I met Jane Badler when we were kids – her mother was my mother’s college roommate – but I don’t remember much about her.
On Broadway, I saw Bette Midler in Fiddler on the Roof; Christopher Lloyd in Red, White, and Maddox; Sam Waterston, David Rasche (before “Sledge Hammer”), and Max Wright (“Alf”) in Lunch Hour (the rest of the cast were Gilda Radner and Sally Kellerman, but both were established stars), and Peter Bonerz (before The Bob Newhart Show), Melinda Dillon (“E.T.”), Mary Frann (“Newhart”), and Richard Libertini (various roles) in Story Theater (Valerie Harper was just making a splash as Rhoda).
Off Broadway, there were Linda Lavin, Valerie Harper, and Libertini in The Mad Show. I also saw Lavin in The Mad Show. I later saw Lavin in It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman, where she sang the showstopper.
I saw Drew Carey as the second act at a random comedy club my friends and I wandered into while we were roaming around Chicago one weekend. We had no idea who he was, but he was the funniest guy in the line up that night.
I know Kurt Warner from his days playing for UNI and the Iowa Barnstormers. I was really happy when he ended up the QB of the St. Louis Rams.
Many moons ago, I lived in downtown Ft. Lauderdale, within walking distance to several of the clubs I frequented. My BFF and I used to troll around downtown checking out bands like it was our job. (Well, in my case, it sometimes was. I often reviewed shows and/or new albums for a local music rag and sometimes actually got paid for it.) Anyway, there were two clubs downtown that seemed to rotate this one band back and forth between them just about every weekend. One week, they would be at Squeeze, and the next weekend, they’d be at The Edge. I saw them several times before the first album came out. They were always followed around by an entourage of punked out girls in schoolgirl outfits, all carrying aluminum lunch boxes as purses. Once, my BFF and I sat and had a beer with this guy named Brian. Tall, skinny, geeky looking dorky guy, who was quite nice, but a little weird. Turned out to be Marilyn Manson. I was never that big a fan of Marilyn Manson, but that Brian Warner fellow was nice and decent enough.
I’ll put a hockey one here that will only be relevant in another 10 or 15 years: I’ve known Dominic Suhr since he was in diapers. His father and I have been co-workers of one sort or another for 12 or 13 years now (and in fact, he is currently one of my bosses when I work at a certain venue). Dominic is still a kid, but he’s getting lots of notice from people in other states whenever his hockey team travels for a tournament and I have no doubt he is going to be a huge star someday. You read it here first, folks!
I went to school with John Stanier (but was actually friends with his older sister), who played drums with Helmet. He went on to play with Primer 55 for a bit and now plays with the much-lauded group Battles.
Back in 1995, or perhaps early '96, I was living in Cleveland going to school when a group of us went to a music festival. It was at Blossom and featured some 20 bands, I believe Sponge was one of the headliners. Anyway, back on the third or fourth stage a group of maybe 8 or 9 of us were watching a young blonde thing up on the stage with a bar stool and a guitar.
She sang a couple songs, but mainly just chit-chatted, talked about going gig to gig in her van and what kind of candy she liked. Rather random, but cute enough; at one point she did a bit of yodeling and was pretty damn good at it. I remember feeling rather bad for her at the time because she had such a paltry audience considering the thousands of people who were there. I figured it must be kind of embarrassing.
Somehow, I doubt that Jewel is losing much sleep over that these days.
When I stayed in the towers at OSU there were a few football players living on our floor. One of them was Orlando Pace. The guys in my suite were saying he’d likely go pro, and boy did he. Number one draft pick, five time All pro, and seven time pro bowl pick.
I saw Incubus play when they were widely unknown. The album they were promoting was S.C.I.E.N.C.E. which was damn good at the time. Brandon still had really long dreads and played a djembe on stage. This was at the same club that “Dimebag” got killed at. WAY more of the acts I’ve seen there have been of they “long after their prime” variety though.
Not quite the same thing, of course, but I remember seeing Tom Hanks when he was in the sitcom Bosom Buddies back in the 80s and thinking that he had great comedic timing and would likely be very big someday. Peter Scolari: not so much.
I saw Mitch Hedberg at a little stand-up club in Addison, TX, long before his big Comedy Central special came out. He got heckled a bit, and his humor is definitely not what your average suburban mom would like (I went with my parents) but I laughed my ass of. I still remember him doing the “Koala Infestation” bit…
In San Francisco, my pal Freaky Ralph used to perform regularly at a club alongside Father Guido Sarducci. One evening, Ralph’s roommate phoned me up, said “TV. Channel 7. Now. G’by!” There was the Padre, on the Smothers Brothers’ TV show, and he just kept getting bigger from there.
I also partied with Leonard DiCaprio–who wore diapers the entire time. (Of course, he was just a little baby back then…)
In High School I dated Erin Daniels, does that count as nig enough? We dated for a summer or so when I was a senior and she was a freshman. She grew up down the street.
I saw No Doubt open up for the punk band ALL about 10 months before Tragic Kingdom came out in a small club in Provo Utah. They played a few songs of Tragic Kingdom along with stuff from their first album.
Marilu Henner and Jeff Conway in a broadway musical back in the 70’s (I don’t think John Travolta was in it, if I remember the name of it I can check).
Saw an English band with the funny name “The Police” playing in a room over a bar, downtown. Not all that much time passed before “The Police” were packing the crowds in at The Dome (which also attracted acts like The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, etc.).
I saw Poison at a club in the San Fernando Valley. They had been signed but the album not yet released. They were well known in L.A., but not yet stars.
OK, it was Marilu Henner, Treat Williams , AND John Travolta, before he was in Welcome Back Carter. It featured The Andrews Sisters who had made it big decades before!
Regis Philbin. San Diego, 1962 (IIRC). He had a little “Tonight” show type thing every Saturday evening, with live audience in bleachers, Channel 10. My Dad took me to see it once, met RP in the lobby afterwards, brief chat (with Dad), autograph. A year or so later he moved up to LA and his career took off.
Nathan East. Bassist for Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Ry Cooder, Michael Jackson, Anita Baker, Babyface, B.B. King, Elton John, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Quincy Jones, Al Jarreau, Kenny Loggins, The Manhattan Transfer, Herbie Hancock, etc.
His older brother Ray was one of my closest friends from about age 11 through 17. Nathan was five years younger, so I had minimal interaction with him, but in the early 70’s I visited Ray’s parents’ house, and found the younger brothers having a family jam session, including Nathan on electric bass. I actually played a tiny bit of keyboard with them for a few minutes; I like to say (jokingly) that this puts me in exalted company, even if only by the weakest of technicalities.
Just a few years later, I saw his name mentioned in a news blurb about a local (San Diego) jazz band that had relocated to L.A. Not too many years after that I was astonished and delighted to see him playing in Clapton’s band (the “Unplugged” concerts), having become one of the most sought-after musicians in the business. In what seemed to me to have been a remarkably short time.
Tom Waits. Opened for Zappa in the mid 70’s, just before he broke out big. In their wisdom and good taste, Zappa’s audience practically booed and heckled him offstage. It was embarassing to be surrounded by such idiots.