This time, it's all about her
Solo date for famous rock girlfriend
Hear the name Bebe Buell and you think one of several things: Liv Tyler's mom, or serial rock-star girlfriend, or (if you're an adult magazine connoisseur of a certain age) Miss November 1974. Odds are slim you're picturing the 53-year-old blue-eyed blonde growling punk-metal tunes in a sweaty nightclub, but that's what Buell is going to be doing tomorrow at the Middle East -- with a backing group that includes members of Boston rock bands the Rudds and the Neighborhoods and Buell's husband , Jim Wallerstein.
``My mother tells me that I used to stuff a sock in my pants and stand in front of the mirror with a hairbrush for a microphone," says Buell, on the phone from her home in Portland, Maine. ``My roots are in music. But Eileen Ford saw my high school graduation picture, and next thing I knew I was on a plane to New York. That's what threw a monkey wrench in it. The modeling."
Still, Buell managed to keep her toes wet through the years, fronting the B-Sides -- which released a Ric Ocasek-produced EP in 1981 -- and the
``I've had this conversation with Chrissie Hynde and Courtney Love," says Buell, who divides her time between Portland and New York. ``If they'd dated the men they dated before they picked up their guitars, things would have been different. I'm not trying to name drop, but I've had this conversation with Cher, too, who has more last names than Zsa Zsa. Except she was Cher before she had those last names. I'm remembered as a model who dated a rock star [or 10, among them Steven Tyler, Todd Rundgren, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, Jimmy Page, and Rod Stewart]. It's like being Miss America for the rest of your life. It's a brand."
The last time Buell played in Boston was 1988, opening for the Neighborhoods at the now-defunct Channel nightclub, and it was Neighborhoods frontman David Minehan who encouraged her to do it again. Minehan, a longtime friend who recently produced tracks for Twin Engines, Buell's husband's band, admires Buell, he says, for her good taste in music and her irrepressible nature.
``She didn't come up through the ranks as a musician, she doesn't have a hundred thousand gigs under her belt, but Bebe was able to glean a special look at rock 'n' roll in a golden age," says Minehan. ``She has a true rock heart and throws herself to the lions. Hopefully she tastes good."
Buell's set list is a mix of originals and covers, among them Iggy Pop's ``Fun Time," the Nightcrawlers' ``The Little Black Egg," and Leon Russell's ``Superstar." She and her new band performed their maiden gig at Buell's birthday bash at the Cutting Room in New York a couple of weeks ago, and according to bassist Tony Goddess, it was a great success.
``Liv told me it was the best band Bebe's ever had," Goddess reports. ``We showed up for the job pretty well-prepared, but she can draw performances out of guys. `You've got to be more nasty,' she'd tell us. `You've got to rock harder.' She knows where she wants to be in the rock 'n' roll spectrum."
And while Buell's place in the pantheon is more a function of association than accomplishment, she has no regrets. Her role as a mother, she says, has been the most important part of her life.
``The day the Gargoyles' record deal papers landed in my lawyers' office was the day the paternity thing went public," Buell says, referring to the revelation in the early '90s that Aerosmith frontman Tyler was her daughter's biological father, and not Rundgren, who raised Liv as his own. ``I was not about to start touring when my daughter just found out who she is. So I became supermom."
In true supermom fashion, Buell maintains a good relationship with Tyler.
``Liv's dad comes to Portland to visit," she says. ``He flies up on his little plane and we spoil him and feed him and give him a dose of real life. We take his cell phone and hide it from him."
But despite her long history of close connections with some of rock's brightest talents, Buell insists that her musical path is her own.
``I don't think those guys influenced me at all as a musician," she says. ``They required a lot of attention. When you're young you want to take care of your boyfriend. It was difficult to have my own voice during that time. But it's all part of my journey. You go through it for a reason. I've known the most amazing people, I have a gorgeous grandson, and I can still pack a room. That's moving to me. I'm an entertainer."
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com 
