The Smiley Smile Message Board

Does any one have any further updates on Jeff Foskett and his health?


Thanks in advance for responses. 

Parlay

He was with Mike & Bruce just a few days ago at a private gig. Jackson Browne and Mark Mcgrath also performed. Jeff didn't sing but he looks good considering what he is dealing with.

Mike just posted this on Facebook, along with a couple of onstage pictures:

Thanks to Jeffrey Foskett for joining us for a couple shows last week! It was great sharing the stage with him again.
We Love you Jeff ❤️

Just wondering if anyone can access this story?

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/lifestyle/article/John-Stamos-helps-best-friend-and-Beach-Boys-17025659.php

The paywall pops up but under the Stamos/ Jeff picture it calls him a rare survivor. Interested how he’s doing.

LIFESTYLE
John Stamos helps best friend and Beach Boys member Jeffrey Foskett raise $8.3 million for MD Anderson

John Stamos needs no introduction — you’ll likely hear him coming long before you see him.

“John, John!” echoed through the Four Seasons Houston lobby on Wednesday as the actor made his way to the hotel’s second level. He wore a black T-shirt that read “Love like Jesus, hug like Bob Saget,” white Prada sneakers and yellow-tinted glasses.

The first thing Stamos does is reach for his best friend Jeffrey Foskett, the musician best-known for performing with the Beach Boys. The second thing he does is reach for his guitar, a red Gibson with “Saget” spelled out in block letters.

Stamos has already lost one friend this year; Saget, his long-time “Full House” co-star passed away in January. He’s landed in Houston to ensure he doesn’t lose another.

In 2019, Foskett was diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer, a rare malignancy. His prognosis at a California hospital was grim: three to six months life expectancy. Three years and a second opinion at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center later, Foskett is alive and well and reunited with Stamos.

Tonight, the twosome will share the stage at Toyota Center for an A-list, invite-only concert starring Foskett’s all-star industry pals. The lineup includes the Beach Boys, Todd Rundgren, Christopher Cross, the Commodores and Generation Radio. In celebration of MD Anderson Cancer Center’s 80th anniversary, the evening co-chaired by Foskett and his wife Diana and Suzie and Don Sinclair has already raised more than $8.3 million.

“The thing I wanted to do more than anything is to raise awareness that MD Anderson exists. Outside of Houston and Texas, MD Anderson is not that well-known,” Foskett explains. “Everyone knows of St. Jude’s because they have TV commercials all the time nationally. I want to raise awareness that this incredibly talented staff is available and it’s the number one rated cancer center in the world. Without the money you can’t have the research, so I do understand the importance of both.”

He first met an 18-year old Stamos in the early 1980s — back then, the raven-haired heartthrob played Blackie Parrish on the hit soap “General Hospital” and was a true Beach Boys die-hard.
“I call it heart music,” Stamos says. “You don’t have to think about it. It just bypasses the brain and just goes straight to the heart. That’s why so many young kids continue to be turned on by the Beach Boys music.”

Mutual friends introduced them, and Foskett invited his celebrity fan to a show at Jack Murphy Stadium in San Diego. After the baseball game, tractors wheeled out the band and all their gear onto center field. At some point during their performance women in the crowd spotted Stamos and went wild. A crew member asked if that happens a lot and Foskett nodded.

“He said, ‘Well get him onstage!” Foskett recalls. “Our last two songs I brought John up and announced him as Blackie from ‘General Hospital’ and the place went nuts.”

The rest is history. Their friendship and occasional gig-sharing has spanned four decades. Once, they even shared a condo together in the Sherman Oaks area of the San Fernando Valley.

“Other than my wife and my child, my happiest moments have been with him,” Stamos admits.
Foskett first began touring with the Beach Boys in 1981 when Carl Wilson briefly left the band. By 2014 he became a permanent member. That lasted for five years.

