Before you ask, no, I didn’t have a press pass.
In fact, I had to sneak in a point and shoot camera, which will explain the poor quality of the photos below. So why was I at the Grammys? I was on the arm of a VIP – my husband, Nick Landis.
Nick is member of the Recording Academy and is about to finish up his fourth year on the board of governors. Because of that, we had the great privilege of walking on the red carpet to our 6th row seats at the 2012 Grammy Awards in Los Angeles.
The photo at the top was taken at the Grammy Nominees Reception, which takes place the night before the telecast. Before the reception is the Special Merit Awards, which includes the Lifetime Achievement Awards. That ceremony is vastly different than the telecast. It’s in a much smaller theater and each award winner has as much time as they’d like to speak to tell their stories. It’s much more emotional and heartfelt.
Here are a few photos from the Special Merit Awards. (Squint and kind of turn your head to the side and you might recognize the people in the photos through the fuzziness that comes with a point and shoot in low-light…I apologize…)
Diana Ross
Allman Brothers Band
Glen Campbell (Rhinestone Cowboy)
Diana Ross, the Allman Brothers, Glen Campbell, Antonio Carlos Jobim, George Jones, The Memphis Horns and Gil Scott-Heron all won lifetime achievement awards this year.
Let’s skip ahead to the Grammy telecast. On Sunday Nick went off to the pre-telecast show while I had my hair and make-up done by the amazing Christopher Vanek. After the pre-telecast, Nick and I took a shuttle (very glamorous) to the red carpet outside the Staples Center.
We saw a few celebrities, but they were all very busy being interviewed and photographed.
We made our way through the tent and to our seats with plenty of time to spare.
Then the show started. It was an amazing show! Filled with performances by Paul McCartney, Adele, Bruce Springsteen, Tony Bennett, the Beach Boys, Glen Campbell, among others, and tributes to Etta James and Whitney Houston, how could it be anything but fabulous?!
I took a few photos as I watched the show, but I tried my best to enjoy myself and not worry about getting a great picture with a challenging camera. Here are a few shots that I got.
Paul McCartney
Adele
Stevie Wonder
Beach Boys
glowing bracelets in the crowd during Coldplay
After the telecast (which I mentioned was incredible!), we made our way to the after party at the convention center. There were two rooms at the after party. One was a larger room with a big stage where pop artists were scheduled to play. We went there first, knowing the food lines would be shorter. The food was very good, but my favorite dish was in the second room. It was a jazz room, where the best high school jazz players in the nation played, followed by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Dessert was also in the jazz room. I had warm chocolate bread pudding topped with caramelized bananas, with a side of vanilla ice cream.
At that point, I had it in my mind that we needed a couple photos of us since we were all dolled up. So here we are…
I could write pages and pages about our experiences over the weekend, but in the interest of keeping this post reasonably short, I’ll stop here. If you have questions, please post them below and I’ll be happy to answer them.
We headed back to Austin Monday morning and it was back to business. Speaking of which, I will be back to photo blogging next week, so look forward to that!