Regular readers of the SDMB may have figured out by now that I’m a big fan of pop singer Ke$ha. She’s performing in Chicago on Sunday. Members of her fan club could win a meet & greet with her before the show on each of her tour stops. (There are five winners per show.) This was on a first-come, first-serve basis. I signed up a few seconds after the contest opened last Wednesday. Today I found out that I won one of the slots for the Chicago show! Last night, I dreamed thrice that I won, but then I woke up each time. Today, the suspense was killing me until they announced the winners around noon. I’ll get to meet Kesha before the show, get my picture taken with her, etc.
Who has met their favorite celebrity, and what was it like? I’m not really interested in stories of meeting a famous person that you only sort of like, but I’m not too picky.
My favorite singer is probably either Enya (whom I have not met) or Tommy Makem (whom I have). Well, if by “met” you include “briefly talked to long enough to get my program autographed”.
I can’t say I really have any favorite athletes.
Favorite celebrities overall would mostly be authors, but most of my favorite authors died before I was born.
When I worked retail in the 80s in Houston Galleria, I saw quite a few.
Warren Moon and Sleepy Floyd bought TVs from me.
Met Tom Landry at a meet and greet type thing after he spoke at my high school.
Moses Malone thinks I’m a dick. Or, at least he did for about 30 seconds one night at the Summit. I doubt it still keeps him up at night. Hey, I was a loudmouthed teen in Houston of the 70s.
I have met one of my favorite performers on several occasions: Alan Parsons. I used to be in the Alan Parsons Project fan club, and one of the perks was backstage passes for any shows we attended. He’s a fantastic guy–nice, down-to-earth, very much a gentleman. I’m glad to have had the chance to meet him.
I’d love to meet Alice Cooper, but haven’t managed that yet. Would also like to meet the members of Rush, but since my favorite Rush member is Neil Peart and I know how he feels about meeting fans, I’m cool with accepting that will never happen.
90s in OKC, my hand met Shania Twain’s butt for a way too brief encounter during a concert performance walkabout in the audience before a body guard and my GF really got really uptight about it.
In the late 90s/early 2000s I was really, really in to Ben Folds Five and the Squirrel Nut Zippers. I ended up meeting everyone from both bands and palling around with a lot of them, even hanging out at their houses. One of the guys from SNZ I’m still friends with, everyone else including the BFF guys were just sort casual “we know each other” things.
One thing that sucks is if you get to know favorite artists as people and find out that you don’t like them as people it sort of screws up your ability to like their art that you once adored. Not saying that any of the folks in the bands I mentioned are bad people (they’re not) they’re just regular people and some are much better left to the imagination
Now, if I ever met a REAL star like Eddie Vedder - that’d be something!
I have met Todd Rundgren, several times. The best was at SIGGRAPH, where I could talk to him geek to geek about computer graphics, rather than as a fan of his music.
I’ve met Kate Bush several times, but the best was when she called me to talk about the fan video I had made for her song The Infant Kiss.
I’ve never met Peter Gabriel.
Those are the biggies. I’ve met several dozen other singers and musicians I admire, and with varying degrees of connection. I try to get something generally useful out of it by taking a portrait of them to add to their Wikipedia page, rather than just the usual “fan standing next to vaguely uncomfortable-looking famous person” pose. I am most happy with these ones of Leon Redbone and Raul Malo.
I’m good friends with the folks in the Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band, and they have been touring with Jimbo Mathus, so I got to hang around with him. Nice guy.
He’s not my biggest guitar hero, but I met Eric Clapton at the mall once. It sounds stupid in retrospect, but I was struck by how much of a nice, regular guy he really was. He was just a guy in flip flops at a dingy mall on a Wednesday. It was obvious that he’d had someone stare at him dumbfounded before, and he took that with more grace than say, I would have.
