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TO PROTECT AND SERVE (AND ACCESSORIZE)
BY JOHN MULVEY |
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Bodyguards and the cult of entourage:
why fans want their celebrities behind barricades.
I have never been famous and thus can never really understand the gymnastic negotiations between endurance and delusion, between affection and contempt, that fame necessitates. Nevertheless, like so many of us on the outside, I can’t help but speculate how it must feel to be loved by countless people you will never know—loved so much that adulation becomes a kind of threat. This world of dawn-till-dawn security, of perpetual shadows in your wake, has to sometimes feel paradoxical. How and why are superstars protected from those who love them so much?
Michael Francis acted as a bodyguard for Led Zeppelin, Bon Jovi, Cher, and Kiss before retiring to write his autobiography, Star Man: The Right Hand Man of |
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Rock’n’Roll. “You’ve got to know the person that you’re protecting,” he says pragmatically. “You’ve got to know what they want and what they don’t want.” What they want—the “principals,” as bodyguards call them—is not always as obvious as it seems. Sometimes, the famous require their minders to share the spotlight, to be paraded as a status symbol rather than merging into the background.
Listening to Francis and other professional bodyguards, the disdain for their more ornamental counterparts is clear. Display is not their job. Invisibility empowers them. Francis, at least before he wrote his frank and full-blooded memoir, was a classically discreet bodyguard. Another London-based security man, who—like most of his trade—chooses to remain anonymous, is cut from the same cloth. “The key is to blend into the entourage yet maintain a presence,” he says. “In 12 years, I’ve only been photographed by the |
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NEW YORK CITY, 2003
Singer Beyoncé Knowles at
P.Diddy’s MTV Video Music
Awards after-party. |
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PHOTO BY FERNANDO SALAS |
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press a handful of times.”
“I don’t think you should be seen unless you need to be seen,” says a third bodyguard, “because then you’re infringing on their privacy or their work. You’re getting in the way. You should be gray, until there’s a situation. Then you should be red and everyone should see you…. It’s all about presence: presence within yourself and presence in a situation.”
What, though, are they protecting their celebrities from, exactly? “It is very rare they actually want to do any harm,” says Bodyguard Number Three of the delirious fans that assail his clients. “Some people get near and they don’t even talk, they just look, which is more frightening than if they say hi. They stand there and gawp, mouth open.” He betrays, for a moment, how ridiculous this adulation must seem to those in the orbit of celebrities 24 hours a day. “‘Bring your mouth up, mate. It’s embarrassing, you’re drooling.’” |
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WHAT CELEBRITIES FACE IS A PROFESSIONAL DILEMMA:
A CHOICE BETWEEN EFFECTIVE AND INVISIBLE PROTECTION
OR AN EYECATCHING, ASPIRATIONAL PROP. |
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Bodyguard Number Two talks about the “profiling and assessment of potential stalkers,” about making friends with fans so that they will tell him “if someone is behaving strangely. They want to meet the artist and, if they trust and respect you, they’ll work with you rather than against you.”
Not all famous people want their security to be so invisible, though. When a chart-topping R&B star positioned her improbably proportioned bodyguard in the seat by her side at a recent Milan fashion show, it seemed to be primarily for ostentatious reasons. “If he had to sit next to her,” reckons Michael Francis, “then he hadn’t done his homework on the venue.” In cases like this, the bodyguard is there to be seen—to serve as a solid presence framing a paparazzi shot, unobtrusive enough so as not to obscure celebrity luster, but noticeable enough to accentuate it.
“It’s nothing to do with protection, they’re a
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piece of jewelry,” says Francis. “It’s a complete waste of money. Jon Bon Jovi or Cher would never have walked around with people like that. They didn’t want to be noticed, which is very hard with a 400-pound gorilla next to you.”
“What happens if the principal decides to go running in the morning?” wonders Bodyguard Number Three, pondering the usefulness of such totemic security men, whose dramatic size hardly compensates for their immobility. “What’s the bodyguard do? Wait in the hotel? If he’s six-foot-six and 28 stone, it’s not happening, he’s null and void. There’s no point in paying him.” He tells a good story about a colleague who was off-duty, eating a hamburger for lunch, but who had become connected with his client to the extent that he was instantly recognizable. “He couldn’t get out of McDonald’s because the fans didn’t believe the person he looked after wasn’t there … it was absolute hysteria.” |
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NEW YORK CITY, 2001
Britney Spears goes shopping. |
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PHOTO BY ARNALDO MAGNANI |
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Others play a surprisingly prominent role. In the wake of Britney Spears’s short-lived January wedding, it was the scolding she received from her head of security, Big Mo, that reached the newspapers. (“What you guys did was totally fucking stupidly ridiculously insane,” he reportedly told the couple. “I wanna kill you right now. We’re doing earthquake control because of you.”)
What celebrities face, then, is a professional dilemma, a choice between having effective, invisible protection or an eyecatching, aspirational prop. That decision must depend on what they consider more important at that point in their career: safety and a modicum of privacy, or a way of being identified as precious goods.
Detroit duo the White Stripes spent years cultivating a fuss-free, approachable image in keeping with the fundamentalist tenets of indie rock. Their 2001 album, White Blood Cells, sold steadily and well, but did |
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not make the best-seller charts upon its release. When they toured their fourth album, Elephant, in April 2003, they brought with them a hefty security man known as B.J. Dressed in the same black suit and trilby hat worn by all of the crew, B.J. would lead Meg White onstage to her drum kit. Far from a necessity, this was slightly ironic shorthand to let everyone know that the band had stepped up a level. The White Stripes are more than just another indie rock band, B.J.’s presence suggested—they matter. They have a profile, a mystique, and a widening gap between themselves and their audience.
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