If there were any of you who were following my live blogging on the On the Red Carpet site last night, I lost all Internet connection backstage at the Grammys and was unable to blog during the last 40 minutes or so of the show. It was excrutiating! But I cheered up when some of the bigger names began coming into our interview room. I am now officially all about Mary J. Blige. Love, love LOVE her! Blige has that survivor thing going on that so many of us can identify with. “This has been an incredible night for me…it has been a personal breakthrough….You just strive to put your back up straight because you’re sick of slumping.” Great woman and amazing singer….
Tony Bennett, that ageless wonder, spent loads of time with us backstage talking about how he has always strived to make timeless music that would still be listenable 50 years from now. He! has certainly accomplished that. Tony is 80 years old, an amazing 80 years old, and talked about how finding something that you love in life and doing it, keeps you young. He is living proof. He is a living legend who now has 14 Grammys, the first won in the early 60s for “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.”

And, of course, who isn’t thrilled for The Dixie Chicks? For them to win five Grammys including album and record of the year was sweet vindication for the absolutely horrendous backlash they suffered through for daring to speak their minds in the United States of America. We waited an hour for them to come backstage and talk to us – which is partly why I’m so dead-tired today – and I left in frustration about 10:30 p.m. I said to my award show buddy Sandra Barrera: “I’m tired of waiting for the Pixie Stixs!” But here are some backstage comments from other artists on the Chicks win: John Mayer said “it was just almost an instant classic album…They were running from a lot of ghosts.”
I also became a fan of Ludacris who last year, walked by me on the red carpet at the Oscars and I had no idea who he was. At the Grammys, he performed magically and backstage, he told us that he cut off his signature braids because he didn’t want to turn 30 next year with cornrows. He also did not hild back when describing what winning a Grammy (his first) for “Release Therapy” meant to him: “Today is pretty much the best day of my life…no words can explain how great I feel right now.”
Multiple winners The Red Hot Chili Peppers came backstage and were so friendly and fun. They were ready to take all the questions we had for them – and we had many – but this very annoying woman with an ugly gold lame coat and frazzled hair rushed them off the stage. This woman was a nightmare. I got to the press room about noon. By 1 p.m. she was on my nerves. By 2:30 p.m. I hated her. By the end of the night (10:30 p.m.), I was making a list of various ways to not exactly kill her, but maybe tie her up and stuff her in a closet so she could rethink her attitude…and her hairdo! Anyway, one of the Chili Peppers, Chad Smith the drummer, made a face at her behind her back and she saw him. Busted! Most peeps would laugh it off, but gold coat lady was incensed. I was convulsing in laughter. It was so third-grade…and so funny! When Chad walked back into the press room earlier, he looked around and said: “You guys are stuck back here the whole time? Why? Why? Were you bad in college?”