“All of 2018 I was having trouble hitting notes. God has given me a beautiful, beautiful voice and I was having trouble hitting those notes,” he says. “I went to a specialist in California who told me I had acid reflux. I started taking vocal lessons for the first time in my life and stopped eating after 4 p.m. so nothing would be in my stomach when we sang. I was having to give away songs to members of the band because I couldn’t sing.”

At one point, Stamos whips out his iPhone to play the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” and Foskett’s eyes fill with tears. “It’s hands down the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard,” Stamos says softly. “It’s ethereal, his voice. It makes you cry just hearing it.”

An ultrasound of Foskett’s thyroid and neck revealed a cluster of lumps. His final performance as a Beach Boy was Feb. 3, 2019; his first operation followed on Feb. 21. “The surgeon woke me up and said in the recovery room, ‘I’m very sorry to tell you this, but I accidentally severed your right laryngeal nerve,” which paralyzed my right vocal cord so I was not able to sing any longer,” he recalls. “That one statement dramatically changed my life.”

With no available cure, he was referred to palliative care to make him more comfortable. But instead Foskett Googled his form of rare cancer and much to his surprise, two names he’d never heard of kept popping up: Maria E. Cabanillas and M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

“My wife and I made our chief surgeon refer us in the hospital, and by the time we reached our car in the parking lot, they’d already called my wife back and asked ‘How quickly can he be here?’,” he says.
That exchange took place on a Thursday. By Sunday, Foskett was in Houston. “It typically takes two weeks to go through all of the tests to get onto a clinical trial, and it’s very grueling. They tell you the worst case scenario because they want to make sure you’re OK with it.”

Foskett says he wasn’t scared off, though Stamos remembers that time a little differently. The actor remembers the exact day with vivid precision, Feb. 28 at 9 p.m.

“I’m in line at In-N-Out Burger waiting to order. Jeff said he was fine, not his regular thing, and tells me he has cancer,” Stamos says. “I hung up, Googled it and I was crying so hard I couldn’t drive home. My wife drove home.”

Stamos lost both of his parents to cancer.

“When I was diagnosed, all of my friends in the business were very sweet,” Foskett says. “They all asked if there was anything they could ever do and I told them, ‘Not right now, but there’s going to come a time’.”

For MD Anderson’s 80th anniversary celebration, he phoned-in favors. His talented friends are giving their services away for free. They’ve all volunteered for a small stipend: flights and hotel rooms.
Which is how Stamos wound up at the Four Seasons holding a red guitar. Foskett says his old friend is an even better drummer.

“Losing Jeff,” Stamos says. “Would’ve been like losing melody, or harmony. It’s unimaginable.”
amber.elliott@chron.com

I saw this article last week and one of the local papers. I was glad to hear Jeff is doing well but I was also sad. He has such a great voice. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of listening to his solo CDs search them out and listen to them. They're just so tremendous, through my window, cool and gone and so many others are just great great CDs. I miss his voice

Thanks for posting the story wbarnes4393. Much appreciated.

Damn shame about severing a vocal cord but he does seem to be doing well. 😳

Very touching article. We give Stamos a lot of flack here, but this is lovely. Thanks for sharing.

I completely agree. Honestly, a lot of the animosity towards the guy (and I've done my fair share of complaining about Full House and other Stamos related things) is probably subconscious irritation that Stamos is one of the luckiest* Beach Boys fans to ever live and we wish it were us in his shoes. I'm not saying we'd all love to rock a mullet and be uncle Jesse, but how cool that this guy has been able to rock out on stage with The Beach Boys and be in their circle?

*and by "luckiest" I just mean compared to any other fan of The Beach Boys. Clearly Stamos has worked hard his entire life to be where he is today.

Really such an uplifting/inspiring story. Thanks for posting that, wbarnes4393.

Credit where credit is due... Stamos is a mensch.


Yes, I think there's definitely something to that theory... I mean, think back to the famous 1990 hotel tape where Stamos is right there in the middle of it as Brian-freakin-Wilson himself and company are jamming in a hotel room.   Heck, at various points, Brian is assigning him parts to sing and saying things like "Stamos, you need a little more bass."  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMQBeKTFBO0

As a fan, how jaw dropping would it have been to have been him in just that one moment?

