TYCOONS trying to impress will pay millions for a Picasso or Pollock, so why not splurge on a living, breathing Jagger? Or hire rapper 50 Cent to drop by the mansion and perform "Get Rich or Die Tryin' "? Now \o7that \f7will get them talking down at the country club.
That's the loud and lavish sensibility behind the hottest party accessory around -- the rentable rock star.
Grammy-winning superstars of every stripe are available these days for holiday parties, weddings or bar mitzvahs, whatever, just as long as there's a boatload of money waiting for them. Actually, make that a yacht-load of money.
On New Year's Eve, for instance, British pop star George Michael was in Russia making about $3 million an hour singing for a few hundred guests of Vladimir Potanin, a mining and lumber magnate. The gig was 75 minutes, and he was home in London by lunchtime.
Last weekend, pop diva Christina Aguilera and Oscar winner Robin Williams were in Pittsburgh as the hired entertainment at the birthday party of Joe Hardy, founder of 84 Lumber. Both stars are veterans of the lucrative circuit. Aguilera took a reported $1.5 million to serenade another Russian businessman, Andrei Melnichenko, at his September 2005 wedding. Williams, who reportedly fetches a cool $1 million for a night's work, joined the Rolling Stones and John Mellencamp in Las Vegas in 2002 at the birthday soiree for David Bonderman, co-founder of Texas Pacific Group, a private equity investment firm. The reported price of the affair: $10 million.
And check out the lineup of stars that David H. Brooks, a defense contractor in Long Island, N.Y., hired for his daughter Elizabeth's bat mitzvah at New York's Rainbow Room in 2005: 50 Cent, Aerosmith, Don Henley, Tom Petty, Stevie Nicks and Ciara. And during the pre-show cocktails, Kenny G provided some burnished background music. Again, the bill hit a reported $10 million.
That made Brooks and Bonderman the free-spending leaders of the pack, but don't be surprised if some other billionaire one-ups them in the next few years. Opulent affairs with rock heroes are regular occurrences now during the party seasons, especially in Russia and the Middle East but also in Manhattan and in the Bay Area, where the stock-option windfalls of the dot-com era are still being spent.
