I couldn’t feel worse for Whitney Houston and her family -- particularly her minor daughter who she was apparently taking to clubs where alcohol was served (and who- knows-what was available in the bathroom!) -- over the last several years.
As great as her tragedy was, it was more for a kid. God bless, and help, her!
On the other hand, as an artist, it was hard to have any but the best feeling for Whitney. I know a little about it, from both a professional and personal level. And the telling thereof may say something about both the music business and the journalists who follow it.
To wit, at one point in my life, me.
I’ve already written about my experiences with the Rolling Stones during the recording of their classic album “Exile on Main Street,” not to mention the early days of the Ramones. But I knew them long before I became Newsweek’s entertainment correspondent in Los Angeles the ‘80s. In fact, I probably only got the job because of my association with the pre-punk New York Dolls, whom Newsweek (as well as Time) had touted back in the ’70s as “the next Rolling Stones.”
Turns out the Dolls proved to be nothing of the sort. But I hear "Personality Crisis” and “Looking for a Kiss,” or hear them on movie soundtracks, and I still love their music … maybe more than then!
The Dolls got me to L.A. in the mid '80s, where I was considered hip. That may have been simply because a magazine like Newsweek wouldn’t have known “hip” if it was hit by a semi of “LPs,” as they were called in those days.
For some reason, they assigned me my first L.A. cover story, “Women in Rock.”
The idea was to feature Madonna, which would have been her first major cover. But Madonna was too stupid to understand the opportunity; following the furor over her “writhing bride” performance of “Like a Virgin" at that year’s MTV awards, she’d decided men hated her. So, thanks to her manager (today even she hates him), I was taken off the story, because I was a male!
Little did Freddie DeMann know that I’d actually voted for her in the awards (in those days, I had a vote). Instead, she got a female writer who hated her. Freddie didn’t understand that it was males who loved Madonna and females who found her a threat to their liberation.
In the end, Freddie’s maneuvering cost Madonna the cover—though I got a nice credit with such subjects as the then-hot Bangles. But that’s not the story I want to tell you. No, half a decade later, I found myself at the Cannes Film Festival with my first independent film, “Born to Run,” repped by foreign sales maestro Jeff Schechtman, one of the ‘90s independent film gurus and a former exec at New Line Cinema.
Over the years, Jeff taught me of many things, but one of the most memorable was “Le Petite Carlton,” or the Little Carleton, a cheesy bar located behind the famous Carlton Hotel.
