Who knew that David Crosby was friends with Phil Collins? Unlikely as it may seem if you’re not a dedicated fan of either of them (which, even if I do own some Byrds and Brand X albums, I admit I am not), they played on one another’s albums, they wrote songs together, and, as the rumor went, when Crosby needed a kidney transplant, it was Phil Collins who paid for it. True or not, on a TV show with Phil Collins that I was working on in 1998, Crosby was the one and only guest performer. To see them hanging out together, it was quite obvious that they liked one another very much.
It was a 2-hour, live-music TV show called, “Live By Request.” I had worked on the show since the first episode which had featured Tony Bennett. In fact, the whole show had been his idea. The concept was that the entire show was comprised of that episode’s artist performing live requests from the audience, either from fans there in the studio or from the TV audience. Of course, the reality was that the entire setlist was actually worked out in advance. In live TV production, we don’t like surprises.
It was a weird production day for us and I don’t remember exactly why. For one thing, all of the other episodes of the show were shot at Sony Music Studios in Manhattan but for this one, we were at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens. Second of all, it was a very long production day. I think we did the show twice, once for the US market and once for the UK, several hours apart (my TV production friends can correct me here if I am misremembering).
For this show, I was not the talent manager; I was the audience coordinator. I really enjoyed doing this job because I felt that I was painting the room with love for the performers; when the artists came out on the stage, they would know immediately that they were among their people and it would be a vastly better TV show because of it. (Other people I knew who did this job didn’t see it that way at all. The prevailing wisdom seemed to be that, as long as there was a body in the seat, they had done their job. They also tended to overbook the audience by about 2-to-1; anyone who didn’t get in could try again next time. I never wanted to do that. I didn’t think it was good for the show and I thought it was just a lousy way to treat people.)
There were a lot of stakeholders on LBR and a lot of people to please, in my job in particular. Despite my desire to find the superfans, the live audiences tended to turn into cocktail parties for sponsors, trade-out partners, and advertisers. The tickets became highly sought-after and there was often an edge of mayhem to what truly needed to function as an orderly live TV broadcast. I had to keep a lid on things in the weeks leading up to the show and especially at the studio on the day. My job was made much more difficult by the fact that there were people to whom I simply could not say “no,” and some of them had absolutely nothing to do with TV production. I was always riding a fine line on this one.
In the middle of the afternoon on the day of the Phil Collins show, we are deep in pre-production and rehearsals when a couple shows up at the door of the studio. I told them to come back after 6pm but this guy isn’t hearing it. He insists that he was invited to be here, in the studio, and he is coming in and so is his wife. I am getting the vibe from this guy, loud and clear: he wants to show his wife that he draws a lot of water around here and no one is going to tell him where he can’t go! But we have a TV show to produce and we really don’t need looky-loos in the house right now. He pushes; I push back. He’s leaning on me pretty hard but I’m not budging. This could go sideways real fast: think, Goldman!
“Do you like Greek food?” I ask him.
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“Some of the best Greek restaurants in the country are right in this neighborhood. Why don’t you guys go get a bite and when you come back I will give you a great spot to watch the show.” That’s an easy one for me. It’s a tiny TV studio; there are no bad seats. I tell him my name and he tells me his. It turns out that they just had a long drive and they really do like Greek food (that was lucky because there wasn’t much else around there back then). I walk outside with them and I give him directions to a great place in easy walking distance.
Now that I know his name, I call the executive producer to find out who it was that I might have just pissed off. Yep, he tells me, he’s an advertiser, does a big ad buy for LBR. “We do not want this guy badmouthing this show! Do I need to come try to cool him off?” “Well, he left but I’m sure he’ll be back. Leave it to me.”
What does all this have to do with Crosby? Crosby is walking over to me right now. I don’t know Crosby; I have never met him or spoken with him but I certainly know about him. He has a very mixed reputation in the biz. People I know who know him well— his band members and people who work with him— have a lot of respect for him but I have heard stories about erratic behavior and him sometimes completely flying off the handle. There are also the many well-documented brushes with the law for various drug and weapons charges. Whatever he is bringing, it won’t be good. He’s not coming to talk to me because he thinks I look like a cool guy he’d like to be friends with.
