As an audiophile-turned-journalist, I have my share of stories from the musical trenches. I love to tell them and my friends are so nice to oblige me by listening. There are funny moments backstage, bewildering memories singing with an artist in the studio or even hosting a birthday part in a hotel room. But thankfully Chynna Phillips provided me with the story to beat all others.
When I was a teenager watching Wilson Phillips parade around on that beach in that “Hold On” music video, I would never have guessed that one day I’d be telling you this—Chynna Phillips grabbed my earlobes and would not let go.
You know Chynna from the pop group and more recently, Dancing with the Stars. She’s an accomplished singer and actress, married to William (“Billy”) Baldwin of the famous brothers, daughter to John and Michelle (of the Mamas and the Papas) and sister to actresses MacKenzie, Bijou and Busy Phillips.
With such a musical pedigree and prominence, I was quite excited to have lunch with her when she visited my work office a few years ago. She and a singing partner brought lunch in for some of our editorial team so they could tell us about a new CD they’d been working on. When Chynna arrived and sat beside me, I was thrilled. But I would never expected the following turn of events.
As we were introducing ourselves, she looked over my shoulder. I thought, I’m boring her – she’s not interested. Undeterred, I kept talking (I’m quite good at that). She interrupted me: “Your earlobes are amazing!”
Come again? Did you say something about my ears? “I love your earlobes,” she continued. I think I said something to the effect of “Really?” I can’t quite remember, because when an 80s music icon starts talking about your ears, you kind of get frozen in time. Finally, she said, “I hope you know I’m going to touch them before this is over.”
I know my face had to be all shades of red when she reached up to grab my earlobe and rubbed it. “Oh, it’s also kinda fuzzy, like my grandma’s!,” she said. I looked around the conference room and people were fixated and confused, including my boss. Still flustered, I managed to respond, “Well this is pretty surreal.” She threw her head back laughing and the ear massaging was over.
We continued with lunch, but little did I know there was tweeting going on and a friend sent out the message, “Who knew Chynna Phillips had a thing for earlobes? She currently has DeWayne Hamby’s in her hands.” My lovely wife LeAnn was also working at the same company, one floor down, when that tweet popped up on her screen. She and her coworkers were, I’m sure, perplexed, even to the point of considering sending her upstairs to see what in the world was going on.
For the rest of the lunch and for portions of the afternoon, it was question-and-answer, talking about the new CD and some memories of the days of pop music stardom (the audio interview I conducted can be found here—she tells an interesting story of being saved from drowning by Robert Plant). An hour or two after our lunch, my interview was over and I was walking out of a long room. I waved to say goodbye to our guest on the other side. Chynna spoke out, “DeWayne! Hold on!”
I stopped for a moment while she trotted quickly to me, saying “You know what I want!” In a final moment, she grabbed both earlobes with both hands and rubbed one final time. I laughed. I walked down the hallway, stopped to check the mail and then saw her once again on the far end of another hallway waiting for the elevator. She turned to wave.
“Bye, Lobie!”
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