David Klein has always felt like a perennial plus-one on life’s guest list…
Maybe it’s because he keeps crossing paths with remarkable people—from his well-connected roommate and his enchanting girlfriend, a young actress named Marisa Tomei, to Winona Ryder, his first cousin, who affords tantalizing proximity to the rich, famous and fabulous, to his current romantic interest, the close friend and confidante of world-renowned yoga gurus.
Ascending to this level of grooviness has been a long time coming. A fan brought up in a house full of critics, in the thrall of a troubled genius older brother, David came of age in an era where it was all too easy to lose an eye, get trapped in a spare fridge, be burned by teenage punks, even get booed at a Led Zeppelin concert—by Led Zeppelin. And all by the time your first whisker appeared.
The Plus One tells the story of a music-obsessed bumbler finally granted the backstage access he craves and determined to make the most of it—even if that means being dissed by Gwyneth Paltrow and Marilyn Manson in the same epic, mortifying night. Whether he’s singing bossa nova with Philip Seymour Hoffman, stealing a woman’s shoe with a just-pre-fame Johnny Depp, or sharing a life-changing cigarette break with Lady Gaga, Klein relates the sublime and the ridiculous, the reckless and the traumatic, with dry self-awareness and storytelling flair.
Alternating among celebrity encounters—with such 20th-century icons as Courtney Love, Ringo Starr, Bono, Phil Spector, Peter Gabriel, and Tom Petty—are sharp-eyed recollections of long-gone demimondes: 1970s suburbia, AIDS-era New York City, and the workaday world of ’90s office culture that blinked into existence in the hangover of those glitzy nights out. Throughout, a picture emerges of a young man learning to quit measuring himself against his own life’s famous guest stars and settle in to growing up.
