{"id":23669,"date":"2026-09-08T18:04:47","date_gmt":"2026-09-09T02:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/?p=23669"},"modified":"2026-09-08T18:05:03","modified_gmt":"2026-09-09T02:05:03","slug":"peoples-parties","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2026\/09\/08\/peoples-parties\/","title":{"rendered":"People&#8217;s Parties"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe title=\"Spotify Embed: People&amp;apos;s Parties\" style=\"border-radius: 12px\" width=\"100%\" height=\"152\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen allow=\"autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/embed\/track\/5RI0qk5rSvAJwCwxtDSKKM?si=291040f257754348&amp;utm_source=oembed\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0JsVcxopKTE?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s a real story you know.<\/p>\n<p>You think these artists make this stuff up out of thin air, but you&#8217;d be surprised how many songs are inspired by real life. Kinda like &#8220;He blew his mind out in a car\/He hadn&#8217;t noticed that the lights had changed&#8221;&#8230; This was Tara Browne, a Guiness heir. I didn&#8217;t know this until Bob Cavallo told me Browne&#8217;s favorite act was the Lovin&#8217; Spoonful and they were hired to play Browne&#8217;s twenty first birthday, during which he was given a Lotus Elan as a present. Paul McCartney was there, Mick Jagger too, although they didn&#8217;t perform. And then Tara Browne lost his life in a car wreck&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>And it turns out &#8220;People&#8217;s Parties&#8221; was about a very specific party, held by hairdresser Ara Gallant at his New York apartment. Appollonia van Ravenstein, a Dutch model, was the woman who put a lamp shade over her head as she cried&#8230; It all had to do with Jack Nicholson and sex, but Jack was not at Saturday night&#8217;s party&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>This person celebrates her birthday with a party every year at this time, always in a different location. This time high in the hills above Los Angeles, so high that there was limited parking and you had to give your car to a valet halfway up the hill and take a van up to&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The kind of house that you see in movies, the kind you don&#8217;t think anybody really owns, certainly not anybody you know, but she did&#8230;it was an investment property.<\/p>\n<p>Now when you&#8217;re in your twenties and thirties you live to go to parties. That&#8217;s where the action is. Back in my day the alternative was staying home and looking at the four walls. You had to go out to meet people, make connections, get ahead.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s what everybody is trying to do in L.A., get ahead. It can be tiresome. But one thing about being my age&#8230;you&#8217;re over the hump, you certainly wouldn&#8217;t turn down an interaction that would pay dividends, but you&#8217;re no longer on the hunt. You&#8217;re hanging out, observing.<\/p>\n<p>And there&#8217;s a view from downtown to the beach. The only person I know who had a view this good was Q, but his house was in Bel-Air, and he&#8217;s no longer here.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All the people at this party, they&#8217;ve got a lot of style&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>You have to put on your look. Which is never elegant in L.A., it&#8217;s hip.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve got stamps of many countries, they&#8217;ve got passport smiles&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Most people there probably had a passport, they&#8217;d been places, done things, but the guest list was not that exclusive. Assuming you knew this person. But how many people outside L.A. know this person?<\/p>\n<p>Not that there are not mass parties elsewhere in the country, but the clientele is different.<\/p>\n<p>No one is old, even if their age is. Everybody&#8217;s got a young and hip attitude. And having gotten inside the velvet rope, no one has airs, no one is acting superior, then again, how many of these people do you actually know?<\/p>\n<p>So, we went upstairs where the food was. And I saw Paul and Jerry over my shoulder, a very friendly couple I hadn&#8217;t seen since the beginning of summer. And I&#8217;m loading up my plate with fare and I&#8217;m walking out by the pool to talk to them and a woman comes rushing by and knocks over my plate. Why she was in such a hurry, I do not know. But she did stop and apologize, and stunningly my clothing escaped unscathed. But after assessing the mess Paul and Jerry were nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n<p>Nor was Felice.