There was always something really cool about trying to meet your favorite band after a show, or even your not-so-favorite band.  While meeting said rock stars was a thrill, part of the fun was the chase, the planning, the logistics:  “How do we locate and then meet this rock star?”  In my many, many years of being a hardcore fan of rock and roll, I have never tired of the idea of meeting someone I admire, and who has inspired me, but in this day and age I am seeing this time-honored tradition begin to fade a bit, and I am not pleased.

One of my favorite bands, The Who, toured the U.S. in 1982, and while the thought of meeting the band was really cool, I also understood that Pete, Roger, John, and Kenney (post-Moon) are of the upper-echelon of rock royalty, and meeting them would be close to impossible.  After the show, my sister, her boyfriend, the guys in his band The Ohms (“Ohm” is “Who” upside-down, of course), and I found our way out to the cavernous tunnel that allowed limousines to drive directly into the bowels of the Capital Centre in Landover, MD, and upon seeing said limousines, decided it would be interesting to see if the band members made a brief appearance between the stage door and the limousine doors.  Seeing the band offstage for 10 seconds would be fun, right?  So we waited, and waited, and nothing happened, but this extra time allowed us to come up with a brilliant idea:  let’s pull the car around to the top of the tunnel entrance, and when the limousines pull out, we follow them.  Who cares about getting home late and being tired for school the next day, this was The Who.  We had to do it.  So the bass player of The Ohms, Mr. Loftus, went out to the parking lot and pulled his tiny, AA-battery-powered car around to where we were perched, and the five of us piled in.  A short while later, the limousines began creeping up the tunnel incline and turned towards the exit roadway, off to parts unknown.  We jumped in line and the chase began.

I don’t know if there are laws pertaining to limousines, but the guy driving the limousine carrying John Entwistle was all over the road, reaching speeds of 80 to 90 miles per hour.  Weaving in and out of traffic.  Driving on the shoulders.  I think he even went through a few red lights, without a care in the world.  Since we were part of the caravan, we did all these things, too, with the skilled driving of Mr. Loftus to keep us on track, and alive.  A few miles into the journey, we figured the band was headed into Washington DC for the night, and as we pulled up next to Entwistle’s limo, to our great surprise The Mighty Ox poked his head out the window and gave us the thumbs-up sign.  If anyone thought we could be stopped after getting the green-light from Entwistle, that person would be mistaken.  Our resolve was steeled.

By the time we arrived at The Dolley Madison Hotel in DC, we were so excited at our good fortune that we didn’t even have time to figure out something cool to say.  (And trust me, we should have.)  I walked up to John and said hello, shaking his hand, and he commented on our efforts to follow the limousines, congratulating us on a job well done.  Score!  After saying any number of stupid things to John, none of which I can remember (thankfully), I went over and said hello to Pete, whose famous nose was there within my reach.  It was a surreal scene.  As it turned out, Roger and Kenney were down the block a ways with a small group of fans, and while my sister met one or both of them, I was so wrapped up in the Pete/John world that I blanked out and didn’t even realize what was happening…that I was missing half-The-Who.  But no matter…meeting Pete and John was a highlight of my rock and roll life, and remains so to this day.  The five of us put in a Herculean effort to make this happen, and it paid off.  And that was part of the fun.

Jump ahead to a 1992 KISS concert in Fairfax VA (the non-makeup years…don’t tell Dub Warrant, he’d kill me), and after the show we hitched our wagon to a limousine leaving the Patriot Center grounds at GMU after seeing the silhouetted giant-haired heads of a few rock stars in the back seat.  After a 30-minute pursuit we finally caught up to them, only to find that the two guys in back had big hair, alright, but they didn’t happen to be members of KISS.  But the lesson here is that the journey was fun, even if we looked pretty silly.

One of the last times I saw one of my favorite bands, Marillion, was at a small venue called The Birchmere, and as true Englishmen will do, they arrived at the bar a few minutes after the show ended.  We sat around with the band and a few other fans and had drinks, talking about whatever came up, and had a good time.  No egos, no huge bodyguards, no disrespectful or rude people…just a band having a drink with the fans.

