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
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