HORACE LANGFORD JR. / PVT Andrew Sabori has painted just about anyone who's anyone, from Jimi Hendrix to Georgia O'Keefe. Now he's working on murals from his home here in Pahrump. Advertisement

It can be pleasant, says Andrew Sabori, to paint his portraits of the famous and talented where they will be displayed.

"People like to talk to me, they want to buy me a drink or lunch, and they want to talk," he said in his modest home near the Calvada Eye on a recent morning, "and I don't get anything done."

So as he works to fulfill contracts for artwork at Polyester, a nightclub at the Stratosphere, and the Las Vegas Walk of Stars, he stays at the home he shares with his wife Roberta where it's quiet and calm and he can put on some music

And unlike the stereotypical starving artist, Sabori has been getting things done for years, ever since he wandered into the legendary Fillmore West in San Francisco during the sixties and suggested to equally legendary rock impresario Bill Graham that he could do portraits of the performers.

A San Jose, Calif., native, Sabori has sketched and painted a who's who of culturally significant individuals and groups. His portfolio ranges from Sinatra to Thelonius Monk, from Bugsy Siegel to a remarkably youthful John Lennon, from Jim Morrison to a recently completed Devo, and from Eldridge Cleaver to Ronald Reagan.

Of the Polyester portraits, he says, "I still have to do Tina Turner, Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen. That's when I'll finish the seventies."

Among artists from the eighties, he'll be working on Adam Ant, female impersonator Frank Marino, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the late Curt Cobain.

"Deborah Harry [from Blondie] wants to meet me," he said. "She wants a portrait by me. Gwen Stefani may want to meet me."

Back in the sixties, as rock music grew up, Graham allowed the young Sabori open access to his music lodestone, which Sabori refers to as "the Holy Grail."

"We didn't know those paintings were going to be collectors' items," he said of his early pieces of performers like Joan Baez and the Jefferson Airplane's Marty Balin and Jimi Hendrix. "Bill Graham paid us peanuts, but we'd go backstage and meet 'em and have a beer. Everybody was there."

From Hell's Angel leader Sonny Barger to beat poet Allen Ginsberg, from Dylan to Creedance Clearwater's John Fogerty, Sabori said hi and wielded his pencils and brushes.

"I was always with my sketch pad out," he recalled, "sketching ... sketching."

And from the Fillmore stemmed his career. In fact, his contract with Polyester came about due to his familiarity with someone at the club who had known him back in the sixties.

Tony Bennett heard about his work at the Fillmore and wanted to meet him. "He's a good artist," said Sabori. "And he's a collector. He's really good. He's a nice guy."

His talent and his connections made a difference and gained him entree into a rarefied atmosphere. His painting of artist Georgia O'Keefe is the only painting hung at the renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York. Six of his paintings of great black musicians are on display at the Apollo Theater in Harlem -- no small achievement for a white artist.

After the Apollo, he said, "A lawyer for the NAACP asked me if I'd do a portrait of Thurgood Marshall" -- first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court -- "for their headquarters."

His work on murals in Atlanta for the 1996 Olympic Games earned the attention of soul artist James Brown, who asked for his own inclusion in one of the murals on which Sabori was working.

Well, the murals were of a time gone before, when steamboats carried cotton bales on southern rivers and no one had heard of rock 'n' soul music, but Sabori simply included Brown as an anonymous black man out walking his dog -- the singer's real dog -- and Brown was delighted.

Sabori eventually did paintings for the singer's offices as well as his home; the latter mural includes both the Apollo and the White House, two of the sites Brown played during his career.

When he visited the Virginia Military Institute, a chat with the commandant resulted in a portrait of one-time instructor and later Confederate general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and his nearby home.

In New Jersey, he painted famous Jerseyites from here to there -- almost literally. "It took me a couple of months to do 'em," he said. "This is down a big huge wall."

Closer to home, years ago the original owner of the famed Mustang Ranch brothel acquired Sabori's services to provide some "tasteful nudes." He also created a mural for Clint Eastwood's restaurant in Carmel, Calif.

Sabori smiles easily and points to image after image, some on the walls of his home, some in a small bound portfolio, some in a sketch pad he hauls out from under a day bed in his studio.

Of course he smiles. He is doing precisely what he has always wanted to do and getting paid for it.

His focus always seem to return to popular music, from Wayne Newton and the Mary Kay Trio to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, from Janis Joplin to Bix Beiderbecke.

He smiled and pointed out, "I almost went to Altamont, but I didn't go that day" -- a reference to a free Rolling Stones/Jefferson Airplane concert in late 1969 that descended into chaos and death, the polar opposite of the first Woodstock festival barely five months before.

Technically, Sabori does all his paintings in acrylics, and for the most practical of reasons. Traditional oils can take many months to dry, but the businesses that want Sabori's work want murals and paintings up in a reasonable time, and acrylics allow for that.

He has no lack of work ahead of him. The Trop is planning major renovations and wants murals, a casino that will be going up in Virginia City will include his work.

One project fell through.

In Lodi, N.J., stands the Satin Doll, better known to television viewers as the Sopranos' Bada Bing. The plan was to create images from the series and sell them to tourists, but then, in perfect Hollywood fashion, the lawyers got involved -- first representatives of star James Gandolfini, then those representing his television wife, Edie Falco.

Sabori bailed out and moved along to better things.

Aside from his work with paint and pencil, he also plans to be more active here. "I'll be going to teach some classes," he said, "and paint in peace."

Looking around the living room, with its many paintings and an original Mucha on one wall, he pointed to a framed print of Picasso's Don Quixote.

"That's not mine," he quietly remarked.