Road Tips

Richie Hayward - 1946 - 2010

The death earlier this week of the drummer and one of the founding members of Little Feat, Richie Hayward, was a sad day for a number of music aficionados.  Richie was a dynamic drummer, fully ambidextrous whose beats and rhythms flowed across his drum kit.  Not only was he the backbone of the Little Feat sound, he was a great showman who turned in great performances night after night.

With the 6th annual River Roots Live festival coming up next weekend here in Davenport, I would like to share a story about meeting Richie Hayward backstage when Little Feat played the initial event in 2005.  I had been hired to be the stage manager and announcer for the event, a position I'd done a number of times for the local Davenport Chamber of Commerce for other festivals they had.  Little Feat happened to be the headlining band for the Saturday night part of the festival that year. 

Before the show, I talked extensively with Bill Payne, the keyboard player for Little Feat, who has long been one of my musical heroes.  I learned long ago that famous musicians usually don't like to be asked about their music or "what were you thinking when you wrote that song", especially by a local crew member in the backstage area.  Most of the more famous musicians I've worked with over the years want to be treated like normal people.  

It turned out that Bill and I had a mutual interest in photography.   He had spent a good portion of the day traveling around the Quad Cities and taking pictures of various places in and around the towns.  He said, "I think this is a neat area.  You have so many little neighborhoods throughout all these towns.  I got a lot of great shots of houses, store fronts, the riverfront.  A day like this makes the long travel we go through on tours somewhat bearable." 

I had known that Richie Hayward was born in Iowa (in Clear Lake - 1946) and raised in Ames.  I was hoping to be able to ask him about growing up in Ames, which was about 55 miles from where I grew up in Newton.  In fact, Ames High School and Newton High School were in the same conference and natural sports rivals for years and years.  I was wondering if he had any recollections of growing up in Central Iowa.

Richie was hanging around the stage before the gig, joking and talking with other members of Little Feat and their crew, so I didn't feel it was appropriate to go up and talk to him about growing up in Iowa.  So, I just sort of left it at that, figuring that I wouldn't have a chance to speak with him.  I will have to say, however, that it was pretty cool to be standing on the ground about 10 feet behind Richie Hayward looking up at him play on the stage watching him masterfully roll across his drum kit with such a fluid nature.  He was truly mesmorizing to watch. 

As Little Feat was finishing their encore, I was positioned toward the back of stage right, near a set of service stairs.  Little Feat's trailer was parked next to the stage with a ramp coming from it onto the stage.  The band accessed the stage by going up the steps in the side of the trailer and then out onto the stage via the ramp.  When the band had finished their final song, they all stood at the front of the stage acknowledging the crowd of nearly 8000 people who had come to hear them play that evening.  When they left the stage, the all took the ramp back onto the trailer.  Except for Richie Hayward.  He turned around and came barreling at me, trying to get down the service steps at the back corner of the stage.  And, of course, I was in the way.  He sort of ran into me, grabbing on to me in the process.  He said, "Watch it, big guy.  You're gonna get hurt if you're in the way!" 

Well, I wasn't expecting anyone from Little Feat to be coming off stage in that direction.  I apologized to him and got out of his way.  I felt sort of like a dolt because the last thing you want to be on or behind the stage is "in the way."   Even though it may be my job to be in the way.  

As the evening was wrapping up, the members of Little Feat were on their bus cooling down after the show.  I had paid the remaining money due to their road manager, Denny Jones, and he and I were talking about a little bit of everything.  (Earlier in the day, Denny told some amazing stories of life on the road in the 70's and 80's when he worked for bands such as Poco, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Lionel Richie, The Tubes, and Kenny Loggins.  He also told some great stories about playing in a Southern California softball league 25 years ago with members of the Eagles.  Their team was called the Hollywood Hoovers - and not because of a sponsorship by the vacuum cleaner company.  The term "Hoover" described heavy cocaine users in the day.)  

As Denny and I were walking back to the Little Feat bus, we paused and shook hands and I headed over to one of the RV trailers that we had for some of the bands that weekend.  Standing alone along some bicycle rack fencing near the trailer was Richie Hayward, smoking a cigarette.   He was just surveying the departing crowds, hanging out trying to wind down after the show. 

I was hesitant to go up and talk with him, but he sort of saw me and acknowledged me.  I went over and said, "Hey, sorry to get in your way up on the stage."

He said, "Aw, hey.  No harm, no foul."

I said, "You sort of surprised me by coming that way off the stage.  Everyone else was going off on the ramp through the trailer."

Richie sort of laughed and said, "They all say that I'm a little different."

I thought it would be a good time to ask him about growing up in Iowa.  I said, "So, when did you graduate from Ames High?"

He sort of jerked his head and gave me a startled look.  But he then said, "I graduated in 1965."

I told him that I had grown up in Newton and he said, "Oh, you're a Cardinal!"  (The Cardinals were Newton High's nickname).  I told him that I was, indeed, a Cardinal. 

I asked him if he had gotten his start playing with bands around the Ames area.  He said he had.  "In fact, my first paying gig was when I was 13 years old.  We played the...  hmm... "  He was having trouble recollecting his first gig, considering it was nearly 45 years prior.  He then said, "It was either in the Moose Lodge or the Elks Club in Nevada."  (Nevada, IA is a town about 10 miles from Ames.)  We played for a bunch of old farts.  My mom set up the gig."  

He said his mom was very supportive of his love for music and playing the drums when he grew up.  He said, "I lived in Clear Lake for about the first six years of my life and I found that I liked to bang on things.  When we moved to Ames I got hooked on playing drums.  I think I was seven or eight."  He said he got his first set of drums not long after that.    

Richie said that he played in a number of different bands while in junior high and high school, but he knew that staying in Ames, IA wasn't in the cards for him.  "As soon as I graduated from Ames High in 1965, I think the next day I was on my way to California," he said laughingly.    

He said he was bumming around Southern California for a while before he answered an ad in a local free paper for a "freaky drummer".  "I liked the wording of the ad and I had to go see who would be on the lookout for that kind of guy," Richie told me. 

It turned out that person was Lowell George.  And with that, their longtime friendship and collaboration began.  They played in a band for a couple years before going their separate ways for a year.  But in 1969 they formed Little Feat with Bill Payne.  "And the rest, as they say in Hollywood, is history," he said.

Hayward's style of drumming crossed over into many different styles of music.  In addition to his work with Little Feat, Richie also played in the studio and on tour for such diverse performers as Eric Clapton, Barbra Streisand, Robert Plant, Taj Mahal, Van Dyke Parks, Joan Armatrading, and James Cotton. 

Last summer, Richie was diagnosed with a severe liver disease and took a leave of absence from the band.  I don't know if it was cancer, but I do know that Richie was living in Canada with no medical insurance.  A number of fund raisers were held to help him with his medical bills, but he died Thursday of complications from pnuemonia in a hospital near Vancouver, B.C. where he was awaiting a liver transplant.  

My short visit with Richie and him telling me stories about his early years in Iowa will stick in my mind as one of the highlights of my life.  He was very down to earth and friendly during his conversation.  I stuck out my hand and thanked him for the years of enjoyment his music had brought to me.  He said, "Thanks, man.  You keep rockin', ya'hear?"

It's sad and too bad Richie couldn't keep rockin' a little while longer.  He might not of been the one of the most famous drummers on the music scene, but as Larry Luttrell, a drummer from Chicago once told me, "Richie Hayward is a drummer's drummer." 

You keep rockin', Richie.  Ya'hear?

Paul W. Klipsch

If you're somewhat familiar with some of the top name brands in consumer electronics, you'll no doubt recognize the Klipsch loudspeaker brand name.  This is a "Brushes with Greatness" story involving the founder of Klipsch speakers - Paul W. Klipsch - that I've been wanting to write about for a long, long time, but never really got around to it.  And it's kind of a long story, coupled with some side stories within the story, so maybe that's why I've had trouble getting it started. 

Paul Klipsch was an audio industry icon for years and years, long revered for his innovations in loudspeakers and his blunt assessment of many of his competitors.  In fact, one of Paul Klipsch's trademark phrases was "Bullshit!", often used when one of his competitors would excitedly claim of "breakthroughs" in sound reproduction.  Klipsch began to hand out little yellow pin buttons with the "Bullshit!" phrase on it.  These buttons were worn by Klipsch disciples with pride.

Paul Klipsch also wrote what was sort of the first audio/video industry newsletter.  Called "The Dope from Hope", Klipsch's newsletters spanned over 20 years, and they were never written on a scheduled basis.  Some of the information in the newsletters were strictly "propeller-head" stuff, but there were also useful tips in setting up systems, getting around obstacles in room acoustics, and some ramblings about how some companies had tried to infringe on the Klipsch design and their miserable failures at trying to do so. 

Years ago, I was the General Manager of an audio/video store in Davenport, IA by the name of Audio Odyssey.  (Audio Odyssey is now Planet Audio - part of the Hawkeye Audio chain out of the Iowa City area.)  We were a Klipsch dealer and as part of a sales contest, three people - one from the East region, one from the Central region, and one from the West region - would be picked at random to travel to Hope, Arkansas to spend a weekend with Paul W. Klipsch.  It turned out that the guy picked to go from the Central region couldn't go due to scheduling problems.  So, the Klipsch Central regional sales manager, Ernie Coulter, pulled out another name - mine.  Ernie told me later on, "When I pulled your name out, I thought, 'Oh, this guy is going to have a lot of fun.  I wanna be there with him that weekend.' "

It was September of 1992 when I caught a flight from the Quad Cities to Little Rock via St. Louis.  I was met at the Little Rock airport by Georgia Bell (seriously, that was really her name!), who was kind of the "every woman" at Klipsch at the time.  She wore many hats for the company and was really the glue that kept the company together.  I met the other two contest winners - a kid from a store in Portland, Oregon who was mesmerized by his surroundings all weekend long; and a store owner from Portland, Maine who, I found out later, took the trip away from one of his sales people who had been originally picked for the trip.  The guy was kind of a prick for doing that and he wasn't very social all weekend long. 

The Klipsch speaker company was undergoing some internal changes as Paul W. Klipsch had recently sold the company to a distant cousin, Fred Klipsch.  Fred Klipsch headed Klipsch Lanham Investments and before he bought the Klipsch speaker company in 1990 he really had no idea there was a Klipsch speaker company out there, or that Paul Klipsch was a distant relative.  Fred Klipsch orchestrated a rapid growth of the KIipsch brand - much to the consternation of audio purists who were Paul Klipsch disciples - and today it is the second largest speaker manufacturer in the world, trailing only Bose Loudspeakers. 

