Talking On The Phone With A Lovely Lady In The Hamptons Who Was Andy Warhol's Right Hand Woman And Michael Jackson's Media Girl
Susan Blond is a perfect Hamptons personality. She splits her time between the East End and New York City, runs her own business, and was intimately a part of arguably the most iconic art movement in history.
Susan and I speak on the telephone occasionally, and recently I realized that I simply have to share some of her stories. Susan is one of those charming, elegant, classy Jewish women in New York City who handles people with grace, smiles a lot, and then will quite casually tell you some of the most amazing stories about some of the most amazing people, all of whom she knew or knows very personally. Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey, Ozzy Osbourne, Cyndi Lauper, Tina Turner, Luther Vandross and Michael Jackson, are all people that she has stories about.
Her closest relationship was Andy Warhol, who she worked for directly out of college after meeting Paul Morrissey at a party, “Andy was one of those people who was just incredibly smart. He was really good and listening to people, at getting people to talk about themselves. He was also very good at introducing his friends in a way that made them feel good. He’d say, ‘This is my friend Susan who is in charge of running Epic records‘, when really I was just working there. He would do that with everybody he knew. He was so smart that way. You would never catch Andy talking about himself, he was always getting people to talk to him.”
Susan worked as an actress in Andy Warhol’s movies such as “Bad” and “Madam Wangs,” and then launched the advertising arm of his magazine, “Interview.”
From there, Blond went on to work as a Vice President at Epic Records, which at that time, was the only recording studio in the world that mattered. While at Epic, Susan helped promote a variety of famous musicians and artists, one of whom was Michael Jackson. Susan says very causally, “It was great to go to parties with Michael and Andy would love it when we’d all go out together. We’d go out for a night in New York City and, well you can imagine, it was a lot of fun.”
I’d suspect that there are few people around today that knew Andy Warhol as well as Susan did.
After spending the majority of her career at Epic, Susan has since launched her own business in New York City as the owner of Susan Blond Inc. a public relations company, and of course, because she’s in public relations, she or one of her employees calls my news desk quite frequently. I will say one thing, whenever I get a call from a PR person, I’m always impressed by the friendliness and professionalism that they display when pitching stories, but there is a bit of magic when I get a call from Susan. It’s as if charm and positive energy is a vitamin she takes every morning.
These days, in the summer time, I’m planning on catching Susan at one of her Shabbat’s at her home in Sagaponack where she frequently invites over many of her friends and family. I can only imagine the stories that I’d hear there.