Who is Bebe Buell? Everything You Need to Know

Quick Facts

Also Known As: Beverle Lorence Buell

Age: 70 Years, 70 Year Old Females

Family:

Spouse/Ex-: Jim Wallerstein (m. 2002), Coyote Shivers (m. 1992–1999)

father: Harold Lloyd Buell

mother: Dorothea Johnson

children: Liv Tyler

Born Country: United States

Models American Women

Height: 5'9" (175 cm), 5'9" Females

U.S. State: Virginia

Ancestry: German American

More Facts

awards: Playboy Playmate

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Childhood & Early Life

Bebe Buell was born Beverle Lorence Buell, on July 14, 1953, in Portsmouth, Virginia, to Harold Lloyd Buell and Dorothea Johnson. Her father was a World War 2 veteran and was an officer in the U.S. Navy. When Bebe was born, her father was not around, which led her mother to wait a few weeks to name her until her father returned home. Her parents are of German descent and she grew up in a financially comfortable household. Her mother was the founder of the Protocol School of Washington.

She spent the early few years of her life in her hometown of Portsmouth and while her father was away most times owing to his job as a navy officer, she was mostly raised by her mother.

Bebe Buell had become infatuated by the rock n roll culture during her early years. In the 1960s, when Bebe reached her teen years, the American culture and art flourished with many new movements taking place throughout the decade, especially rock n roll. She grew up listening to and admiring musicians such as Elvis Presley, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

For a very long time, Bebe had wanted to become a musician, but her mother had other plans for her. As per her mother, she might have a bright future in modelling. Following her high school graduation, Bebe began her modelling career and moved to New York City all by herself.

Modelling happened when her mother took her high school yearbook photo and mailed it to the Fords Model Agency. However, despite Bebe making a mark on the modelling industry early on, she maintained that she had wanted to become a singer.

However, she took the modelling assignments that came her way and began her ascension into show business.

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Career

After moving to New York, Bebe Buell was managed by the modelling industry legend Eileen Ford, working at the Ford Modelling Agency, one of the most popular modelling agencies in the world. She appeared in many advertising campaigns and magazines in the first few years of her modelling career.

Her career’s big break happened when she appeared naked in the Playboy Magazine, in November 1974, when she was selected as the Playmate of the Month. She was photographed by famed photographer Lynn Smith, who advised her to have a photo-shoot and send it to Playboy. She was among the first few models to have achieved the honour.

Modelling paid well and hence, Bebe Buell kept working as a model for the next few years. In between, she had many relationships with popular musicians, which fuelled her dream of becoming a musician. By the late 1970s, she had decided to pursue a career in music and she had also become a mother by then. Hence, she took a partial retirement from modelling and began her career as a musician.

In 1980, she moved to Portland with her 3 years old daughter. There, she started a group called the B-Sides. In 1981, the group released their first EP titled ‘Covers Girl’. Bebe performed the first live show of her career in Portland, at a few local venues.

Portland and Maine in general, had an extremely thriving music scene in the 1980s and Bebe Buell wished to take the full advantage of that. She stayed in Portland for the entire decade and in 1989, she moved back to New York City. By then, due to the lack of success, her band had disbanded.

In the mid 1980s, Bebe Buell began a new band called The Gargoyles. The band released a few more singles and many major record companies exhibited their interest in signing up with Bebe’s band. However, Bebe’s career struggled to bag major record deals when Bebe’s romantic association with Steven Tyler became public.

This led her to become frustrated with the whole music scene and in the early 1990s, she took a temporary retirement from making music. Instead, she took on a career as a manager and along with managing her daughter Liv Tyler’s modelling career, she also managed actress Charis Michelsen.

In 1997, her daughter Liv became a full time model and left the house, which led Bebe to reconsider beginning her musical career. She worked with the producer Don Fleming, which led her to record a solo song. She eventually began a Bebe Buell Band and performed at a few venues in and around New York City.

In the early 2000s, she also worked with another band named The Rudds, from Boston. She also formed a few more bands and associated with many musicians to make her music career lift up. In the decade, she recorded and released a few albums such as ‘Free to Rock’ and ‘Retrosexual’.

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After a break of many years, in 2010, Bebe Buell released yet another single titled ‘Air Kisses for the Masses’. She further embarked on live shows to perform around New York City and she followed it with the release of an album, which had 12 songs, titled ‘Sugar’.

In the early 2010s, she completed another album, this time in the grunge and glam rock genre. The album thus released, titled ‘Hard Love’, contained 11 songs. Most of the songs in the album were original songs while some were covers of other popular songs.

Personal Life

Bebe Buell’s personal life has gained more media attention than her musical or modelling endeavours. She began dating Paul Cowsill from the band the Cowsills at the age of 15.

Biggest turning point of her life was moving to New York and beginning her modelling career. She had an inherent infatuation towards music and she regularly attended musical concerts and met many musicians, eventually beginning relationships with them.

In the early 1970s, Bebe Buell dated the Utopia band’s multi-instrumentalist named Todd Rundgren. Todd was on the verge of beginning the most successful phase of his musical career when he dated Bebe. The couple dated for a few years.

In the same decade, she also dated many popular musicians of the time, such as Iggy Pop, Jimmy Page and Elvis Costello among many others.

However, in the mid 1970s, her relationship with Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler grabbed the most media attention. The couple’s relationship tragically ended when she learned about his drug abuse issues. However, by the time they broke up, Bebe was pregnant with a girl child and Liv Tyler was thus born in 1977.

Bebe had kept the identity of her father secret from her daughter for about 9 years. It was during an Aerosmith’s concert that she revealed the identity of Liv’s father. After that, Liv took her father’s last name.

In 1992, Bebe got married to actor and musician Coyote Shivers. However, they separated soon after and eventually got divorced in 1999. She later married another musician named Jim Wallerstein.

Throughout most of her adult life, Bebe has lived mostly in New York and New Jersey. However, since 2013, she has been living in Nashville, Tennessee.

In 2001, she published a book titled ‘Rebel Heart: An American Rock ‘n’ Roll Journey’. The book was based on her experiences of working in the American music industry in the 1970s and 1980s.

Bebe Buell Biography