The Unguarded Tour: Opening For Amy Grant (Fall 1985)

 Approximately 35 cities in about 2 1/2 months. For years, I had been joking about never having met Amy Grant. I even made a promotional video for the WORD sales team (which I still have). Among some straight bits that I did for the then-pending release of NON-FICTION, I ended the tape with a mock “Help Bob Meet Amy Grant Contest”. At the time, I explained “everyone else seems to know Amy. They casually drop her name in conversation ... I did lunch with Amy Grant, I played tennis with Amy Grant, I lubed a car with Amy Grant ... everyone knows her but me, but that’s where ­you come in ...”

During the Summer of 1985, Amy went on tour in support of her hugely popular Unguarded album. On this first leg of the tour, Philip Bailey was opening. This was hot on the heels of his hit single “Easy Lover” with Phil Collins. When Amy and company pulled into Denver a day early to play Red Rocks, someone invited her to come to a little concert I was doing at Bear Creek Presbyterian Church. I didn’t know she was in the audience, but I met her afterwards and she was very kind and encouraging. 

Soon I got a phone call from my record company telling me “Amy Grant wants you to open for her on the next leg of the tour”! This was totally Amy’s idea. In fact, I later heard that one of her William Morris booking agents reacted with a “Who the hell is Bob Bennett?” In the big-time music business, this was an absolutely fair question. So I started out on tour. Remember that this was the mid-1980’s, Unguarded was a pretty pop, techno type of record (and the tour reflected that). I was scheduled to play a solo acoustic set of 20-30 minutes (depending on the night, venue, etc.) before a brief break that led to Amy’s headlining set. To make a long and painful story short, her audiences generally hated me! They were there to see their Amy and only one thing was standing in the way ... this bearded, rotund, acoustic folk-singing guy. I got heckled pretty routinely. To put this in perspective, there was absolutely no discernable drop in audience noise level between the times before the lights went down (when people were talking, yelling and walking to their seats) and during my set. It was pretty jarring. By the fifth or sixth date of the tour, I was practically in tears after every set. (Yes, I know I’m a big crybaby, but I’m an honest crybaby!) I even spoke to her managers and offered to just have them take me off the bill and I would just return home. They encouraged me to stay anyway.

Here’s why I’m glad they did. First off, I needed to have my butt kicked. Why? Because I thought my ship had come in. I thought I had touched the hem of the leopard-skinned coat and that career virtue would flow out from Amy toward me. I would graduate to the big-time that I so richly deserved. Nope. Not so fast, big guy! I found out later on that my opening for Amy and doing the big-time tour thing in arenas was not my place ... not my situation. Something that, as obvious as it might have been to virtually everyone else, I could not see or understand until I got a taste of it. You know the old axiom: Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.

Although I had hoped this would also mean I’d get to be buddies with Amy, that didn’t quite work out either. Not her fault, just unrealistic expectations on my part. But I will say this ... she was always unfailingly kind and supportive of me. And, back when Trivial Pursuit was a brand new game, we played it all the time on the tour. And the couple of times that Amy and I partnered against other tour personnel, we wiped the floor! We were awesome. Her Dad is a doctor and she was strong in the Science & Nature department. And I had Entertainment down cold.

I will always be grateful because she wanted to put me in front of her even-then large audience. Of course it was a goofy pairing and it made no sense. But it seemed from the heart, based on the music. And all these years later, that still feels pretty good. So for me it was the “Amy Grant: Get Off The Stage Tour” but it was also the “Bob Bennett Gets A Somewhat Painful But Thorough Education Tour”! And learning valuable lessons can never be bad, I suppose.