by John Popper
But as long as people aren’t belligerent, I don’t mind having a conversation with them. Provided they don’t slap me on the back. I hate back slappers.
Picture, if you will, this hearty, jovial man, and I always picture him having eaten a large barbeque or drinking a lot of beer, more of a soccer dad, who walks up behind you, filled with love and admiration—they only want to say something nice. But the way they express themselves is by taking their flat open hand and whapping you like you’re the biggest smash return in a tennis match, and saying, “Hey man, I love you!” or “How’s it going, brother?” with a familiarity that’s just so inappropriate to being slapped hard on the back.
You haven’t even seen this person; you’re just minding your own business and get a big loud slap on your back and a stinging red mark. So your first instinct is you want to turn around and take a swing at whoever just did that to you. But as you turn, you realize that this person meant well, that they’re not being a dick. They feel like they know you, and they’re genuinely happy to meet you.
The thing you’ve got to remember when you’re dealing with a fan is that they might say something you hear over and over again, but for them it might be the only time they’ll get to say it. I try to be there in the moment because it’s really about the person who’s having the moment with you. They want to tell you something amazing about you that you don’t want to believe, and what you’re really aware of is that this person believes it, so fuck what you believe. And you let the person tell it because it’s really important to them that they had the courage to tell you, and this is their moment. They don’t do this every day; they don’t go around looking for musicians to tell this to.
So I try to be supportive and listen to what they have to say. It’s almost always something really nice and positive.
But what happens is that you don’t feel any different—what makes it matter is that they’ve imbued it with power: you haven’t, but they have. So what you’re really getting is their reaction to what you do, and that gives you the actual wisdom they claim you have. So it’s a really weird symbiosis, and I think that really is the key. You just stand there and let that moment happen and try to pay attention, if you can, to what they’re saying. That gets harder when it’s a bunch of people, but you’ve got to remember the objective. You’ve got to remember the point, which is that what you did really affected somebody.
And people have affected me as well. There have been a couple of people I’ve been too scared to talk to, like Michael Jordan. I’ve been the worst kind of fan, a back tapper who wouldn’t leave him alone. He was meeting kids in wheelchairs and was surrounded by cameras, and I was behind him—tap tap tap . . . “Mr. Jordan?” . . . tap tap tap. Then finally he turned around and barked, “What?” I said meekly, “I’m a big fan,” handed him a harmonica, and just slinked away. I still don’t know if he knew who I was.
Another one is Jack Nicholson. There was a Bulls connection there too, because I became friends with Dennis Rodman. One time Dennis was sitting at a table after a game with Jack, and I just couldn’t bring myself to join them. I sat somewhere else, and instead, my road manager, Dave Precheur, went up to him and said, “I just wanted to say hello” and Jack responded, “Well, hello.” And I don’t even have that. That’s my Jack Nicholson story—talking about how Jack Nicholson said two words to my friend because I was too chicken-shit to approach him myself.
A better Michael Jordan interaction came when I was a fan in the crowd at the United Center in Chicago. It was game six of the 1997 finals against the Utah Jazz. The Bulls were down in the fourth quarter, and it looked like they might lose. Jordan walked onto the court after a timeout, and I sort of fearfully cheered and lifted my beer. Then he looked at me and gave me this wink, like, “We got this.” It was a priceless moment that any fan could have.
The Bulls really blew me away, especially during the second three-peat era. Michael Jordan had gotten me into basketball. It was like watching Babe Ruth play baseball—you didn’t have to be a baseball fan; you’d just get it. Jordan had some moves like that fadeaway, where it was almost like slow motion, the whole place slowed down, and even the other team said, “Wow.” I was hooked immediately.
I began buying box seats and going to games whenever I could. My accountant couldn’t understand why I’d want to buy a gun or a cool sword, but Bulls tickets made sense to him, even though it was about a thousand bucks a throw. Dennis Rodman eventually invited me to sit in his box, which made it a lot cheaper.
