All right. Michael Caine at the Kenny Everett party was a sweetheart of a guy. In general, I’ve found I get treated the same way that I treat people, which is fair enough, really. And some people rise to the occasion and are just wonderful. . .
But on the other side of the coin, some celebrities I’ve had brush-ins with were pretty horrible. Then again, maybe they were just having a bad day? Hard to say. For example, back in NY, before moving to England and during my Nervus Rex days, there were two annoying, stuck up celebs (one a future celebrity) who stick out in my wondering cranium:
Marvin Hamlisch. Yes, that’s right: Marvin Hamlisch. He bumped into Mike Chapman when Chapman & Chinn were wining and dining Nervus Rex. It might have been the Russian Tea Room. Our meal with the Chinnichap team was winding up, and we were reasonably happy to get the attention and promises of a fabulous future from a team of dedicated pop hitmakers.
Then this schmuck shows up. Hamlisch gladhands Chapman, who tells him, “’Ere’s a new pop band we’re signing, Nervus Rex!” Not missing a beat, Hamlisch utters in our direction, “G chord, D chord, C chord, guys!” Thanks, dude. We did NOT take it as a compliment from the tone of his voice and his smirking face.
The other unkind person I encountered in my naïve youth was a young woman who rode the elevator in the Music Building on 8th avenue just like everybody else -- but unlike anybody else, never deigned to speak to anybody and always eyed everybody else haughtily. This was when she first came to the city, around 1980, ’81, when she was experimenting with her sound (she started out doing a rockin’ Cyndi Lauper type of thing but then veered off to doing disco-flavored singles, dancing and singing -- as her singing isn’t anywhere as excellent as ol’ Cyndi’s).
Madonna Louise Ciccone NEVER looked like she was having a nice day. . . and was even nasty enough to talk about the “losers” who rode the elevator with her in the Music Building in her first big Rolling Stone interview in 1985 or ‘86, when the Washington Squares were on tour in LA. I read the article and couldn’t believe that somebody could be so ungracious. . . but that is why you won’t find me being a Madonna fan (while I admire the fact she is rich because I can’t help myself, struggling so and being so indoctrinated in our land of the free, home of the brave, adorer of the rich).
Back to the Main Squeeze. There was a party for the reunion of Simon & Garfunkel one night, and of course I was working. Art Garfunkel came into the room with an entourage of unhappy looking Eurotrash & London Scenester types.
What happened after that is the real story. . .
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