In 1975 I won a trip to Washington, DC, as a National RECC “young leader” and Gerald Ford spoke to us on the back lawn at the white house, there were no security barriers. Later went to a play the Kennedy Center and shook hands with Happy and Nelson Rockefeller - he was huge! - both tall and big.
Shook hands with BJ Thomas at a concert around 1980.
Went on vacation in Arkansas once and was served by Ramona Jones in the buffet line at the Grandpa Jones Dinner Theater. Interesting how most people are pretty common up close.
HRH Prince Edward (have shaken hands with him twice)
Prime Minister Chrétien - handshake while he was campaigning.
Prime Minister Trudeau - happened to be on a train with him going through the Rockies and he came out to chat with other passengers at one of the stops.
My parents and I stood behind Chuck Berry at the airport in St Louis in '84.
Was in the next grocery line at Pavillion from Ben Stein. ( meh)
Talked with Ken Kesey for about 10 minutes after meeting him a few months prior.
Shook hands and got the autograph of Robert Kennedy, Jr.
Sat near Clea Duvall and Sarah Paulson at a restaurant in West Hollywood. (they’re both even cuter in real life)
Ran into LL Cool J in NYC and took a picture of him with my then girlfriend.
/side/So there are TWO Cowboy Junkies fans on this board. Great stuff. Just turned a friend of mine on to them. I love the little bit of a whistle that she has to her voice.
My friend was kicking around the idea of starting a Blues/jazz MJ club here in Colorado. I thought that the Cowboy Junkies may be some music she was not familiar with, and would fit right in.
I was at Johnny Copeland’s last public performance and got to shake his hand (and Shemekia’s). He was very weak and performed sitting down but he still had power in his voice and playing.
Mick Jones of The Clash, when he was touring with his post-Clash band Big Audio Dynamite.
Eugene McCarthy, who I declined to interview when I was a grad student in journalism in the early 90s because I graciously assigned the interview to an undergraduate who needed a primo addition to his clip file. But I sat in on the interview. What a great person.
Jesse Jackson, when he ran for president in 1988. Shook his hand, which was puffy and swollen due to shaking hands with hundreds of people each day.
Exene Cervenka, of the band X. And John Doe, Billy Zoom, and DJ Bonebreak of X.
I interviewed the band The Cramps after they did a show at a small club in Bordeaux, France, and so I spoke with Lux Interior, Poison Ivy, Nick Knox, and Bryan Gregory. Lux did most of the talking.
Mew from the band Elastica.
Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads, when she was touring with The Tom Tom Club.
I’ll think of other musicians, I’m sure. All of my musical encounters were conversations, some brief and some quite long, and not just “sitting in the front row” as mentioned in the OP.
Oh, yeah … All the members of the Japanese band Shonen Knife, just this September. Conversation limited by language differences.
Jay Leno, c. 1988. I was on the campus entertainment committee that booked him, and I got him to sign an autograph. Swell guy.
Gerald McRaney (sp?) and Delta Burke were seated next to me and Mammahomie at Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans one year at Mardi Gras, Gerald having been grand marshal at one of the parades.
Al Gore
The Dalai Lama
Barbara Streisand
Cybil Shepard
The King of Sweden
Mikail Gorbachev
Harold Ramis
Sigourney Waever
John Kenneth Galbraith
IF Stone
Dan Quayle
Marion Barry
Earvin Johnson, several times standing near where the Spartan basketball team walked to the court in Jenison Field House.
Dave Winfield and Billy Martin, as we moved to seats near the Yankee dugout in old Tiger Stadium on Billy’s second to last game as manager.
Alice Cooper, last Saturday as he got into his car following the College Game Day show.
Jesse Jackson, happened to walk next to him as I was walking the other way at Reagan Airport.
Didn’t get quite close enough to JFK to qualify, it was probably 100 feet as my dad held me up to see him in a 1960 airport campaign stop in Michigan. Though I was pretty close to his corpse visiting his grave at Arlington.
I can’t remember why I was there, but many years back I attended some Christian men’s dinner (don’t even remember the name of the organization), and the inspirational speaker was former NFL player, Manu Tuiasosopo. I got to shake his hand.
The man’s fingers were bigger than my wrists.
Later, in 1990 or '91, I got to cook dinner for most of the Seattle Seahawks defensive line, and they liked my cooking enough that I was invited to pose with them for a photo (and got all of their autorgraphs. The only names I remember are Jacob Green and Cortez Kennedy. That damned photo (and the autographs) is one of the things I lost when my storage unit got jacked a couple years ago.
I’ve also met and shaken hands with former (well, he was current at the time) Mariners 2nd-baseman, Joey Cora. He called me “sir”.
