There are many, many ways that pop-culture fans have discovered shapeshifting rocker/actor Michael Des Barres over the decades. Some may know him from his big-screen debut at age 17 in the 1967 Sidney Poitier film To Sir, With Love; or as the frontman of the Deep Purple- and Led Zeppelin-associated bands Silverhead and Detective; or as the co-writer of Animotion’s 1983 hit “Obsession”; or as the longtime host of the Little Steven’s Underground Garage morning show on SiriusXM; or as iconic MacGyver villain Murdoc; or for his many other television appearances on shows like Roseanne, Seinfeld, Melrose Place, Northern Exposure, Frasier, and Nip/Tuck.

But if you’re one of the Gen X kids among the estimated 1.9 billion people (nearly 40 percent of the world population at the time) who watched the global Live Aid concert broadcast 40 years ago, on July 13, 1985, then you might best know Des Barres as the lead singer of the Power Station.

Live Aid was, incredibly, only Des Barres’s second public appearance with the Duran Duran-spinoff supergroup — as an extremely last-minute replacement, after original frontman Robert Palmer unceremoniously bowed out. And the Power Station were part of an absolutely stacked Philadelphia bill that included everyone from Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, and the surviving Zeppelin members; to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; to Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ronnie Wood; to comeback queen Tina Turner and rising pop princess Madonna.

And yet, it seems Des Barres was the only performer at JFK Stadium who wasn’t nervous that day.

“I’d been in many, many movies. I’d done 120 hours of television by that time. So, getting nervous is not something I do,” chuckles Des Barres, who was a decade older than the Power Station’s John and Andy Taylor, and (definitely unlike John and Andy) had already been clean and sober for four years when Live Aid took place. Des Barres’s young bandmates, however, were “very nervous and very frightened about what could happen,” he recalls.

The surprise success of the Power Station’s self-titled debut album (a success so surprising, in fact, that Palmer, whose only U.S. performance with the group was on Saturday Night Live, quickly decided that it was more of a commitment than he’d bargained for) had impressed all the rockist snobs who’d once wrongly dismissed the Taylors’ main band, Duran Duran, as mere pretty-boy teen-pop. And so, Live Aid, which was set to be followed by an international Power Station tour, was a massive opportunity. “They had prayed for something like this — and now it’s happening, but Palmer has split. It was not cool, really, to do that to them,” says Des Barres. “I mean, God bless him, but a week away from a six-month tour — and he quits? That’s kind of heavy.”

So, how exactly did Des Barres end up at Live Aid, playing right after Neil Young, in front of a live Philly audience of 100,000 people and a TV audience about 20,000 times that size?

“I was with Don Johnson — in Miami, of course — and we were just gallivanting around. We were doing a record together, me and him,” recalls Des Barres, who was longtime pals with the Miami Vice star and later used that connection to land the Power Station a cameo on an October 1985 episode on the slick NBC cop drama. “And I get a call: ‘Come to New York!’”

At first, the talent agent on the other end of the line, Wayne Forte, would only tell Des Barres that he represented a mystery band in desperate need of a new lead singer. But eventually Forte revealed that the meeting in New York City would be with John and Andy Taylor, who’d been impressed by Des Barres’s stage presence when another supergroup that Des Barres had fronted — Chequered Past, featuring the Sex Pistols’ Steve Jones and several members of Blondie — had opened for Duran Duran the year before. “It was like saying Rudolf Nureyev wanted to dance with me,” Des Barres laughingly says of the out-of-the-blue offer.

Des Barres took a whirlwind flight to meet with John and the Power Station’s drummer, Tony Thompson of Chic, in New York, where they were “looking very nervous, because this was millions of dollars at stake.” He recalls that John was actually holding a list of other possible replacement frontmen. “I look down and I read all these names… I won’t tell you who!” he chuckles, although it’s known that before Robert Palmer originally signed on, other singers that were considered included Mick Jagger, Billy Idol, and the Psychedelic Furs’ Richard Butler. But regardless, after the New York meeting, Des Barres moved to the top of John’s list, and he was then flown to London that same night, to meet with Andy.

“I hadn’t slept for 24 hours,” Des Barres recalls. “There was a limo waiting for me at Heathrow Airport. I went to the studio. Five hours, I waited, exhausted. And Andy shows up with two bodyguards, big guys, and he says, ‘Go in and sing something.’” Des Barres, who’d been part of Britain’s early-‘70s glam scene, got in the studio booth and banged out the first verse and chorus of T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong” (the Power Station’s cover, released as “Get It On,” had just cracked the top 10 in America). Andy’s reaction was to just say, “Let’s go shopping,” and the two took off to Vivienne Westwood’s store for the rest of the afternoon. Des Barres got the job.

