My Kid the Superstar
MORE Magazine
June 2004
By Louise Farr
The young woman at Lindy Groban's front door was tall, blonde and drop-dead gorgeous. "Is Josh here?" she asked. "I'm a friend." Lindy asked her to leave her name and phone number. As it turned out, the woman was no friend of Lindy's son, 22-year-old baritone and international idol Josh Groban, whose CDs have sold well into the millions.
"She had been following him to different events," says Lindy, a former art teacher at Los Angeles' Mirman School for gifted children. The admirer never returned. Still, the incident shook the singer's mother. "Some fans I just adore," she says, "but in other cases, you take a breath." Her son's ability to give a semiclassical gloss to popular songs has spawned legions of fans, known as Grobanites. Breathless e-mails from them flood her son's official Web site.
The mail has been piling up since Josh was discovered at 17 by Hollywood music producer David Foster, who needed a singer to perform on short notice. He called Josh's coach, Seth Riggs, whose other clients include Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand. "I pinch myself," says Lindy, who like her husband, Jack, an executive recruiter, pictured Josh waiting tables and trying out for parts while hoping for a break.
When Josh was at Carnegie-Mellon University studying music and theater, Foster kept calling him to apprear at charity performances, then offered him a contract. Lindy and Jack watched their son leave college and immerse himself in his new world.
"There he was, an eighteen-year-old, working with larger-than-life figures. Your child's making his way; your heart's in your throat. But he has to do it on his own. There's not much you can do to help," says Lindy, who was an at-home mother to Josh and his younger brother, Christopher. "There are many ways to live life, and that worked for me."
As Josh's fame grew, Lindy worried about its effect on Chris, a college fershman studying film production. "He wants to hit the ground running, like Josh. I say to Chris, 'Slow down. You have your whole life ahead of you.'"
Lindy sometimes wonders if Josh's career is, in fact, the more fragile one. "We live in an age of instant this and disposable that," she says. "I want him--like Chris--to have a lifetime of fulfilling work."
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