Steve Hackett. Actually, I could probably say that of all the members of Genesis including original guitarist Ant Phillips.
Goddammit. Figures. Never meet your heroes, they say.
Vocals: Peter Noone has always been known as a genuinely nice person.
Guitar/Violin/related intruments: David Lindley.
Yeah, I know it’s Wiki, but this says that his first marriage ended in divorce and he’s still married to his second wife, the mother of his 3 children.
Yeah, the first wife is the one I was referring to. But even if you feel that his starting a family with his second wife nullifies any assholishness arising from his treatment of his first wife, then that still leaves the matter of the bullying allegations and credit disputes.
Well… anecdote time!
One time I saw Hackett, back in '93, he played at the club (200-300 people) where all the lesser-known and unknown prog acts played. Every time I’d seen a show there, after it was over the crowd would go outside and around to the side entrance, and the band would come out and chat with people, sign autographs, and whatnot. I missed Hackett when he played there the year previous, but my friend told me that Hackett had done exactly that.
The show was absolutely fantastic! Afterwards, many of the crowd went around to the side entrance, and waited. And waited. And then, someone yelled from near the front of the club. Hackett had snuck out the front and gotten into a limo(!). We all swarmed the limo, but the driver forced us out of the way and took off.
I don’t hate Hackett for it or anything - far from it, I am still a huge fan. But it was an assholish thing to do. He came across as the high-and-mighty star who doesn’t have time for the fans, when he should have been grateful that a few hundred people wanted to see him play. It’s not like he was Phil Collins, playing an arena with 20,000 people.
Just remembered (hence the bump)…
Talked to Adrian Belew on a number of occasions and always found him to be very obliging, kind, humble, and funny.
dude rules
Krisiun. Three totally chill dudes.
I get the feeling that Hackett is one of those people, like Neil Peart of Rush, who just isn’t comfortable interacting with fans. Some friends of my brother ran into Hackett at a Wishbone Ash show years ago, when they were in town the night after a Genesis show. They approached him and asked if he was Steve Hackett, and his response was something along the lines of “Yes but please don’t make a big deal about it.”
How did we get this far without mentioning Dolly Parton?
Graeme Thomson wrote an excellent biography of Kate Bush called Under The Ivy, and he talked to nearly everyone who ever worked with her, and nobody had anything bad to say about her. He said that it was plain that pretty much everyone who worked with her had fallen in love with her.
My own interactions with her backs this up. I made a video to one of her songs, The Infant Kiss by editing down the film that inspired it, The Innocents.
I managed to get a copy to her via someone who knew her brother.
She called me to thank me and chat about editing.
Chris Barron, lead singer of the Spin Doctors, is Internet friends with me, and he’s a great guy, so I nominate him.
I am fond of telling the story about the time I unsuccessfully tried to pick up Alanis Morrisette, but although she shot me down she was nice about it and we chatted for awhile. She seems lovely.
Also internet friends with Lisa Loeb, who is very nice, although she never swears and I’m weirded out by that.
My parents were friends with the parents of Paul Langlois, The Tragically Hip’s bassist, and the Langloises are very nice so I’d assume their son is too.
I can stitch a band together with that.
Cool!
This post is super Canadian.
Edit: NM, thought the Spin Doctors were Canadian. Only 1/2 then.
One of the greatest conversations of my life was talking to Rudy Isley of the Isley Brothers about touring Europe with the Beatles in 1962. He is not an asshole.
Robby Krieger from The Doors
Michael Anthony. By all accounts one of the good guys. He refuses to talk shit about his time in Van Halen even though the brothers and DLR absolutely shit all over him.
Tim McGraw seems to be a down-to-earth, genuine guy. I don’t know if that’s accurate or just a persona, but a few years ago I accompanied Mrs. SMV (who’s a big fan) to a concert of his at Lakewood Amphitheater in Atlanta. Mrs. SMV had won admission into a private preconcert, where McGraw’s band took center stage, to show off their vocal chops, while he played backup for them. Seemed like a cool thing to do, to let his band have a moment in the spotlight.
Likewise Paul Simon was on stage backing up each of the three opening acts in his Graceland tour (which is to this day the best concert I’ve ever seen).
I can also attest from personal experience that Emily Saliers of The Indigo Girls hands out candy to trick-or-treaters who come to her door at Hallowe’en.
Posters here on the SDMB seem to love repeating stories about how Paul Simon is one of the biggest dicks in the music business, even in threads where dickish behaviour is not the topic. (That thread is just the example that springs to mind, as I’m the one who started it. But I’ve observed this Paul Simon-bashing to be a general pattern here.) If this trait of Simon’s is so salient that people feel the need to bring it up all the time, then this rather strongly suggests that he doesn’t belong in a thread about non-asshole supergroups.
Pete Seeger
(I know, too easy)
Yes, I saw him mentioned in the “Band of Assholes” thread. And I don’t know enough, or care, to know whether he is a shit or a saint (although I am a huge fan of his music). Nevertheless, the fact that a star like Simon was willing to play backup for three obscure (at least to Americans) South African acts - Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, for the record - impressed me at the time.
Additionally, there’s this. For those who don’t want to click on the link, it’s a YouTube video of a Paul Simon concert where a fan yells out that she learned to play guitar from his song “Duncan”. So he invites her up to the stage to play it with him.
So, asshole or nice guy? I suspect the answer is, sometimes one, sometimes the other. Just like all the rest of us.