John Wayne

By the time I encountered John Wayne in the summer of 1976 on my fellowship at WSB TV I was not much of a fan. The reporter I was  with that was going to do the interview with him was totally awestruck and had a difficult time doing his job. The interviews were set up with a bunch of desks in a large room and Wayne would go from one network reporter to the other and he wasn't at all happy about it. "Come on will ya ask the questions" he would bellow at the poor guys. Then the WSB handler, which was a woman that Wayne had some earlier relationship with, would take him to someplace picturesque outside the room and make him do a station promo, which he really didn't like doing. He was supposed to be looking at something and then turn around and say "When I'm in Atlanta I always tune in to WSB". He would get about half way through it and then say something like "this is such crap" and the woman would come out and pet him and get him to try it again. They finally got a decent take. His hair piece did not look great from the back either.

The Allman Brothers

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Chuck Berry

 Berry came to Guam when he was 47.  Berry traveled around on the "oldies circuit" alone in that period, just himself and a guitar. He would get a pick-up band that knew his tunes, do the gig, no encore, and move on. Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller performed the backup band function early in their careers. This time a local Guam band called "Friends" would back him up. No rehearsal, no discussion, just hit the stage, do the old tunes, and go to the airport. "Friends" was a very tight group and I think Berry actually appreciated it.

His concert on Guam was on August 17, 1974, Rand Coffman's 27th birthday. Rand produced the concert through a project he created called "Youth Incorporated" and a grant from the American Bicentennial Commission. I was the photographer-cinematographer for the Chuck Berry gig and Frank McGuire shot stills for the local paper.  I don't know what happened to the 16mm color footage I shot.  I was 27 and taking a break from graduate art school at Florida State University. I've been close friends with Rand since high school, some 50 years now. He still lives in Guam, has a radio program called "The Edge of Heaven" about phenomena, renovates yachts, teaches gifted children, and lot's of other interesting things.

Chuck thought I laughed a little too much. He was probably right. Mr. Berry on the other hand, was not very funny.   We picked him up at the airport in a Rolls Royce. The one and only time I've ever been in a Rolls. It belonged to somebody's uncle.  Why was he doing a concert in the George Washington High School stadium such a very long way from St. Louis? I got the feeling he might not have known how far it was to Guam and when he finally got there a bunch of scruffy hippies picked him up in a Rolls. He wasn't too cheerful. To top it off it rained at the concert and he went on early but played anyway.  He did a very good set and got a standing ovation which seemed to cheer him up. Before he could get off,  a bunch of kids jumped up on the stage and started singing and dancing around him. He started laughing. Laughing like a regular guy not a star. He took the microphone, pointed at the audience still applauding, and yelled "you're all my children!"  And we are.

Brian Eno

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Neil Young

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Ken Kesey

Ken Kesey, 1970

I have a Kesey story. I know it's true, I've told it before. In the summer of 1970, after graduating from the University of Florida my pal Bob Gould and I set out in our VW Bus to go to San Francisco and get a job at the Whole Earth Store. Well they already had an employee at the Whole Earth Store so Bob went to Boston and I headed up to Washington with my new girlfriend Pat Thomas in her VW bus. On the way we picked up another couple hitch-hiking and he turned out to be a writer for underground papers with an address of a buddy in Eugene, Oregon, that we could stay with. We knew about the Springfield Creamery being owned by Ken Kesey's brother Chuck so of course we had to drive by it.

As fate would have it, there, standing in front of the Creamery  with his dog Stewart (we know it was Stewart because he yelled at him to stop barking at us) , was the man himself, Ken Kesey. We played it cool of course. I rolled down the window as we pulled up next to him and we exchanged the knowing smiles. I'm sure he had seen hundreds of scruffy hippies coming up there to hang out with him. "Would you know a place we could camp?" I asked as casually as I could. He smiled again and said "Yes, below the Jasper Bridge is a good place" and he proceeded to give us directions. Sure enough we found the Jasper Bridge and the little road leading down below it. There on the side of the bridge support in flaming dayglo spray paint was "KESEY SUCKS!!!" We laughed ourselves silly.

Jasper Bridge, Highway 222 

Next day we headed for the address our writer passenger had and wound up at Kesey's farm. There was the famous bus and Kesey's Edsel convertible. His wife came out and was very nice to us but said they were expecting a bunch of people to show up any minute and we couldn't stay there. The guy who had given the farm as his address no longer lived there. We had our brush with greatness and it was time to move on. We never did make it to apple picking.

Sam Shepard, Jessica Lang, Kirsten Giroux

Lang and Shepard, Boston, 1980's.

Maybe this has happened to you.  I was having breakfast with a Boston actress, Kirsten Giroux sometime in the late 1980's.  There was a couple at the next table. The woman looked really familiar. I kept thinking that I knew her from someplace and that inevitably she would look over and see me and saw hello and I wouldn't have clue who she was but I would have to pretend that I did. I would have to get Kirsten to introduce herself so the woman would tell her name because I couldn't remember it. I would have to prep Kirsten to do this before she recognized me. I kept flipping through my history - grade school, high school, university, jobs, trying to place her. I even started to "age" kids I knew in grammar school to see if I could match her up with somebody. Funny how quickly you become obsessed with something like this. I could always just say "Don't I know you from someplace?" if it came to that. I leaned over the table and whispered to Kirsten "I think I went to high school with the woman at the next table." Kirsten (who is a terrific actor)  smiled and said "Oh did you really?" " Yes, I said, " but I can't think of her name. "  "Did you go to school with Sam Shepard too? Because that's Jessica Lang", Kirsten said. Just then Shepard and Lang looked over at us and we exchanged nods.

Kirsten Giroux teaching in Oregon, 2013.