Now, this was also the point in history where a local Hope boy by the name of Bill Clinton was on the verge of gaining the office of President of the United States.  When we were on the way to Hope from Little Rock, Georgia said that she lived caddy-cornered from the boyhood home of Bill Clinton.  When we were in the hotel lobby getting ready to go over to Georgia's house for a cook-out with some Klipsch employees, there was a map that showed Bill Clinton's boyhood home.  I said, "So, Georgia, show me where you live in conjunction to Bill Clinton's boyhood home."

She pointed to a place that was six blocks from the Clinton home.  I said, "Wait a minute.  I thought you told me that you lived caddy-cornered from Clinton's boyhood home." 

She said, "Oh, well, technically I do.  The house they have on the map is the house he lived in when he was 2 or 3 years old and on.  The 'original' house he lived in when he was first brought home from the hospital and where he lived for his first couple of years is just over my back yard fence.  I'll show you both homes and tell you the story of why they call that other place his boyhood home." 

The first house she drove us by was a very nice little bungalow not far from the downtown area in Hope.  It had a sign in the yard designating it as Bill Clinton's boyhood home.  Then she took us to another house not far away.  This house - a nice southern style two story home - had burn marks coming from the upstairs window.  The place was really in disrepair on the outside.  Georgia said, "This was the original home for Bill Clinton when he was born."

Sure enough, it was just across the fence on the southwest corner of her yard.  She explained to us that the first boyhood home she showed us was owned by a couple of lesbians, which caused some consternation with the locals when they decided to put up signs calling their house Bill Clinton's boyhood home.  However, the second house with the burned out windows was owned by a poor black family who suffered a fire in the second story the year before.  They couldn't afford to do anything with the second story of the house, so they just closed it up and lived on the first floor.  Georgia told us, "So, you see it's easier for the town leaders to allow the two lesbians to have that sign up because they couldn't put up a sign for this house."

(As an aside, after Bill Clinton was elected, a foundation was set up to get donations to buy the house and to fix it up.  Opened in 1997, the Clinton Birthplace Museum showcases some Clinton items and other memorabilia.  The house was owned by Bill Clinton's maternal grandparents and he eventually moved to the other house in 1950 when his mother married Roger Clinton.  Actually, it turned out that Bill Clinton lived in a lot of homes while he was growing up as there are locations in Hot Springs, AR that he lived in, as well.)

The following day, we had a tour of the Klipsch factory.  During the tour, we were taken into an office in the research and development area of Klipsch and sitting there was Paul Klipsch, himself.  Paul Klipsch was a tall man - easily 6'5" - with unruly white hair, a full mustache and menacing eyes that look you up and down as he mentally sizes you up.  While we were scheduled to meet Paul Klipsch later in the day at the original Klipsch "factory" across the road from the main office, he took the time to meet us.  Even though he was no longer the owner of the company and was officially retired, he still came into the office every day to fiddle around.  Even at the ripe old age of 88, Klipsch's mind was still pretty sharp.

After the introductions, Klipsch said, "Which one of you are from Davenport?"

I spoke up and said, "I am."

It turns out that Paul Klipsch spent a lot of time in Rock Island and Davenport before and during World War II working on munitions and ballistics for the U.S. Army at the Rock Island Arsenal.  In fact, the land on which the Klipsch plant was built was part of an old munitions testing ground during the war.  And the "original factory" for Klipsch was the munitions assembly block house that had thick concrete walls and a thick concrete floor to help guard against any explosions.

Now, here's another side story on Paul Klipsch.  He was quite an interesting man who lead a colorful life.  Klipsch was the holder of 20 U.S. Patents.  He held patents in his work with General Electric when he helped develop Chile's electric train system in the 1930's.  He holds patents in his work with the Army in munitions and ballistics.  And he holds a number of patents in his work with loudspeakers and their components.  

Eccentric is also what Paul W. Klipsch was.  He was one of the first people to jog around Hope in the 60's long before the fad of jogging came about.  One time, he took off all of his clothes and turned up the heat in his office to see if a new digital thermometer really worked.  On Sunday's, he was known to sit in a pew and take notes from the preacher's sermon, then use the notes to debate parts of the sermon with the preacher.  Once when church was letting out, Paul was getting annoyed that the line to greet the preacher at the front door wasn't moving fast enough for his liking, so he began stepping on the pews to make a quick exit from the church. 

When they had a big parade for Bill Clinton in Hope in early 1992, at the very end of the parade was a solitary Paul W. Klipsch carrying a "Bush/Quayle" sign.  In fact, on the way out to the factory that is located north of Hope (see map), there were all these signs for "Clinton/Gore" up and down the roadside.  Then you turned the corner before the plant and there was a plethora of "Bush/Quayle" signs.  

One Paul Klipsch story that a long-time Klipsch employee told me when I was in Hope - As part of his "workout" Klipsch would swing his legs over the parking meters in downtown Hope.  When he found that he couldn't get his legs swung over a meter, he'd make a note of its location.  Then he went to the mayor's office to report the discrepancy in height of that particular parking meter.

When Paul Klipsch went to Stanford for his graduate degree in electrical engineering after his three-year stint with G.E. in Chile, he was called upon to teach a couple classes.  Two of his pupils were Bill Hewlett and David Packard - the founders of Hewlett-Packard (and if you're a regular reader of Road Tips, you know how much I detest H-P).  When asked by one of the guys who made the trip to Hope how Hewlett and Packard did in school, Paul said, "They passed."  

When you asked Paul Klipsch a question, it was often followed by a long moment of silence as Klipsch would measure his answer.  It was a good ten seconds before Paul Klipsch said that Hewlett and Packard had passed their course with him.  

Later on during the day, we met up with Paul Klipsch again at the little bunker that housed the original Klipsch "laboratory and factory".  Paul Klipsch got the idea for a horn-loaded speaker that has made the Klipsch company famous all over the world from a large multi-chambered, folded-horn public address speaker that was used in the old movie theater in Hope.  When he was in the Army, he would take his first wife, Belle, there for movies.  Klipsch got to thinking that there had to be a way to reproduce that type of folded-horn sound for homes.  

After the war, he bought the bunker and the land surrounding the building for pennies on the dollar from the Federal Government.  In the bunker, he made his first Klipschorn loudspeaker.  Actually, the first four failed.  The first one that worked - marked "X-5" on the outside of the cabinet - was sitting in a dusty corner of the bunker.  To me, that's big audio history, right there.  

There were a number of other speaker projects that Klipsch had in the little bunker.  When he was asked why he didn't have these speakers in a museum setting somewhere, he looked at the person for a moment and finally said, "I find this somewhat boring.  I'm sure others would, too." 

Oh, no way.  It was way interesting to me.  

One of the more interesting things Klipsch had in the bunker was the original Bell Labs horn speaker from the old Hope movie theater from which he got his first idea of the Klipschorn speaker.  It was huge - about four feet high and six feet wide.  He said, "This was what constituted high-fidelity in the 40's.  I knew there had to be a way to make it smaller and more efficient to run with smaller amplifiers."  So a guy who had patents in munitions and electric trains started up his own speaker company and the rest was history.  

We were invited to go over to Paul Klipsch's house for drinks and snacks.  Paul asked, "Does anyone want to ride with me?"

Oh, God!  I JUMPED at the chance.  The other two guys declined.  I thought, "You FOOLS!"  So in the ride from the Klipsch plant to Klipsch's home in Hope, he talked about his days coming to Rock Island and Davenport, where he used to stay in downtown Davenport, some of the places he used to frequent and some of the people he got to know in the area.  We didn't talk speakers or hi-fi the whole 20 minute ride to his house.  It was kind of cool to be with an audio industry icon in his Mercedes talking about everything he remembered about where I lived.  

At his house, we were met by his second wife, Valerie (Belle had passed away a number of years before), a slight lady with a heavy German accent.  She was a little spitfire and a perfect compliment for Paul Klipsch's somewhat biting tone from time to time.  In the Klipsch's living room were matching Steinway baby grand pianos, faced back-to-back like you see at some of the modern piano bars that are popping up across the nation.  There was a pair of Klipschorn speakers with acoustic walls made especially for them.  (Klipschorn speakers are what they call "corner loaded" speakers - they need to sit in a corner to help extend the bass waves for better low-end response.  The Klipsch living room had doors in three of the corners and the pianos were in the fourth corner.  Paul Klipsch came up with an acoustical wall to place the Klipschorns in his room.  The instructions for building the acoustical wall are part of the "Dope from Hope" newsletters.) 

And in the middle of the speakers, smack-dab in front of a 20 foot wide picture window that looked out into the backyard, was a single Belle Klipsch speaker.  Paul Klipsch was the first guy to advocate a center-channel fill speaker in the 50's.  That was at a point where stereo was just beginning to become more than a novelty (most hi-fi systems were a single channel amplifier and a full range speaker up to the mid-to-late 50's).  Then a guy from Hope, Arkansas said that the best way to listen to stereo was to have a third speaker in the middle.   

Well, people thought he was crazy.  They'd say things like, "First of all, you're telling me that we have to have TWO speakers in order to be able to listen to music.  Now this Klipsch guy says that we need THREE speakers?!"  One guy said it was heresy for Klipsch to promote the idea of a center channel speaker.  So what did Klipsch do?  He made a center channel speaker and called it the "Heresy."  As a stereo pair, the Heresy's really rocked. 

In Paul and Val Klipsch's back yard was a lap pool - also an eccentricity of his.  When people would get a pool to relax in, Klipsch had a 4-foot deep, 25-yard long lap pool installed to swim back and forth in.   His neighbors thought he was nuts. 

Surrounding the back yard was a seven foot high wooden fence.  Inside the fence was a foot wide shelf that was mounted with model train tracks that went all around the perimeter of the fence and across the face of the back of the house.  When I inquired about the train tracks, Paul Klipsch jumped up out of his chair and went outside to activate the train.  It was pretty cool.  It was this Lionel O gauge electric train set with a locomotive, some cars and a caboose.  When Klipsch hit the power to the tracks, the train started up slowly at first, then gained speed as it went down the side fence toward the back.  His eyes darted back and forth looking at the train and making sure a squirrel hadn't deposited a walnut on the tracks down the line which would cause a derailment.  Honestly, he was like a little kid at Christmas when I asked him if the train really worked.  He couldn't wait to show me. 

As we enjoyed cold St. Pauli Girl beers and snacks in the living room and back yard, he talked about his time he spent drinking in the great beer halls of Germany.  Each fall, Klipsch would make the trip to Munich for Oktoberfest.  That would have been a kill to see that guy in one of the beer tents in Munich at Oktoberfest. 