I wish Stamos would share his 2nd generation copy VHS tape that he has in his possession....

I'll give Stamos credit that he brought attention to the band's forgotten masterpiece, "Forever".  The problem is he did so on the dopiest show ever, Full House.   And his version of the song with its screaming guitars completely misses the point of the song. 

Stamos has been discussed at length over the years. I don’t think anybody has ever questioned that he’s a nice guy and his friends and families and colleagues are fond of him. I'm glad he's so supportive of Jeff.

And, to his credit, in an interview several years back, Stamos finally commented on fan attitudes towards him. I think he chose to word it something like “Brian Wilson fans always s***ting on me”, but I was surprised by how Stamos *absolutely* understands why some fans aren’t into him. He even pointed out in that interview something along the lines of “I’d be annoyed too if I was in the audience and Scott Baio jumped on stage and jammed with the Beach Boys.” Stamos’s reasoning is simple. His take in that interview seemed to be essentially “Who wouldn’t want to get on stage and play with the Beach Boys?” He seemed to be arguing essentially that he know he annoys some fans who take the music seriously, but he simply has to ignore them and do something he has fun doing.

The issues I’ve raised over the years have had nothing to do with him as a person. I’ve always acknowledged he seems to be a nice guy. (I’ve also pointed out over the years that Mike Love is also a nice guy to most of his friends and families and colleagues, and to fans). I’ve taken issue with the tackiness that has sometimes accompanied his association with the band (I won’t dredge up that whole debate on whether “Full House” makes the band cool or lame or whatever, we all pretty much know where we all stand on that). I’ve taken issue much more so with his amateur musicianship. Coming on stage for a song or two, or playing bongos on “Kokomo” on stage is one thing. But he has often played extended or full sets with the band, both during the Carl/Al era, and after (and C50 as well), and he’s literally an amateur musician. As in, it’s clearly a hobby for him. He makes the music worse, especially when he drums.

More broadly, while he has often seemed to be one of world’s most famous celebrity Beach Boys fans, I’ve always said he could have (and still could) do a lot more to actually help the fandom. Instead of just using his association with the band to be a summer rock star out on tour (and try to jump start questionable projects like the 2000 TV miniseries), he could have been championing archival releases, essentially try to become one of the most famous benefactors or champions of getting more BB music out there and released. He made a supportive tweet, sort of, for the “Feel Flows” set a couple years ago (though it was more kind of just “I’ll ask Mike about it”). But just as some celebrities have taken on causes to help truly cultivate the legacy and archives of artists (or films, or filmmakers, or whatever), that could have been a great role for Stamos. Instead, Mike bringing Stamos out on tours kind of feels more like those awful Adam Sandler movies where he clearly just invites his comedian friends out on some vacation, and they film it and make it an awful comedy and sell it to people.

I've felt more and more regret lately for judging/critiquing people related to this band. I've seen a lot of personal loss in the past year, and it has been slowly changing how I feel about certain things.

I remember critiquing Jeff's voice on certain Brian projects and now I wish I had just enjoyed it for what it is. He is a guy with a lot of talent and instead of seeing that, I picked it apart because he didn't sound exactly like a 20 year old Brian Wilson. And now Jeff no longer has that same voice. Now when I listen to his music or his vocals on a Brian track, I enjoy it for what it is: a guy with a great voice with a passion for the music of The Beach Boys. Just a sad/obvious lesson that I need to appreciate things more because we don't know how much longer we'll be able to enjoy them.

And while I do find it difficult to look past a lot of what Mike has done relating to this band/Brian/etc, I will (and do) regret a lot of the negative comments I've made about him and his music.

In Stamos' case, I've been a harsh critic of Full House (relating to The Beach Boys), and I think he was one of the people trying to kickstart that Mamma-Mia-esque Beach Boys musical many years back ugh. But all-in-all, he's a guy who has a passion for Beach Boys music, ever since he was a kid I think. And he has ridden that wave his whole life. He's not perfect, but I can't imagine any of us being able to maneuver perfectly around the minefield of band/fan politics in The Beach Boys world either.

