7 minute read
Rockin' the Embassy
Scott Brown and his wife, Gail Huff Brown, recall decorating their temporary New Zealand residence with rock memorabilia from famous friends
BY LYNNE SNIERSON
It’s 8:30 in the morning when most people are still sipping coffee and easing into their day. But not Scott Brown.
“Today I already swam, biked, ran, lifted weights and then I did some work around the house. I get up at 6, and I’ll be done by 8:30. Then I do some work,” he says while describing his typical routine.
But the multifaceted and multitasking Brown and his extremely accomplished wife, Gail Huff Brown, are anything but typical.
He is a former U.S. senator and ambassador to New Zealand, a world-class senior tri-athlete and champion du-athlete, a highly decorated U.S. Army National Guard colonel (retired), political analyst, attorney, professional model, rock star and youth sports coach.
She is a former model and Boston TV news reporter and anchor, a current Strawbery Banke roleplayer and historical interpreter, and a Seacoast Realtor who ran for New Hampshire’s U.S. Congressional District 1 seat in the 2022 Republican primary.
They are also parents to Ayla Brown, the “American Idol” season 5 finalist and now the morning show co-host at Country 102.5 in Boston; and Arianna Brown-Hendry, the head veterinarian at Lafayette Animal Hospital in Portsmouth. Plus, they’re the involved grandparents of four kiddos all under age 3.
“I’m a go-go-go guy. It’s in my DNA. The motto in our family is ‘Sleep when you’re dead.’ Gail and I always are on the go, and we’ve always challenged ourselves and our girls to think outside and step outside your comfort zone. For example, it’s running for the U.S. Senate and having a rock band and playing on stage with famous rockers like Cheap Trick and not even thinking twice about it,” says the lead singer and guitarist of the renowned Scott Brown and the Diplomats.
The name The Diplomats is apropos.
After Brown, who pulled off a stunning upset in the Massachusetts special election to fill the term of the late U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy but lost reelection to a full term in 2012, the Browns established permanent residency in Rye in 2014. The ninth-generation New Hampshire native ran for the Senate again in 2014 as the Republican nominee from the Granite State but came up short. In 2017, he was appointed ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa by former President Donald Trump.
Gail was keen on the assignment, but when it came time to decorate the official residence at the embassy, the couple had decidedly different ideas.
“I didn’t know that Gail had already been working on this. I think she did a wonderful job on the official entranceway, dining room and living room. The art she chose was beautiful sea scenes of New Hampshire. But for the rest of the house, I wanted to have rock ’n’ roll displays. I wanted Kiss, Cheap Trick, Joan Jett, Dropkick Murphys, etc. When people walked in, I wanted it to look like a Hard Rock Café,” he recalls. “I’m an American. What do we export most? Music. Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Chuck Berry, right?”
Scott called a few friends. Gene Simmons from Kiss sent the band’s original drum kit. He borrowed pieces from Bon Jovi, ZZ Top, Guns N’ Roses, and other famous artists including Ayla Brown, of course. Rock ’n’ roll posters, framed gold records, signed guitars and other collectors’ items would be in the décor.
Gail still had her doubts.
“I was mortified,” she says. “When he first pitched it, I thought it’s going to look like a college dorm. But he was able to get so many amazing things from all these artists. Then I saw that diplomats and guests from all over the world would come to the residence where we represented the United States, and they would see all these rock ’n’ roll bands and the memorabilia. They all knew them. They knew the artists, and even if they didn’t speak English very well, they knew the songs.”
“There was a commonality there, a common language. It broke down barriers. I said, ‘Honey, this was brilliant.’ Then I said the three words I hate saying: ‘I was wrong.’”
Scott adds, “There were 45 displays and people loved it. It broke down some potential barriers that might otherwise have been there. It helped to get a lot of business accomplished. That’s why we did it.”
In 2017, with the diplomatic assignment completed, the Browns returned to their Rye home, where Scott proudly shows off an entire room stacked with rock ’n’ roll items in his personal collection. Outside in the yard is another cherished memento. It’s his signature old pickup truck that he drove all over Massachusetts while wearing a barn jacket to denote his working class bona fides when campaigning for the Senate in 2010.
Well, sort of.
“The back of this bench is the truck’s tailgate. It’s still got my campaign bumper stickers,” he points out. “We donated it to a charity, and then someone told Gail it was in a scrap yard in Concord. She had people go up and pry it out, and we made it into this amazing bench. I put 383,000 miles on that truck campaigning.”
For years, the couple have hosted the now famous and free “No BS BBQs,” where almost every Republican presidential candidate — and even Independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — gets grilled by thousands of engaged voters. Might there be another political campaign on Gail’s or Scott’s horizon?
She shakes her head ‘no’ emphatically. He’s not so sure, even though he turned down the offer from RFK Jr. to run on the ticket as his vice president in this election.
“I’m so upset with what’s going on that it’s stoking the embers. There is nothing right now, but if things keep going like they are I am a firm believer that if you don’t put good people in there, people who don’t have any agenda or don’t owe anybody anything, which I don’t, on both sides of the aisle, then our system isn’t working properly. If we keep getting people who don’t have the experience, don’t have the knowledge, don’t have the temperament, then yeah, I’d be thinking about it,” he confides. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. I’ll know when I know.”
“Against All Odds: My Life of Hardship, Fast Breaks, and Second Chances”
That’s the title of Scott Brown’s New York Times best-selling autobiography, a searingly personal account of his deeply dark childhood, determination for a brighter future and journey to redemption. He holds back nothing.
“It’s a raw book. It tells everything. I let it all out. I was sexually abused at camp. I endured domestic violence at home. I stole food to eat. I was drinking and stealing cars at 12. I was arrested. It’s all there,” he says. “I still think about the book and think about my life, especially when I’m out riding my bike. When I was writing one of the final chapters I thought that my life is like a spider web. If I pull this thread, does that mean I don’t join the military? If I pull that one, does it mean I don’t go to law school? If I pull here, does it mean I don’t meet Gail? If that’s the case then I don’t have Ayla and Arianna, and then I don’t have my grandchildren. I’m OK. I’ll just leave everything how it is. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Gail wisely notes, “One string can unravel a whole life.”
“We’ve led full lives but very good lives,” he says with a smile.