Over time that late afternoon, I noticed that Paul Klipsch had sort of taken a liking to me.  He kept calling me "Herr Veber", probably from the Germanic pronunciation of the name "Weber".  He kept wanting to show me things, almost pushing the other two guys who made the trip out of the way to show me a picture or a clipping of some item that fascinated him.  I noticed that a lot of the conversation he started was directed toward me, calling me by my name and asking if I needed anything else.  It was quite the time, to say the least. 

The next day before we left Hope to go back to Little Rock for the evening, Paul Klipsch had lunch with us at the hotel restaurant.  Once again, he seemed to favor me in conversation - asking questions about my family heritage, inquiring about old landmarks around the Quad Cities that he remembered, and sharing stories about his days in Chile.  When we left, I shook his hand and I said, "Mr. Klipsch, it's been truly an honor."

He gave me that somewhat nefarious look and didn't reply right away.  Then he said, "If it was an honor for you, it was a pleasure for me."

About 18 months later at the 1994 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Klipsch company had a 90th birthday celebration for Paul Klipsch at a hotel off the Strip, even though Paul's birthday wasn't until March.  I was long gone from working retail and selling Klipsch speakers, now back on the road working for a rep company.  But I'd heard that he'd be there and I wanted to go over and give him my best wishes.  I ran into some people that I knew from Klipsch and they were surprised that I'd make the time to show up.  Ernie Coulter led me over to where Paul was seated and he asked Paul, "Do you remember this guy?"

Paul gave me the trademark "Klipsch Up-and-Down Look" before he finally said, "Herr, Veber!"  I told him that I wanted to come over and give him my best wishes for his birthday.  In a measured response he said, "They must not think I'm going to last for another two months!" 

We made small talk for a moment, then I told him that I had to be going.  I said, "Besides, there's a long line of people who want to talk with you."

He looked at the people behind me and he said, "They can wait."

Tomorrow will be the seventh anniversary of Paul Klipsch's death.  He was 98 when he passed away in Hope in 2002.  His wife, Valerie, gave Klipsch's alma mater, New Mexico State, a number of items that Paul had in the bunker and in his office for the Paul W. Klipsch Museum in the College of Engineering at NMSU.  The museum also catalogs all of Klipsch's calculations, experiment results and white papers.  Although it's only open to the public on Tuesday and Thursdays for 90 minutes, I think it would be cool to go through sometime.  Although I'm not certain 90 minutes would be long enough for me to bring back the memories of the weekend I spent with Paul Klipsch. 

The Death of Evil Knievel

The death earlier today of stuntman Evil Knievel at the age of 69 reminded me of a time years ago when I knew Knievel's oldest son, Kelly.  Now, this isn't really a brush with greatness, but more of a brush with someone who was the son of greatness.  Or something like that...

My good friend, Todd Bishop, was living out in Las Vegas and I'd always see him when I'd go out for the Consumer Electronics Show during the 80's and 90's.  It turned out that Todd worked for Kelly Knievel as one of Knievel's top managers at a telemarketing company in Las Vegas.  Todd and Kelly would regularly play golf together as both were very accomplished golfers. 

Kelly wasn't the daredevil Knievel brother that followed in his father's footsteps.  That was Robbie Knievel (right).  Kelly was definitely the more "buttoned-down" of the two brothers.  I understand from Todd that Kelly and Robbie had a "love-hate" relationship for a number of years do to a number of factors, but the last report I had a few years back was that they were on speaking terms again. 

I met Kelly during one of my times in Vegas and he seemed like a real down to earth guy.  I never really asked him about his dad - I figured enough people did that.   

(As an aside, years ago I met a guy who worked at an audio store in Minneapolis by the name of Steve Raitt.  Steve was a very nice guy and he would always see me at trade shows and we'd talk.  In the 90's, Steve had a cancerous brain tumor and it knocked him out of commission for awhile.  He was able to beat it and slowly got himself healthy again.

In 2001, Bonnie Raitt played a benefit concert in conjunction with the American Cancer Society at the CEDIA Expo in Indianapolis.  I didn't go see her play that night, but a friend of mine did.  He told me, "Steve even got up and sang a couple songs with Bonnie last night." 

I said, "Steve?  Steve who?"

He looked at me funny and said, "Steve Raitt, Bonnie's brother."

I stood there for a long second and finally realized a guy that I'd known for over 15 years was Bonnie Raitt's brother.  He was such a quiet and unassuming guy that I would have never put two and two together that Steve and Bonnie Raitt were brother and sister.  And Steve even performed on a number of Bonnie's albums.)

In any event, I got to know Kelly and he was a good guy.  When Todd got married back in Newton, IA in 1991, Kelly came back for the wedding.  A bunch of us were out at a bar in Newton and Kelly was kind of hanging with me because other than Todd, I was about the only other person there he knew.  And of course, a lot of the local people there that night knew well in advance that Kelly Knievel was Evil's son.  Many of them were coming up and asking Kelly about his dad and sort of making a nuisance of themselves. 

After awhile, Kelly and I were sitting at the bar and I asked, "Does it bug you when these people are coming up and ask you about your dad like that?"

Kelly said, "No, not really.  I really admire what dad has done.  I don't get tired of talking about him one bit."

Kelly paused for a moment and then he said, "You know, I've known you for, what, two or three years now?  And you've never asked me about my dad." 

I told Kelly that whenever I've met someone famous or someone who was related to someone famous, I'd never ask questions about the part of being famous.  I'd rather get to know them as to who they really are, because I found that most famous people are like normal people - except they have a talent that normal people don't have.

He sat there for a second and said, "That's a good way to look at it.  I honestly don't mind to talk about my dad, but it's also good to get to know someone who isn't trying to climb through me to get to my dad." 

I saw Kelly one other time after that wedding weekend in Newton.  Not long after that, Kelly and his company got in some hot water with their telemarketing practices.  Todd divorced his wife that he married in Newton and moved to Reno soon thereafter. 

I was looking through the Internet this evening looking up stories on Evil Knievel's death and I found a couple quotes from Kelly Knievel and it brought back the memories of hanging with him, even for just a short time.  Kelly said about his dad, "His courage and determination as an individual to form his own identity, I think that was his strongest characteristic. He was a man, a self-determined man."

Kelly also said, "I think he lived 20 years longer than most people would have (after so many injuries). I think he willed himself into an extra five or six years."

Kelly was also interviewed on NPR earlier today.  Click here to hear that interview.  I think you'll be able to get a good snapshot of how Kelly revered his father in that interview.  He was certainly proud of his dad when I knew him years ago and he's just as proud today talking about his father's life.        

The Death of "Mr. Whipple"

Dick Wilson, the actor who played "Mr. Whipple" in the Charmin toilet paper commercials died yesterday of natural causes in Woodland Hills, CA.  Wilson was 91.  In over 500 commercials, Wilson played the exasperated grocery store manager who always implored his customers to not "squeeze the Charmin", all the while he's also squeezing the irresistably soft rolls of toilet tissue.   

For those of you who don't remember the Charmin commercials featuring Mr. Whipple click on the video below:

I met Dick Wilson once when we were seated across the aisle from one another on a flight between St. Louis and the Quad Cities about 15 years ago.  He was flying in to do a promotion commercial for the local NBC affiliate, KWQC-TV.  I documented our meeting in an earlier blog entry here. 

He was a very nice man, although he became a little flustered when he heard we were landing in Moline, IL and he thought he was supposed to be in Davenport, IA.  When I explained to him that Davenport was 10 miles away, just across the Mississippi River, he calmed down.

Wilson's "Mr. Whipple" was a large part of the pop culture for nearly 25 years in the 60's, 70's and 80's.  The commercials spawned a number of jokes and parodies of the Whipple character.  But it also led to a lot of sales of Charmin toilet paper. 

Wilson was a character actor who also had parts in nearly 80 television shows and movies since the mid-50's.  Some of the older people out there may remember Wilson as Captain Gruber in the old Hogan's Heroes show in the 60's, as well as various characters in a number of the old Bewitched shows during that same period. 

Even though meeting him was in a little more than a fleeting moment, I can still say that I met "Mr. Whipple."   

Berke Breathed

Berkeley Breathed is the reknown cartoonist who brought us the socially irreverent Bloom County and Outland comic strips and the current Opus (left)weekly strip. 

For about four years in the early 80's, Berke lived in Iowa City while his girlfriend was going to the University of Iowa College of Medicine.  He used to come into a store that I worked at - Audio Odyssey - and he bought a few things from us from time to time.  The first time I remember him coming in was when he bought a very nice car audio system from us. 

This was when Bloom County was just starting to get picked up in newspapers across the nation.  My friend and co-worker at the time, Dave Arnold, helped him when he bought his car stereo.  And Dave ended up getting a panel of Bloom County signed by Berke and he proudly displayed it on his mantle at his home. 

He didn't like the publicity, he didn't like getting fawned over, he just wanted to be treated like any other guy.  And I did that with him.  In fact, all of us at Audio Odyssey treated him like an ordinary every day customer.  And he really liked that. 

Berke was always "close to the chest" when it came to getting to know him.  He was a very private guy.  But a good guy when you treated him like a regular person. 

There are very few pictures of Berke Breathed available, but here's a picture of him.  Each time I see a picture of Berke, I'm reminded of the comedian Jeff Foxworthy. 

Berke bought something from me at Audio Odyssey one time, I believe it was a cassette tape deck.  He ordered it from us and asked me to bring it over to him when we got it in.  I remember going to his house on the east side of Iowa City, not far from downtown.  He and his girlfriend lived in a small bungelow and he had his studio in one of the rooms.  Nothing spectacular, but that's the way he was.

In 1985, his girlfriend graduated from the U of I Med School and got an internship at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque, so Berke was going to move down there with her.  But before he left he came in and bought a very nice stereo system from me.  It came to about $3000 and it was - up to that point in time - the biggest sale I'd ever made on audio components.  He told me, "You know, I could have waited and got something down in Albuquerque, but you all have been so good to me while I've been here that I wanted to get something from you guys." 

And with that, my relationship with Berke Breathed was over.  But I've remained a fan of his work.  He was a great guy to work with.

Vince Vaughn

Once again, not necessarily a "brush with greatness", but more of a "sighting of greatness"...

I was traversing through the streets of downtown Chicago yesterday, trying to make it to a parking garage off of Michigan Ave.   I was taking a right turn and a couple guys sort of jumped out in the cross walk - a tall, handsome looking guy and a shorter, balding guy.  The taller guy sort of put out his hand, making the "stop" sign.  I saw them well in advance and wasn't going to hit them. 

The taller guy and I locked eyes for a moment and then he turned away as he walked on.  I sat there for a second and finally said out loud to nobody, "Shit, that's Vince Vaughn!" 

