Some of you know that when I lived in New York City (1978–1985), I worked as a waiter at Tavern on the Green. Back then, the restaurant’s clientele consisted of three groups: New Yorkers (mostly Manhattanites) who came for upper-end entrées like rack of lamb and Dover sole; tourists who came for burgers and BLTs; and celebrities who came to bask in the limelight. In the five years I worked there, I saw hundreds of famous people, from George Steinbrenner to Martina Navratilova. Along the way, I spied certain patterns among them. I served Liza Minelli, then a year later, Joel Grey—both from Cabaret. John Travolta, then Olivia Newton John—Grease. I also saw celebrity couples who would go on to suffer ugly and public separations: Woody Allen and Mia Farrow, Donald and Ivana Trump, just to name a few. However, out of all these celebrity sightings and encounters, three stand out above the rest, and they remain among the strongest memories from my life in the City. Coincidentally, all three are somehow linked to the music industry.

The first occurred soon after I started in 1980. I had applied for a job at Tavern because my running partner’s girlfriend, Sarah Bishop, worked there as a waiter. She put in a word on my behalf, and I interviewed a week later and landed the job. Good thing, too, because living in Manhattan, I could barely keep my head above water, financially speaking. I joined the staff and the money started rolling in. About a month later, word went out that Carly Simon was coming to the restaurant for dinner. That name might not ring a bell now, but back then it sure did (Simon & Schuster heiress, hugely successful pop singer; check out “Anticipation” and “You’re so Vain”). The assistant manager, Tony, always flipped out when celebrities came; he would run around frantically and bark orders at us to get ready. As you can imagine, none of the waiters liked him. When Simon arrived, Tony went crazy, yelling at us to look sharp and triple check everything. As Simon approached the maître d’, Tony ran up to welcome her, officiously. Simon’s reaction: she asked if Sarah Bishop was around. I have never seen a human being more perplexed than Tony at that moment. “Sarah Bishop?” he asked, incredulously. “She’s a waiter.” Simon replied, “I know.” Just then, Sarah ran up and gave Simon a huge hug in front of everyone; it looked like a reunion after a 20-year absence. We were all shocked, but poor Tony looked positively poleaxed. It turns out that Sarah and Carly had grown up spending summers together on Martha’s Vineyard and were best friends. I mention this here because it was my first big celebrity encounter at Tavern, and also because I got to meet and chat with Carly Simon, who was every bit as cool as her public persona suggested. But I also cite it because, as any ex-waiter will tell you, every restaurant has at least one imperious manager who will abuse the staff to no end, making a tough job even tougher. Tony was that guy at Tavern, and 45 years later, I can still see him in his penguin suit, looking like a complete fool in front of the staff. Thank you, Sarah.

The second story occurred three years later when Richard Burton and Elizabth Taylor reunited for a Broadway revival of the play Private Lives. I can understand if you don’t know Carly Simon, but Burton and Taylor were the probably the best-known celebrities on the planet, and when they hosted an opening night black-tie gala at Tavern, every A- lister in the Western Hemisphere was there. So was I, serving Burton’s table, incidentally, and it was all I could do to concentrate with so many luminaries floating around. At one point, I needed more table napkins, so I ran into the Crystal Room (entirely made of glass) and saw a man standing outside one of the entrance doors. On closer inspection, I saw that it was James Taylor, also a hugely successful pop singer (check out “Fire and Rain” and “Sweet Baby James”). I opened the door and said hi. Taylor was wearing jeans and a tee shirt that was made to look like the front of a tuxedo. Clearly, he could see that I was a waiter. He told me that he was a huge fan of Richard Burton, and while he hadn’t been invited, he was hoping to crash the party and meet his idol. It took me a second to wrap my head around his request, but if Taylor idolized Burton, I idolized Taylor. So I said sure, and let him in, receiving an autographed cocktail doily in exchange for looking the other way. Taylor disappeared into the crowd and I never saw him for the rest of the evening. But 42 years later, I am still glad I let him in, even if I did break the house rules. For me, it remains one of those rare moments in life when you’re actually glad you did something wrong.

My third story dates back to December 8, 1980. I was working an evening shift in the Crystal Room, and the restaurant was uncharacteristically slow. At 11:00 p.m. the dining room was practically empty, so the manager said I could go home early. I lived near Columbia University, so I usually walked up Central Park West to 72nd Street, hung a left, then headed over to the uptown IRT subway entrance on Broadway. As I approached 72nd Street, I saw the familiar gothic spires of the Dakota silhouetted against the evening sky. I also saw a huge crowd gathered, illuminated by bright lights. This didn’t surprise me because I frequently ran into films crews around the city, especially in front of landmark buildings like the Dakota. However, the crowd did look unusually large. I walked up to the back of it and asked the guy in front of me what was going on. “Someone just shot John Lennon,” he said. That remark hit me like a lightning bolt; I don’t think I have ever been struck dumb in so public a place. As the crowd swelled and word filtered back that Lennon had been killed, I was consumed by a sorrow I cannot begin to describe. Like millions of people who had grown up in the ’60s and ’70s, I was more than a fan of John Lennon and the Beatles; it was like that band was a part of my DNA. In the days that followed, I participated in many of the public mourning ceremonies, including a gathering in Central Park that lasted more than three days. Of course, life went on, but that event has stayed with me ever since. Many of us have experiences that become defining life moments, events that retain a powerful and lasting effect for decades after they occur. For my grandfather, it was the day the Stock Market crashed in 1929; for my dad, it was the day JFK was assassinated; for me, it was the night John Lennon died.

Of course, living in Manhattan for seven years, I saw celebrities all over the place, including Jackie Onassis at a Broadway show and Lauren Bacall at the MOMA. However, in the ’80s, Tavern on the Green was celebrity central, giving the restaurant an atmosphere that Scott Fitzgerald described in The Great Gatsby as “spectroscopic gaiety”. It was larger than life, and like Nick Carraway, I had a ringside seat. I enjoyed it so much that when I got a job teaching English on the Upper East Side, I kept working at Tavern. It almost ruined my health—try hustling in a dining room until 1:00 a.m. and then waking up for your first-period class six hours later. But I still needed a thrill; after all, how many celebrities were going to walk into a classroom of 12 ninth-grade students discussing The Catcher in the Rye? So even as I began my day job at New York Prep, designing lesson plans and grading papers, I spent my evenings at Tavern on the Green, serving the rich and famous, catching a glimpse of life (and death) in the fast lane, and waiting eagerly for the next magical moment to arrive.