Long story short, as life goes on and more loss happens (especially with people directly or indirectly related to our lives) I think we learn to care more about what we have now, because we never know when it'll leave us. And even though some people/things drive us crazy, perhaps it's not worth the effort to be so judgmental - and I say this as a reminder to myself to not be such a prick to people here on the messageboards and to people related to this band.

And with all that said, it really is inspiring to see Stamos use his passion/love of music to help promote/raise money for an incredible cause. When you can do what you love and help people simultaneously, that is where it's at.

My thing with Stamos is that I’ve usually not like complained about the guy or anything related to him vis-à-vis the BBs in an unprompted, random fashion.

With things like “Full House”, or his other projects with the band, it has simply been, often in the face of effusive enthusiasm for such projects, to point out that these are not high-water marks for the band, and that they are *a part* of the narrative that has led the band over the years towards “novelty act” rather than being taken seriously *as they should be*. There are a lot of nice people who don’t lead artists down appropriate paths.

I don’t even think Stamos thinks of the band in the lightweight terms that some casual fans do (such as the type of fan that loses their s**t seeing Stamos perform on stage). I thought it was pretty interesting to read that Jason Fine article during C50 where Stamos and Mike Love are among a group listening back to the Brian-heavy ending suite to the TWGMTR album, and Stamos thinks it’s marvelous and magical, while Mike mimes shooting himself in the head.

I think Stamos is probably far more insightful about the band (and about his part of the band’s history) than his shticky stage persona and cheesy “Full House” stuff would lead one to believe. In that same interview I mentioned in my previous post, Stamos also reflects on that 2000 ABC TV miniseries that he was a part of. As I recall, Stamos seemed *very aware* that that movie at least temporarily burned some bridges and was not well received. (Ironically, he seemed to view his “Mamma Mia”-esque Beach Boys stage show idea as a *reaction* to that miniseries experience, positing that a musical would be less potentially inflammatory than the miniseries was).

I definitely see what you're saying. I think part of me sympathizes (in a way) with Stamos and the projects he was a part of relating to the band. I guess between Landy, Melinda, Mike, the lawsuits, the craziness of the culture, etc I just can't imagine being in the shoes of Stamos (or pretty much anyone) trying to maneuver through all of that during the 80s/90s. To clarify that: I would doubt that Stamos had any bad/harmful intentions when agreeing to be a producer of a Beach Boys miniseries, or when he decided to bring attention to the song 'Forever'. But the fact is that clearly someone had bad intentions regarding the mini-series (and Stamos has his name tethered to it), and that perhaps John's vanity blinded him to the more timeless nature of 'Forever'.

And I think it's perfectly logical for fans to push back when things like this happen....good or bad intentions, if something is bad it will be called out by passionate fans. I'm with you, I give Stamos credit for having self-awareness about his image and the effect he has on some fans.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=925967528242549&id=100024879326543

Stay well Jeff, your voice has not been silenced!

I am glad that Jeffrey is still alive! He seems to be such a nice guy. Of course not being able to sing will be hard since it is what he's been doing his whole life, but there's so much else to live for. All the best for your recovery, Jeff!

Jeff’s speaking voice sounding pretty good compared to a few years back after the surgery. All the best.

https://youtu.be/xq9Y9OWK_ng

There was another updated video a couple of days ago where Jeff sang a couple of lines to a song on stage. Not classic Jeffrey of course, but it was good to hear him even attempt to sing again first time in 3 years he said. All the best Jeff

After seeing that video he did for the hospital, I thought his speaking voice sounded really good; you'd never know what he'd just been through. I knew someone else who had a paralyzed vocal chord, and she sounded like she had swallowed sulfuric acid, unfortunately. And I had actually wondered if maybe Jeff *can* still sing, just probably not with as much range and/or power as usual.