As Requested: The Time I Met Barry White

In the comments section of my previous entry about the late, great Joe Franklin, one Gladgirl Shelly asked if I have ever met Barry White. As it turns out, I have, so I figured I would tell you about that now as I hate to pass up an opportunity to talk about Barry White and the fact that I have indeed met him.

Backing things up a bit, I became a fan of Barry White in high school. My friend Tony had inherited his dad’s old Jeep, which came equipped with an 8-track player. And the only two artists he had on 8-track were James Brown and Barry White, so that was all we ever listened to when we rode around the suburbs of Cleveland in his Jeep looking for trouble and/or a Burger King drive-thru.

I quickly became a big fan of both artists-  James Brown for his high-energy smorgasbord of funk, soul, and R&B, and Barry White for his more laid back approach to the same while singing mostly about things my buddies and I had yet to experience in life, as evidenced by the fact that we spent most of our free time rolling around town listening to music without proximity to any females whatsoever.

Fast forward a few short years to 1995. Barry White was coming to play at the State Theatre in downtown Cleveland. By that time, my first band Sons of Elvis had a couple of songs on the radio and a video that played on MTV in the middle of the night. We had also named our debut (and only, it would turn out) album Glodean after Barry White’s by then ex-wife (The album came out in 1995 on Priority Records, a label mostly known for slightly more popular artists like Ice Cube and Eazy-E. Get it on eBay!). It’s also worth noting that 3/4 of the band was comprised of the same guys who rode around in the Jeep with Tony back in high school, my friends Tim and Pat and me.

My bandmates and I figured we could maybe use our “star power” to weasel our way into meeting Barry White when he came to town and we were right. We also figured we should probably document the occasion with some pictures so we asked our record label to pay for a photographer to come take photos of us with Barry White in hopes that the picture might wind up in one of the local papers. Our label somehow agreed on the the one condition that all four of us had to be there for this historic meeting. Unfortunately though, our singer John, the one member of the band who didn’t live in Cleveland, was back home in New York at the time. So, in order to get our record label to send the photographer along anyway, we lied and told them all four of us would be there before asking our friend Mike to dress up like John for the photos with the addition of a cowboy hat and sunglasses to obscure as much as his face as possible so it would be slightly harder for anyone to tell we had gotten a stunt double.

The four of us- me, Tim, and Pat from the band and Mike headed down to the theater on the night of the show, thrilled that we’d finally be meeting our hero and one of the greatest musicians of all-time. We’d even gotten free tickets and the seats were great. Barry came out and began playing T-ball with the hits, one after another for a couple hours. It was an incredible show, the kind that made you wonder why you ever bothered listening to any other kind of music.

After the show, we were led backstage to a small, impossibly hot room filled with a dozen or so other people waiting to meet Barry. We sat there for ten or fifteen minutes, slowly becoming drenched in our own and probably a few other people’s sweat, when suddenly a door opened and in walked Barry, wearing a floor length black leather jacket and seemingly unaffected by the heat whatsoever. The next thing we knew, a handler led us over to him.

“Barry, this is the band Sons of Elvis,” the guy told him.

“I’ve heard a lot about you boys,” Barry said in his impossibly deep voice.

He probably hadn’t, but we loved that he said that just the same. We then took turns shaking Barry’s hand while telling him how awesome he was. I had brought a stack of his CDs for him to sign but I couldn’t work up the courage to ask him to sign any of them. Sometimes when something seems too good to be true, I just want it to be over so I can breathe again. And I wasn’t sure I would survive standing there awkwardly while Barry signed stuff for me.

The pleasantries out of the way, Barry then gathered us around him for the photo, which I tried to find online to post here but came up empty. It was a good one though, with Barry looking amazing, of course, Tim, Pat, and I grinning from ear to ear, and Mike staring off into the distance, hoping not to be found out.

As soon as the photo was snapped, Barry’s handler began pulling him toward the next group of people waiting to meet him. Barry began to walk away before suddenly stopping and turning back toward the four of us as we just stood there in shock over what had just happened.

“If you ever want to collaborate musically,” Barry said, “I would like that very much.”

Unfortunately, that collaboration never came to pass but it’s probably for the best as it probably would have killed me. Still, it was an exciting thing for my bandmates and I to talk about for the next several months as we tried desperately to get any of Barry’s people on the phone to talk about it.

As Tim, Pat, Mike, and I headed out to the parking lot afterward, a woman suddenly chased after us.

“Hey!” she yelled.

“Yeah?” we replied.

“Are you guys the Nine Inch Nails?” she asked.

“Yes, we are,” we told her.

Then we probably just went to Burger King or something.