Minnelli, Gest already planning family

Olympian news services

Originally published Tuesday, March 19, 2002

LONDON -- Liza Minnelli and producer David Gest are wasting no time in starting a family.

After marrying on Saturday, they're already planning to adopt four children, a British newspaper reported Monday.

Minnelli, 56, and Gest, 48, married in a celebrity-filled ceremony at New York's Marble Collegiate Church. The wedding was Minnelli's fourth and Gest's first.

Britain's Daily Express newspaper quoted the couple as saying they were going to adopt four children "of all races."

The newspaper is owned by the same proprietor as OK!, a celebrity magazine that has bought exclusive rights to the wedding.

NEW YORK -- Billy Joel and Elton John have postponed the rest of their U.S. concert dates together to allow Joel to recover from an illness.

The two were scheduled to play at Madison Square Garden on Monday night; at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, N.Y., on March 20, 22, 28 and 30; and at the Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., on April 4, 8 and 11.

Joel's spokeswoman, Claire Merucuri, said Monday that the "Face to Face" tour shows will be rescheduled in the next day or so.

"He's being treated for an inflamed vocal cord and an upper respiratory infection," Merucuri said. "We expect him to make a 100 percent complete recovery."

LONDON -- George Michael thinks he may have been trying to shake up his life when he got arrested four years ago.

Michael was charged with lewd conduct in a Los Angeles public bathroom in April 1998. Soon afterward, he said publicly for the first time that he was gay.

The 38-year-old singer told British Broadcasting Corp. radio on Monday that he may have tried to get caught to "make my life about me."

He said he had been grieving after the deaths of his mother and of his former partner, Anselmo Feleppa.

"I think, with hindsight, I did it to myself and I tried to work out why," Michael told BBC Radio 1.

"I'd gone through losing my mother and a partner before that, and my life hadn't been about me forever," he added.

"And suddenly, it was a way of making my life about me. And for six months it worked."

Michael was fined $810 and ordered to perform 80 hours of community service for committing the unspecified solo act.

Michael, who was half of the duo Wham! in the 1980s, released his latest single, "Freeek!" in Britain Monday.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Singer-songwriter Kristyn Osborn of the country group SHeDAISY has filed for divorce, her attorney said.

Osborn, part of the SHeDAISY trio with her sisters Kelsi and Kassidy Osborn, seeks to end her nearly eight-year marriage to Joel Stevenett, attorney Rose Palermo said Friday.

The couple was married in Magna, Utah, in 1994. They have no children.

PHOENIX -- Former Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones couldn't get back into the studio for several years after bandmate John Bonham died.

"The rug was pulled out from under your feet," Jones told The Arizona Republic in Sunday's editions. "Apart from losing a very close friend and a great musician, I didn't know what to do for a while."

Jones, 56, also didn't want to deal with the comparisons to Led Zeppelin, the rock group that churned out such classic hits as "Black Dog," "Kashmir" and "Stairway to Heaven."

"I'd been in the best band in the world, so I couldn't see myself joining another one. It would have been anticlimactic somehow," said Jones, whose new CD is titled "The Thunderthief."

The Olympian Copyright 2002

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