Michael Des Barres looks out into the crowd during the Power Station’s opening Live Aid number. (photo: YouTube)

For a moment, though, it seemed like Des Barres’s Power Station stint was going to be the shortest listing on his illustrious résumé, when, after returning to the U.S. via the Concorde, he got a call from his manager, informing him that Palmer had decided to do Live Aid after all. But the very next day, Palmer changed his mind again, this time for good, because “young girls were not his audience. It’s as simple as that. He did not want to play to young, teenage [Duran Duran fans],” shrugs Des Barres. “Meanwhile, me? I’m in a bikini and eyeliner.” Des Barres was officially back in the band.

And so, after just three days of rehearsals and one warm-up gig at New York City’s 1,500-capacity Ritz club, the Des Barres-fronted Power Station, introduced by Don Johnson, played Live Aid, performing without a net and literally without any teleprompters. Not everything went smoothly. Andy’s amplifier blew up right before their set, and notorious concert promoter Bill Graham was being “an asshole up there … shouting at us all. I was laughing my ass off, thinking, ‘Can it get any weirder?’” Des Barres also recalls being the target of “a lot of anger from young men” in the JFK Stadium crowd, who were apparently upset that Palmer was a no-show. “One guy, I’m out onstage and this bucket of water is literally like in slow motion, coming towards me. I was going to be splashed in front of 2 billion people. I dodged it, and it went all over John Taylor,” he laughs.

It was also a risk that of the only two songs the Power Station played at Live Aid, they opened with a deep cut of sorts, the non-single “Murderess.” Des Barres says that decision was made to showcase Andy’s little-known and under-appreciated guitar chops. “It’s an Andy song. I thought it was a great song. He was so talented, but he was a rock ‘n’ roll guitar player, and I think that’s why he left [Duran Duran],” Des Barres explains. “He wanted to play rock ‘n’ roll, and they’re not a rock ‘n’ roll band. … Andy wanted to be Eric Clapton, essentially, a bluesy rock ‘n’ roll guitar player. That’s why he left.”

Duran Duran also played JFK Stadium that day, and notably, this turned out to be the last time that Duran’s original “Fab Five” — guitarist Andy Taylor, bassist John Taylor, drummer Roger Taylor, keyboardist Nick Rhodes, and singer Simon Le Bon — would perform together until 2003. Le Bon, Rhodes, and Roger were already fracturing off with their own very different side-project, Arcadia, and when Le Bon hit that infamous, unfortunate “bum note heard around the world” during Duran Duran’s Live Aid performance of their James Bond theme “A View to a Kill,” the annoyed, exasperated look on Andy’s face made it obvious that tensions were running high within Duran’s ranks.

Des Barres didn’t witness much acrimony between the Duran members that day, as he was too busy enjoying the rest of the show from the stage wings (his favorite Philly Live Aid performers were Neil Young, Patti LaBelle, Tom Petty, and Mick Jagger with Tina Turner). But once he went out on the road with the Power Station, he “could see it splitting apart. [John and Andy] weren’t even talking to each other much, and I was there, singing away. And that was that. … I would arrive, I would sing, I would leave. Then they could do their coke.” (Incidentally, Des Barres later helped both Taylors get sober. “So, I brought more than music to that experience,” he says proudly.)

As for the other snafus that took place at JFK Stadium that day, Des Barres may have kept his cool despite the daunting circumstances that led him to Live Aid, but he says, “Everybody [else] was in a different state of mind than I’ve ever seen from any artist, ever. It was fascinating. … It was very hard for a lot of people to come on and do 20 minutes, and Bill Graham is screaming because the snare drum isn’t there for someone. It got them on their feet, really. … They were all scared shitless, every one of them.”

Des Barres recalls that “Madonna was a wreck; she was shaking,” and that “Bob Dylan, Ronnie Wood, and Keith Richards were all playing in a different key; that was a trainwreck, but it was a fabulous trainwreck, I suppose.” His old Swan Song Records cronies Led Zeppelin, with Phil Collins on drums, were “not cohesive and didn’t have that brotherly Zeppelin vibe. It was almost like a rehearsal or something. And then it probably was a rehearsal! It wasn’t as powerful as I think people expected. … And nobody spoke about it [afterwards]. That’s the only way to deal with shit like that.

“The most interesting person there was Joan [Baez], because she hated it and was riffing on how everybody was awful and that only her songs really meant something to the audience. It was the weirdest thing. There was that kind of irrational behavior,” Des Barres continues. “But I think that was her way of being scared.”