<\/p>\n<p>Now if a party is small enough and you lose your partner, your bearings, you feel out of place, like people are focusing on you, judging you. It wasn&#8217;t that bad, but I was feeling unmoored, and then upon reconnecting with Felice she proposed we sit down, which we did, at this tall table with high chairs.<\/p>\n<p>And then people came to us.<\/p>\n<p>At the beginning of a party you&#8217;ll talk to anybody you know. Just to feel like you deserve to be there. And the funny thing is a lot of these people you only see out, you don&#8217;t connect with them at home, may rarely hear from them in e-mail, but when you run into them it&#8217;s like old home week, and they update you on what they&#8217;ve been up to, both personally and professionally.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some are friendly, some are cutting, some are watching it from the wings&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The people watching was fantastic. Who exactly were these people and why were they there? Felice couldn&#8217;t get over the four fiftysomething women sitting on a bench at the top of the stairs staring straight forward, not speaking and not moving. What was their story? We postulated.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Some are standing in the center, giving to get something&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Everybody&#8217;s selling. Hyping you on their new project. Introducing you to people, some you&#8217;ve heard of, some you haven&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>And then Jeff Ross shows up. At the end of our podcast he insisted we were now friends.<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s like old home week. And then the birthday girl comes along and says Jeff roasted her and I&#8217;m talking to Jeff&#8217;s friend, who tells me about designing the logo for Woodstock &#8217;94 and writing a new song with Paul Williams and when we&#8217;re done I do a little business, I tell him I&#8217;d like to do a podcast with Paul Williams.<\/p>\n<p>And then Jeff and he disappear.<\/p>\n<p>And I breathe a sigh of relief. These people I share intimate moments with, how do I continue when I see them? Especially women.<\/p>\n<p>Like I was at Harold&#8217;s house years back and I got into this long conversation with Fawn Hall. We seemed to be connecting, I mean conversation with me is never light, I get right down to the real nitty-gritty, but what does Fawn Hall want to do with me?<\/p>\n<p>So years later, more than five, we&#8217;re playing rock trivia at Branca&#8217;s house up in Beverly Park and Ms. Hall is there. I avoid her. What, I&#8217;m going to go up to her six or seven years later and say REMEMBER ME?<\/p>\n<p>But we had shared that moment. And when the game is over, when we&#8217;re noshing on food, Fawn comes up to me and says&#8230;AREN&#8217;T YOU GOING TO SAY HELLO TO ME?<\/p>\n<p>I was positively floored. Oh, she remembered.<\/p>\n<p>I guess in a world where everybody professes to be a winner, I don&#8217;t feel like one. What&#8217;s so special about me, I&#8217;m certainly not an Adonis, I&#8217;m not rich, I am interested in your story, I do give good conversation, and only at this late date have I realized that makes me special, because everybody else is so narcissistic, selling, and no one wants to reveal their warts, their inadequacies.<\/p>\n<p>So Jeff and I are buddies. But are we really? We didn&#8217;t go to summer camp together. What exactly are we going to talk about? It&#8217;s good he&#8217;s moved on, because I&#8217;m flummoxed, I don&#8217;t know what to say next to continue the conversation.<\/p>\n<p>And at some point I have to find a bathroom. Now this is a big house, and the facilities are not obvious, and it seems that whenever I do find a WC there&#8217;s a queue.<\/p>\n<p>So I end up downstairs in the theatre, whereupon I run into Howard Paar, who I haven&#8217;t seen in ages. He ran the O.N. Klub&#8230;where you danced to turn of the decade ska (from the seventies to the eighties), and he&#8217;s there with this woman who used to work at Epic and the last time I saw her was at this same yearly party, prior to lockdown, she was recovering from a divorce. She seemed to have crawled from the wreckage into a brand new car.<\/p>\n<p>And we&#8217;re talking about whether we go out or not. She does, Howard doesn&#8217;t. Used to be you went out and saw bands.<\/p>\n<p>And we&#8217;re philosophizing about the modern music business and then the bathroom is open and we call it a day and when I finally wend my way back upstairs Felice asks where I&#8217;ve been, that there&#8217;s got to be a story.<\/p>\n<p>And then Jeff reappears. Asks me if I had a good summer. Says he officiated at his nephew&#8217;s wedding back east. And tells me he&#8217;s going out on the balcony for a smoke and to come with, he&#8217;s got a story to tell me.<\/p>\n<p>And as he&#8217;s puffing away, he tells me he was at this John Mayer show in the Hamptons and he shared a joint with Paul McCartney. They were sitting right next to each other. He didn&#8217;t think Paul knew his name, but Paul had gone on record that the bald guy who insulted people was his favorite comedian.