George 1976
Barb Clark
With a little help from my friends issue #17 (January 1977)
Knowing about the promotional party that Warner Brothers was
having for George’s new album, 33 1/3 and knowing he’d show up, we—Tempy S.,
Kay P. and I packed our bags and drove to Chicago. We went to O’Hare Airport thinking he’d get
into town a few hours before the party.
There we met up with George Tebbens, Sharon U., and Carol or was it
Nancy? I got them mixed up. They were sisters. All of them were from Chicago. We spent the day meeting all the flights
coming from LA. The flights came 15 to
25 minutes apart, which just gave us time to run to each one. It started to get late. The last flight we met, one guy got off with
a Warner Brothers jacket on. We thought,
this is it! The last person got off the
plane. No George. Tebbens went home to get ready for the
party. We all went over to the hotel
where George was staying and went into the lobby to wait. Kept our eyes glued to the elevator door. Tempy got up and moved closer. We sat there a while. A man came up to us and said we’d have to
leave. He asked who we were waiting
for. We didn’t answer. He told us to go outside and stand – that
he’d be coming out soon! So we all went
out front. About 20 minutes later out
George came; wearing a colored sweater, orange trousers which we later found
out was a jumpsuit. And he looked
gorgeous! Looked a bit like ’68 Yellow
Sub. time. He looked surprised to see
all of us waiting for him. He grinned
that grin and said hello to everyone.
Signed some autographs, and then got into the limo and went off to the
Ambassador. We quickly got a cab. The cab driver was cool—knew what was
happening. He said, “I think we can beat
them!” We got out, threw him some money,
and stood in front of the Ambassador.
Three seconds later George arrived!
He rushed through the crowd while we stood around trying to come up with
some way to get into the party. Meantime
the crowd started changing, “We want George, we want George!” Some climbed up on the windows and looked in
them – they were chased down. Everyone
still yelled, “We want George!” And then
the curtains opened and some man looked out.
Everyone yelled louder, “We want George!” Meantime we’d met up with another friend of
ours, Howard S. who had a room in there.
Everyone continued shouting “We want George!” Finally the curtains opened and there stood
George, grinning and waving to everyone.
After a b it he waved goodbye, and everyone yelled a bit louder. It all felt like 1964 again, us yelling and
him waving and grinning out the window at us all. Finally he left the window.
Earlier a police car had arrived. I thought they’d take us all away. Overheard the cop saying he was there to
arrest the doorman. We did get into the
hotel. Howard having a room there, but
that’s as far as we got. They had a list
of names and as you went into the party, they checked your name off. So we didn’t get in. Tebbens got in somehow of course. Somehow we’d missed seeing George leave, but
we all got together to celebrate what had happened, then called it a night and
were to meet again the next morning in front of George’s hotel.
We met about 9am except for Howard and George. Howard got there too late and George (as in
Tebbens) had to work. We stood around
for an hour or so. Char B. met up with
us. We all kept getting crazy remarks
from the limo driver, “Why do you still do this? “You stand out in the cold all this
time?” Someone said, “Yeah, all day if
we’d have to.” We told him where we were
all from. Tempy told him Boston, and he
said “you should’ve stayed there, that’s where he’s going next.” (You can imagine how she reacted to
that.) Kay went to put money into the
meter while the limo driver watched her and said, “Is that your car?” She said “yeah,” and the other guy with the
limo driver wrote down her license plate number. They brought out his luggage then and loaded
it into the limo, and then out came George!
Looking surprised as ever, wearing a plaid tweed hat and an army jacket. He grinned and said hello to us and got into
the limo and signed some autographs. And
then the limo took off and so did we.
Tempy, Char, Kay and I ran to the car to follow him. The limo was already 3 blocks away and almost
lost in the traffic. We had lost it
earlier. We’d found out he landed at
Midway Airport in a private jet, so we took off for there. Getting out of the traffic finally, and onto
the Expressway doing about 80. No sign
of the limo. Kay got it up to about
90. Still no sign of the limo and then
suddenly it came into sight. We’d caught
up with them! We were all yelling and
going mad. We calmed down a bit, went
off the exit with them, got a red light.
The driver looked into the rear view mirror and Kay waved at him. George and the guy in the back seat then
turned around and waved, and we slunk down into the seat. They turned into the airport and went into a
gate leading onto the field. Tempy and
Char jumped out of the car while Kay and I parked it in the middle of the road
next to the gates. WE all ran onto the
field. George was getting out of the limo
and going up the stairs leading onto the plane.
He got to the top, stopped and turned around and waved to us. We waved back and he disappeared into the
plane. Someone looked out the window,
but the windows being dark, we couldn’t tell who it was. The plane started up and we stood back
watching it as it took off and disappeared from sight. George was off for Boston and so was Tempy,
as we took her to the airport. By the
way, remember the one who wrote our license number down? He did that to clear it with the guards or
whoever at the airport –otherwise, they would’ve stopped our car from following
the limo up to where the plane was!
My hometown! Thanks for posting. I love that they made sure their car could get through. Different times.
ReplyDeleteGORGEOUS GEORGE!!!
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