"Brian & The Biz" - Celeb Interviewer on His Life As a Claymate

We don't often hear from the male side of Clay's fanbase, so this article titled "My Life As A Claymate" is, quite simply, wonderful. Brian gives an honest, in depth view about Clay. Go to Brian's blog to read the full article. Here is an abridged version:

While this season of “American Idol” is shaping up as an especially exciting one full of surprises and reversals, I don’t know if I agree with the show’s claims that the current Season 7 features the best lineup of talent ever.

The second season was the one that really captured my attention, starting with an appearance by my friend Fred Bronson, who pitched the show the idea for the theme, “Billboard Number Ones.”

I started to grow more and more impressed with Clay, who shined on both ballads (Neil Sedaka’s “Solitaire”) and fun uptempo songs, like one of my alltime favorites, “Build Me Up Buttercup.” Then on the season finale, Clay let out a one-two knockout punch: first a transcendent version of “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (while Ruben sang a rather boring take on “Imagine”), followed by his soon to be number one hit, “This Is The Night,” which I liked much more than Ruben’s “Flying Without Wings.”

The first time I met Clay was at a radio studio across from the NBC building in Burbank where Clay was appearing on “The Tonight Show” that evening. Fred Bronson had been assigned to do one of the first in-depth interviews with Clay after his “Idol” stint, and as often happens, I tagged along. Fred conducted a long interview that covered Clay’s life from singing in the carpet department at Sears at age five all the way to the Idol finale, and along the way added a lot to his fans’ knowledge about their hero. I found Clay to be an excellent storyteller, funny and also brutally honest about his “Idol” song and wardrobe choices. One other thing surprised me: Clay gave me a hug when he left (a year later, when Fred interviewed Season 3’s Diana DeGarmo at the same studio, I gave her a hug as she was leaving, probably surprising her at the time… but then, I’m no Clay!).

Eventually, I got a chance to interview Clay myself, but it would have never happened if I hadn’t been at those earlier interviews. One of my friends hosts his own movie review show on TV. He was based in Portland, Oregon at the time and couldn’t make it back to Los Angeles to cover the festivities celebrating the DVD release of Disney’s “Aladdin.” He asked me to do the interviews on the red carpet outside Hollywood’s El Capitan Theater for him, and I gladly agreed, having never done any interviews for TV before. Many of the stars attending were featured in Disney produced shows, and I got a good number of them to talk to me. But when Clay arrived, it seemed like he was in a hurry to get inside and skipped talking to most of the gathered press. Fortunately, I caught the eye of his publicist, who recognized me from the earlier interview with Fred (as did Clay) and steered Clay over to me for a few minutes.

I got in four questions. First I asked Clay how he keeps his energy up on tour, to which he replied, “McDonald’s!” He laughed and added that he tries to change his show a little bit every night to keep things interesting for him, and in turn, the audience. I also asked him about his upcoming Christmas album as well as the song he did for the “Aladdin” DVD. But the best response I got from him came when I said that I know his female fans love him to death and go to great lengths to see him in concert, but does he ever hear from the husbands and boyfriends they drag along? Clay said every once in a while, he’ll see a T-shirt on a guy in the audience that says, “I got dragged to see him,” but to him the funniest thing was how the women manage to make it to the front row in front of the stage, leaving their men stewing fifteen rows back.