Then I started hanging out with him. There was always a late-night party, especially with Dennis and the team winning a lot. There were a lot of celebrations. I wouldn’t hang out with Jordan, but I’d see Steve Kerr, Scottie Pippin, and, eventually, Phil Jackson toward the end, but he was not a big hanger-outer.
I can remember one of the first times when we went looking for Dennis, he was at some place called the Crobar in Chicago. I walked in with Bobby, and the first thing we saw was a man dancing naked in a cage. It turned out that Dennis and the Bulls were hanging out around the corner, but Bobby and I saw the naked cage dancer, looked at each other, and started to leave when this hot blond girl said, “Hey, you’re that guy from Blues Traveler. Come dance.” And we started making out while we were dancing to electronica music. I remember thinking it would be cool if I made out with her for the entire length of the song, but I didn’t realize this was a techno tune, so it really lasted a good long while. Bobby was blown away because he was the guy who was used to taking over the room. Some days I do have my moments.
I never assume that anybody knows who I am. Whenever I think everybody knows me, that’s when nobody does. And whenever I think they aren’t paying attention to what I’m doing, that’s when they know precisely what I do. So I’ve got to be ready for both.
I can never tell which way it’s going to be. As soon as I try to get out of a ticket, I get a ticket hard, and as soon as an older cop who does not look like my demographic pulls me over, he’s like, “Hey, I saw you on VH1” and he lets me speed. It’s nothing I can ever count on.
When I meet someone I’ll usually say. “Hi, I’m John.” And if they say, “Of course, I know who you are,” I’ll respond, “Well, I still reserve the right to introduce myself.”
And if there’s one lesson in the racket of being famous or being pseudo-famous, it’s this: never ask the question, “Do you know who I am?” Because if you have to ask, the odds are they don’t.
Sometimes the whole thing gets kind of murky when someone maybe, sort of, kinda recognizes me.
I remember we did a NORML benefit at the Playboy Mansion. Bill Maher was there hosting. I think I’ve been there three times, and every time I get into that grotto, the same experience happens: there are no women in there and a bunch of dudes are asking, “Are they any women in here?” It’s like Christmas when you walk in, and then your heart sinks when you see a bunch of dudes who look just like you: schlubby, horny, and overeager. And then right behind you comes another guy who looks like a kid on Christmas morning until he gets the same look on his face when he sees you, and that makes you realize, “Wow, I’m a pervy slob too.” Then he feels like a pervy slob when the next guy comes in behind him. It’s like this endless machinery of agony.
Then I walked into one of the little houses. It had a pool table, and I was pretty sure Thora Birch was playing pool. I thought she recognized me, but we both weren’t sure. I was like, “I think that’s Thora Birch,” and she was like, “I think that’s that Blues Traveler dude,” which is what most people call me. But we were both too nervous to talk to each other. I love awkward moments like that.
My favorite one is when Lukas Haas came to say hi to me and I got it into my head that he was Henry Thomas. I was like, “No way, man! I loved you in ET! My friend was obsessed with that movie when it came out. We hid in the bathroom and saw it like fifteen times.” And he was so sweet about it (but crushed too) that he pretended to be Henry Thomas the entire night. H
e wrote me a note later explaining, “My name is Lukas Haas. I was in the movie Witness, among other things.” Of course, I loved Witness too, and I loved Lukas Haas in it (and when I read that I recognized him in retrospect instantly). He just didn’t want to let me down, so he pretended to be Henry Thomas for me. And I asked him questions about working with Spielberg and what Drew Barrymore was like, and he would give me polite, positive answers. But the sweet little note he wrote me was just awesome. I got to see him later and make it up to him. It was one of the nicest things anyone’s ever done for me.
The question, of course, is would Henry Thomas pretend to be Lukas Haas for me?
Hollywood is strange. I’m glad I don’t live there because I would be such a whore about it, like, “Oh my god, Christopher Walken said ‘Hi’ to me again!”
I met Christopher Walken after Alicia Silverstone invited me to her Excess Baggage premiere. I was newly famous and didn’t quite understand how that worked, so I figured I’d just try it out. I’d read some article that said Alicia Silverstone was starting her own production company and thought that was cool, considering how young she was, so I wrote her a fan letter and she invited me to the premiere.
