In Hollywood, you never know where your next industry connection’s gonna get made.
Maybe it might even happen while you’re accidentally babysitting — like when future Grammy winner Michael Bolton stumbled into looking after future hitmaker/”American Idol” judge Paula Abdul.
Bolton joined Andy Cohen on SiriusXM’s Radio Andy this week and related how the whole thing fell together. “Her older sister was dating my guitarist and I was writing songs, demoing them to try to get a record deal in LA,” he said. (Bolton, 68, is 10 years Abdul’s senior.)
“We wanted to go out one night and we realized we couldn’t because we couldn’t leave Paula — our friend’s baby sister, little sister — couldn’t leave her alone,” he continued. “So that turned into the perception that we were babysitting for her. We were all stuck at the house basically.”
OK, so it wasn’t the traditional $12/hour babysitting gig!
Abdul remembered things mostly the same when she visited “The Kelly Clarkson Show” earlier this year, with a little twist. “My older sister, Wendy, was really good friends with Michael,” she explained, noting that he was an aspiring songwriter from Connecticut (still called Michael Bolotin) who’d come out to LA during the summers.
“He had his girlfriend, who ended up being his wife later on, Maureen,” Abdul added. “We were all together and I would be in my Brownie uniform and no one wanted to babysit and we’d make Michael (do it) … Michael would have to babysit.”
So how did she rate him as a sitter? Well … not so hot.
“He was the worst babysitter, because all he cared about was music,” she said.
But it didn’t sour her on working with him some years down the line. Bolton told Cohen he called her out of the blue and asked the by-then-established choreographer to choreograph one of his videos. Abdul must have seemed a little dubious that the Michael Bolton would want to hire her, so he added, “‘Well, who else would call you a “little brat”?’ And she went, ‘Oh, my God, it’s you.'”Michael Bolton “bumping into” Paula Abdul at a recording of the “Grammy Living Legends Gala” TV special in Los Angeles in 1989.Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
After that, they reconnected. “I loved bumping into her in the business,” he said.
Which just goes to prove that being a lousy babysitter has very little to do with your future musical success!
