COAT TAILING

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

For most of the first half of 1979, the Rick & Ruby act was on its way to getting almost famous. It all came down to befriending someone who was on his way to becoming a megastar, and we had a clever manager who recognised it, who made sure we hung with him as much as we could. It worked, as when it came down to a national concert tour, he told his management he wanted us to be his opening act. It was also fortunate that his management agreed. I remember when Robin Williams called me at home in February to talk about the upcoming tour, my then wife had a friend from high school visiting. When I finished the call, the friend said, “Geez, my upcoming hiking trip through the mountains of Montana sounds rather paltry in comparison.” I said, “Well, your trip will be less stressful than mine.”

The tour wasn’t an exhausting one, it would be in shifts. We would start with a week in San Francisco, which was handy. One night I witnessed first hand the magnitude of Robin’s stardom, as he was driving me home. We were at a stop light, and two girls in an adjacent car recognised him, leapt out of their car and ran up to kiss him. He acknowledged that since Mork & Mindy had debuted, that sort of thing was happening with some frequency.

Two weeks after the San Francisco run, we were booked for an entire week at New York’s famed Copacabana, the same one Barry Manilow sang about. Those tickets were the hottest thing in town, and celebs came every night. It helped us that our doorless dressing room was on the way to Robin’s dressing room, so when celebs were coming back to meet Robin, they talked to us and most of them had kind words to say. Among the people we met that week were Bill Murray and Gilda Radner (who were dating at the time), Andy Warhol, comic team Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara (parents of Ben), talk show host Dick Cavett, comedians Rodney Dangerfield and Robert Klein, and Gene Simmons of KISS.

Because we were part of Robin’s entourage, it meant we got free passes to wherever Robin decided to go. We went at least twice to the legendary Studio 54 disco with VIP passes, meaning we got to enter the club through the back entrance. We didn’t have to go in the front way and deal with the Attitude Police who often decided who was allowed in just by their look or their story. My brother-in-law was living in New York at the time, and had to brave the front entrance, but he told the bouncers that his brother-in-law was in the act Rick & Ruby, that’s opening for Robin Williams at the Copa. To the bouncers, that sounded like he was important enough, and he was let in.

The next leg of the tour involved a midwest swing, with one-nighters in 2000-seat venues in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Detroit, and a weekend in Chicago. All the one-nighters were good for us, Chicago, not quite as good. Robin had trouble there too. I think some of the attitude came from being a big city without the glitter of LA or New York. One guy sitting up front gave a Quaalude to my partner while we were on stage, as if he thought we might appreciate it. He even came up to us during the interval between our set and Robin’s, and said “Hey man, that really was a Quaalude,” just to illustrate his point further. There was a fair amount of drugs on that tour, but my partner had given up all stimuli except alcohol by then, and while I still indulged, I always waited until after our shows to do that. We threw the Quaalude down the toilet.

The one great moment in Chicago was our celebrity encounter, and it was fortunate that Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, along with some of his brothers, came on the best show we had of the four we had done there. They got there too late to hear Ruby’s Diana Ross parody, but didn’t ask to hear it either. The whole entourage came backstage with us, and because there was such a throng around Robin, they decided to talk to us rather than steal any of his thunder. I heard so much about what a horrible person she was, but didn’t see anything resembling that behaviour. Michael was very shy, but very friendly. At the time, the Off The Wall album had just come out, we were three years away from Thriller, and about 8 years from his strange phases.

This tour should have been the thing that launched us into the stratosphere, but nothing comes easy. There were many factors to blame for that, first off not moving to LA for another year and a half, by which time the media interest in us had faded a bit. We still got the episode of Mark & Mindy as a result, and did a fair amount of TV in the interim. Amazing that 45 years have passed, but also sad that it’s almost exactly 10 years since Robin Williams decided to leave us. I will always feel honoured that someone as brilliant as he chose to have us experience the mania with him.

April 19th, 2024



Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.