The Ordinary Experience of Meeting Famous People

It's Wednesday. So I sometimes write about books. And sometimes just share some new writing. Here are two new short stories about meeting famous people.

“Being Backstage”

When I met Athol Guy, he must have been about 48 years old. Because I was about 13, and I see he’s 83 now. Which means I’m nearly the age he was when we met, and that’s far closer than I ever thought we’d get.

He was standing by the buffet table, The Seekers had just played a gig. And there was a huge feed going down for the WAGs, the band, and various hangers-on. Judith Durham wasn’t there, so maybe at this point they were running that New Seekers line. I can’t remember. But I do remember that the only reason we were there was because my dad’s best mate was one of the promoters – and it was his brilliant idea that we all leave our family holiday in Taupo and drive several hours each way across the middle of the island, there and back in the same night, and all just to see this band that none of us cared about. At all.

The promoter’s son – one of our family friends – was into this video game Skate or Die, and also the band Suicidal Tendencies. So that was his vibe. We walked backstage and flashed our silly passes after the show, and Dan yelled, “Oh my gosh, did that suck?” And he always spoke in a phoney American accent. (We never asked why. We mostly just laughed. Often with him. Sometimes at him. He never minded either way).

Athol Guy was standing, guarding the table. He wanted to meet everyone and anyone that he was sure wanted to meet him. But it also looked like he was keeping score of what was being lifted from the table.

We were explained aways as the children of the promoter. But in fact, I was ‘staff’. They’d asked me to sell programmes, at $20 a pop for the glossy souvenir edition. It was a stretch, back in 1990. And they only paid me $20 in total for my work. I’m pretty sure I was sold on the fact that the next day I’d be buying a new cassette tape, or a wrestling action figure, or maybe both…

Athol Guy was grinning like a wax-figure version of himself. Probably thinking about all the money he was saving by paying slave-wages, I remember thinking. And he stood as upright as his double-bass.

Worse than the $20 fee for working for the band, we were given a copy of their latest Greatest Hits. New versions. No Jude. And they all stood around and signed the CD, like we might one day care. My mum’s face was priceless. Athol Guy was last to sign, he scrawled his name larger than anyone else.

He shook my hand and told me I was the band’s youngest fan.

Skate-or-Die mate shouted out loudly, “no he’s not!” And I could see Athol Guy beaming, thinking there was someone younger even than me that loved this band, even with Julie Anthony sitting in.

This was my first backstage experience. And I’ve hated being backstage ever since. It’s as phoney as Athol Guy’s smile, I always think. Regardless of the band, and of whether I could claim some legitimacy in being there. Or, for that matter, whether they could.

We Do Talk About Bruno

Seventeen. End of high school. I’d done a bit of journalism for the National Youth Drama School because my teacher had put my name forward. And rather than pay me, they decided to give me free entry to any of the classes that I might want to attend. The problem there was that I hated drama, was deeply insecure about being put on a stage, wouldn’t want to try, didn’t have the skills and couldn’t see any way in.

But I found they had a course called Music in Drama. So I opted for that. And it turned out to be a lot of fun. We just sat in a room and jammed Led Zep and Black Sabbath and Faith No More. And I bashed away on the drums and made some jokes and did my best.

The patron of the National Youth Drama School was Bruno Lawrence.

It was never clear what the patron was meant to do, but Bruno just seemed to wander around the school drinking a beer, wearing rugby shorts, and thongs. And one night, after the class, midway through the week of the school, I was loading my drums into my car because I needed them for a band practice that night. This sandpaper voice whisper over my shoulder, “flash drums, cunt”.

Bruno.

I knew his work from Smash Palace and Quiet Earth and a few others. I thought he was the greatest. I knew he played drums and had seen him lead a kick-ass jazz band in Napier one time when I was allowed up late. And I knew he wrote Ride The Rain. Had been in Quincy Conserve, Max Merritt’s Meteors and The Crocodiles. In fact my first drum teacher was the guy that replaced Bruno in the Quincys.

In Havelock North in the 1990s everybody knew Bruno – or acted like they did. My mum would often get mistaken for Bruno’s wife. And the ladies in the supermarket would say things like, “I see Bruno’s back in town”. And my mum would just answer honesty, saying, “I haven’t seen him”. That no doubt got tongues a-wagglin’.

So I’m thinking about all of this right as I hear “flash drums, cunt”. And I’m thinking about Ginger Baker and Elvin Jones, since that’s the sort of jazz noises I hear from Bruno when he plays drums. I saw him play one night with not only his hands and feet but his body, his soul, his mind…

But here we are face to face. And he swills the beer in the Steinlager bottle. It’s dregs. And he belches.

I show him the picture of John Coltrane I’ve photocopied and attached to my bass drum.

He tells me that Elvin Jones is it. The business. And then he laughs about the fact that I’m lifting cymbals into the car wrapped up in tea-towels. He says, “Flash drums cunt, but you need a cymbal bag. Elvin Jones woulda had a cymbal bag!”

He tells me he probably has one lying around as a spare. And to come up to the house sometime. And then he wanders off. No number, no address. And I never followed up. It was another Bruno Lawrence performance permanently etched into my brain.