10 NEWS People
When Harry met Frank
Harry Connick Jr. can testify to the dangers of
meeting your heroes, said Adrian Deevoy in The
Daily Mail (U.K.). In 1990, the young crooner
was being touted as the next Frank Sinatra
when he was asked to perform for Sinatra’s 75th
birthday party at the Beverly Hilton hotel. “It
was a nightmare,” says Connick, now 52. Before
going out to sing, he bumped into Ella Fitzgerald
backstage, who told him, “I’m so nervous.” Now Connick was
even more terrified. He sang “More,” arranged by Quincy Jones,
with Sinatra 20 feet away in the front row. “I forgot the words,”
Connick says. “It was just disastrous.” After the show he told
his then-girlfriend Jill Goodacre (now his wife) that he wanted to
apologize. As Sinatra got into an elevator with his wife, Connick
caught him and said, “Mr. Sinatra, I want to tell you that I’m a lot
better than that.” Sinatra looked at Connick, then at Goodacre, a
Victoria’s Secret model. “He took her face in his hands and said,
‘You’re beautiful,’ and he kissed her on the mouth and walked
out. It was so aggressive.” Connick grimaces at the memory. “If
any guy in the world other than Frank Sinatra does that,” he
says, “you’d definitely spark him out.” All he can do now is sigh.
“Man,” he says, “that was a rough one.”
In Bob Dylan’s shadow
Robbie Robertson refuses to live in the past, said Paula Cocozza
in The Guardian (U.K.). Now 76, he was a singer and guitarist
for The Band, a five-piece Canadian group that had a string of hits
in the 1960s and ’70s and inspired the biggest rock artists of its
era. Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, Van Morrison, and George
Harrison all revered The Band. The group became famous when it
started backing Bob Dylan in 1965 during the period in which he
first went electric. On tour, it was hard to hear their playing over
the jeering of Dylan’s acoustic-loving fans. “When people boo you
night after night, it can affect your confidence,” Robertson says.
“Anybody else would have said, ‘The audience isn’t liking this, let’s
change.’ We didn’t budge. The more they booed, the louder we
got.” While their collaboration with Dylan did change music his-
tory, it obscured The Band’s later work and damaged Robertson’s
relationship with his bandmates. So did their worsening heroin
addiction. “I didn’t know anybody that didn’t do drugs,” he says.
“When it got in the way of what I wanted to do, when [I felt] ‘Holy
s---! I’m going to die if I keep living this way,’ I went in the other
direction.” Solo since the 1980s, Robertson still feels defined by his
days backing Dylan. “It’s not what I do,” he says. “It’s what I did.”
Naomi Campbell is much more than a pretty face, said Elisa
Lipsky-Karasz in The Wall Street Journal Magazine. She was one
of the first black models to gain global stature in a notoriously
racist industry, and at 49 has somehow managed to maintain a
legendary career and withering travel schedule while competing
with models half her age. “I’ve not expected anything to ever be
easy,” says Campbell. “I’ve been told so many nos and not pos-
sibles. The nos helped me to build a stronger resilience.” Born
in South London to a single mom, Campbell made her debut at
age 7 in a Bob Marley music video. Her career nearly foundered
during a turbulent decade in which Campbell pleaded guilty to
assaults three times and took court-mandated anger manage-
ment classes. “I don’t have a squeaky-clean life, and I don’t pre-
tend to,” she says. “I was the first to say that I was an addict, and
I’m so grateful to God to be a recovering addict and a recovering
alcoholic.” She’s traded cigarettes for mango-flavored vaporizers
and drinks celery juice every morning and night. Still, she main-
tains an intimidating aura that’s part of her allure. Asked if people
are afraid of her, Campbell smiles and says, “Maybe.”Sh
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(^2
)Campbell, warts and all
QFormer NBC Today show host Matt
Lauer released a graphic letter last
week attacking one of his sexual
assault accusers, saying, “I will no
longer provide them the shelter of
my silence.” Lauer spoke out after
former NBC colleague Brooke
Nevils said Lauer anally raped her
in his hotel room in Sochi, Russia,
where they were covering the 2014
Winter Olympics. “I was too drunk to
consent,” Nevils said, adding that she
“wept silently into a pillow” while he
forced himself on her. Lauer called her
“a fully enthusiastic and willing part-
ner,” describing the “variety of sexual
acts” they performed. Lauer was firedfrom the Today show in 2017 after numerous
women accused him of sexually preying
on them; he insisted last week that “I have
never assaulted anyone or forced anyone
to have sex.” Nevils called his letter, which
paints her as a jilted lover, “a case study in
victim blaming.”
QActor Jeremy Renner was drunk and
high on cocaine when he threatened to
kill himself and his ex-wife Sonni Pacheco,
she alleged in court documents published
by TMZ.com this week. The couple split in
2014 after less than a year of marriage, and
Pacheco now wants full custody of their
6-year-old daughter, saying Renner, 48, is
too dangerous. On the night in question,
Pacheco says, Renner put a gun in his own
mouth and later fired the gun into the ceiling
while their daughter slept in her bedroom.She says their nanny once overheard
Renner saying he should kill Pacheco, then
himself, because “it was better” that their
daughter “have no parents” than have her
as a mother. Renner’s spokesperson called
the accusations “dramatizations” with “a
specific goal in mind.”
QJane Fonda was handcuffed and arrested
last week along with 15 other climate change
protesters after being told repeatedly to
leave the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Fonda,
81, was charged with unlawfully demonstrat-
ing, “crowding,” and “obstructing,” police
said. The Academy Award winner, famous
for her Vietnam War protesting, recently
moved to Washington, D.C., so that she
could become more active in climate change
protesting and lobbying. “Come get arrested
with me,” she had told fellow activists.