Cheating like crazy here, but there’s a **great** back story to this image
from 3-10-11! I don’t expect much of anyone to recognize this old fella;
back in the late 1960s (when they were apparently still chiseling Social
Security numbers on stone tablets according to my younger friends) he was
the lead guitar for Procul Harum. Thanks to my dad, I was raised with
somewhat eclectic tastes in rock & roll, and in 1976 at the venerable age of
FIVE I stood in the hallway at three in the morning to snarl “And I bet he
played ‘Alethea’ *really* loud!” when my parents got home from watching him
play to a packed house at the 12,000-seat Portland Memorial Coliseum. His
name is Robin Trower, and in 2009 my awesome wonderful neighbor packed me in
his truck and helped me fulfill the 33-year-old desire to see this guy play
live! Having been under the impression since like Y2K that Trower had
retired due to arthritic hands, I was foaming at the mouth to get to see him
for real and it was incredible. I remember bursting into tears when he
actually walked out on the stage in front of me and my camera. We went
again this spring—Trower is, as you can see, not a young man, so it seems
like a good time to catch him at any chance—and had a better time than we
could ever have imagined. Same venue, The Knitting Factory in Spokane, but
this time a crew monkey overheard me being nervous about my neighbor getting
a seat, since the amount of time we spent standing in ’09 was terribly hard
on his back and ankles (this is the usual-suspect neighbor, whose feet are
best described as “on there sideways” and who broke several lumbar vertebrae
in a work accident in ‘82). I was told to find Ed, and that proved to be
the best advice I could have gotten. Ed is the KF’s head of security, and
he is a *joy* to work with: professional, personable, smart, efficient,
well-spoken, and ideal for the job because he’s also about six foot
fourteen. He made sure we got seated, and in a really nice section, and
that a waitress was keeping an eye on our supply of drinking water. The
Knitting Factory does have a full bar, and although we never bought drinks
we never ran dry on those cups of water. I caught wind of an
autograph-involving event after the show from someone else entirely and
begged my way into the special wristband for it, and later into one for my
neighbor. When Ed saw us in that group, he unlocked a staff elevator so my
neighbor wouldn’t have to do stairs, gave us a security escort so we
wouldn’t get hassled…and took us to the front of the *“O holy Lord this is a
meet-and-greet!!!” *line! I thought my head was gonna ‘splode when I got to
shake Robin Trower’s real live right hand and tell him yes, I **did** just
say “since 1976”!!! I had my hat on, so I think the look he gave me for
that had a lot to do with it hiding all my gray hair…but it’s for damn sure
I night I will never ever forget.
