From a post on working in a corporate bookstore in downtown Minneapolis:
One of my favorite perks was the occasional celebrity encounter. Sometimes they would be there for signings; sometimes they’d just be in town, bored, and need a book or a magazine to get them through the crushing dullness of Minneapolis. I once drifted around the store on a glorious haze because Danica McKellar, one of my first childhood crushes (Winnie Cooper, guys! Winnie Cooper!), was wandering around the store with her then-husband. I couldn’t work up the courage to bother her though. Nor did I gush over Bruce Springsteen… to his face. I did tell Ethan Coen how much I enjoyed his movies, but that was after annoying him with my membership card spiel. I once told our county attorney to get in the back of the line; she was coming through the line’s exit, not the entrance. Now that woman is our U.S. senator [Amy Klobuchar]. The time Pete Townsend came to the store was something else, though.
So there’s this English musician named Rachel Fuller. Rachel makes perfectly lovely music for English housewives that is not my cup of tea. Apparently she and her boyfriend, rock icon Pete Townshend , were friends with the brothers that were, respectively, CEO and president of this bookstore chain. Rachel had a new CD out, and somehow worked out a deal with her bookstore-owning friends that she would go to a few of their stores, play a quick set, and reap the benefits in record sales. Her boyfriend would tag along for moral support. Word got out to the local classic rock station that the bookstore was going to have a free Pete Townshend concert. This was not actually the truth, but hey, any publicity is good publicity, right?
The day of the Rachel Fuller/PETE TOWNSHEND concert, I’m helping a friend in the music department ring up customers. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her talking to a tall scruffy-looking guy. I see him hand her something and say “afterwards, look at this. It will explain everything.” Then he left. He had given her a CD-ROM. I asked what that was about, and she summons the manager and cop on duty. The guy had told her that Pete Townshend had stolen one of his songs and owed him an enormous amount of money (I regret my memory fails me as to how much money he wanted. The guy was sure that Townshend owed him a very specific sum, like sixty-one thousand dollars or two hundred grand, or something) and “after twenty-nine years, it will finally come to an end.” Well, that sounded like some sort of threat, didn’t it? Some kind of imminent deadly threat to a celebrity? The cop was on it . The crazed fan had left the store, but our cop started reviewing security footage with an alacrity I had never before seen him use. He was able to take the crazy’s image, get it to the police department downtown. Soon they had the guy identified. They try to track him down. They call his parents.
“Oh, we haven’t seen him in months, but we know he stopped taking his medication!”
Our community relations manager puts the CD the crazed fan had dropped off in her PC upstairs. On it is some sort of multimedia presentation. It looked like it was addressed to Pete, and each animated frame of his slide show had some message. They might have been ravings, they might have been references to Townshend’s lyrics. Honestly, I’m not much of a Who fan, could be either. Stuff like “If you look through your Mirror Door, you know what you must do.”
Two hours before the concert starts, and every police officer we had ever hired for off-duty security is hanging out in the store, whether they were scheduled to be there or not. This is Christmas for cops. The crazed fan walks in the store. It’s crowded, but the police spot him right away. They surround him and bustle him into a cop car. I hear he’s held for a mental health examination for 24 hours. Sometimes the best climax is an anti-climax. The show eventually begins. Rachel Fuller comes out with her synthesizer and puts on a few numbers, her boyfriend backs her up on vocals for a few of those songs. It’s nice enough music, I guess. I never see the crazed fan again.
Also:
-
Once, at a different bookstore in a nearby suburb, I had a stack of vintage paperbacks in my hands. I kept looking between them and the circular rack I had pulled them from, wondering if it was worth owning an incomplete set of “Doc” E. E. Smith’s “Lensman” series, especially if they didn’t have Galactic Patrol. I became aware of a short man who was glaring at me. We made eye contact. I thought he was trying to telepathically command me out of the way or telekinetically shove me aside. Either way, he wasn’t using his words. I looked at the rack one more time, and almost started using my words to say something like “did you want to look at these” or “I don’t work here, but can I help you with something”, when something about him started looking very familiar. I moved aside and he floated past. Was that man… I mean, he was so old, and so small, and his hair was frizzy, and his skin was kind the color of blonde wood, and his eyes were flashing and furious… I made my way over to the used CDs and picked up a copy of “1999” and “Purple Rain”, such was his power. As I bought the CDs and left, I saw the short man behind the wheel of a large red Suburban. Whether he had bought anything in the bookstore or not, he did not stay long. Someone else in the parking lot was backing up in front of him, and he was laying on the high-pitched horn. He had no time to wait. It was Prince, I’m sure of it. It was the summer before he passed away.
-
Once I went through an airport security checkpoint in St. Louis. The pre-TSA airport screener was gushing that the man right in front of me was Travis Tritt. The guy was with a small entourage. It took me less time to get my stuff than for them to get situated, so I walked past and took a closer look. I guess it was him. I’m not a country fan, and can’t name any of his songs, though I’d heard of his name. He seemed pleased that people were recognizing him.
-
I think I might have rung up Dennis Farina when I worked at a gas station. It would have been unlikely, sure but the station was on a U.S. highway and the guy was putting off a very Dennis Farina-like vibe. Stranger things have happened.
-
Har Mar Superstar and a woman walked past us as we stood in line for a Regina Spektor concert.
I’ve had a number of other celebrity encounters, but they were planned, not random.