Letters for October 24, 2002

Jeff H. Christ

Comments (0) Thursday, Oct 24 2002

...continued from page 1

Gary Tortora

Davie

A roadie strikes back:I read Jeff Stratton's September 19 article on Leif Garrett and posted a link to it on a few message boards. Jeff's phone interview with Leif was really rude. Did you want a reaction of negativity? Well, you have it.

I have been a fan since I was 14 years old. I went to those Leif Garrett concerts in '79. I'd be the first one to tell you: I screamed my lungs out, chanting. It took a lot of make-believe marketing credit back in those days to make Leif seem to be larger then life to thousands of girls. The magazines easily faked stories and posters just to get young girls to believe teen idols were perfect. Well, it's not the case today, and I'm sorry. As it is, artists have no private lives.

Leif Garrett has presented himself as who he is today and not who he was in the '70s. I've gotten to know Leif over the past four years as an upcoming performer starting on the bottom singing in venues and recording EPs (five songs)... Well, so what? That's no different from any of my other favorite bands. Some of them are Red Hot Chili Peppers and Kid Rock. So you see, I'm not totally out of the groove scene.

How dare you bad-mouth Leif, the guys in the band, and their music! Then you make comments about his fans and refer to them as his "now-menopausal fan base" as if we wouldn't get or like his kind of current music or something. Come on... get real! Most of the circle of Leif fans have all become close friends over the past two years. We've given congrats to each other for becoming mothers and/or grandmothers for the first time, getting married, and dumping a jerk for a boyfriend and cheered for each other when the oldest child left home and cried with each other when someone died.

On the road trips we have taken to see F8 play, we have seen each other face to face, hugged, and stayed up all night and chatted. We share an interest in a sweet guy, totally based on a nice personality, whom you can only love and protect like he was your brother. The fact comes down to, "you just don't dis a bro!"

Kathie Dike (www.leifgarrettfans.com)

Sioux Falls, South Dakota