Famous Musicians You’ve Met?

@Moondog Wily - brilliant to hear your Prince story. As a UK-based person, and a teenager during his early peak years (79 - 88) I dreamed of the type of access you are talking about.

My brother and I went to see Prince, at the first of the night of his 21 Nights in London, at the O2, in August 2007. We managed to get into the aftershow concert, at the IndigO2 (a theatre-style club within the O2 venue). I was at the upper bar, watching the show below, which was an extended jam by the band, sans Prince. The next thing I know my brother taps me on the shoulder, and points to Prince walking away from the viewing spot behind us (no more than 5 or 10 feet from where I was standing), where he has been watching the set from. Close but no cigar!

Happy new year to all!

Cheers, Gilesy
 
I've shaked hands with the guys from Pantera once before their concert in Europe. Dimebag asked my name and signed a card for me, they were really very kind and friendly. They had obviously a lot of patience for their fans. I took my card thankfully and went away, happy as a child. Then I looked at the card and I saw "To dear EVIL, Dimebag." ...Oh no, I immediately ran back to them and I said to Dimebag "Hey, I'm not evil, this is a mistake...". They all looked curiously at me, then I said "My name is Ivo, not Evil..." (almost the same pronunciation). He apologized right away, we all laughed and he signed a new card for me, this one spelled correctly. I still don't know if the mistake was because of my name or my looks. :grinning:
I've never seriously had any idol in my life, but the day he died, I was a grown up man, walking home from work and crying.

Btw., I lost my T-shirt during that concert, it was that fun. I found it on my way home...in my underpants.
 
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GitGuy513 said:
I’m a bit further north in York, PA. But it’s a straight shot south and east to all the places near the ocean. My sister owned some property on Chincoteague Island. I use to hang there and OC a good bit. I can actually make it to Stevensville pretty quick.
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Is fat daddys still there???
 
while driving a cab on St Pete Beach Florida (circa mid-late 90s) I met the Edge at the Don Cesar Hotel. he and his 2 friends needed a ride into town to go to a hair products specialty shop (that was interesting since he was already into wearing the skull caps by then) and I waited while they shopped and gave them a ride back to the hotel. Edge was not particularly talkative but nonetheless cordial. on the return trip I had to ask: "with such a full sound for your guitar parts do you use additional guitar tracks live?" his reply "no.. I use pedals to get all those sounds".. fair enough.
 
GitGuy513 said:
I’m a bit further north in York, PA. But it’s a straight shot south and east to all the places near the ocean. My sister owned some property on Chincoteague Island. I use to hang there and OC a good bit. I can actually make it to Stevensville pretty quick.
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Doesn't the band Live call York home also??
 
I got to hang out w/ Chris Squire and Alan White for a few hours after a show in Atlanta way back... so much fun! Just two regular guys; we mostly talked about everything except music. I actually met them a few times on different tours ( I had a friend who knew them and where the band hotel was ;-) Rick Wakeman as well, earlier that night backstage.

Delivered a case of booze to Clarence Clemons when they were in LA recording the River and he invited me to hang w/ him for a while. That was super fun too, but I wasn't really a big Springsteen fan. I think I did turn him on to the Dead though (who he sat in with a bunch of times many years later...)

I actually met a lot of people when I had that delivery gig (from a store on the Sunset Strip ;-) ... James Brown, Bowie's band (but not David), the Beach Boys' mom, Exene and John Doe from X, the Runaways, Steve Lukather, Randy Rhoads, loads of actors... and I once played football w/ the promoter Bill Graham (in the parking lot outside a Dead show, lol).
 
Most famous I've spent time with was Stu Cook from CCR. His wife (now divorced) was a music major at the same time I was and a friend of mine so I got to hang out with Stu a few times. He had some great stories and absolutely hated John Fogerty (as is well known). He even played bass on a few songs with the band at our friend's wedding.

The two most famous musicians I've met (but didn't spend time with) are David Bowie and Roger Daltry.

A friend was an intern at a record company and invited me to a secret taping of Tin Machine. We met at the LA Forum and everyone got on a couple of busses. Ours drove around Inglewood for a while (not the best area at the time) until we stopped and picked up Tin Machine at a bus stop, all dressed in pastel suits. Bowie walked back on the bus and thanked us for being there. The performance is on YT but the bus ride part isn't unfortunately. In the video you see them getting off our bus.

Roger Daltry was on my flight from Burbank to Denver. If you don't know Burbank Airport, it's a pretty small airport including walk up stairs to the planes. Pre-flight he was sitting in the terminal with someone, I'm assuming a manager. Nobody said anything. He sat in first class, I didn't and I figured that was that. After the flight, I go to baggage claim and Roger is there. I never do this but I grabbed a pen and my itinerary and asked for his autograph. He was very polite and signed it. Later, my wife had it framed with the program I had from seeing The Who in 1989.
 
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I met Brian Johnson (singer with ACDC) when I was young when he fitted a vinyl roof to my Dad's 1968 Ford Cortina 1600E. He had not joined ACDC at this point in time, I'm guessing it must have been about 1972-3. Andy Taylor, the guitar player from Duran Duran went to my school and I have various memories of him including one of him bumping his Transit van into his garden wall as his girlfriend of the time helped him reverse out and said to him, "back, back...crunch. Stop". I was given a guitar plectrum from BB King when he played in Newcastle (UK) in the early to mid-90s. Peter Green was the support act. I said hello to Snowy White (ex Pink Floyd, Thin Lizzy, solo artist) at the bar after his show at "The Cluny" in Newcastle. John Sykes used to play in a local band called The Tygers of Pan Tang so I would see him and occasionally speak to him in my fave rock night club of all time, "Mingles" in Whitley Bay. He was a monster guitarist, but not famous in the real sense of the word. An old timer by the name of Eric Burden (The Animals, House of the rising sun) lived down the road from us. Locally he was more famous for being married to either a Miss UK Or a Miss World lady. He would chat with my Dad in passing when we were out and about. Probably if we were at the shop where my Dad bought a morning paper. There are a few more names I can think of, but one that springs to mind for me was a local guitarist by the name of Dave Black. Dave played in a one-hit-wonder band called Goldie. Dave taught (or gave lessons to) Andy Taylor and ME!! Sadly he took his own life a few years back. What a waste of a talent and a nice gentleman. RIP mate.
 
