Many, many moons ago, one of my friends parents saw Willie Nelson in concert at a nice dinner theater place.
Willie had short, short hair cut in a respectable businessman style. Wore a suit and tie. The next time they saw him ( years later) he had found his image that we all know today.
They said he was always one of the best performers they’ve ever seen.
I used to fool around with one of the girls from “The L word”. Friend of friends and we were all young and partying alot. Cool to see her up there . . .
The only celebrity I’ve met before becoming famous is Isabel Keating. She started out in Savannah in the 80’s playing extremely small venues (you’ve heard of “dinner theater”? How about “dessert theater” where they serve ice cream and cake at intermission. The place was located in a strip shopping center next door to a vitamin shop).
She has been nominated for a Tony this year for her portrayal of Judy Garland in “The Boy From Oz”.
I saw Widespread Panic playing a frat party in Atlanta in 1989.
I saw Better Than Ezra at a frat party in Oxford, Mississippi in 1993. Don’t remember much about them, as there were all sorts of bands on fraternity row that night, and I’m not much of a live music person. I wouldn’t even know this much except it was about six months later and we heard them on the radio. My roommate says “Hey, we saw those guys in Mississippi.”
Uh, we did? Cool.
Take care,
GES
I hung out with Joan Cusack in college. She was very funny and smart, and attractive in an unusual way. I should have asked her out…
I saw U2 in a bar with about 100 people somewhere around 1980. They were awesome.
This wanker from Detroit called “Kid Rock” was the headliner on a show with my friend’s band. The show was at a tiny place in Cleveland and there were about 150 kids there. My brother was backstage with them and said Kid’s whole crew was a bunch of drunken druggies.
I’m sure not much has changed 
I still have fond memories of cutting class in Atlanta and walking up from Booker T Washington High School on the Morris Brown campus the day Spike Lee was filming the ‘Homecoming Weekend’ sequences for ‘School Daze’. I somehow conned my way past security by posing as a reporter from the school paper and walked around the sets for a couple of hours before I got thrown (okay – escorted) off. I only saw Spike from a distance, but I met both Lawrence “He’ll always be ‘Larry’ to me” Fishburne** and Tisha Campbell. I remember Larry’s smile when I looked at him sideways and said, “Hey! Weren’t you that kid in Apocolypse Now?” We sat around and shot the shit about the Braves and MARTA service(!) between takes. Oh, and I saw a rough cut of EU’s ‘Doin’ The Butt’ video.
Ah, youth.
I have had many celebrity sightings from way back (I have a good memory and always seem to remember and recognize lesser-known celebrities), but right now my good memory fails me—at least when it comes to spotting someone before they were famous.
However, one incident does stick out. When I was quite young, some friends and I were at a science fiction convention and we didn’t have a ride back home (this was being held at the Disneyland Hotel). So we got word of a place to “crash,” a room full of lots of fellow fans who had nowhere else to sleep. So we slept on the floor. One of our floormates (literally) was a rather unremarkable looking guy with a bushy beard. I remember he borrowed my toothpaste (he didn’t have any) and was very friendly to both of us. He told his that he had a book coming out and we were very excited for him. Well, he turned out to be David Brin, who is a pretty well-known author now. I guess he can now well-afford his own hotel rooms!
When I was quite young, I went with my parents and grandparents to a small club to see a magician by the name of David Copperfield.
Also, we once went with our neighbors to an outdoor show. To get rid of us, our parents sent us to see a wrestling tiger. The opening act was Gallagher.
Years ago I used to hang in a bar about 35 miles north of Chicago. It had changed names and owners so many times I do not remember what it was called at the time, but I think it is now called The Rockland Road House. One night this thin dude with long blond hair and foam spewing from his mouth said he was meeting his father there. He had a demo tape that we got the DJ to play. He told us that his band had just got signed and was going to be big. The tape sounded like crap, but the bands name was Guns N Roses. Axel I suppose.
