How Bronson van Wyck Throws One of His Over the Top Parties
In one of the grandest rooms in New York, 550 of the most fabulous people in the world have just finished dinner. The mayor and the police commissioner are there. More Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony winners than you can count, including several people who have won all four.
It was a surprise birthday party for the father of two old friends, and I’d helped them plan it. I’d heard of half the people in the room, I’d worked for half the people in the room, and I wanted to work for the other half.
Dinner was over, and it wouldn’t be long before the guests started to drift away. It was time for the daughter of the guest of honor to take the stage, toast her father, and unveil the surprise headliner. My friend was in position, but I didn’t have the band. Earth, Wind & Fire had arrived, but they were in their dressing room with the door locked. Praying, they said. For the past forty-five minutes.
We had installed a state-of-the-art sound system for their performance— the kind you might see at Madison Square Garden. But it was useless without the band. I wanted to delay the program, but knowing we might lose people, the daughter decided—band or no band—that she had no choice but to begin. I hurried back- stage to try to move heaven . . . and Earth, Wind & Fire.
The daughter started her toast, but the band did not emerge. She stretched her toast out, and then stretched it more, until her younger sister—the only other person in the room privy to what was supposed to happen next—asked me where the band was. I explained the situation. Improvising, she grabbed a glass of champagne and gamely joined her sister on the stage.
The toasts continued, and the band prayed on. Finally, the father, the guest of honor, left his seat and asked me, “What’s going on here? This high praise is very nice, but it’s getting damn embarrassing. What’s happening next?”
“I can’t get the band out of the dressing room,” I whispered, a bead of sweat on my brow. “Well, I’ve got to get up on that stage and save those girls. Figure this situation out,” he hissed. He went up and—at great length, taking his time—began eloquently returning the toast.
It’s funny where your mind goes in the moments right before a car crash. Time slows down and we speed up. I noticed a bartender passing two drinks to a beautiful woman in a white fur stole. A glass of red wine had been spilled at a nearby table, and I wondered if it would ruin the tablecloth. Three guests posed as another took a photo of them with his phone.
On the staff radio, I could hear our stage manager outside the dressing room door, pleading with the band to come out. Above that, I heard the perfect clarity of the guest of honor’s voice as he wrapped up the peroration of his toast. Our vaunted sound system was exceeding my expectations.
My mind snapped back to the situation at hand.
“Do we have audio in the dressing rooms?” I asked. “Absolutely,” replied my sound engineer. “We have monitors and speakers in all of them, so the performers can follow what’s happening on the stage.”
I opened the music library on my phone. I didn’t have to scroll far. Selecting a song, I handed the phone to the engineer. “Patch this into the dressing room. Full volume. The prayer revival’s over. It’s showtime.”
Fifteen seconds later the band poured out of their dressing room and streaked to their places on the stage. My friends’ father’s ex tempore toast concluded to thunderous applause. The curtain dropped as the first bars of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” roared into the room. The party exploded in a delirium of delight as the crowd rushed onto the dance floor.
“How’d you get them out?” the hostess asked me later that night. I handed her my phone: AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” still played on repeat.
Bronson van Wyck's new book, Born to Party, Forced to Work is available now from Phaidon.
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