Diversions:
'Live, From Your Living Room ...'
Big Names Now Do Parties
By LISA GUBERNICK
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Strobe lights flash across the stage as the evening's
main attraction, singer Tom Jones, emerges in his signature
French-cuffed shirt and skintight pants. Flanked by his band, Mr. Jones
pulls a woman from the crowd and does the bump with her. The audience
goes wild.
Is this Caesar's Palace? Madison Square Garden? The Hollywood
Bowl? No, it's the 50th birthday party of Dee Dee Anderson of Corona del
Mar, Calif. "It was incredible," says Brandy Valdez, one of
Mrs. Anderson's daughters, who helped throw the party. "Mom totally
savored the moment."
Here's the latest evidence the economy is rockin': Party
givers across the country, people whose closest link to the music
business is listening to the radio, are hiring celebrity performers to
entertain their guests. Costs range from as low as $7,500 for graying
headliners such as '60s rockers Gary Lewis and the Playboys, to
around $50,000 for rhythm-and-blues diva Gladys Knight, to upward of
$500,000 for Whitney Houston and Elton John. An Affordable
Extravagance.
Though an extravagance by any definition, some performers
actually can be booked for less than the price of a family trip to
Europe. Like Mr. Lewis, Mark Lindsay, a big name from the '60s
who hit the top of the charts with Paul Revere and the Raiders, charges
less than $10,000 for some events. Susan Pearlstine Foster and her
husband, who own a beer distributorship in Charleston, S.C., hired the
Four Tops for their 15th wedding anniversary last year for $25,000 plus
travel fees. "When we heard the price, we thought maybe we should
rethink and get a local zydeco band," says Ms. Pearlstine Foster.
"Then we figured it wasn't so bad. They were, after all, the thing
that was going to make everyone show up."
While megawatt stars such as Elton John rarely do more than half
a dozen private dates a year, some acts -- particularly those whose
salad days predate disco -- fill as much as 30% of their tour schedules
with corporate events and other parties. Anything that
generates income is a good thing," says Mr. Lewis of Gary Lewis and
the Playboys, who had their first big hit, "This Diamond
Ring," back in 1964. The group still performs 125 dates a year, and
as many as 25 are parties. "Doing private gigs keeps us
alive," Mr. Lewis says.
Keep in mind that the performer's fee isn't the only
cost. You will be expected to cover travel, lodging and production fees
such as lighting and sound costs -- all of which can total as much as
half of the original tab. Contract riders can cover everything from the
number of hotel rooms required, to the kind of food the artists must be
served, to the precise length of the performance.