<\/p>\n<p>And they got busted by the usher and Paul mentioned Tokyo and then I told a couple of my own Paul McCartney stories and then a guy came up and&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the thing about being famous. People want to come up and talk to you. And Jeff was being nice, but now we were bonding, truly connecting, who was this interloper?<\/p>\n<p>And these fans always want to impress you, right up front, to earn their connection. And this guy is going on and on and I&#8217;m standing there thinking that prior to decades of psychotherapy I would have told him to get lost, but in this case I didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>And then another guy came up. Acted like he had portfolio, but after demanding our attention and taking our time it turned out he did not.<\/p>\n<p>So finally I can go one on one with Jeff again, and we&#8217;re talking about the Beatles and Wings and we move on to his career and I find I&#8217;m giving him advice. And I start to wonder, does this have to do with my anxiety? Fearful of quietude, do I always make it about the other person, afraid of empty space?<\/p>\n<p>But my advice is all positive. How the roast thing is great, but the Netflix special was transcendent.<\/p>\n<p>And then Jeff&#8217;s looking over my shoulder&#8230;oh, I&#8217;ve bored him. But no, they&#8217;ve gathered to sing Happy Birthday.<\/p>\n<p>And when they&#8217;re done, what do I do, continue to talk or move on?<\/p>\n<p>But Jeff hands his phone to someone in the vicinity and tells them to take a picture of us.<\/p>\n<p>So I guess he does enjoy my company.<\/p>\n<p>And then I tell him to be unafraid of judgment. That when he reveals his true self, then we can connect, and that&#8217;s what it&#8217;s all about, what we&#8217;re all looking for, even Fawn Hall.<\/p>\n<p>And Jeff looks me in the eye and says &#8220;You get it.,&#8221; and on that note I tell him I don&#8217;t want to take up any more of his time, and it was great seeing him&#8230; You don&#8217;t want to glom on to celebrities, you don&#8217;t want to be a hanger-on.<\/p>\n<p>So I mosey on back to our tiny table and Herbie Hancock is standing next to Felice.<\/p>\n<p>Now the funny thing is I&#8217;ve sat next to Herbie Hancock before, at a Jacob Collier show at the Fonda. He didn&#8217;t seem interested in talking to me and I wasn&#8217;t going to talk to him, figuring he had no idea who I was.<\/p>\n<p>But now it was a convivial atmosphere&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Nah&#8230; I don&#8217;t need to know any more celebrities. I&#8217;d like to do a podcast with him too, but I don&#8217;t want to sell myself, convince him.<\/p>\n<p>So he&#8217;s famous, never mind talented, but it&#8217;s not uncommon to be up close and personal with household names in Hollywood, actually, it&#8217;s nearly de rigueur.<\/p>\n<p>But not if you live in the suburbs. Not if you live anywhere else in America other than New York.<\/p>\n<p>But New York is different. The society there is much less fluid. And who your parents are and where you went to school count, whereas none of that matters in L.A., here you make it up as you go along, try to create something out of nothing, that&#8217;s what everybody there was doing. All independent contractors as far as I could tell. They were hustlers, going from project to project, doing their best to keep the balls in the air. The key is to sustain, and stay in the game, but that&#8217;s easier said then done.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s when Felice looked me in the eye and said, &#8220;Are we done?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And we went downstairs, exited the front door, took an E-ticket van ride back to the valet parking stand, waited for our car and when we got home&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People&#8217;s Parties&#8221; was playing in my head. It had been so much fun going out. That&#8217;s the thing, you walk out your front door and you have no idea what will happen.<\/p>\n<p>Like Saturday night.<\/p>\n<p><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That&#8217;s a real story you know. You think these artists make this stuff up out of thin air, but you&#8217;d be surprised how many songs are inspired by real life. Kinda like &#8220;He blew his mind out in a car\/He hadn&#8217;t noticed that the lights had changed&#8221;&#8230; This was Tara Browne, a Guiness heir. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-69L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23669"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23671,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23669\/revisions\/23671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}