Beverle Buell was born on July 14, 1953 in Portsmouth, Virginia. Being the daughter of a U.S. Navy officer, her father was not at home at the time of her birth, so her mother waited until he got back before naming her daughter. The nurses in the hospital took to calling her "Baby Buell," which is where her nickname "Bebe" originated. It was a moniker that would stick with her for life.
After high school, Bebe wanted to be a professional singer, so she moved to New York City where she was discovered by modeling agency executive Eileen Ford. Possessing “the look”, at 21 she became Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for the November 1974 issue. I could include a link to images of that, but do the damn work yourselves, pervs!
Describing her early years and modeling career, Buell said, "I wanted to be a professional singer which was why I came to New York—yes, I was a pretty young girl, so I fell into the modeling thing, and then I did Playboy, so then the rock stars came a-hunting, as I like to say."
And hunt they did. Bebe dated the likes of Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, Jimmy Page, Gary Glitter, Rod Stewart, and Duran Duran's John Taylor.
DAMN! That's an impressive list of conquests. And those are the musicians we know about! She was seemingly a very popular girl!
She was so popular with the rock star crowd, Beverle Buell became part of the inspiration for Kate Hudson’s character “Penny Lane” in the Cameron Crowe movie, “Almost Famous”. One of the male band members in the film was named Jeff Bebe as further tribute to Buell.
From 1972 to 1978, Bebe had an on again-off again relationship with musician/producer Todd Rundgren of “Hello, It’s Me” fame. In 1976, during a break from Rundgren, Buell became unexpectedly pregnant from a brief relationship with a mysterious rock star lead singer. On July 1, 1977, Buell gave birth to a daughter, initially naming the baby girl Liv Rundgren, claiming that Todd was the biological father to protect the child from her real father’s drug addiction.
Rundgren and Buell ended their romantic relationship shortly after the baby’s birth but he treated the child as his own, signing her birth certificate, giving her his last name, and even paying for her to attend a prestigious private school. Todd remains committed to her to this day.
Bebe's daughter revealed that she came to a full realization of who her real father was at the age of 11, having an epiphany of sorts after looking up at a poster of Aerosmith on her bedroom wall. "My mom has a diary entry or something where I wrote, 'I think Steven Tyler is my father'," she said.
Liv realized from an early age that she bore a resemblance to Steven Tyler, having gone to an Aerosmith concert and having seen Tyler's other daughter Mia who he shared with Cyrinda Foxe. "I kind of figured it out because he looked exactly like me and had a daughter named Mia who is a year younger than me and I saw her standing at the side of the stage at a concert and I was literally like looking at my twin. She looked exactly like me and I looked at my mum and she had tears in her eyes and I kind of put it all together".
Buell and Rundgren had made a pact that he would be Liv’s father, and if it ever became an issue, they’d tell her at 18. They never got to that point as Liv had already come to her own conclusion.
In fact, she said she "fell madly in love" with Steven Tyler despite having no idea who he was. ”It must be chemical somehow - DNA and genes,” Liv explained to the Guardian in 2017. "I felt a connection in a very strong way when I met him as a little girl, and I didn’t know why at first, but I figured it out rather quickly."
After discovering the truth, the pair began to nurture their budding father-daughter relationship, eventually becoming incredibly close.
From then onwards, Liv began to consider both Steven Tyler and Todd Rundgren as her fathers. “I’m so grateful to Todd for choosing to be a father figure to me. It’s a big thing for a man to say, ‘I know this kid might not be mine, but I still want to be her father'," she said. "Although he and my mom weren’t together, he was always a very stable, loving force in my life."
Liv also feels no ill will towards her mother keeping her father's true identity secret from her throughout her childhood. "It’s quite an emotional story, honestly, the whole thing. My mother was very young when she had me, and there was a little bit of confusion about where I came from." Liv changed her last name to Tyler in 1991 but keeps the name Rundgren as a middle name.
Liv Rundgren Tyler, daughter of Beverle “Bebe” Buell, has gone on to star in dozens of Hollywood movies such as “Empire Records”, “That Thing You Do”, “Lord of The Rings”, and “Armageddon”.
In the movie “Armageddon”, her father, Steven sings the end credit song, “Every Time I Close My Eyes”, which he dedicated to her and describes how it gave the song a new meaning, singing it to his daughter.
So yes, life was crazy as a '70's groupie. The drugs, the rebellion, the sex, the party-all-night lifestyle. Things got wild. Out of control. Life isn't supposed to be this insane or complicated. So much could have gone wrong. But in this case, good fortune, good people, and forgiveness seems to have won the day in this rock and roll redemption story.
So, now you know. From a high school girl in Virginia, to a New York City fashion model, to Playboy magazine, to partying with elite artists, to an "illegitimate" baby fathered by a drug addict, to raising movie starlets and creating a loving family all along the weird highway of life. Here's to you, Beverle Buell. Life can get crazy when you're smashing rock stars.
And now the storyteller must go. Thanks for allowing me to share this tiny bit of rock and roll history, and as Penny Lane stated in the movie "Almost Famous", "See you back in the real world."
Until next time...
Doc Dan
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