Yes, it was Vince Vaughn - and I knew it was him because I just watched part of "Dodgeball" in the hotel the night before. 

Vaughn is a Chicago area native and moved back to Chicago last year.  I understand he lives somewhere in the downtown area, so I'm sure he was just out walking from point "A" to point "B". 

So, yeah, I saw Vince Vaughn in downtown Chicago.

Emerson, Lake and Palmer

I've been a big Emerson, Lake and Palmer fan since the 70's.  I had the chance to see them in concert on two or three occasions, the last time was in 1993 at the Adler Theater in downtown Davenport.  I was a guest of the old KFMH radio station and I had seats in the fifth row center.  I was in heaven.

A year later, I'm out at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and a friend of mine, Dave Donald, told me that Dolby Labs had an area where Emerson, Lake and Palmer were doing a meet and greet.  I said, "Geez, I'd love to meet ELP." 

Dave said, "I think I can get it done."

He took me to the area where ELP was and he introduced me to John Kellogg from Dolby.  John is one of the recording industry's heavy weights and instrumental in many new formats Dolby has introduced for music and cinema over the past few years.  In fact, John was the engineer for the multi-channel re-mixing of Emerson, Lake and Palmer's epic "Brain Salad Surgery" album.

Dave said, "Hey, John.  This is my buddy, Will, and he would really like to meet ELP." 

John said, "Well, they're just finishing up, but I think I can get you in." 

So he takes me into booth area and there are Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and Carl Palmer sitting there.  Emerson and Lake were in no mood to talk, but Carl Palmer was quite engaging.  I told him, "I saw you guys last February at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa.  I was fifth row, center." 

Carl Palmer said, "Oh, Davenport, Iowa!  The Palmer School of Chiropractic medicine!" 

I said, "That's right!"

He said, "They took me there to give me an adjustment before the show.  To loosen me up, so to speak.  Oh, yes.  I remember Davenport very well.  Davenport.  What a dreary town..." 

I kind of chuckled and said, "The whole Midwest is sort of dreary in February." 

They all signed a 8X10 glossy photo of themselves and I have it prominently displayed in our family room in the basement of our house.

Meeting Emerson, Lake and Palmer was a pretty neat deal.

Bob Gibson

Growing up in the central Iowa, it was tough for a kid to not be either a Minnesota Twins fan or a St. Louis Cardinals fan.  Add to the fact that my uncle, Jack Wehrle, grew up in Eureka, MO and he had an undying love for everything Cardinals, I was almost ordained to be a Cardinals fan when I was a little boy. 

Jack took me to my first game at the "second" Busch Stadium in 1968 - the year after the Cardinals won the World Series.  We got to see two games against the Mets - one of which featured the great Bob Gibson pitching. 

I remember it being hotter than hell, even in the shade on a Saturday afternoon, and Bob Gibson had an amazing streak of complete games pitched that he was working on.  It was up to something like 20 games in a row when Red Schoendienst pulled Gibby in the 9th inning in a tie game with the Mets.  My uncle was aghast that Schoendienst would actually pull Gibson.

Gibson went on to the Hall of Fame and is still revered as one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball history.

As I wrote in an earlier post, when I first started to travel to Omaha in the mid-80's, I used to stop in and have a burger or sandwich at Bob Gibson's restaurant (see my blog) just next to Creighton University near downtown Omaha.  I knew that Gibson grew up in Omaha and still had a house there somewhere.  In fact, Bob Gibson was a regular customer of one of the dealers that I called on, Custom Electronics.

One Friday morning, I was doing a product training for the guys at Custom Electronics.  One of the sales guys, Denny Thompson, told me that he had to deliver a Velodyne sub-woofer (one of the lines I represented at the time) to Bob Gibson's house that afternoon.  I said, "Bob... Gibson?" 

Denny said, "Yeah, he's getting a big 15" sub-woofer to go with the Klipsch speakers he has." 

I said, "Do you need any help?"

He said, "Sure."  He said that he was going to go over about 3 p.m.  Well, I was going to leave to go home that morning after I finished up at Custom Electronics, but I decided that I could stick around Omaha for a few more hours.

During the time I was waiting around, I contemplated buying a couple baseballs and having Bob Gibson sign them for me.  But then I got to thinking about how when I lived with a couple guys who played basketball for the University of Iowa how much they hated to be hounded for stuff like that and how they really wanted to be treated like regular people.  So I didn't buy the baseballs.

I showed up and helped Denny load up the sub-woofer and we took off.  Gibson's house was on a somewhat busy street in suburban Bellevue, NE.  We went to the door and we were greeted by Gibson's wife, a rather striking blond woman, very classy and very nice.  She took us down into Bob's "playroom" (as she called it) and there was Bob Gibson.  Denny introduced Bob to me and we went up to get the sub-woofer to bring it in.

The reason Bob needed the sub-woofer was that he was using a pair of the big Klipschorn loudspeakers - which have an open back and should go up against a wall to help manufacture low frequencies - out in the middle of his room.  He couldn't put them up against the wall because there wasn't an area in the room to do that.  So he needed something to deliver bass information when he listened to music (actually, using Klispchorns in that situation was stupid and acoustically counter productive - but I wasn't going to tell him that).

We got the sub-woofer in and set up and Bob was as happy as a kid at Christmas time.  It still didn't sound very well in that room.

It turned out that Bob was also a woodworker - he built the bar in his room as well as a number of wood and glass shelving units that held innumerable little baseball glove trophies, all holding autographed baseballs.  I was just stunned. 

He had a Babe Ruth and a Lou Gehrig autographed ball. ("I had to do some tradin' out for those," he said.) He had autographed balls from Negro League greats such as Buck O'Neil, Buck Leonard and Cool Papa Bell.  Name a contemporary of Bob Gibson's - Sandy Koufax, Pete Rose, Henry Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, Frank Robinson, Juan Marichal, Don Drysdale - each had their autograph on a baseball.  Even the stars of the day - Cal Ripken, Jr., Roger Clemens, Ozzie Smith, Don Mattingly, Rickey Henderson - Bob had their autograph, as well.

I'm guessing there were well over 400 baseballs with autographs in three huge displays with overhead lighting and 4 glass shelves in each. 

He had a number of awards including his Cy Young Awards, his Most Valuable Player Award from 1968, numerous other awards and plaques, numerous Gold Glove awards, pictures and other memorabilia.  It was like I was in baseball heaven.

But one thing that he had on his wall that really stuck out was a Sports Illustrated cover from 1968 that had the starting regular line-up for the St. Louis Cardinals and Gibson seated in the locker room in their street clothes with manager Red Schoendiest in his baseball uniform.  At the top it said, "World Champion St. Louis Cardinals". 

(If there was ever a case of the famous "Sports Illustrated Jinx" that occurred, this was it.  St. Louis was the reigning world champions of baseball winning the World Series in 1967, but were beaten later that week by the Detroit Tigers, 4 games to 3.)   

I'll never forget that cover because it folded out and had Roger Maris, Tim McCarver, Mike Shannon, Lou Brock, Dal Maxvill, Orlando Cepeda, Curt Flood, and Julian Javier sitting with Gibson.  And a little sub-heading after you opened the fold said, "Baseball's Million Dollar Team".  These nine men's combined salaries were $1 million bucks, which was big money in 1968.   

But the cool thing about the one that Bob Gibson had on his wall - each man in the picture had autographed it.  I was in frigging awe!  I couldn't quit gaping at the picture.  I was like a little kid in a candy store where all the girls behind the counter were topless. 

Of course, I was a complete dork about it, too.  I wanted to talk about baseball, but all Bob Gibson wanted to talk about was audio.  He was actually more proud of the stuff he was pulling out of his back room to show me than he was of the awards. 

He showed me this nearly pristine Sony reel-to-reel tape player that he go when the Cardinals went to Japan after the 1968 season.  Bob said, "Back in those days, the consolation prize for losing the World Series was that you got to go to Japan and play exhibition games over there.  It wasn't much of a consolation, believe me." 

I said, "Couldn't you just say that you didn't want to go?"

He said, "In those days, you couldn't say no.  But I did get a lot of neat stuff when I was there." 

He showed me a little portable TV they gave him.  He had some other audio stuff that he'd accumulated over the years and was just sitting there in a back room.  It would have been more than enough for a couple stereo systems on their own. 

But what caught my eye in the room were the other baseball awards (Gold Glove awards - he won something like 10 total), plaques and memorabilia that he had stored in the room.  I could have spent a day in that room and probably wouldn't have been able to get through it all. 

Bob was gracious and he opened a bottle of wine and we sat at his bar drinking.  I kept trying to talk about baseball and he kept trying to pick my brain about audio.  I was too stupid to figure out that I could have really been Bob Gibson's friend by playing coy and talking to him about audio stuff, then casually bringing up some baseball stuff.  No, I was too young and stupid to realize that. 

I told him that I missed his restaurant, Bob Gibson's.  He said, "I miss it, too."  A lot of the memorabilia that he had in his back room I'd seen before in his restaurant.  I asked him what happened and he said, "Well, you trust some people and when they don't come through for you, it sort of hurts."  He didn't have to say it, but I'm guessing the guy who was managing the place stole from him.   

All in all, we sat and drank two bottles of wine, played with his stereo stuff, he endured more insipid baseball questions from me.  But I did get him with this one.  I told him that he was the answer to one of my all time favorite baseball trivia questions.  He said, "What's that?"

I said, "Who is the only major leaguer to play for the Harlem Globetrotters?"  (Gibson played for the Harlem Globetrotters in 1958.)

He sort of sat there for a second and said, "Well, hang on.  Let me think."  He sat there for a moment again and he said, "Was (Dave) Ricketts (a former teammate) a Globetrotter?  Hmm... No, I don't think he was.  Well, I'll be!  So, I AM the only former Globetrotter to play in the major leagues."  He smiled broadly and exclaimed, "How about that?!" 

When Denny and I were leaving, I noticed that Bob had a set of the Boston Acoustics Sub/Sat 6 speakers in his son's play room on the main floor.  I told him that I represented Boston Acoustics, too, and he lit up again.  He said, "Man!  You rep a lot of great lines!  Give me your card!" 

So I exchanged addresses and phone numbers with Bob Gibson.  He never did call me, but I did get a hold of him one day a few years later when I sent him a couple pictures I took of him at an Old Timers game in St. Louis and asked him to sign them for my hospitalized uncle who originally took me to see Bob Gibson play years before. 

He graciously signed them and sent them back to me with a note saying that he remembered me as the stereo guy who couldn't stop talking about baseball.  I just sort of chuckled when I read that, because it was all true.

I'll never forget my afternoon with Bob Gibson.