After Live Aid, the Power Station recorded one song with the unflappable Des Barres — “We Fight for Love,” which Des Barres wrote, for the Commando soundtrack — and it was all over by 1986, with John returning to Duran Duran and Andy going solo. But Des Barres will always consider his brief time with the band “a major chapter in my life,” and he will always be thankful for the opportunity to play for “the biggest audience ever,” which boosted his career in ways he could have never imagined.

“I love them to this day,” he says. “I was very grateful to them for getting me on that stage.”

This interview originally ran on Gold Derby.

The new extended movie trailer for this year’s A Star Is Born remake, starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, came out to major buzz this week, but there’s an unsung music veteran behind the scenes: Michael Des Barres, the resident “vibe adviser” making sure that all of the film’s rock ’n’ roll details are legit.

The 70-year-old rocker/actor, who’s served as the frontman of the Led Zeppelin-associated bands Silverhead and Detective and the supergroups Chequered Past and Power Station, was recruited by A Star Is Born producer Bill Gerber, who used to manage Detective back in the day.

“Billy Gerber especially wanted it to look real,” Des Barres tells Yahoo Entertainment. “So, let’s cut to the chase. If it’s a rock ’n’ roll movie and you’ve got the wrong bracelet, I’m not going to enjoy the movie. The wrong earring, the wrong hat, a terrible wig — that has ruined every rock ’n’ roll movie.” But Des Barres insists that the reboot (or “re-high-heel-boot”) of A Star Is Born “will be the real thing, even if we have to dig up some costumes. So, I went there really more in an advisory capacity. It’s about the tiniest f***ing thing.”

Michael Des Barres (Photo: Bobby Bank/Getty Images)

It was Des Barres’s job to pay attention to the movie’s rock ’n’ roll minutiae, whether it was telling one unnamed actor, “Perhaps you shouldn’t be wearing what you’re wearing — this is 19-whatever-it-is” (Des Barres won’t reveal any more details about this fashion faux pas, but he says it “had something to do with [time-period-inappropriate] flared trousers”), or telling the faux roadies to move with more urgency.

“You can feel it, how roadies move,” he explains. “What is a roadie? They run. It’s almost like a love affair between a roadie and a guitar player. If that string breaks, man, that guy is there with another guitar, whatever it is. That is so beautiful to watch. So, I sort of saw lackadaisical vibes going on, and I thought, ‘No, no, no. You’ve got to step that up, 100 miles an hour! That guy’s in the middle of a solo. Are you kidding?’ It was in that capacity.”

Des Barres, who made his film debut at age 17 in the 1967 Sidney Poitier film To Sir, With Love and recently reprised his iconic role of villain Murdoc in CBS’s MacGyver reboot, is used to giving these sorts of on-set style pointers. The real-life rocker has also played a musician onscreen, whether it was the bad-boy womanizer in Allison Anders’s 1999 rock ’n’ roll dramedy Sugar Town or the obnoxious punk singer Dog on 1978’s famous “Scum of the Earth” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati. “Scum of the Earth were written as punks, with ripped this and ripped that and dog collars,” he recalls of that fictional sitcom band’s original TV wardrobe. “I said, ‘Put them in suits. Put them in suits and ties. And let’s see them throw a TV out the window.’ It was so much more interesting.”

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.

Legendary rocker/actor Michael Des Barres has played many roles — from his big-screen debut at age 17 in the 1967 Sidney Poitier film To Sir, With Love, to frontman of the Led Zeppelin-associated bands Silverhead and Detective and supergroups Chequered Past and the Power Station, to SiriusXM DJ on “Little Steven’s Underground Garage.” But many fans will know him best as the original MacGyver villain, Murdoc — and those fans are in for a treat, when Des Barres/Murdoc returns Friday, Feb. 2 to CBS’s MacGyver reboot (alongside the new Murdoc, played by David Dastmalchian), in the much-anticipated, sure-to-be-epic “Murdoc vs. Murdoc” episode.

On Friday, Feb 2, it’s Murdoc vs. Murdoc when @MDesbarres guest stars alongside @Dastmalchian on an explosive new #MacGyver. ☠️ pic.twitter.com/ZXgXEp9acB

— MacGyver (@MacGyverCBS) January 26, 2018

Amusingly, Des Barres likens Dastmalchian stepping into the Murdoc role to that time in 1985 when he replaced Robert Palmer in the Power Station. (Des Barres made his onstage debut with that group in front of millions of fans at Live Aid, after only a few days of rehearsal.) “It was very similar to that, because here’s a guy who was really irreplaceable, I thought. I was a huge Robert Palmer fan. This was a similar situation [for Dastmalchian], but in the other way around — with him taking my gig, you know? And he was wonderful. David Dastmalchian is a fabulous actor. So that was really comforting. And then we became friends through social media!”

