One year ago I was living in Virginia, about an hour from Charlottesville. I often boarded Amtrak there when I traveled north to New York or Connecticut on business. And on more than one occasion I walked through the very intersection where a bunch of people were mowed down on Saturday when a 20-year-old white supremict from Ohio purposely sped his car into a crowd of people who had gathered to protest the presence of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.
My summer has been CONSUMED writing the Tiger Woods biography. But last weekend I took a much-needed break to go see U2’s Joshua Tree tour. It’s strange to write that sentence, given that I went to see the Joshua Tree tour thirty years ago. But U2 is doing a 2017 version of the tour to commemorate the epic record. This post is about looking back and going forward.
This post is about David Crosby’s concert for a friend.
I know a CEO who wears cowboy boots and blue jeans and keeps a folded wad of crisp Ben Franklins in his pants pocket. His name is Glade Knight and he lives on a ranch outside Richmond. Twenty-five years ago he rescued a private girls school that had gone under and turned it into a liberal arts college called Southern Virginia University. I started teaching there 10 years ago. And even though I now reside in Connecticut, I run the university’s Institute for Writing and Mass Media, a non-profit that I founded to help students prepare for careers in media. You can check out what we do in this new video.
This actually happened.
Yesterday I was at a rehearsal with David Crosby in LA. He and his band are getting ready for the tour that starts next week. Partway through the rehearsal, David stepped outside for some air. A blue Corvette pulled up and the window went down. The driver was Paul McCartney.
You know things are out of whack when you bring your work to the bedroom. But my wife has been out of town for the past couple weeks and I’ve got a deadline looming on a big biography. So I’ve been keeping my laptop beside my bed, enabling me to write until I fall asleep, and then resume the moment I wake up.
Jeff Benedict is a best selling author of 14 books and a television and film producer. His latest book — QB: My Life Behind the Spiral (written with Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young) was a New York Times bestseller. He is currently writing the biography of Tiger Woods. He is a producer on the forthcoming motion picture “Little Pink House,” starring Oscar-nominated Catherine Keener with music by David Crosby. To book him for a speech or private event, contact Ellis Trevor at ellis@chartwellspeakers.com
