Fanatics and Fans
Even when China was a child, I didn't have bodyguards. What for? On tour, I was always surrounded by men, and when I was home, the people in San Francisco were friendly, but not invasive. The exceptions to the rule were strange indeed.
We were annoyed when a radio DJ who'd lost all sense of proportion jumped Paul's and my fence in Bolinas on a semiregular basis. Sometimes we'd find him standing in the backyard; sometimes he'd be in the house. Eventually, Paul got tired of it. On “DJ's” final visit, Paul asked him to leave by pointing a gun at him. Not to be deterred by a lethal weapon, the man just kept walking toward us. When Paul shot about five bullets around him in a circular pattern, his response was, “We must have a misunderstanding.”
Uh huh. Fearless stupidity.
Two other fellows, unknown to each other or anyone else for that matter, decided (independently) they were China's father. The first climbed up the outside of a New York hotel to the nineteenth floor, crawled in the window, then turned on the tube and spread himself out on my bed, waiting for me to return from a concert. Airplane had booked the whole floor for that particular date, but the hotel guard who was stationed near the entrance hadn't seen anyone. When Paul and Bill Laudner walked me to my room that night (I still maintained my own room), there was this guy just lying there.
“Hi, Grace, I want to see my daughter,” he said, right in front of Paul. The guys were amused; it was so goofy, nobody was taking him seriously—except me. I wanted him the hell out of my room. He was “escorted” out of the building and spent an evening hanging out with NYPD Blue.
The second stalker, who'd maneuvered himself to a dangerous precipice overlooking the bay in San Francisco, also wanted me to admit he was China's father or he'd jump off the cliff next to our house by the Golden Gate Bridge. Some part of me wondered why we didn't just let him jump, but reason took over. We asked the fire department to bring the suicide nets, and it took them quite some time to get hold of the man without triggering a dive.
Rather than committed lifetime stalkers, these two were more into one-night stands. Lucky for me. Maybe I should have been nervous about that kind of insanity, but with so many people around at all times, I tended to find it entertaining—pathetically entertaining.
Of course, it did occur to me that perhaps I should be offended. Most celebrities have stalkers who're more interested in them than in their immediate family members. Did the obsession with China imply that I wasn't interesting enough on my own to stalk? Or might these guys have created the “father-of-China” thing as some kind of proof they'd boinked a rock star? I used to get lots of fan mail from prisoners and people in nuthouses. It was a bit easier to understand someone wanting to correspond with a person who seemed to have a larger area of freedom and mobility, than to make sense of guys who were willing to kill themselves over an impossible (they apparently weren't afraid of DNA testing) claim.
On the other end of my fanatical-fan spectrum were two benevolent fans who were almost twins but who had no knowledge of each other's existence. The first, Vincent Marchilello, gave me a reproduction antique doll during one of his visits backstage—with the result that I developed an interest in dolls that eventually became so extensive, my house looked like a toy store. Vince was a good-looking Italian man who was always polite, and although he was a persistent fan, he never showed any tendencies toward the stalker-type MO.
The second benevolent fan was named Vincent, too—Vincent Marino (or Vinnie, as I liked to call him). He was also sweet, good-looking, generous (he sent me every panda article, picture, magazine, and trinket available to Western man), Italian, and East Coast, and eventually he became one of my best friends.
The moral of the story: Some fans are frightening, some are family.
Back at the beginning of “Now I'm famous” in the sixties, I'd never heard of stalkers or tabloid journalism. If the lowbrow newspapers or gossip columns focused on anybody in particular, it was probably people in the movie business who were trying to maintain a certain amount of decorum. Rock-and-roll musicians could have cared less if they were caught with their pants down, so to speak—so we were less interesting to the press. But now it's a different story entirely. Constant invasion of privacy is driving people nuts, not only entertainers but notable people from all walks of life. I think paparazzi should have to get a signed release for any picture they take.
I understand about First Amendment rights, but the First Amendment was written by people who never had a clue that cameras, if used improperly, could cripple freedom. The new photo machinery and zoom lenses that are available to any goofball make it harder and harder to endorse limitless freedom of expression. From the somewhat harmless “organized” chaos I saw in the sixties and seventies, to the nineties death of Princess Diana, the stalking and rummaging around in people's garbage for cheesy information has escalated to insane proportions.
Supply and demand? That's a big part of it. As long as we read the rags, they'll continue to flourish.
My personal reaction to one of those in-your-face photographers was to be more disgusting than he was. At a concert back in the sixties, I was in a coed bathroom taking a pee, when I heard a guy ask, “Can I take some pictures out in the hall when you're through in there?” I was through, so I opened the stall door and pulled up my shirt, exposing one of my boobs, and said, “Here you go. The left one's a better shape than the right one, so take the shot now!” He did, and it appeared in the rock magazine Creem.
Sure, being famous can be fun, but when you have to resort to bodyguards, killer dogs, armored cars, and Fort Knox security systems, it makes you wonder. Today, my own home is situated so that there's no way to get to it except through an electric gate that closes behind anyone who enters. And if they look scary, I press a button and the gate becomes electrified, meaning that if you touch it, you're toast. Nice and friendly, but I was robbed three times in my relatively well protected Mill Valley house. This time around, I've made a vow: no robbers, intruders, paparazzi, or nuts (except me) get in or out without searing results.
Welcome to the modern world.