Happy Birthday @MDesbarres // ✌️ ❤️ and !!!! pic.twitter.com/0PrB9Jy5u4

— David Dastmalchian (@Dastmalchian) January 24, 2018

Des Barres concedes that this MacGyver is very different from the one he starred in from 1987-91 (“It’s much more of an action-oriented show than the initial incarnation”), but when he returned to the show, he found some old habits die hard. “The first day that I walked onto that set, I saw a trailer and it had ‘Murdoc’ on the door. I just automatically went over there, like some machine. I knocked on the door — and David came out. Great. I went to my other trailer.”

So, what’s Des Barres’s craziest memory from the original MacGyver series? “Well, I’m terrified of snakes,” he begins. “There was scene where I had to wade through these snakes to get to MacGyver. I said, ‘I can’t do this.’ What happened was, Richard [Dean Anderson], who was such a great guy, said, ‘Why don’t we just alter this?’ I got on his back, and he carried me through the snakes on his shoulders. Then we cut, and we’re all laughing. ‘Oh, no more snakes!’ But what the crew had done is they put a whole bunch of fake snakes in my trailer. ‘Oh, that’s real funny, guys.’ Then they went back and they told me, ‘There’s two snakes missing. You have to do the scene again. We didn’t quite get the angles, and there’s two snakes. There’s two snakes crawling around the set.’ Yeah, that was pretty horrible.”

As for the onscreen chemistry that Des Barres shared with original MacGyver actor Richard Dean Anderson (“the sweetest man in the world”), he says, ‘I think [MacGyver] is such a good man, and Murdoc was such an evil bastard, that it had a wonderful black and whiteness, which seemed to enmesh. I brought out the bad, the tension, in him, and he brought out some goodness in me perhaps every now and then.”

Murdoc isn’t the only villain role Des Barres has taken on. He has also played obnoxious punk singer Dog on the “Scum of the Earth” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, a bad-boy womanizer in Allison Anders’s rock ‘n’ roll dramedy Sugar Town, and Amanda Woodward’s slimy corporate nemesis on Melrose Place. What makes him so perfect for malevolent characters?

“There’s only one reason for that: my cheekbones,” Des Barres quips. More seriously, he adds, “No, it’s like the classic British villain. … It goes back to the old Hammer movies, where you had these British actors that were so over-the-top and grandiose. Most American actors try and play it down because of Montgomery Clift and James Dean and Brando; they want to be real. I never wanted to be ‘real.’ I just want to be exciting and entertaining. I think I do bad good.”

Considering how Des Barres has played a rocker all his life, onscreen and off, it makes sense that he was recently enlisted to be a “vibe adviser” on another pop-culture reboot of sorts, the new A Star Is Born starring Lady Gaga (or “Stef,” as Des Barres she’s known on the set) and Bradley Cooper. “Let’s cut to the chase: If it’s a rock ‘n’ roll movie and you’ve got the wrong bracelet, I’m not going to enjoy the movie. The wrong earring, the wrong hat, a terrible wig, has ruined every rock ‘n’ roll movie,” says Des Barres. It was his job, therefore, to give the film rock ‘n’ roll authenticity, whether it was telling the roadies to move with more urgency or that time he “said to an actor, ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t be wearing what you’re wearing. This is 19-whatever it is.’” Des Barres won’t reveal any more details about this fashion faux pas, but says, “It had something to do with flared trousers.”

Des Barres is used to giving these sorts of on-set style pointers, dating back to his aforementioned WKRP episode in 1978: “Scum of the Earth were written as punks, with ripped this and ripped that and dog collars,” he recalls. “I said, ‘Put them in suits. Put them in suits and ties. And let’s see them throw a TV out the window.’ It was so much more interesting.”

Des Barres has certainly led an interesting life. “In my life — I’m 70 years old — anything can happen at any time,” he says, chuckling. In fact, last month, during the week of his septuagenarian birthday, he released a potent new political song, “Living in the USA.” Watch Des Barres’s full, fascinating Facebook Live chat below, in which he discusses the inspiration for that timely track, his groundbreaking role as a gay man on Roseanne, battling and overcoming drug addiction, hanging with Led Zeppelin, co-writing the No. 1 Animotion hit “Obsession,” and how his ex-wife, notorious groupie Pamela Des Barres, was a feminist trailblazer. Murdoc rocks!

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This article originally ran on Yahoo Music.