What makes these post-concert adventures so important, and the reason they become such fond memories, is that there is a goal that is set out, the goal is achieved, and you meet someone you want to meet.  The pay-off is there, no matter how long you wait, or how much time and effort is involved.  I once waited outside in 25-degree winter weather for nearly 3 hours to meet the great Scottsman Fish outside a club in DC, and even though I was the last person there, and the only fan who stuck it out, the pay-off did present itself:  Fish walked out, we chatted, he signed an autograph, he thanked me for braving the cold, and then he got on his tour bus, and I got in my car.  Everyone wins.

Which brings me to the modern equivalent of meeting your favorite rock star:  the “meet-and-greet,” or MnG, as I shall call it from here on out (clever, I know).  The MnG is a great idea in concept, but as a longtime music fan, it bothers me that a huge part of being a fan, and behaving as a fan, and creating great memories, is now reduced to how much money I, as a fan, am willing to pay to meet my rock star of choice.  Never mind (for now) the merchandise or the gift-bags, I am talking about the interaction with the artist…from saying hello, to getting an autograph, to watching a sound-check, or whatever.

Now, I fully understand that there is value that must be considered here.  That is, if someone wants to pay $500 to meet Bruce Springsteen, then the dollar amount is irrelevant, since there is no truly inherent value in meeting Springsteen…or any artist, for that matter.  Meeting someone like this is a matter of personal value; that is, how much the meeting means to the person paying the money to participate in the MnG.  What bothers me about the MnG concept, though, and it’s implementation, is that the way these events are handled, the fans who don’t, or can’t, pay the costs to meet an artist will knowingly *not* meet the artist.  No “what if,” no “maybe,” no driving to Philadelphia (damn you, Richard Face), and no, “we’ll wait outside after the show.”  That is, if a MnG is planned, then the artist has to cater to those people who paid to meet him/her.  The artist can’t sign autographs and pose for photos with the paying fans, and then go outside the venue and do the same for the fans who didn’t pay for the MnG.  That would make no sense.  So if an artist advertises a MnG, that automatically means that most fans are cut out of the loop, and cannot, no matter the effort, meet the artist.  To me, this takes away an important part of being a fan.

There is also the question of merchandise offered by the artist.  Let’s assume for the sake of discussion that Artist A charges $100 for a MnG.  At the event, the fans can have an item signed, and pose for a photo with the artist.  When the fan leaves the MnG, he is given the merchandise offered as part of the MnG deal, perhaps a t-shirt, a tour laminate, and a poster.  While these items of merchandise very likely will not equal the amount paid by the fan for the MnG, isn’t the merchandise nonetheless acting as an incentive of some sort, where the fan is essentially buying merchandise based on the meeting with the artist?  In the example above, Artist A agrees to meet a fan for $100, and as part of the deal the fan gets $50 worth of merchandise.  The monetary “value” of the MnG then becomes $50; the fan is not given an option to meet the artist for just $50 and to forego the merchandise.  Quite the contrary, the merchandise is part of the deal.  So is the “meet and greet” part of the arrangement simply a very subtle way to force the fan to purchase merchandise, even merchandise that he or she might not even want?  And isn’t the music industry based largely on merchandise sales now, where artists record and tour simply to get fans to pay $60 for a t-shirt?  Or $30 for a poster?  I know I am simplifying this, as artists hopefully record music because they are artists and writing/recording music is what they do (save for a few exceptions), but from a business standpoint, many artists today admit that merchandise is where the money is.

Is the MnG concept, to a cynic, simply a way to force merchandise sales, with a huge mark-up?  The “meet and greet” part of the deal, after all, costs the artist nothing.

Again, though, taking the somewhat-cynical view, the MnG concept is yet another way that the true relationship between artist and fan is being morphed into something not altogether positive.  Access to the artist is granted via a dollar amount, but in the process many of the artist’s fans are being cut out of the process, and thus the MnG largely becomes an exercise in exclusion.  An artist should want to meet and interact with his/her fans, not charge them for a handshake and an autograph.

[Patrick Lacy is an Elvis fan, writer, and researcher, and has been a student of rock and roll since 1976 or so.  He met John Entwistle again in 1998, which is when JE signed his PLAID t-shirt. The 1982 signatures were stolen. ©2024]