I was smitten with her, but she had a boyfriend—now her husband, Chris. She called me Johnny and I loved it. When Chris called me Johnny, I loved it considerably less. She’d always try to go motherly on me and feed me vegan food options—which were pretty good—and then she’d show me movies of animals being slaughtered and I’d say, “Yes, but they’re delicious.” Even so, she ended up being a really cool friend.
But at her premiere I met Christopher Walken and went up to him and said, “I’m your biggest fan.” He said, “Of course you are.”
Ken Ober, who was a friend and appeared in our best-known videos, was once doing something for the LA Lakers and walked by Magic Johnson’s locker. He saw Magic Johnson’s Mennen Speed Stick and stole it. I asked him why he did it, and he showed me that there was a single armpit hair on the Mennen Speed Stick. He built a little shrine around it.
Ken was a good guy, one of the sweetest people. He was exactly like me because even though he got into this line of work, he still cared about things much as fans do. We’re all fans at some point, and he proved it by building a shrine to Magic Johnson’s armpit hair. It was the high point of his apartment, and I kind of loved that about him.
But what I still need to come to grips with is that the people I see on TV or the movies are people who are weird, just like me, and sometimes they get to do special things just like me.
Bill Murray wants to be funny; it’s what he does. It’s not all he does—he’s not the Terminator—he just has the instinct to be that guy I look up to. And there’s an instinct in me that has no social acknowledgment, where I could put my hand in Bill Murray’s food and yell, “I touched Bill Murray’s food!” (No, Bill, I haven’t ever touched your food.)
Whenever I meet famous people, I tend to become this bumbling fan. I treat them the way Chris Farley did in that Saturday Night Live skit in which he hosted the “Chris Farley Show” and mostly just said to his guests stuff like, “Remember when you were in Ghostbusters and you said, ‘Let’s show this prehistoric bitch how we do things downtown . . .”
I think it really helps when people come up to me and treat me the way I fear I treat Bill Murray. People come up to me, and I can’t tell a joke without them going way too nuts over it or they won’t let me tell a joke because everything I’m saying is super-profound. I run into people like that, and it really kind of helps because what I realize is that whenever you’re doing something that’s seen by a lot of people, it takes on an impact, especially if they saw me when they were young. That’s what I’m running into now, and that’s something Bill goes through on a much larger scale.
Michael J. Fox was hosting this benefit a couple of years ago, and he had me attend to be part of the band. Elvis Costello was there, for God sakes, and I could barely talk to him, but I held my own, I think. But it was still that kind of thing in which I went home and giggled to myself that I was normal around Elvis Costello—so you can’t quite count that as normal. I was close but I wasn’t quite there.
Roger Daltrey came all the way from England to this benefit, and Michael J. Fox forgot to call him up on stage. I was talking to Roger, and he suddenly said, “Wait, that’s the song I’m on.” So Roger Daltrey showed up to get blown off by Michael J. Fox.
Michael J. Fox had all these musicians around him because he likes to play his guitar, and as the first song was being counted off, right there in the first note he cried out, “Wait! I’m not plugged in!” And then the song started.
Those two moments made it really awesome because I was watching someone I’d seen on television since I was teenager, and television is super-important to me. It’s the parent that never has a job. Yet here he was, so intimidated by the musicians around him, myself included, that the guy I’m intimidated by was not even plugged in.
The older I get, the more I’ve gotten used to people putting me in that position where I can be Fonzie for a second and hit the jukebox and make it go on. That’s a fun opportunity, and I don’t want to waste that. It also helps me see the position that someone like Bill Murray is in.
Ultimately it’s about empathy, and that goes two ways. There’s empathy for someone who looks up to you for stuff that isn’t quite true, and there’s empathy for someone you’re looking up to that isn’t quite true, and everyone wants to come through for whomever’s looking up to them. But they also want a chance to interact as a normal human, so there’s a schism of your empathy. There’s an empathic schism, and it’s weird and takes time getting used to.