Five years ago my office did business with a younger just starting out singer. She told me she had just done a tour of Japan and we ended up having a discussion on Japanese musicals. She later bought me some Japanese programmes from CATS, Phantom and Aspects of Love.
Her name? Alicia Keyes.
I also spotted a singer in the chorus of Carosel at Broadway on Broadway 1993. I was so impressed with her voice I got her autograph. It was Audra Ann McDonald, who later went on to sing at the Met and won a Tony for AIDA and was profiled on “60 Minutes.”
When I was twelve, I went with my mother when she visited her old college roommate. I spent the day playing with Jane Badler, best known as Diana on V.
I’ve mentioned it on the Board before – back in college, I saw the National Lampoon Show that was touring colleges (not"Lemmings"). They had just lost their plump physical comedian, John Belushi, to some late-night TV show. His rep0lacement was an unknown singer named Meatloaf (well before Rocky Horror or Bat Out of Hell). Besides singing songs like “We Don’t Give a ____”, he also performed in skits (“The Rhoda Tyler Moore Show”)
Playwright Albert R. “Pete” Gurney was one of my professors. He wasn’t exactly unknown, but he wasn’t well known outside theater circles. Then he wrote “Love Letters”. (Thus beciome my only professor to have his work satirized by Mystery Science Theater 3000).
A friend of mine had a summer job as a cameraman in Indianapolis, where he had wild memories of working with the local weatherman. It’s been years since I’ve seen him, but I’m convinced the weatherman was David Letterman.
Not much - while working at a bookstore in Santa Barbara to help pay for college, I sold a book to SI-Swimsuit-Issue-Cover Girl Kathy Ireland. Simply drop dead gorgeous, but her voice was helium - she has clearly gotten a ton of vocal training since them.
Also saw Counting Crows at an SF club about a year before they got signed. Adam Duritz started off with an acapella version of O Susannah - not sure why - then they did a bunch of songs off of August…they sounded pretty much like they sounded on the album…
Years ago, my friends and I were talking about which club to go to, when we looked through the indie paper. I said, how about this band playing at the Brewery, they got a weird name, so maybe they’re some kind of experimental punk band that eats their own barf on stage?
Nope, our first clue was the presence of so many izod-sweater wearing yuppies at the show. The opening act was Jeff Hart and the Ruins, one of the sappiest pop bands in existence.
After the main act came on, we left after 3 songs.
Their name?
[Casey Kasim voice]
Hootie and the Blowfish
[/Casey Kasim voice]
A year later their single hit #1 and they sold out stadiums.
Went to the first revival of the Sam Shepard play True West at the Cherry Lane Theatre (maybe 40, 50 seats?) in Greenwich Village, in 1982. Austin and Lee were played by Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.
yosemite writes:
> He told his that he had a book coming out and we were very excited for him.
> Well, he turned out to be David Brin, who is a pretty well-known author now. I
> guess he can now well-afford his own hotel rooms!
So this must have been in 1980. David Brin was already 30 years old and was teaching astrophysics at some college at that point. He was just being cheap. He could have afforded his own hotel room. Heck, for that matter, why didn’t he just commute to the con, since he lived in southern California?
Better than Ezra started out in my hometown of New Orleans in the late 80s. By about 1991-92, they were fixtures on the club scene around LSU (where I was attending at the time). Saw those guys a lot, and was somewhat surprised to see them break nationally in the mid- to late-90s.
…
I saw Creed play the Flora-Bama club just outside of Gulf Shores, Alabama Memorial Day weekend 1998. They were very close to hitting it big – “Higher” was right around the corner. They played mostly early 90s grunge covers. I can’t recall any original stuff. Wasn’t a bad show at all.
My husband knew Ted Nugent.
Also, have a family friend whose son played with Metallica before they were big - he left my husband an autographed guitar before he killed himself. (To clarify - the family friend’s son killed himself.)