Besides, for all the stories I may tell about hanging out with rok stars, when you’re working on a show, the last thing you want to do is interact with the talent if it’s not part of your job description. As far as your employers are concerned, backstage needs to be a safe place for the performers to be unguarded; they do not need hangers-on and autograph seekers bugging them in the course of putting a show together. “They have their job to do and you have yours. Let’s just put in a day at the office and go home to our families.” If you’re sitting down to lunch and Herbie Hancock sits next to you and asks about your cool camera (and Herbie Hancock will definitely ask about that camera!), of course, you answer; you don’t want to be rude. But anyone who has wrangled talent for me can tell you that asking for a picture together with an artist when part of your job is to keep civilians from asking artists for a picture, is always an immediately fireable offense.
I am standing backstage, barking into my cel phone. It’s the most private place I could find but apparently, it wasn’t all that private. In my distress about trying to keep this show from going off the rails, I didn’t realize that I am right by a rehearsal room where the musicians are working out a song (one that Crosby is not on).
Does Crosby blast me, like a good little rok star? Not at all. Crosby comes over and gently reminds me that what seems so important to me at this moment probably isn’t worth stressing over, that my actions affect the people around me, that the world will be a better place if we all give some thought to what we are bringing to it before we take action. In other words, all of the things that I should have realized already.
A lot of hippy-dippy posturing? I don’t think so at all. This ethos was clearly written deeply into this man’s soul. He didn’t lecture down to me or despise me for being one of those TV pukes.* He saw me. He saw me trying to do my job, whatever the hell it might be, and he allowed for whatever differences in perspective he and I might have. Yes, he was protecting his friends but he was also sharing some wisdom which, in that moment, I very much appreciated. I thanked him and apologized. “No need,” he said, smiling and backpedaling to the rehearsal room.
That couple came back. They thoroughly enjoyed that fantastic Greek food and the guy gushingly apologized for the hard time he had given me (I think Madame may have expressed her viewpoint to him when they were out of earshot of me, after he had a couple of glasses of retsina and some ouzo). I refused to accept it, telling him that all that mattered to me was that he and his wife had a terrific time with us. I did manage to get them right up front (despite all the other heavy hitters who showed up) and they loved the show. It turned out that they really were big Phil Collins fans.
The next week, I got a very nice note from him. Apparently, he owned a number of car dealerships in a nearby state and he insisted on giving me a car to use any time I wanted, a particularly nice car of my choosing. “Really, it will be my pleasure,” he said. I already had a car that I barely used but I was glad to hear that I had brought him around. Guess I dodged a bullet.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=221647048569047
* Here is what I meant by “TV puke”: I remember bringing one of the bands that I was managing to perform on the Arsenio Hall show (back when that was a thing). There were all of these people walking around with headsets and clipboards. None of them were very nice to us and, compared to me, they didn’t seem to do very much. In the next 24 hours, I was going to have to work! (get my guys out of here, get on a plane, ground trans, media appearances, load in, soundcheck, wardrobe, show, merchandise, get the money, feed everybody, hotel, do it again the next day); they looked like they were just farting around. My hard work would put my guys in front of 2,000 people the next day and pull in enough money to get us paid and on to the next town. Arsenio (who himself was no master of empathy backstage, but that’s another story) would put us in front of millions. We were getting stopped in the airport the next day! That was when I decided to jump the fence and do TV, despite my misgivings about those (yes) “TV pukes.”
When I started working in TV, I met lots of wonderful, committed, creative, loyal people, many of whom have been friends for decades. Nevertheless, I remember the impression that the backstage TV people whom I met in LA and London and New York, and elsewhere made on me when I was a road dog. I would expect (and expected at that time) that, if you dug just a tiny bit under the surface, you would find a similar attitude from David Crosby. Knowing a bit about his character, he might have thought he had every good reason to hate me. That’s what I meant when I said, “TV puke.”