Oh My God Please Let This Anecdote Be True

[pot80]

From a thread on ILM:

i've heard that Barry Manilow's a real prick. In the early 80's, for a while after lennon got shot, he really thought he'd be the next "rock star" to take a bullet. My marketing teacher is friends with the guy who did the sound for one of his tours back then and apparently he used to have bulletproof glass shields and stuff

Comments

A Follow-Up:

[pot80]

Yeah, I forgot him too! Or wanted to put it out of my mind. I remember working a Manilow concert in the mid-80s (God, I was starting to really hate that job). The thing was, Barry M. refused to come out for soundcheck and then threatened to cancel the concert altogether. One of the road crew told me that Barry was holed up in his dressing room, awash in a powdery sea of white stuff and screaming that "the next Mark David Chapman could be lurking around any corner!" His road manager convinced him to finally come out

[ex_misadvent483]

the sound guy snuck some samples of gunshots into the monitor mix and Barry hit the deck mid-song.

Five minutes later and I'm still laughing about that. I hope it's true too. And I hope one day, secret security footage of that pops up somewhere. A girl can dream, I guess.

The cardboard cut out story doesn't surprise me at all. My aunt has a life size cardboard cut out of Richard Simmons that she stole from work, so the Manilow story sounds downright sane to me.