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(Ed Note: This is an article about the plane crash that Paul was involved in, even though it doesn't mention his name.)
LOS ANGELES - Helen Reddy isn't going anyplace for a while. Not after she and husband-manager Jeff Wald narrowly missed death in the stormy nosedive of their chartered seven passenger jet while returning home from the last stop on her current tour.
En route west from Philadelphia, the airplane was diverted north to avoid a thunderstorm at the St. Louis airport. But suddenly they found themselves in the midst of another part of the storm, which hadn't shows up on radar. The jet plunged 15,000 feet in little more than two minutes before the veteran pilot was able to pull out below the storm at 8,000 feet above the ground.
"The Interior paneling and the rubber rims around the windows all popped loose during the dive," said Reddy. "The gravitational pull froze us in our seats and we all thought we were going to die. This was the only part of the tour when we hadn't brought the baby along. If we had, Jordan would have been killed because we couldn't have held onto him during the fall."
The Pilot reported after they landed in Moline, Illinois, that if the dive had continued another 2,000 feet the wings would undoubtedly have fallen off.
Aussie Concert Debut
At any rate, Reddy has cancelled all live performances out of town through the end of the year, except the first concert tour of her native Australia for which she will force herself back on an airliner.
"The way I intend to tour from now on is to fly out to a major urban center and just work that region for a week or so," she said. "No more one-nighters with flights in-between."
So Reddy and Wald and their two children, daughter Tracy, 12, and infant Jordan, will all be home in the Hollywood Hills for the next few months and Helen hope to write some songs again. "I need uninterrupted time to write," she said. "I'm not one of those people who can put together a song on the plane or in the motel."
For the duration, Reddy has halted all further construction on the showplace Outpost Drive home which she and Wald have been remodeling for two years. "At least the stove is finally connected, so we can eat at home in our all-brick country kitchen," she sighed.
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