From a young age Bebe Buell noticed that when her mother decorated, she would keep things grouped together in their like category. All the birds would be in one place. All the glass eggs in another.
Little by little, her mother started small collections for her too, like a little shoe collection, and her Desert Rose patterned china. Both have grown extensively since those early days.
“My mother really was the driving force behind my collectible gene,” Buell said. “I sort of picked it all up from her. She’s also the one who gave me permission to be diverse, to decorate with really valuable pieces and also just pieces I love. Like my deer heads. I’ve probably got a deer head – not real, but like brass or porcelain – in every room in my house. She said the eclectic mixture of decor was always a lot warmer than people who just want it perfect.”
In 1972, when Buell was 18, she moved to New York after signing a contract with Ford Models, and from there her collections evolved from what her mother got for her as a little girl to what she was picking up for herself through her, sometimes unbelievable, life experiences as she pursued a singing career and found herself among a circle of icons.
Naturally, mementos of this time in her life, when she was hanging out at Max’s Kansas City with Andy Warhol and longtime partner Todd Rundgren, and becoming the muse for some of the most iconic musicians ever, including Mick Jagger, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Elvis Costello and Steven Tyler.
“There isn’t one thing hanging on my wall that doesn’t have a story,” she said. Like the Picasso block print Jagger gifted Buell when she turned 21. Or the Patti Smith drawing from the artist herself. Or the drawing Kurt Cobain did for her husband Jim Wallerstein when his band Das Damen was touring with Nirvana.
And those are just some of items among the sea of memorabilia, photos, art and objects hanging on the walls of her Franklin home.
“You’d have to sort of walk around and look at everything,” she said. “Slowly, because you could overlook something easily. And I will continue to frame and hang pictures. I’ve got lots of wall space.”
And just like her mom, Buell groups her collections accordingly. One wall is filled with crosses and religious iconography. In a curio cabinet, all of her teapots stand. And in the downstairs bathroom — nothing but dogs.
“The dog bathroom is my favorite room,” she said. “That started from a collection of postcards that belonged to my husband’s mother when she was a little girl. Then I started seeing these amazing dog things everywhere. And then my mother reminded me she had the paint-by-numbers I did of Boxers when I was in high school. And then, before I knew it, I had another budding collection. But then I became obsessed. Everywhere I go, I look for dog pictures.”
Buell’s mother, Dorothea Johnson, passed away earlier this year at the age of 96, and Buell, her cousin Annie Noyes, and her daughter, actress Liv Tyler, went through Johnson’s belongings together, bonding over their loved one by the things she left behind.
“It was a very loving exchange, and everybody sort of knew who was going to get what anyway” Buell said.
“Believe it or not, inanimate objects have energy and power,” she said, describing the energy she feels from an 80-year-old Hummel collection that belonged to Jim’s mother.
“I treasure everything,” she said. “That’s a problem with me. I can’t throw anything away. But I feel an energy around some of this stuff. But of course, you can’t take it with you.”
Now, Buell takes notice when people like something of hers, and has started assigning in her mind who will get some of her special pieces.
“I’m not planning for my goodbye from the planet, but you do become vulnerable when you have to go through a health scare,” said Buell, 72, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024 and underwent a lumpectomy. “As Jane Goodall would say, you realize you’re closer to the end than you were to the rest of your life. And you have to be very conscientious and very present about what you choose to do with those years. And I’m sort of at that place right now, where I just want to do my best work. I think I have a lot to give to people that feel like things are over. They’re never over. Even when they’re over, they’re not over.”