Celebrity Sightings at O'Hare

Actually, I'm bending the rules regarding the "Brushes with Greatness" category on this one.  I usually only talk about celebrities that I've met and interacted with.  But coming back from France a week ago, I had to go through O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and I saw a couple famous people that I wanted to tell you about.

First of all, I was seated at the bar in a restaurant in the American Airlines terminal during my 3 1/2 hour layover and one of the waiters came up to the bartender and said, "Hey, I've got Scottie Pippen at one of my tables." 

The bartender said, "No way?  You've got 'No tippin' Pippen' in your area?  You poor guy." 

Scottie Pippen is a former NBA basketball player whose hey-days were with the six time World Champion Chicago Bulls.  He was Michael Jordan's "wingman" on those championship teams.  He was in town working for TNT on an NBA broadcast for a play-off game between the Bulls and the Miami Heat.  And he must have a bad reputation for not tipping.

I asked the bartender what she meant and she said, "I waited on him one time and he didn't leave a tip.  He told me, 'The honor of waiting on me should be enough of a tip.'  He said that telling friends and family that she waited on Scottie Pippen would be more than what he could pay her in a tip."   

Sure enough, when I walked out of the restaurant, he was seated with another big black guy who I thought looked like either Horace or Harvey Grant.  I had the sports section for the Chicago Tribune with me and there was a picture in there of Pippen getting way-layed during his playing days.  I thought about going up and asking him to sign it, but it was a pretty unflattering photo and thought better of it. 

But he was just seated there like he was holding court.  He knew people were staring at him and it was like he was sitting there on display for everyone to see.  Sort of weird. 

But the celeb sighting that got the blood up was when I was walking back from the United terminal to the American terminal. (I went over to see if I could get into the Berghoff Cafe out in the C concourse at O'Hare - but with all the flight delays the place was packed with a long line of people trying to get in.)

I saw this statuesque blond with very large mammary glands walking with a black guy that I instantly recognized as a rap star and actor.  They were walking with a United Airlines security person.  He was dressed in a Chicago Bulls uniform and she was dressed in a tight black outfit with her boobs showing a lot of cleavage.  Now, if I hadn't seen her, I would have NEVER seen this guy.

I couldn't remember the guy's name, though.  I kept wanting to say he was Ice Cube, but I knew that wasn't him.  But I knew he was on one of those crime shows on, I believe, NBC.  After I got home, I ended up asking some friends who I might have seen and Tom Kakert said, "You saw Ice T."  Well, I wanted to say his name was Ice T, but then I got to thinking that Ice T was a name from a Saturday Night Live skit or something.  But no, it truly was Tracy Morrow, aka Ice T. 

I got to wondering about the girl that was with him and Kevin Gertsen said, "It was probably his wife."  And he sent me this photograph of them together and an accompanying newspaper article.  The incomparable "Coco" is 23 and she is something else.  When I found out she was 23, I was incredulous - she looked older than my wife!  But she definitely had a major pair of manufactured bazoombas, I'll tell you that. 

Then Dr. Gary Gaffney sent me more information and pictures of Coco.  Turns out that Coco, whose real name is Nicole Austin, is a model who has her own web site.  It's a pay site and mildly X-rated, so you've been warned if you go there.

So, yeah, I didn't really meet or talk to either Scottie Pippen, or Ice T and Coco, but just seeing Coco was something else.  I mean, God...  She was tough to miss.  I figure that Ice T must keep her around because he is an aging rapper (he turned 48 this year) and the only way he'll get his picture taken in public is if she's with him.  That is one scary lookin' couple.  And I'm not talkin' about her boobs, either.

Rufus R. Jones

Back when I was in junior high and high school - circa 1969-74 - there was a professional wrestling show on Sunday nights (and sometimes on Saturday afternoons) called "All-Star Wrestling" that was based out of Kansas City.  It was hokey, but it created a cult following with friends of mine who used to just laugh and carry on the next day about the matches from the night before. 

When I was a sophomore at Newton High School, they had an All-Star Wrestling road show come to the gymnasium one Saturday night.  And to help promote the event, Hesse's Men's Wear in downtown Newton hosted a "meet and greet" autograph session with Rufus R. Jones.

Rufus R. Jones was this large black guy who professed his love for eating "poke chops".  "I loves poke chops, baby.  Can't get enough of 'em," he would say during between match interviews with Bill Kersten, the long-time, schlocky announcer for All-Star Wrestling (pictured below).  Rufus was one of the good guys, regularly going up against such dastardly foes as Handsome Harley Race, Cowboy Bob Orton and Baron Von Raschke.  He was famous for his "head butt" - literally butting his forehead against his opponent's forehead, usually crumbling his rival to the mat and then pinning him for the victory.  I often wondered that if the head butt was such a devastating wrestling move for Rufus, why didn't he use it right off the bat at the start of the match? 

Bill Kersten

It was the fall of 1971 when Rufus R. Jones pulled up in front of Hesse's in his big Cadillac.  He was dressed in a nice sports coat and a pair of slacks.  The place was just PACKED full of people wanting to see him - that's how popular (in a strange way) All-Star Wrestling was in those days. 

I was there with a group of buddies, hanging out.  It was actually a madhouse in the place and Hesse's - and All-Star Wrestling - couldn't have picked a better pre-match promotion.

One of the guys who worked at Hesse's, Chris Wade, came up to me and said, "Hey, Veber.  I'll buy this jock strap if you take it up to Rufus to have him sign it." 

I increduously said, "What?"

Chris said, "Seriously, here's a jock strap.  Take it up and have Rufus sign the thing.  Go on!" 

To this day, I have no idea why Chris picked me to do this little stunt.  Other than he must have thought I'd be stupid enough to do it.  So, he hands me this Extra Large jock strap and tells me to go over and get it signed.

A buddy, Bob Turner, and I approached the table where Rufus was seated, signing autographs with a big felt tipped pen - kind of a precursor of a "Sharpie".  The rest of the guys hanging with us followed closely behind.  I handed Rufus the jock strap and I said, "Hey, Rufus!  Sign this, would you?" 

Rufus' eyes got huge and he looked up at me and said, "Damn, baby!  This is a first for me!"  We were all laughing and he was laughing, too.  He said, "What do you want me to do, baby?  Put it on?" 

He was laughing so hard when he signed his name.  Except he signed it "R Rufs Jones".  I don't know if he was flustered or laughing or just sort of stupid.  I suppose those head butts could catch up to a person sooner than later. 

We stood there talking to him for a couple of minutes and he was joking with us.  This is back when I was a skinny, scrawny kid of 15 and he told me, "Baby, you needs to be eatin' poke chops.  Get to be a big man, like me!" 

Unfortunately, Rufus died 13 years ago so I wasn't able to show him that I took his advice to heart and ate a LOT of pork chops over the last 35 years...

I had that jock strap on my wall at home for a few years until my mom decided to take all the crap I had on my wall down not long after I moved out.  When I figured out that a Rufus R. Jones autographed jock strap would have been one of those keepsakes in life, worthy of many stories, my mom had long thrown it away. 

Oh well...

Edgar Winter

I didn't know whether to list Edgar Winter under "Bands and Music" or "Brushes with Greatness".  Either way, I thought I'd tell the story of working with him during the River Roots Live event held in Davenport this past August.

Actually, the Friday night show was supposed to be Rick Derringer, followed by Edgar Winter, then headlined by Edgar's brother, Johnny Winter.  However, Johnny Winter had to pull out a couple three months before because he wasn't going to be fully recovered from Carpal tunnel surgery.  The BoDeans were brought in to replace Johnny Winter.

Rick Derringer warming up prior to his River Roots Live show.

It would have been interesting to have Rick Derringer, Edgar Winter and Johnny Winter all playing on the same stage in one evening because of how their musical careers have intertwined.

Edgar Winter's band arrived the afternoon of the gig.  They were four kind of non-discript guys - one of whom bitched the whole time because we didn't have "specialty" beer available for the band.  I do remember the drummer - he was a big kid, had to be well over 300 pounds. I couldn't believe the amount of food he ate before AND after they played that night. 

Edgar Winter showed up about 6 p.m. and was herded into a dressing room trailer by his manager.  He never came out until showtime.  After the show, I had to deliver food to the trailer for Edgar and his band.  Plus I had to get a tax form filled out by Edgar before we could pay him. 

I brought the food into the trailer and he was very gracious for the hospitality.  He kind of talked funny (listen to how he talks when the video plays on his home page of his web site), sort of a heavy tongue and lisp at the same time.  But still he was very nice, very laid back. 

I brought in the tax form for him to fill out and he had his manager fill it out.  Then when he had to sign it, he got down real close to the paper - it turns out that he has Retinitis Pigmentosa, which I understand can be a common affliction in albinos.  He can't see shit any more than about three inches away from him. 

He handed me the paper, shook my hand and thanked me for the chance to play "for such a wonderful crowd."  It hit me - he probably couldn't see me other than this big fuzzy image. 

The next day I was talking to Denny Jones, the road manager for Little Feat.  Denny, I found, has a very long history of working for a lot of bands over the years and he's very connected within the music industry.  Denny was telling me that Edgar Winter and his wife, Monique, live in what amounts to be a luxury retirement village in Beverly Hills, CA.

Edgar Winter and his wife, Monique.  Have you ever seen a scarier looking couple?

Denny said, "This isn't like any ordinary retirement home.  They're basically condos that have a 24 hour personal valet service, they have doctors and nurses on staff 24 hours a day.  You need to go somewhere, they have a fleet of limos and vans to take you to appointments or where ever, 24 hours a day."

Denny Jones, road manager for Little Feat

Denny said that a lot of old rock stars, movie and television actors live in the place.  He told me, "It's quite the place to live."

I've never been that big of a fan of Edgar Winter.  Even when his two big hits "Frankenstein" and "Free Ride" were on the radio all the time when I was growing up, I just never cared much for them.  But I will have to say that even though he's kind of a weird guy, Edgar Winter was weird in a very nice way. 

 

"Mr. Whipple"

In September of 1992, I was flying back to the Quad Cities from spending a few days in Hope, Arkansas as a guest of the Klipsch Loudspeaker company and I got to hang out with hi-fi pioneer Paul Klipsch for a couple three days. 

Paul Klipsch

In fact, look for a "Brush with Greatness" post on Paul Klipsch, because he was a fascinating man and it was an interesting weekend, to say the least.  That was also six weeks before a guy who was born in Hope was elected President of the United States.  The stories of his two boyhood homes are kind of funny. 

Once again, I digress from the matter at hand. 

