies than ever slithering around out there.

If Pamela Des Barres (I’m With the Band: Confessions of a Groupie, New York: Beech Tree Books) is a typical groupie, then it’s easy to understand the lack of publicity: many of them must die off before they can even give an interview. Des Barres recounts her experience with a drug called Trimar, a liquid that is normally measured by the cc but which she handled by the quart: “Even when I found out that it was used in zoos to knock out gorillas and elephants, I refused to believe it could also knock out my brain cells.” Her readers will be less skeptical.

The best way to get a grip on Des Barres—to use a metaphor that seems appropriate—is by considering her descriptions of the man who changed her maiden name from Miller. Michael Des Barres, an insignificant glitterpunk performer, was “a degenerate drug-taking sex-dog” who “didn’t take many showers” and whose “teeth were all chipped from banging them with the microphone.” Of their courtship she writes, “He gave me scabies and I didn’t care.” Love means never having to say you’re sanitary.

Why was this book published? Who could possibly be interested in the trajectory from a schoolgirl infatuation with Paul McCartney to grabbing at the privates of the lead singer of the Iron Butterfly, from a craving for Jimmy Page to secret rendezvous with Mick Jagger to family life with the Zappas to scabies? To be sure, the names are there, but they are connected with only one part of the anatomy. In a “kiss and tell” Hollywood autobiography, the victims are supposed to be chagrined by the revelations. But will Mick Jagger really care?

The only person who would be drawn to the sticky pages of this “confession” is someone who alternately reads Spin and the Star. But even they will be disappointed because: (a) there’s no really good rock trivia in the book—people like madcap Keith Moon come off looking more boorish than maniacal; and (b) she never meets Elvis (though she nearly dated the King once).

The book may be of historical interest, however. Several hundred years from now, someone researching the pop culture of the late 20th century may regard I’m With the Band as the key to a culture that can be reduced to one big hormonal throb.