One of my favorite comedians is Larry Miller, and in getting to do Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, one of the fun things was that I got to be on with Larry Miller. I couldn’t stop freaking out about Larry Miller; it was almost unnatural. Why is this rock-and-roll-band guy freaking out about this balding comedian? He’s wasn’t cool or trendy, but when you get into stuff, you care about people who are good at it. I always wanted to be a comedian, and he’s just funny.
Adam Carolla is a really cool guy, and the great thing about him is that he makes you feel normal. He remembers very well that he’s a carpenter. He feels like a carpenter, and the fact that he’s famous is very weird to him. He’s one of the few people I can really identify with in that way because he can express it. I think everybody’s who’s famous feels weird that they’re famous, but you get used to it because it’s what you’ve got to do; you learn how to handle it. But I think Adam feels first and foremost like a carpenter—and he loves cars, so maybe he feels like a gearhead too.
Me, I’m a musician. And in the discipline I come from, musicians aren’t necessarily known. They do the backup stuff; they’re the backup band. That’s the musician I prepared myself to be when I was growing up. I was trying to be famous, don’t me wrong, and to the extent that I’ve succeeded, I’m happy with it. But the discipline I came from requires that you’re there first and foremost to play music.
That’s why things sometimes get weird when people want to debate me about whether I’m me or not.
I was once getting my driver’s license, and there was this girl with her mom. She whispered in her mom’s ear, and I could tell what was going on. The mother said, “I’m sorry you just look so much like him.” I responded, “No, I am him.” But they didn’t believe me, so then I wanted to prove I am who I said I am. Except I was in line at the registry of motor vehicles and had just turned in my license, so this was the one place I had no ID. Finally I got my license and held it up: “See! I am me!” And the mother said, “Oh I don’t care.” That was quite a zigzag of my ego.
Something I noticed after I moved to Quakertown, Pennsylvania, in 1996 was that people would ask, “Why would he live here?” speaking in the third person about me. And I wanted to answer, Why? Was there a chemical spill?
There also were people who would demand
proof: “No, you’re not John Popper. Prove you are.” That took me a while to work out in my head. You want to show them a license, but then you realize they’re making you do stuff. So where I came down was, “No, I don’t need to prove to you that I’m me.” I agree with the mom—I really don’t care either.
I like working the job and saying, “Look at me! Look at me!” But I also don’t want to get upset to the point where I’m obnoxious.
A few years ago a girl was convinced I was in Sister Hazel, and there was no talking her out of it. I actually got my Wiki page out on my phone with a picture of me to show her, and she said, “No, it’s okay. I just like your band.” And I said, “I know, but I’m in another band.”
I’ll admit, though, in a moment of weakness I was trying to impress a girl I was with.
Originally I had said, “Thanks,” but the girl I was with asked me, “Why don’t you tell her who you are?” I said, “Because it doesn’t matter. Why don’t I be in Sister Hazel for her?” When in doubt, be Hootie. I’ve been called Hootie plenty of times. Let them call you Hootie. If it makes them happy that you’re Hootie, just be Hootie.
Then this other girl started to feel slightly annoyed that I wouldn’t admit I was in Sister Hazel. So I said to the girl I was with, “See, this is why I don’t do this.” And then I said to the first girl, “I am in Sister Hazel. I’m sorry—it’s just this girl I’m with thinks I’m in Blues Traveler.”
That’s something Lukas Haas taught me. If it’s really important to you that I’m Hootie or that I’m in Sister Hazel, then I am. I’m in Marcy Playground too. As long as you’re happy about it.
20
JOHNNY APPLEHARP
My fate is to walk the Earth, distributing harmonicas.
They call me Johnny Appleharp.
During the band’s first trip to Europe in 1991 I was hell-bent on placing one at the place where Attila the Hun was toppled at the Battle of Chalons in France. I’m a big history buff, and I was reaching back through history to kiss Attila the Hun’s ass. So I had to go to a museum to try to locate it. I was trying to speak French, and it was a spinach field and our van got stuck in the mud.