I was on the flight between St. Louis and Moline and I was sitting on the aisle.  Next to me was a lady in her 60's carrying a Houston Astros carry-on bag.  It turned out it was Arlene Hamilton, the wife of long-time Houston Astros broadcaster Milo Hamilton.  She grew up in the Quad Cities (Hamilton worked in the Quad Cities years ago) and she was going to visit her sister who lived just north of Davenport. 

Milo Hamilton

But the guy sitting across the aisle from me was intriguing.  He was traveling with someone who - I assumed - was his wife.  You ever get one of those, "Geez, I know that guy from somewhere" things in your head and you're racking your brain trying to figure out who this person is?  Well, that was me for nearly 40 minutes on the flight up to Moline.

On our final approach into the Quad Cities, the captain announced that we'd be on the ground in Moline in a couple of minutes.  The guy turned to me and said, sort of frantically, "Moline?  I thought we were going to Davenport!"

I said, "Moline is part of the Quad Cities, of which Davenport is one."

He said, "Well, how far is Davenport from Moline?" 

I said, "About 10 minutes, just across the river." 

He replied, "Oh, OK.  I understand.  This is like a regional airport."

"Something like that," I said back.

I'm sitting there and I thought, "Geez, I know his voice from somewhere."

He kind of settled down and we landed.  As we were deplaning, I helped him get a bag out of the overhead bin and it hit me - it was Mr. Whipple!  The guy who, for years, was telling people "please don't squeeze the Charmin" toilet paper. 

Actually, his real name is Dick Wilson and he is a long time character actor.  He told me he was coming into Davenport to film a promotional spot for a local television station, KWQC-TV. 

I walked with Dick and his wife off the plane, making small talk about how long they would be in town (only a couple of nights) and where they were coming in from (Los Angeles).  They were met at the ramp by a well-dressed guy - I'm guessing a limo driver.  He thanked me once again for helping him with his bag, he shook my hand, and away they went. 

So, I got to sit next to and meet Mr. Whipple on a flight from St. Louis to Moline! 

Floppy

Across Iowa, nearly every television market in the 50's, 60's and 70's had a local cartoon show hosted by a character or by puppets - or in some cases both.  The Quad Cities had Cap'n Ernie.  Cedar Rapids had Dr. Max and Mombo.  Des Moines had a couple, including Betty Lou McVay-Varnum and "The House With the Magic Window", which happened to be the longest running children's program in television history. 

But the most popular show of its kind was "The Floppy Show", shown at noon and at 3:30 p.m. on WHO-TV out of Des Moines.  It was hosted by Duane Ellett and his sidekick, Floppy, a dog puppet that he held in a box. 

For as much as Floppy was a cultural phenomenon in Central Iowa, the show was about as hokey as it could be, especially as it got on in years.  The daily "riddle" sequence offered a number of young kids continually asking Floppy questions such as, "What's the biggest pencil in the world?"  Or, "Why did the man man throw a clock out the window?"  (The answer to the first question is "Pennsylvania" and the second is "He wanted to see time fly.")

My favorite one was when the little kid came up to Duane and Floppy and asked, "What did Batman and Robin do when they passed a gas station?"

Floppy said, "I don't know, honey.  What did they do?"

The little kid said, "They passed gas."  Duane Ellett knew he'd been had by some little kid, obviously coached by some ne'er-do-well parent. 

They used to have great Popeye cartoons on the Floppy Show when I was growing up.   But after some fun haters associated with local P.T.A.'s started complaining about the violence the cartoons displayed, they went with some pretty lame Warner Brothers cartoons.  And no Road Runner cartoons, at that!

From 1974 thru 1979, I used to throw these big beer parties in my parents pasture between Kellogg and Newton, IA.  We'd have bands, kegs of beer, a lot of people and even though it was a lot of work - and money - we had a good time.  Each year the party got bigger and bigger.  And we looked for more diverse things to do to make it unique.

A high school buddy of mine who went to Iowa State University told me of a fraternity party that he went to one time where they had Duane Ellett and Floppy there for entertainment.  He said it was a real hoot.  So, I got the idea - I'd have Duane Ellett and Floppy come to my party in 1979.

In May of '79, I called up WHO-TV to find out how to get hold of Duane Ellett to see if he would be interested in doing our party.  They gave me his home phone number in Ankeny and I gave him a call.  When he answered I told him who I was and that I put on an annual beer festival near Newton and I wanted to hire him for a late Saturday night appearance.  Duane was a little incredulous at first.  He kept asking, "Now, what's this for again?"

He didn't want to do it at first - he told me that he was going to have to be in three towns earlier in the day - and he was kind of skeptical of appearing at a party in a pasture.  He said, "It may be after 11 p.m. when I get there."  I told him that was perfect.  He told me his fee would be $300, with half up-front.  I told him that would be no problem.  Each time he tried to shoot me down, I was able to come back with something positive for him.   The more we got to talking, he finally figured out that I was serious and really wanted him to show up.  I even stayed in touch with him over the next few weeks just to allay any fears he would have about showing up. 

July 14 rolls around and we have 2500 people in our pasture.  We have three bands playing.  We have 365 kegs of beer on a semi-trailer.  The place is rockin'.  Along about 11:30, here comes Duane Ellett in his "Floppymobile", which was a VW van that he drove around to his appearances.  He pulls up and I go over to him and introduce myself as we meet face-to-face for the first time.  His day consisted of a stop in Creston, then back up to Boone, then all the way back down to Lamoni, then a trip from Lamoni to my parents place outside of Kellogg.  (Click here to see the map as to where he drove that particular day - he put on nearly 500 miles on the Floppymobile just that day alone.)

My parents and a load of their friends would spend the evening of our annual party sitting in the front yard watching the cars come in and having a few drinks.  I took Duane over and introduced him to my parents and their friends.  My mom asked him if he would like a drink.  Duane said, "I'll take a vodka sour, if you have one." 

15 years prior, I would have thought, "Oh my GOD!  Floppy's daddy DRINKS!!"  But I was 23 at the time and I thought, "Wow!  Duane Ellett is going to drink with my parents!" 

I wanted Duane and Floppy to go on between bands so he sat with my parents and their friends talking in the front yard for about 45 minutes.  He had three vodka sours while he was waiting.  He'd had a long day and this was going to be easy money for him.  Plus he got to drink for free!  

Duane held court for my parents and their friends.  My mom said he was charming, self-effacing, and completely incredulous that he and Floppy were going to make an appearance at some beer bash in a pasture.  But he was ready to go at any point, he told me.  I went back over to the stage area to get things in line for Duane and Floppy's appearance.

The second band finished around 12:30 a.m.  I came back to the house and got Duane and Floppy and took them over to the stage in my car.  As we came over the hill, he had this look of "What the hell?" on his face when he saw all the people.  We parked the car and I had one of our security guys to escort him to the stage.  As Duane stood by the side of the stage holding Floppy, I got up on stage and announced to the crowd, "We thought at this year's party we'd bring you a little treat.  Here's a guy that absolutely needs no introduction."  And Duane came out with Floppy.  The place went absolutely berserk. 

Duane was just standing up there, laughing his ass off, looking out over the crowd which is the size of a small Iowa town.  All the while he has Floppy moving around in the box and mugging for the crowd.  And the crowd!  They're going nuts!  20-something hippies who grew up watching Floppy every weekday after school were rushing down to the stage.  They were pleading to "beep" Floppy's nose (a big thing to do to Floppy, whose face was all wood, while Duane - who was a masterful ventriloquist - would provide the "beep").  It was all the security guys could do to keep them from storming the stage to touch Floppy. 

Duane just couldn't get over it.  2500 drunk people in some pasture were going bonkers.  And he was soaking it in like a rock star before a crowd twenty-fold the size it was that evening.  It was getting to the point that he needed to do something to placate the crowd, so I sort of encouraged him to "do something!"  Duane had this little thing where he'd hide Floppy down in the box and he'd count off "1-2-3" and have the kids yell "Where's Floppy!?!".  He finally composes himself, puts Floppy down in the box and he says, "OK, you all know what to do.  A one, two, three..."

And in unison, 2500 drunks yelled out "Where's Floppy!?!"  My sister, Julie, said that she could easily hear it back at the house, nearly a quarter mile away, and it brought tears to her eyes.  She said, "I didn't get to see Floppy perform!"

As the crowd continued to whip into a frenzy, it was obvious that we couldn't keep him up there all that long.  So, Floppy's appearance consisted of one joke - Floppy "asked" Duane, "What's brown and sits on a stool?"

Duane said, "Uh, gee, Floppy.  Uh, what is brown and sits on a stool?"

Floppy replied, "Beethoven's last movement."  The crowd went wild again.   

And with that, Floppy said good-bye and I escorted Dwayne and Floppy off the stage.  The crowd went berserk once again and began to chant, "Floppy!  Floppy!  Floppy!"  It was just insanity. 

As we were walking the short distance back to the car, I had my coat over Floppy's box and I had a security guy on one side and I was on the other side of Duane.  I was seriously thinking a small riot might break out over Floppy.  So, I take my left hand and sort of push down on Duane's head from the back to kind of help conceal him a little bit.  Except my hand went up underneath his toupee.  Whoops!  I sort of pulled it out rather quick and we sort of looked at one another.  We didn't say a word about it on the short car ride back to the house.

We got back over to the house and my mom had a drink waiting for Duane.  He said laughingly, "My, that was quite an experience!  I really didn't know what to expect, but that was beyond what I thought it would be!"  He was almost euphoric in his nature as he sat back down to talk with my parents and their friends.  But I'm also guessing that he was also euphoric in knowing that was probably the easiest $300 bucks he ever made.   

I asked Duane for one more favor.  I asked him if I could get a picture of Floppy drinking a beer.  He obliged and we got this picture.  But you can certainly see the look on his face that he actually didn't want any beer hitting Floppy's mouth.   (Remember, this was taken 26 years ago when I was in shape and hadn't found the joys of cooking or beer yet.  Yes, that's really me in the picture.)

Duane put Floppy into his case and put him into the Floppymobile.  I remember him pulling out onto Highway 6 about 1:30 in the morning, heading west toward Ankeny right into a fast approaching thunderstorm. 

Later in the evening, we had a little trouble with a group of motorcyclists who were at the party and the deputy sheriff we hired to oversee the party for trouble got a little spooked and called in the highway patrol to roust these guys.  Only it was the Iowa Highway Patrol SWAT team - and those guys didn't screw around.  The incident made all the papers and news stories around the state.  That effectively shut down our party for good after that.  