Dixiethedog said:
I said hello to Snowy White (ex Pink Floyd, Thin Lizzy, solo artist)
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So...I had no idea this person existed until a couple weeks ago thanks to the YT algorithm.

I mean...I was aware of Pink Floyd and Thin Lizzy, of course. But...yeah...I enjoy his stuff a lot.

ETA: Oh yeah, I talked to Josh Smith for a while after he played with Bonamassa in Nashville last year. He was really cool. I saw Reese Wynans as he left as well, but he had his head down and seemed to just want to go home, so I didn't say anything.
 
Being in Europe, I don't know if it's less obvious to meet them here...
Some may be easier to meet actually, as they sometimes have to gig smaller clubs here, or are loved more in Europe than in the U.S.

Leaving out shorter sightings, some that come to mind...

- I try to never bother artists for autographs (I'd rather "say hi"), but I made an exception twice for Pat Metheny, and was able to ask a few questions each time. What was funny the first time was how he was drinking up one of those huge Coca Cola bottles fairly quickly. In those days, I figured this might be why his hair was completely grey so early (OTOH, mine was too).

- A friend of mine was very into Tuck & Patti, and I joined him to three gigs on their tour here. One was in a small café where we got to know them pretty well, so to speak — lovely people. I emailed with Tuck once or twice after that.

- I was once part of an organization that organized a few drum festivals. I got to meet and hang out (to a very small degree) with a bunch of semi-famous drummers.

- One of our large music stores used to invite stars regularly (or still does), and if you go early you can often see them for hours before the demo/gig, warming up, hanging around. That's my only time I met Mike Stern — also a lovely guy. Another demo I saw was by Jennifer Batten (and even Malmsteen played there once).

- After a Lukather gig in a smallish club, I stood behind Bob Bradshaw for quite a while, but decided not to bother him about Luke's delays, etc. He didn't strike me as someone with a particularly nice vibe. After that same gig, Luke seemed to leave the backstage pretty drunk, although that was in a time where he claimed to not touch anything anymore. Of course, this can happen easily with even "one can't hurt" drink fed to him — I imagine that is what happened. Some countries have irresistible but unexpectedly strong beers :D

- Not gonna name this guy, but many years ago I met my BFF through some Facebook group. Turned out she was married to a monster multi-instrumentalist that toured with some very famous artists, and knows several more. We became good friends too and they have visited here. I've organized to have him play on some local church organs here, which he greatly enjoyed (he's into classical music too). If I would claim I had a band member of Deep Purple play in our local churches, it's not 100% true, but almost (in several ways).

- When he had to make his way through the packed crowd of a local club, I strongly rubbed bellies with Dizzy Gillespie. Not all his knowledge rubbed off on me... :( ;)

Idols I've seen but left alone...: Steve Lukather, Robben Ford, Joe Satriani, Tommy Emmanuel, ...
 
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Brewce said:
- A friend of mine was very into Tuck & Patti,
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Huh. Haven't heard that name in long time. I only knew of them because they opened for Stanley Jordan a long time ago, and they were great. I knew of Stanley's playing style, but I was just unaware of anyone else doing it. I usually don't worry if I'm late to a show (it always involves a 2 hour trip for me, which is hard sometimes on a weekday) and miss the opening act, but I was glad I caught theirs.
 
TSJMajesty said:
Huh. Haven't heard that name in long time.
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They had quite a few small hits here in the 90ies, I think. Then we saw his instructional video, which was crazy amazing. My friend even bought an L5, but probably sold it later. I've loaned one of Stanley's records in the late 80ies, IIRC. Pretty incredible back then.
 
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I don't mean to brag but I will!
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! Billy Cobham 1.jpg! Clarke2.jpg

Also studied for a few months with Scott Henderson (I have his signature on my old RC Booster), jammed in club once with the whole gang of Clarke band and many from Cobam's band, folks like Sirota, Jean-Marie Ecay - basically, I've found their hotel and asked them to join a jam nearby, and they all agreed - and Galvez, with whom it's even funnier - 10 years between the two photos:
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And a few other fantastic folks on different festivals and events, like Gary Husband (who was very surprised to learn I'm a guitarist - he thought I was a drummer just because I knew a lot about him - we've also talked about Allan for a bit), Joey DeFrancesco, Federico Malaman, whole Avishai Cohen band (was stupid enough not to take a picture with them, but I least I've got their vinyl signed), and some more. Oh, I lived a happy life.

All that said, I still don't understand why I can't play!
 
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I met the guys from Sevendust after a show back on the Seasons tour. They might be the nicest group of musicians I've met.
An old band I was in opened for Wayne Static not long before his death. He was very calm and quiet. He had to ask us to quiet down because we were partying too much in the green room, lol.
He still ran a solid state Marshall for his amp, MG100 I think. The lead guitar player he had on that tour was super cool (forget his name). He had a custom guitar built by GMP that was awesome. We jammed on some Metallica songs I think.
 
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