POP MUSIC / THOMAS K. ARNOLD : Nothing Like a Fruit Bowl to Help a Superstar Unwind

In every contract for every concert, there’s an issue of utmost importance to the performers: food and drink. That’s where Sue Walls comes in.

In the 10 years she’s been catering backstage at San Diego concerts, Walls has learned a lot about the eating and drinking habits of the stars, such as Pretenders singer Chrissie Hynde’s disdain for meat dishes of any kind, The Cure’s craving for pickled lime rinds and French wine, and Bob Dylan’s penchant for Kentucky bourbon.

“Whatever they want, we give them,” she said, “no matter how odd or unusual their requests might be.”

In the fall of 1979, Walls, now 30, was an undergraduate art student at UC San Diego when her friend and fellow student Bill Silva began promoting campus concerts with the school’s University Events office.

“One day Bill just asked me to do his catering,” Walls recalled. “I had no formal training, but he knew my mother was a home economics teacher and our whole family was totally into cooking.”

The next March, Silva set out on his own, and Walls continued to cater backstage at concerts that Silva promoted at the Roxy Theater in Pacific Beach and, later, at other venues around town such as the California Theatre, Golden Hall, the Civic Theatre and the San Diego Sports Arena.

She also continued her studies at the University of California, Irvine, and subsequently moonlighted for several years as a mechanical-design engineer with an Orange County engineering firm.

“Finally, in 1986, I quit my engineering job and went into the catering business full time,” Walls said. “It had gotten to the point where I had way too much work, and I had to make up my mind to do one thing or the other.”

Since then, Walls and her cohort, Denise Allen, have been catering an average of 70 San Diego concerts a year, satisfying the backstage palates of crews and performers alike, working for Silva and other promoters, including Avalon Attractions and Mel Simas, who produces the annual Del Mar Fair grandstand concert series.

The crews are easiest to please, Walls said.

“We serve them three square meals: lunch, dinner and again around 2 a.m., after load-out,” she said. “And they pretty much get the same kind of food--easy-to-do grilled things like steaks, chicken and fish.”

The performers are a lot more picky, she said.

“They eat only once--either three or four hours before the show or right after the show. And their tastes are really varied. The only constants seem to be a lot of alcohol and a fruit bowl.”

Here, then, is a selective sampling of menu requests Walls has had to fill in recent months:

* Rod Stewart, San Diego Sports Arena: a case each of sake, Mateus rose wine and Evian mineral water, and a fruit bowl.

* The Who, San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium: five cases of beer, including one of Corona and another of Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale; a case of Moet Chandon champagne; a platter each of cold seafood, smoked fish and grilled chicken; two pints of Haagen Dazs vanilla ice cream (on stage, for Roger Daltrey), and a fruit bowl.

* The Cure, San Diego Sports Arena: four cases of beer; eight bottles of French wine; six packs of Wrigley’s spearmint gum; a jar of pickled lime rinds; a platter each of sliced roast beef, tuna and smoked salmon, and a fruit bowl.

* Bob Dylan, Starlight Bowl: a fifth of Courvoisier VSOP Cognac, two pints of Kentucky bourbon, and a fruit bowl.

* Cinderella, San Diego Sports Arena: one bottle of Black Tower white wine and another of Absolut vodka, two cases of Budweiser beer and one of Heineken, a case of red Gatorade and another of green Gatorade, three packs of Pop’s Secret Microwave Popcorn, and a “large assortment” of Tastee-Kakes.

But for once, no fruit bowl.

“Just two bananas and two apples,” Walls said with a laugh. “That’s all they wanted.”

LINER NOTES: In last Thursday’s Reader is a full-page Budweiser ad for the Rolling Stones that proclaims, “For San Diego Stones fans . . . This tour’s for you!” It would be a whole lot more believable if the Stones were actually playing San Diego this week, instead of snubbing our fair burg in favor of doing four shows at the Los Angeles Coliseum. . . .

Sunday night, the Zendik Farm Arts Cooperative, a latter-day hippie commune in rural Boulevard, will throw the eighth in a series of benefit concerts for its ZAP political party. Performing at the Normal Heights Community Center will be the commune’s own Zendik Farm Tribe Band and another local group, Fishwife. Hopefully, the event will be a little better organized than the pre-show publicity campaign: The press release announcing the concert arrived in my mailbox addressed to the Events Editor (!) of the Reader (!!), with the postscript, “I realize this . . . is a bit late, but I would greatly appreciate it if this could be announced by one of your DJs (!!!)” . . .

Tickets go on sale at 3 p.m. Friday for The Alarm’s Nov. 17 appearance at the UC San Diego gym, and at 3 p.m. Nov. 3 for Squeeze’s Dec. 12 concert at Symphony Hall downtown. . . .

Best concert bets for the coming week: O.J. Ekemode, tonight at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach; Curtis Mayfield and Phil Upchurch, Thursday at the Belly Up Tavern; The Dickies, The Dum Dum Boys and Meat Wagon, Friday at Iguanas in Tijuana; R.E.O. Speedwagon, Saturday at the Bacchanal in Kearny Mesa; Gladys Knight and David Peaston, Sunday at Symphony Hall, and Arlo Guthrie, Oct. 24 at the Bacchanal.