Attending the Iowa State Fair about a month later, I happened to run into Duane selling Floppy t-shirts out of his vans.  I went up and re-introduced myself and he leaned back and laughed out loud.  He said, "Hey, we made the papers!"  We had a great laugh over that.  I did get a Floppy t-shirt from him.  But, of course, I had to pay for it.  Obviously, spending three hundred bucks for an appearance fee doesn't necessarily get you a free t-shirt from Duane.   

When Duane died of a massive heart attack while out jogging one morning in the early 90's, a story in the Des Moines Register outlined his career from starting out as a self-taught ventriloquist to the regional star he had become with Floppy.  When asked what his most strange appearance ever was, Duane didn't hesitate.  "We did an appearance out in a farm pasture for a big beer party one time.  That had to be the most strange place we ever appeared." 

I've since heard stories of Duane Ellett being sort of a disagreeable kind of guy.  But I have nothing but a great memory of the guy.  In my personal encounters with him he was a pretty good guy to deal with.  Every once in a while, people will ask me, "Did Floppy really come to your party when you used to have them all those years ago?"  Yes, children.  He sure did.

Charles M. Schulz

In May of 1999, Cindy and I took a trip from L.A. to San Francisco via the Pacific Coast Highway and continued up north into the wine country of the Sonoma Valley.  We didn't really have a plan, other than when the sun started to go down, we needed to look for a hotel.

We stopped off in Santa Rosa, CA to check out the local tourist information booth to see if they had any info on wineries, hotels and restaurants in the Sonoma Valley.  The Santa Rosa Visitors Center was located in the downtown area in what was the old train station.  It was pretty cool, actually.  They did have some information that we were looking for and we were getting ready to leave. 

Suddenly, I turned and saw a bunch of "Peanuts" memorabilia.  Something just clicked in my head.  I turned to the lady and I said, "Is this where Charles M. Schulz is from?"

She said, "Why yes.  Actually, he has a museum here that's next to the hockey rink he built for the city of Santa Rosa a few years ago.  There's a little coffee shop in the hockey rink and..."  She glanced up at the clock - it was a quarter to 4 in the afternoon.  "...he's probably in the coffee shop right now.  He always goes up and has a cup of tea and a cup of soup about this time every day." 

She gave us directions to the Charles Schulz Museum so we went over.  We parked in the parking lot to the west of the Redwood Empire Ice Arena and walked over toward the museum.  We saw the Warm Puppy Cafe and, sure enough, sitting inside by himself was Charles M. Schulz.  Cindy said, "Will, that's him right there!"

So we went in and he was sitting there at a table by the window, having a cup of minestrone soup and a cup of tea, just like the lady said he'd be doing.  We were reluctant to walk up to him right away, so we took a look around the ice arena.  It looked like a big Austrian chalet.   Lots of dark walnut paneling.  It probably sat 1500 to 2000 people in the rink.  As far as hockey rinks go, it was actually pretty neat in there.  There were kids just skating around, some kids were passing a hockey puck back and forth, and a couple girls were working on figure skating.

Redwood Empire Ice Arena

We looked back at Chalres Schulz and he had finished his soup and was just sitting there.  Finally, Cindy said, "This is ridiculous.  Let's go talk to him."

So we went over and I said, "Mr. Schulz?  Hi, my name is Will and this is my wife, Cindy.  We're from Davenport, Iowa, and I just have to say that I literally grew up with Peanuts."

He kind of gave us a pained look.  He said, "Davenport, IOWA!?  What are you doing out here?"

I explained that we were going to explore wine country and we just happened to stop in to Santa Rosa and found that this was here.  I said, "Actually, I thought you lived in Petaluma." 

He gave me another pained look and sort of said with disdain, "No, where did you get that?  I don't live in Petaluma."  And he said that with kind of a sarcastic tone - sort of like you'd say, "No, I don't live in East St. Louis." 

We kind of made small talk with him and finally Cindy said, "You don't like this when tourists come up and bug you, do you?"

He sort of stopped and probably realized that he was being kind of a jerk to a couple of long-time fans who were just trying to be nice.  He said, "You know, you folks aren't that bad.  But imagine the scene in here when a busload of Japanese tourists came here.  At 7:30 in the morning.  And they all wanted Snoopy drawn on a napkin.  That's when it gets to be a little too much."

We thanked him for his time and for the years of enjoyment he'd given us.  And we went over to the museum.

The museum was really cool, too.  Lots of historic photos, line art, Peanuts memorabilia, and knick knacks lying around the place.  They also had a hockey shop in the place, selling hockey gear.  It sort of looked out of place. 

Cindy picked up a book in the gift shop and said, "I'm going to take this back and have him sign the book for Eric (her son)." 

I said, "Cindy, leave the man alone.  We've bugged him enough."

Cindy said, "Will, we've come this far, the worst that could happen would be if he said no."

So we go back into the Warm Puppy and by the time we'd left to go to the museum he was now joined by a table full of middle-aged guys sitting around and talking about the hockey league they were in.  We heard them talking about the "Red Barons" and the "Ice Monkeys".  It was kind of funny. 

Once again, I was reluctant to bother him, but we saw that he was just sort of sitting there and listening, not really taking part in the conversation.  So, finally Cindy went over and handed him the book with a pen and asked him if he'd sign the book for her son.

He took the book, opened up the front cover and began to write.  He stopped and said, "What's your son's name?"

Cindy said, "Eric."

He said, "Is that with a 'c' or a 'k'?"

Cindy told him with a 'c'.  And in a very awkward fashion, he began to write, "To Eric, Charles M. Schulz."  It was somewhat similar to his signature in his comic strips, but his hand was shaking so much that the signature was somewhat squiggly. 

He handed the book back to Cindy and she said, "Thank you."

He said, "Thank you for coming, folks."  And we left.

Actually, before we left, he graciously obliged to have his picture taken.  (Click on the picture for a larger view.)

Cindy had tears in her eyes going out to the parking lot.  She said, "I just can't believe that we just met Charles Schulz." 

Turned out that later in the year, he retired because he was suffering from cancer.  He died about nine months after we met him. 

Given the horrible time he had writing out the inscription in Eric's book, I would have bet the family farm that he didn't do his comic strips any longer.  But in a 60 Minutes piece on him not long after he died, they said that he did his comic strip everyday - with no outside help.  But, you know, I got to looking at the strips in the late 90's versus the ones he was doing in the 70's and they were much more crude looking in the 90's than they were in the 70's. 

Looking back, I can kind of understand why he was a little surly as he really guarded his privacy in real life.  And, the fact that he was probably in the initial throes of cancer taking over his body when we were there.  Still, Cindy and I think it was pretty neat to be able to meet him.

Meeting the King

As I said in the last post about B.B. King's show (see my review), Kristy Adams said there was a chance that we'd be able to get backstage after the show to meet B.B. King in the flesh.  She had brought over a bunch of stuff from the River Music Experience for him to sign and she needed a number of people from the R.M.E. to go back there if it were to happen.  She just couldn't take everything and try and get them signed herself.

After the show was over, Lon Bozarth, the director for the R.M.E.; Claudia, a friend of ours who used to work with Kristy when they were both at Davenport One; Kristy and myself stood around waiting to see if we could get in to meet B.B. King.  Kristy had brought over a Fender guitar from the R.M.E., some pictures and a big poster.  She also had some original sheet music of "Three O'Clock Blues" that B.B. King wrote years ago, and the sheet music for "Thrill is Gone" that B.B. King DIDN'T write. 

About 10:30, someone came out and herded about 25 to 30 people backstage.  We sort of snaked around the corridor behind the stage and waited as B.B. King literally held court in a small room near the dressing rooms.

Kristy was holding the cheap Fender guitar and one of B.B. King's guys came up to her and asked her if that was a guitar she had in the case.  She said it was.  The guy said, "Is it a Gibson guitar?"

Kristy said, "No, it's a Fender." 

The guy said, "I'm sorry, Mr. King only signs Gibson products."  Oh well...

One of the gals from the R.M.E., Kim, was in line in front of us with her young daughter.  We saw them go in, and we never saw them come out.  A couple other people went in, Kim and her daughter didn't come out.  Another set of people went in, they came out with the other set of people, Kim and her daughter never came out.  Finally, Kristy, Claudia, Lon and I got up to the door and looked in and there's B.B. being a dirty old man, flirting with this 20-something Kim.   She's was smitten and not going anywhere. 

So we go in, we introduce ourselves and we start to good naturedly joke around with him.  He's a very nice man, very gracious.  But he's also a little dirty minded in a subtle way.

I was seated across from him and Kristy was next to him.  She handed him the sheet music for "Three O'Clock Blues" and for "The Thrill is Gone" that she wanted him to sign for her husband, Randy.  He looked at the sheet music for "The Thrill is Gone" and he said, "Thrill is Gone - why I first played that back in '69."  He looked at Kim and said, "You know about 69, don't you, darlin'?" 

Kim said, "No, I wasn't born back then." 

B.B. started to laugh and he said, "She don't know about 69." 

I said, "Oh, I caught that one."  And I made kind of a 69 motion with my fingers and he started to laugh.

"Oh, yeah," he roared and pointed at me.  "This boy knows what I'm talkin' about!" 

I took a couple pictures of him with Lon with Lon's camera.  Kristy had this big poster from the R.M.E. that she handed me when Lon got up from sitting next to B.B. - it's a nice blown up picture of B.B. with his head bowed, hands clasped in front of his face.  It had been hanging at the R.M.E. and Lon wanted B.B. to sign it.  I was just sitting there and he was signing a couple of other things, and finally Kristy said, "Here, B.B., Will has this poster he wants you to sign." 

So I hand him this poster and he looks at me and said, "Will?  As in W-I-L-L?"

I said, "Yeah, that's right."

Well, the next thing I know is that he's signing the poster "To Will - B.B. King".  Lon just about came out of his skin.  "No, no!  I didn't want Will's name on that.  Now I can't hang it back up in the R.M.E.!"  He began to have a minor fit right then and there before he finally pulled himself together. 

I sat next to B.B. and Lon took a couple three pictures of us together.  This is the best picture of the bunch. 

As we got up to leave, I shook his hand once again, and I thanked him for his music over the years.  He looked at me and said, "Well, now, that was a very nice thing to say.  I certainly appreciate it, Will.  That really means a lot to me.  God bless you." 

And that was that.

Here's the picture of Kristy and I with B.B. when he was signing the original sheet music for "Three O'Clock Blues".  The poster that B.B. signed to me is sitting on her lap.

Lon, Claudia, Kristy and I worked our way back out of the backstage area and Lon is pissed off.  "Kristy!  I spent $75 dollars on getting that picture blown up.  And you had him sign it to Will.  I can't use the picture now in the museum."

Kristy protested, "Lon, I didn't tell him to sign it to Will.  He heard Will's name and he was writing it before I knew what was going on.  It's not my fault.  It's nobody's fault." 

