Rubbing Shoulders With The Stiff and Famous
Mary Lundberg knows her way around backstage at rock concerts, opera halls, theaters, and smoky dives. She also knows her way around the human body. Forty something and curtly coiffed, Twin cites Lundberg rubs shoulders of the stiff and famous and gets paid for it. She's a professional massage therapist.
A lot of performers and their crew have discovered that the most beneficial thing they can do with their time between sound check and the show is to have a good massage, says Lundberg - better known as " Mother Mary" to her grateful patrons. There's son much craziness, clutter, and hype backstage that a therapeutic massage helps relax them, it helps focus, and very often, it helps heal emotionally as well as physically.
With such curatives as tiger balm, Chinese liniment, and tincture of arnica, Lundberg has realigned bad backs and soothed pounding headaches for hundreds of recording artists, musicians, actors, crew members, the occasional escape artist, several local restaurateurs and one national sports announcer.
Lundberg's massage resume reads like a Who's Who of Rubbing the Right Way: from actor Richard Harris and crooner Neil Diamond, to Motley Crue's Tommy Lee and the head technician for the Grateful Dead. Though Lundberg is a big folk-music fan, the doesnŐt discriminate: She'll massage performers from any genre, whether they're Cajun band leader Queen Ida, or country stars Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, and Kenny Rogers.
Lundberg says an increasing number of performers are relying on holistic rather than hedonistic ways while on the road, which is good for business and gross anatomy. Plus, it's work that has its perks: She wonders where else anyone could be regaled with stories some people tell once they start to unwind, Merle Haggard tried to explain to her the encounters he's had with space bugs on Mount Shasta, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons piqued her interest in a New Mexico zoo that features mutant animals bred near nuclear test sites, and James Taylor shared anecdotes about his kids.
