| Blixseth's Retreat |
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Page 2 of 5 
Blixseth and Foster spend a lot of time together, and have even come up with their own much-employed catchphrase—“You’re living my life!”—which reflects how covetous they are of each other’s talents.“The thing is,” Foster says, “everything that Tim has I want, and there’s only one thing I have that Tim wants.” “Thirteen Grammies,” Blixseth says. “Actually, 14,” Foster corrects, “but who’s counting?” What Foster most wants right now is a Gulfstream IV, one of the most expensive private jets ever made. Foster’s long-standing quest to own a G-IV is a common topic of conversation, and last night the two discussed a particularly desirable specimen of G-IV that Foster has been trying to track down. This morning, Foster has an update. “I’m going to fly to Chino tomorrow to look at a G-IV,” he says. “You found that G-IV?” Blixseth asks. “Well,” Foster replies, with a reluctant, half-embarrassed shrug, “I found a G-IV.” It wouldn’t be a stretch to say the success of Tim Blixseth’s latest business venture, Yellowstone Club World, a consortium of Yellowstone Club–caliber properties around the globe that Blixseth is poised to open, will depend entirely on finding enough members who believe, as David Foster does, that there is an important difference between a G-IV and that G-IV. Yellowstone Club World’s ideal customer already vacations at a ski resort but would love to vacation at that ski resort, frequents a beach on a Caribbean island but covets that beach on that Caribbean island, owns a yacht but wishes he could sail on that yacht. Like Foster, Yellowstone Club World’s potential customers almost certainly already belong to a club of some sort. They just don’t belong to that club. Tim Blixseth has avian eyes, slim lips, a taut smile. He looks a little like that actor from The Matrix who played the impossibly self-contained Agent Smith, though unlike Agent Smith, Blixseth hardly ever wears suits. Blixseth doesn’t dress like a billionaire—he dresses like a regular guy. Today he’s wearing jeans, a white turtleneck, and, in a concession to the chilly Montana winter, a black hooded sweatshirt bearing the logo of the Yellowstone Club. He just wrapped up his meeting with Foster, and he’s in his car now, on one of his roads, descending a series of steep switchbacks on one of his mountains. He’s negotiating the turns while talking on his cell phone, leaving a voice mail for his friend Smokey Robinson, telling Smokey he hopes they get a chance to collaborate on a song sometime in the next few months. Almost as soon as he hangs up, another friend, former congressman Jack Kemp, calls to say that this morning’s Wall Street Journal story about Blixseth’s pending divorce from his wife, Edra, portrayed the fracturing couple as “pure class.” The story focused on the fact that Tim and Edra have decided to forgo lawyers, instead simply sitting down with some pads of paper in a Beverly Hills hotel and divvying up more than $1.5 billion in assets over a couple of glasses of wine. (Example: Tim gets one of the Rolls-Royce Phantoms and the Smart Car; Edra gets the second Phantom and the Aston Martin.) |
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