To echo Zipper JJ’s post: When I was younger, I would have loved to have met Steve Albini. Through talking to people who have met him, I’ve decided that I don’t need to meet the artists I like. He’s got a reputation for being kind of unpleasant. Not everybody is as nice as Eric Clapton.
I met my favorite science fiction writer, Samuel R. Delany, many years ago at a convention. Since then, we’ve been on several panels together; he’s a pretty approachable guy.
Nick Lowe. Several times. Looking forward to seeing him again in August in NJ!
He’s a very affable guy - makes extremely short shrift of eBay hounds looking for autographs for merchandise to be re-sold, and spends a lot of time with fans after the show.
Not me but my husband. The only celebrity he would really want to meet - Chef Gordon Ramsey - was at the airport one day. He was signing a book for someone so my husband was able to approach and ask politely for a photo with him. But this was during “Movember” and my normally clean-shaven husband had a big ole Movember Mustache happening. Apparently he said “Uhh, sorry about the mustache.” and Chef was all, “What’s wrong with your mustache?” and my husband explained about the fundraiser and Chef was impressed about the good cause. So anyway, my husband’s awesome photo of him with his favourite celebrity has him wearing a big goofy mustache.
In 2000 Mike McCready, lead guitarist for Pearl Jam, had a side band called the Rockfords. Mike is my favorite guitarist. There was a online forum set up for the band and I hung out there. We were a relatively small group. The bass player of the band posted all the time. Mike also posted on occasion. Anyway, the band finally set up a show in Seattle. I flew out there and met up with a bunch of my “friends” from online. The show was awesome. The next night, we all went to a bar to hear the bass player’s other band. Mike showed up to jam with his friends. Afterwards, I had a chance to sit down and talk to him. He is a very nice guy. I didn’t drink that night just in case I got to talk to him because I didn’t want to be a gushing fangirl. He doesn’t drink either so it was a cool, coherent conversation. We got kicked out of the bar later and stood around on the sidewalk talking. It was my birthday – one of the best ever. Pearl Jam played in Memphis two weeks later. I was on the front row. Mike saw me and waved.
Have met my favorite singer (Roger Clyne) many times at various events and met my favorite baseball player (Graig Nettles) at a few autograph signings. One of my fave guitarists, Brian Blush (The Refreshments and The Toluenes), has become a semi regular chat buddy on Facebook.
On the list:
Robert DeNiro
Al Pacino
Eric Clapton
Jim Zorn
Steve Largent
Clark Gillies
Mike Bossy
Bryan Trottier
I met Metallica when I was a huge fan, both Jason Newsted and James Hetfield were very nice guys, I was less impressed with Kirk Hammet and Lars Ulrich (they weren’t total jerks but just not as nice).
Authors -I’m a big fan of his work and got to talk to Jack Vance a couple of times at a Worldcon in the 90s.
Met all sorts of other authors I’m a fan of over the years, and more that I’m not!
Musicians - also a big Peter Hammill/VDGG fan and I’ve met Peter briefly several times and also various other members of his bands over the years. Also spoken to Mark Eitzel (AMC), David Thomas (Pere Ubu) and the late Jackie Leven several times each. I’ve seen all four 10+ times each…
My brother has worked for several years with a childhood friend of Tony LaRussa. One time in the offseason, around 2003, my brother came to visit me in San Francisco and invited me to go to Tony’s house, where several Cardinals were in attendance. (We grew up in St. Louis and I remain a huge Cardinals fan).
It was extremely cool meeting several of the players, and LaRussa himself, who was very down to Earth. However, the main thing I remember was not being gobsmacked by all the players hanging around, but rather all their incredibly, and I mean incredibly, gorgeous wives and girlfriends. It’s hard to be awestruck by celebrity when you’re busy being awestruck by indescribable beauty.
We got kicked out of the bar later and stood around on the sidewalk talking. It was my birthday – one of the best ever. Pearl Jam played in Memphis two weeks later. I was on the front row. Mike saw me and waved. 
