Tom Waits -- I lived in Hollywood in 1973-74, just ended up there after hitchhiking accross the country. At that time, I had dreams of writing the great American novel, so I figured I was in the right place, the belly of the beast. Every week (despite available public trans) I used to hitchhike to Venice for the Venice Poetry Workshop. One week, Tom Waits showed up. It was before he even had an album out. He read "In The Heart of Saturday Night" as a poem, and got a standing ovation. He read it in a normal voice, NOT the gravelly, whiskey soured voice he uses on his records. He came twice in the next couple of weeks as well, and gave me a ride home to Hollywood each time. And . . he really had an "ol 55", a 1955 Mercury Monterrey two door hardtop with chrome tipped dual exhausts and the old true Mercury block V8!! He was totally unassuming and very down to earth. He invited me to go bar hopping with him each time, but, LOL, I was too cheap (and nearly broke) to spend money in bars!!
Jackson Brown -- Both years I lived in LA, there was a free festival of theatre, poetry, and music. The first year, it was on the USC campus (very urban). The next year, it was out at a natural amphitheatre in one of the canyons owned by one of the older guys on the Waltons TV show. Nobody really famous performed, except this second year Jackson Brown closed the last night with an accoustic set on a piano outdoors in this very cool natural amphitheatre. There was only a narrow entrance in and out of the amphitheatre. I was standing around outside after the show when Jackson Brown came out with this chick (nobody famous, as far as I know. They were coming towards me, about 10 feet away, and both seemed to be staring at me. I heard Jackson say to the chick,. "I think I know that guy" and she responded, "Yeah, me too". I totally flubbed this big moment, though. I just responded, "Jackson, you don't know me." as they passed by, like a total geek.
One Final Note -- Yeah, I lived in Hollywood (and then, in Venice), but I AM NOT GAY! There were very few gays where I lived, in Hollywood just off Sunset, which was definitely NOT the nearby Hollywood Hills. In fact, the two main groups who lived there were elderly retired Jewish people and transient psychopaths, LOL, not to mention deluded rubes from elsewhere trying to break into movies. My first place was on Pointsettia Pl, right on the corner of Sunset, and I payed $85 a month for a one bedroom!!
I hitchhiked around everywhere, and, yeah, yeah, yeah, about 60-70% of the people who picked me were gay. But I looked like Charles Manson (my own Mom said so!), and they were always more afraid of me than I was of them, and I always got where I was going with no incident and no trouble. I also got picked up by a LOT of very interesting people -- two that visually stick in my mind were a knockout blond in a white Mercedes convertible (her charisman was palapable! She was very nice and friendly but married to a producer and just giving a poor hippie a ride) and an English looking guy in a white suit with a white hat driving a white Rolls Royce who said when he picked me up, "Bet you've never been picked up by a guy in a white Rolls Royce before." He was kind of a dick, just posing and full of himself.