I said, "Lon, I don't care if you cover up my name or what.  I don't give a shit one way or the other."

He kept railing on about it before he finally just shook his head and walked the other way.  Kristy and I were walking along and Kristy said, "I didn't mean to do that on purpose.  Lon was making it sound like it was my fault.  It was nobody's fault - he (B.B.) heard your name and he was writing it before we knew what was going on." 

Kristy and I decided to go get a drink after that and we're sitting there at the bar talking and her phone rings.  It was Lon.  She said, "I'm not answering it.  I don't want him to keep bitching me out for that poster."

So as we were leaving, I said, "Well, here's the poster."

Kristy said, "No, you keep it.  He was making it sound like it was ruined, so you may as well keep it."

So I took it home.

I got to feeling bad about it over the weekend and I called Kristy on Monday to tell her that I'd pay Lon the $75 bucks that it cost him to blow it up.  She said, "Oh, Will.  I found out that he only paid $31 dollars to get it blown up.  He's OK with it.  When he called the other night and I didn't answer my phone, he left a message saying that he was sorry, that it was no big deal and he wanted to know where we were partying and he wanted to come party with us."

Kristy told me that Lon told her that if I'd make a cash donation to the R.M.E. then the poster was mine.  I jokingly said, "Jesus!  I just paid for a family membership a couple weeks ago.  And you guys want more money out of me?"

Kristy replied, "Yeah, we screw up around here and get people to pay us money.  That's how we get our donations up." 

It's a nice poster.  I'll probably give the R.M.E. another $50 bucks for it.  What the hell.  Lon's a good guy and I think the R.M.E. is great for the community.   The poster's a little large, but we'll find a home for it down in our family room.

Jay Leno

Most of the time, brushes with greatness aren't all that cool.  They're more chance meetings than anythng.  I met Jay Leno long before he was big out in Las Vegas during the Consumer Electronics Show.  Not once, but twice. 

The first time - It was 1988 and I was on the main floor of the convention center and I happened to go into the Sony booth to look around.  Back then - and even today - going into the Sony booth at CES is like looking into the future.  So, I'm looking around at some of these new smaller camcorders they had and I'm kind of playing with one and standing next to me is Jay Leno.  Leno was out in Vegas performing at Caesar's Palace, and even though the public isn't supposed to get in, a lot of higher profile celebs get in from time to time.

I'd always liked Leno's work, thought he was a pretty bright comic.  He said something one time on a talk show that was funny, yet sort of made some assemblence of sense.  This was right after a suicide bomber had driven a truck filled with explosives into a Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, detonating it and killing over 240 Marines.  Leno said, "What we should do is find out where these guys are hiding, then get a Pinto full of explosives and have Charlie Manson drive it into the place."

Anyway, I go up to him - he's not standing any more than two feet away from me.  He's wearing a very nice NBC leather letter jacket.  I put out my hand and I said, "Mr. Leno, I just wanted to say that I really like your work and I've been a big fan for a number of years." 

He said, simply, "Oh, thank you.  Thank you very much." 

And that was that.

The next year, I was over at the Boston Acoustics display room at The Mirage and I'm standing there and who walks in but - Jay Leno.  Leno is a Boston boy, and it turned out that he had Boston Acoustics speakers in his home and in a couple of his cars.  He's looking around, and everyone is sort of afraid to go up to him.  Finally, I walk over and I say, "Mr. Leno, hi, I met you last year over at the Sony booth."

He looked at me with kind of a faked incredulous look and he said, "Really?"

I said, "And I just wanted to come over and say 'hi' to you again." 

He said, "Well, that's great.  You know we're going to have to quit meeting like this." 

And that was that.  My meetings with Jay Leno.  Like I say, sometimes the brushes with greatness are short and sweet.

A Potpourri of Celebs

Being the "Cable Guy" for concerts while I was living in Iowa City, I had a lot close encounters with some of the performers who came through to play. 

I talked with Joe Walsh when he got off his tour bus the afternoon before his show.  He gets off and does one of his patented "How you doin'!?" greetings to me.  The guys kind of came off the bus like they were wrung out from the road. 

I said, "Man, you guys look like you had a long trip.  Where did you come in from?"

He said, "Oh, I don't know.  I think it was some town called Davenport."  (Which is 55 miles away from Iowa City.) 

I ate dinner at the same table as Liberty DeVitto, the drummer for Billy Joel .  He was a very pleasant and entertaining man to talk to. 

I played catch with a football with Robert Lamm, the keyboard player for Chicago.  My roommate, Bill Wilson, myself, and a couple of other guys from the arena crew played musical trivia with the guys from Alabama just before they were getting ready to go on stage. 

Bill and I got pushed out of the way by Stevie Nicks when she tried to pass between Billy and myself who were standing at the side of the stage when Stevie came off at the end of her show.  We were told that when she went on to the stage that no one could be standing in the tunnel going out to the stage; and when she came off stage people along the side of the stage had to turn around and face away from her.  But she busted through Billy and I like a little halfback trying to get over to shake hands with her fans.  Man, you should have seen her security guards scramble on that one.

And even though he wasn't that famous, I got cussed out by Elton John's road manager for sitting around watching TV and waiting for shit to happen.  Actually, I was watching an NFL game (the concert was on a Sunday) and there wasn't much for me to do but make sure the cable TV worked, so I was watching the TV.  He came up, turned off the TV and began to scream at me for not doing anything.  I explained that I was the cable guy and making sure the cable tv was working properly. 

Later that evening after the show was over, he was in the dressing room and I was winding up the coaxial wire and he came up and apologized to me.  He said something that I've never forgot and a philosophy that I use when I run the stage for the events I work at here in Davenport - "I'm sorry that I was such an asshole earlier, but they pay me handsomely to be the asshole.  And sometime you have to be an asshole to get shit done." 

However, one of the funnier things I remember happened to members of Joe Walsh's band.  The show was supposed to start at 7:30, but 7:30 came and went and the band was still not on the stage.  Finally, about 10 till 8 they got up and started playing.  I went up to Bill and I said, "What was going on?  I couldn't get into the dressing room.  They wouldn't let me in."

Billy said, "They had to call someone in from Student Health to give four of the guys in the band a shot of penicillin.  Seems that they all got into some skanky bitch a few nights ago and they all had the drips."

Ah - life on the road of a rock and roll musician...

Stephen Stills

In the fall of 1984, Crosby, Stills and Nash played at the Carver Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City.  Being the "Cable Guy", I had to be there to install the cable from the 4th floor down to the women's locker room.  For my work, I got my customary two tickets, which I gave away to friends, and had an "All Access - All Areas" stage pass, which meant I could get into the dressing rooms with the bands.  Just to make sure the cable was working right. 

Hell, the promoter probably thought he was getting off cheap by just giving away two tickets, knowing good and well that a stage union guy would probably be charging him $25 bucks an hour to run cable and have to hang around for 10 hours to do what amounted to be nothing more than about 20 minutes of work on my part. 

What he didn't know is that I would have done it just for the backstage pass. 

Before CSN went on stage, they were walking down the tunnel area of Carver and David Crosby was walking along with his girlfriend.  He had this very vacant, very stoned look in his eyes.  It was pretty surreal to see.  (This was long before Crosby cleaned up his act after being jailed in Texas.)

So, CSN starts to play.  They sound good.  Good crowd on hand.  Everyone is getting into it. 

About halfway through the show, I have to go to the bathroom.  There's a small bathroom in the tunnel of the arena off to the side, just past the men's locker room.  So I went in to take a leak.  I'm standing there at the urinal and all of the sudden someone bursts into the restroom, he runs behind me and goes right into the toilet stall and starts "throwing up his toenails", as my grandmother used to describe someone violently throwing up.

I'm still standing there and I say, "Man, are you all right, buddy?"

He kind of gurgles and says, "Uhhh, yeah, man.  I'm all right."  And he heaves again. 

I finish up and I go out the door and there's my buddy, Andy Piro, who was working with S.C.O.P.E., which was the U of Iowa's student organization on entertainment.  He said, "Did you see Stephen Stills in there?" 

I said, "That was Stephen Stills in there?  All I know is that I'm standing there peeing and some guy busts in behind me and starts throwing up in the toilet." 

Andy said, "After that last song, Stephen Stills came off the stage and came up to me and said, 'Where's the nearest bathroom?'  So I bring him up here." 

We stand around for a moment and, sure enough, out walks Stephen Stills out of the bathroom, wiping off his mouth.  He said to Andy, "Thanks man." And he went back down the tunnel toward the stage.

(Andy thought it might be drug related, but his road manager told me later that evening that Stephen did, indeed, have the flu.)

And Stephen Stills went back out on stage and did a magnificent solo, just playing the hell out of his acoustical guitar in the process.  I was pretty friggin' impressed  considering ten minutes before he was on his knees praying to the porcelin god...

So, I like to tell people people one of my claims to fame is that Stephen Stills once threw up next to me. 

The Cable Guy of Carver

Years ago when the Carver Hawkeye Arena opened up on the campus of The University of Iowa, my roommate at the time, Billy Wilson, was the assistant facilities director.  The first concert held in the place was in the fall of 1983 and featured Jackson Browne as the headliner. 

About 2:30 in the afternoon of the day of the concert, Billy calls me up at the store I was working at in kind of a frantic mode and said that they needed cable TV hooked up in the women's locker room for the performers.  It was going to be tricky, because the women's locker room was on the ground floor and the closest cable outlet in the place was up on the 4th floor, in one of the coaches office areas.  I told him I'd come over and take a look at it.

We had about 250 feet of coaxial cable lying around at our house, so I left work and went home and grabbed the wire, some connectors, and a cable tuning box and went to the arena.  The promoter was in a panic and he was hoping I was there to save the day.  Cable TV must be a really important rider in Jackson Browne's contract. 

Long story short - I found that we could run the cable down along a drain pipe from the 4th floor to outside the women's locker room, under the door and tape it up along a wall to where the TV was.  I hooked it up to the cable box, hooked that up to the TV and voila!  We had cable TV.  Reception was poor, but it was cable TV. 

The promoter was ecstatic and asked me what I wanted.  I said, "What do you have?"  He told me I could get a couple tickets.  I already had tickets for the show.

He said, "Tell you what.  You help us out on the upcoming concerts and I'll give you a couple tickets for each show." 

I said, "Well, that's fine, but what if something goes wrong with the cable.  I'm going to need to have a backstage pass, too."

He said, "OK, sure.  Two tickets and a backstage pass."

That's how I got to be known as "The Cable Guy" and was able to meet a lot of musicians backstage at Carver.  It was a lovely scam for a couple years.