Big Thrill #1
One night I was sent by the KC Times to cover a soft-rock concert by songwriter Steven Bishop, and I was blown away – but not by the music. And it was probably a good thing I didn’t know ahead of time who was going to drop in to surprise his friend – the real reason I was there, in fact. The reporter who set up my admittance to these events wisely kept the details to himself.
During the show I had already been to all the good spots I thought would produce the best pictures of the concert, and decided to see what the view was like from stage left. With live music blasting away it’s really hard to hear what goes on backstage – or even right next to you. After a couple minutes there I realized someone was standing next to me, so as a courtesy I stepped back about a foot to give them some room. Somehow with that small change of peripheral vision I immediately recognized who this fuzzy-haired guy was.
Two words: Art Garfunkel. He had arrived midway through the concert – for Steven’s birthday party after the show! Somehow I managed not to pass out and tried to look as non-nonchalant as anybody else with 30 pounds of camera gear making me list to the right side.
As a classical guitar player myself, of course I had high appreciation for Simon and Garfunkel, real musicians with thoughtful and powerful songs with topnotch lyrics. As a dumb kid though, I was unaware that Garfunkel and Steven had a history of collaboration on several songs, friends for many years.
Steven’s girlfriend at the time was Carol Lynley, and at the party we took turns crowding around a briefcase-sized, battery-operated, portable B&W TV with a 4″ screen on one corner to watch her performance in the movie “The Poseidon Adventure”, which happened to be showing that night on the “ABC Movie of the Week” (in color). It was so funny to see Steven get really excited when she would come into a scene, but then things would go back to being pretty quiet. A rousing party with lots of debauchery this was not.
Years later I discovered that the gal who came to the party with Garfunkel was his real girlfriend Laurie Bird, who was still a new actor herself but had recently appeared in Woody Allen’s “Annie Hall” (ironically as the girlfriend of Paul Simon’s musician character). If I’d also known THAT at the time, I really would have passed out.
