In
this thread I talked about my conflicted feelings about meeting a band I saw live recently. I feel like now that I'm 40 I shouldn't act like a teenager around bands and ask for autographs and pictures, but instead just shake their hand and say "good show"... like an adult!
But it wasn't always this way. To wit:
Shortly after high school, I got a job near Little Five Points\Ponce in Atlanta. The city's record chain at the time was called Turtle's, and the location in the nearby Plaza Shopping Center (where The Majestic diner is) was where "alternative" bands did their meet and greets. I'd only had my job for a couple of weeks, and heard that
Nitzer Ebb was going to be at Turtle's. I snuck off to get a 12" single signed by them. They were nice (if a little too drunk for 2 in the afternoon). I can't believe I risked my job over a band that few remember, and even fewer care about.
I met
Maria McKee (sister of Love's Bryan MacLean and founder of 80s two-hit wonder Lone Justice) at the same Turtle's a year or so later. She was
totally high and seemed lost. She was playing an acoustic guitar, and at one point one of the GIGANTIC silver rings she was wearing flew off her finger and hit a fan square in the face. She giggled and said "Oh... woooow, man!". Smoke weed much, Maria? While waiting, I stood in line with a guy who had tracked down and bought one of her high school yearbooks (well, not HER yearbook, but one featuring her), which seemed really creepy in the pre-Internet age.
I had a friend named Jamie who could talk his way into (or out of) any place he wanted. We saw
Front 242 at Center Stage, and talked our way into the after-party next door. I got totally lit off free beer and was standing at the bar ordering another when lead singer Jean-Luc De Meyer walked up. We drank a beer, then another - just chatting - when I said "ya know... I'd.. I'd... I'd really, like, want your, uh, autograph, man". A Sharpie was located, but I couldn't find good scrap of paper, so I had him sign my jeans. Other band members thought this was funny, so they came over and signed my jeans too. De Mayer started aimlessly doodling on the jeans, and soon everything but my crotch was covered in Front 242 autographs, scribbles and doodles. Oh, and we drank more beer. Good times!
Before the Buckhead Theatre became a soulless, corporate-approved music venue, it was known as the Buckhead Cinema and Drafthouse. I guess the "cinema and drafthouse" bit weren't that profitable, because in 1985 they started having concerts there. The third show was
Love and Rockets. I went with an older neighbor\friend, who bought me beer. I got so tanked that I couldn't stand up, so I crawled up on stage and sat with my back against one of the amps. Just to show you show slack the place was, a stage hand started to walk towards me, but as soon as he saw that I was just sitting there - two feet away from David J - he turned and walked back. I had brought my camera with me, and after the show my friend was somehow able to convince the guard at the back door that I (a drunk 14 year-old) was a photographer for
Creative Loafing, the city's alternative weekly. He let us in, and we hung out and drank with the band... and even followed them back to their "tour bus" (actually an RV). I found a marker and started to draw the band's "bubblehead" mascot on the side of the RV. Daniel Ash poked his head out the window and demanded to know what I was doing. I showed him, and he snatched the marker from me and started doodling himself. All the other band members and fans started drawing on the RV, and it soon looked like the van had been attacked by especially artistic graffiti artists. Somewhere, in all my stuff, there are some fuzzy, out-of-focus B&W prints the evening.
I also met
Bryan Ferry at the same venue (the tour buses\limos had to park on the street behind the venue, so there's no mystery were they would come out). Ferry was a total class act - he stood there, in the cold, for at least 45 minutes, taking to each person individually and signing everything people put in front of him.
Also met
Henry Rollins at the same venue. I've always thought that HR was a bit too full of himself, and this only re-enforced that notion. He was surrounded by younger fans who practically worshipped him - which is fine if you're talking about music, but this was his spoken word tour. I'd just seen him talk for almost three hours about foreign policy, technology, and other things that HR perhaps isn't the most informed person about. And the whole time he had that "yeah, I'm cool" smirk on his face.
I tried to meet the
Cocteau Twins at the same venue, but their manager came out and loudly announced that Elizabeth Frazier was sick and wouldn't be meeting anyone that night. Fine. But then a pack of six burly bodyguards pushed everyone out of the way (like, literally, as if they were Secret Service agents clearing the way for the president) to let Frazier (and Robin Guthrie, who
wasn't sick) through the small crowd. And then the tour bus sat there for at least thirty minutes before I left. I guess she was too sick to meet people, but not sick enough to rush back to the hotel.
I didn't really "meet" them, but I saw
Duran Duran when they came through Atlanta on their 2003? 2004? "reunion" tour. It was slightly surreal for me. When I first started liking the band, few in Atlanta had heard of them. But then they became one of the biggest bands on the planet, with bulletproof limos taking them from private jet to the venue, where thousands of screaming fans awaited them. But that night they'd played
The Tabernacle, which Wiki says has a capacity of 2,600. There were maybe 60 people waiting for them after the show - a lot for the small space between the back door and the tour bus (no more private jet, eh?). But each member stopped and signed sometime from every person. I guess they're kind of humbled a bit, going from playing arenas to small venues. But they still know that their fans have loved them for years, so they signed everything and looked at every person and thanked them for coming to the show, which was nice.
Lastly, my ex sat next to
Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries on a flight once. My ex said that she was so small (not just short, but rail-thin) that she looked sick. She was also surprised that O'Riordan could afford a first-class ticket, and wondered if Delta perhaps gave her a free upgrade*.
How about YOU? Any good stories about meeting a musician?
* - Are The Cranberries one of those "huge in Europe, one-hit wonder in the US" bands? This was in 1998 or 1999.