HANGIN’ WITH ANDY

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

BBC2 has been running a 3-part documentary series entitled “Andy Warhol’s America,” with the final episode airing this Thursday. Episode 2 ended with him getting shot by Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist and clearly not a fan. It was eleven years after that shooting, when Rick and Ruby were in New York for two weeks at the start of our tour with Robin Williams, that we met and hung out with Andy Warhol. There was a lot of partying in that couple weeks, but this section was among the most memorable.

Our actual gigs in New York were only in the first week, then the second week was spent hanging with some of the people we had met. Before I talk of the Warhol meetings, I must mention we met famous people every night, and even though it was Robin’s moment, we were getting accolades of our own, and certainly there was no harm in coat-tailing. One celebrity encounter that stuck in my mind was with Gene Simmons of KISS. At the time, he was in a relationship with Cher, and the two of them were planning to come to the show, but Cher was ill, so he brought Cher’s daughter Chastity, now known of course by the trans gender name Chazz. She was an innocent 11-year-old at the time. The two of them missed the part of the show where Ruby did a Cher song parody, but they had heard about it, so they demanded a command performance in our dressing room. We did her 1973 hit song “Half-Breed” as “Half-Wit” and Gene laughed out loud at it while Chastity gave a look of “Yep, that’s my mom all right.” We couldn’t take a photo with him because at the time he had a contractual clause saying he couldn’t be photographed without his makeup. He was a nice guy with a great sense of humour. A shame he’s a total capitalist Trump supporter now.

The Warhol connection came about one night after our show where we had VIP passes to the legendary Studio 54, a true sign of the times. We saw him there talking to Liza Minnelli, and somehow the word got to him that he should be at The Copacabana (yes the same one Barry Manilow sang about) the next night. And sure enough, there he was the next night, with his entourage, some of whom are interviewed in that BBC show. I would enclose a photo taken of us with him except A) The photo came out with blotches over it, and B) I’m not in the photo.

After the show, he was invited, as we were, to an after-party at Robin’s suite at the very posh Sherry Netherland Hotel overlooking Central Park. Invited guests included singer-songwriter Peter Allen and celebrity photographer Annie Liebowitz. Andy Kaufmann also made an appearance but left after about 30 seconds as he clearly wasn’t comfortable there. And there was the other Andy, who seemed to like the fact that I was married at the time to someone who owned a second hand store in San Francisco. He wound up talking to us mostly, hardly talked to Robin at all. He loved going to second hand shops, and offered to take all of us around to some of his favourite haunts.

He was true to his word. We met up the next day, along with Robin, and Andy suggested a couple stores he knew in Greenwich Village. He still mostly talked to me and Ruby in the limo, but I remember one shop we went to, a huge place with tons of overpriced stuff. At one point I was just surveying the whole scenario and thinking “Holy shit, I’m hanging with Andy Warhol and the current biggest comedy star on the planet.” I noticed a couple of the shop’s young employees spotting Robin and whispering to each other “Do you see who that is?” In that instance, it was fun to be a spectator. None of us bought anything at that shop except Andy, who spent $800 on ties!

We parted ways, but we would see Andy once more before we left New York. He had a magazine called Interview, which was very successful for a while. They tended to explore different aspects of the celebrity culture than your average tabloid, with very incisive articles and interviews. Warhol believed that we were up and coming enough that he’d like to do a photo session, so that in case we make it, he could run an article on us. We went to his studio, The Factory, but only talked to him briefly. The rest of the time was spent with his photographer with the unusual name of William Coupon. He showed us some of his backlog of celebrity photos, which was quite impressive. One of the unique things about his photos was that he encouraged his subjects not to smile, and in almost every case it worked. He took a full roll of 24 shots, and I gotta say he brought out a new perspective as to who we thought we were. It helped too that he had seen our performance. Sadly, we didn’t become household names, so those photos sit in someone’s vault.

We never saw Warhol again, and eight years after our meetings with him, he passed away at the age of 58. The Andy Warhol Diaries, a pretty concise chronicle of his most amazing life, were published in 1989, and in the book there was mention of that party at Robin’s hotel, and of the second hand shopping in Greenwich Village, but no mention of us by name, which I’m sure there would have been if we had gotten famous. He was noted for the prediction “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Damn, I’m still waiting for mine!

January 19th, 2022



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