And now, a name drop about a LIVING celebrity!

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

So Bill Murray turned 64 this week. How did I know that? Facebook reminded me, and even suggested I send Bill a gift! I am currently Facebook friends with Bill Murray, Russell Brand, Christopher Lloyd, and baseball Hall of Famer Orlando Cepeda, but these connections are probably made or approved by some personal assistant who’s a little less discreet. However, I have at least MET Bill Murray, and on THREE occasions. I don’t think I’ll ever have the chance to meet Mr. Cepeda, the other two are long shots.

OK, so the Name Drop Kid strikes again! And yeah, the first time I met him was indeed when Rick & Ruby were on tour with Robin Williams. At the time, Bill was dating his fellow Saturday Night Live castmate Gilda Radner, so we got to meet her at the same time, both wonderful funny people. They had been to one of the shows during the week, and then were invited to the celebratory dinner at the end of the week. They made a grand entrance, but after the dinner was already done, so Gilda made a grand declaration about how they went ahead and ate elsewhere so no one would think they were just looking to scrounge a meal. Even though the celebration was for Robin, for just that moment Gilda stole some focus.

I never met Gilda again, but in May 1988, I had booked one of my side projects into the Main Room of LA’s Comedy Store. I was in a band mostly from San Francisco called The Stupeds, which my music partner Joshua Raoul Brody conceived around 1980. The idea was to play the most annoying songs in pop music history (or at least the ones we believed to be so) and present them in rapid fire medleys so we could hit and run with each song. In an hour-long set, we could usually fit parts of nearly 40 songs. We were quite a good band, it was just our choice of music that was questionable.

One of the singers in the band, O-Lan Jones, was also a successful actress, having had feature roles in such hits as Mars Attacks, Married To The Mob, Natural Born Killers, and Edward Scissorhands. I’m pretty sure it was she who managed to get the word out to Bill Murray and his brother Brian Doyle-Murray, for they both came to the show, and as far as I know, paid! Needless to say, they were impressed enough to come backstage after the show and invite us all to a posh Sunset Blvd. Chinese restaurant, Imperial Gardens, long since gone. Well, cool, we were invited to hang out with Bill Murray, life is good, ain’t it?

But I had a major attack of asshole that night. We’d had a fairly decent crowd, but in the days leading up to the show, the club seemed to put up a plethora of what we considered unnecessary roadblocks that we let become distractions. I forget what monetary agreement we’d made, but we did come out of there with something, plus the club got to keep all the money from the drinks on a Sunday night, when the room would normally be dark. Raoul got his little dig in at the end of the set, when after introducing the individual band members, said “And we’d like to thank The Comedy Store, for being so FUCKING cooperative.” We were both so annoyed by the time we got offstage that even though Murray’s invitation was exciting, we needed to get high (I was still doing that in my late 30’s), and get high right then and there!. I forget who we scored from, but most likely as punishment for us being selfish addicts, the stuff was average at best.

My wife-to-be was going to be our designated driver/baby sitter, and she was clearly getting frustrated with us, at one point saying, “Goddammit, you’re doing THIS when we could be hanging with Bill Murray??” She was right, and the mixture of cocaine and alcohol was taking effect. By the time we got to the restaurant, Murray was still there, and I remember terribly slurring words as I was trying to tell him how much I admired his work and more than flattered that he’d come to see us. I think I still made sense, for he gave me his phone number in Malibu, where he was staying while he was filming the movie “Scrooged.” And we met up later in the week when I was sober to talk about an idea he had for a gig that he thought we’d be perfect for.

Of course I’ll tell you about it, but in the aftermath of that one Comedy Store show, we got a great review in the (long since defunct) LA Herald-Examiner, and a review in Variety where the critic truly didn’t get it. The Variety critic called a day before to ask something about one of the songs we did, and there was something in her tone, that tempted me to ask right then if her review was going to be a bad one. It was a total pan, but I gave less than a shit, because a show biz icon DID like us, so there!

The gig Murray proposed was part of the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the Atlantic Record company, and there was a party at the Roseland Ballroom in Manhattan which presumably a lot of big names would be attending. It was complicated, but the gig did happen, and most of the band members were flown out from San Francisco. I had to complicate things further, flying out of Phoenix, where I was doing a week at one of their comedy rooms. It meant the club had to get a local replacement for one night, but pretty amazing that I only had to miss the Thursday night. I got back to Phoenix completely hung over, but managed to do two shows on Friday.

As for the gig, well, there was a lot of people there, and going on stage right before us were the Manhattan Transfer, whom we’d hung with 10 years before. As for celebrities, well the idea was that Murray was going to come up on stage with us and sing “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl),” one of his favorite dumb songs. Really, the crowd was mostly hangers-on, though I did see Mike Rutherford of Genesis and Mike + The Mechanics talking to Atlantic’s founder Ahmet Ertegun, but that was it. What someone told us later was that Murray, who we’d seen earlier in the day, showed up at the Roseland, but the vibe didn’t set well with him, so he took off. Oh well, we had a major party in our hotel room, totally at Atlantic’s expense, including room service and calling my girlfriend in LA from the room phone and talking for an hour. Absolutely nothing else came out of that gig!

In 1995, I’d meet Murray once again. And like before, it was at The Comedy Store. A very frail Richard Pryor had agreed to do unannounced late sets Wednesdays in the Store’s Original Room. That was tough to watch, for it took Pryor nearly five minutes to reach the stage, and that while being propped on both sides by carers. He still had his wits about him, even if his body wasn’t cooperating. At one of those shows, Bill Murray had decided to come watch. It was my wife who happened to notice him, and pointed him out to me. I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t being besieged, but I sauntered up to him and said “Hey you remember The Stupeds?” He did, and actually talked to me for a good five minutes before other hangers-on were doing the “Hey, Rick, aren’t ya gonna introduce us to your famous friend” ploy. One actually distracted Murray enough that he decided to take off and see Pryor another time.

It’s nice to think that I met this man on three occasions several years apart, and even though he was more famous each time I met him, he was the same nice guy each time. It’s not uncommon for celebs to get more stand-offish as they get more famous. I certainly can think of a few, and you’re welcome to direct-message me if you really want to know who they were. Happy to say, Bill Murray was not, so happy 64th! I’ll be joining him at that age in a mere 44 days.

September 26th, 2014



Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.