Pop Stars That I Have Known, Part 1

It was actually a pretty big deal here recently. Paul McCartney, promoting his new album, gave a concert in the Amoeba Music store on Sunset Boulevard. Folks came out in droves to get upclose and personal with the former moptop (just love that word). Back when, you couldn't get within 500 yards of these legends.
But, I have been lucky enough in the past to have a few brushes with musical greatness. I will relate some of those yarns here over the next little while.
Back in the mullet-cut 80s, I was working at an entertainment company that made an awful lot of coin producing their own concert tours. Of course, at some point, the powers that be decided that the best way to entice top talent to tour with us was by having other talent on staff to do the luring. After all, they all talk to each other, right? I'm sure Boy George, George Michael, and Bono regularly got together to play Strat-O-Matic baseball. But, I digress...
The talent the company hired to be on staff was Rick Wills, one of the guitarists of the then-white-hot Foreigner. I think he stayed with the band for about ten years. (He's on the far left in the album cover above.) Well, anyway, they parked this guy in our very community office in a cubicle adjacent to mine. Over the first few days, you could tell that he was completely out of his element in an office setting.
"What's that strange noise?"
"That would be the phone, Rick."
He pretty much kept to himself, spending the day on the phone talking to whoever rock guitarists talk to during any given day.
I decided that ice needed to be broken.
Because the office was essentially one big area like the bullpen on Murphy Brown, one radio could provide the background music for everybody. One morning, it was tuned to the then-rock station icon in New York, WNEW-FM. Everyone is busy working in their little cubicles. The song comes on.
Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is."
You could hear a pin drop. We all knew that one of the guys performing on that song was sitting amongst us, counting paper clips like the rest of us. The song played on. The office sat in reverent awe.
This was my opening. I was going to roll the dice. Into the steely silence, I asked the following question.
"Hey, can somebody please turn that shit off."
If it was possible, the silence deepened further. For 15 seconds or an eternity, there was an inaudible gasp around the office. Until...
I heard a little British giggle coming from Wills' cubicle.
I had made a friend.
We did lunch.
Dinner last night: Grilled Bratwurst at the Dodger game.