- Sat Oct 07, 2017 7:31 pm
#98699
@Static -
Hahaha.......well, it has been almost a year so....no longer 'too soon' I guess!
To cut a long story short, we had backstage passes for the London Hallowe'en show which TG had organised through Cody (they'd sorta become pals somehow!), but I unfortunately 'mis-read the room' as we walked through security at the side of the stage - there were 5 or 6 folks milling there, including Cody chatting with someone, and behind him JC himself talking with a girl who had won the costume comp. I didn't know what the protocol was, and at TG's urging ('go and get your record signed before he leaves' were, I believe, his ill-fated words...) I approached just as JC finished up with the lady and turned to leave with his security minder. Thinking I had to strike, I grabbed his attention and asked if he would mind signing my LP for me? He turned and said 'how did you get back here??'
Hmm...not what I was hoping for! I genuinely just wanted to get a few words from him about the LP, perhaps an acknowledgement that there aren't too many around, that sort of thing. But he was immediately suspicious, so I hmmed and ahh'd and show my backstage wristband nervously, to which he replied 'why weren't you here earlier'. By this I guess he meant that I should have been there before the show for the VIP signing session - but I hadn't actually paid for that, and was basically a guest of his son unbeknownst to him! None of which I tried to explain at this point, as I managed somehow to put the LP in his hands and he signed it, passed it back and left.
Felling a bit like 'well, that could have gone better!', I returned to TG to find that he was now chatting with Cody, who I was introduced to, and the first thing he says is 'have you guys met my dad yet?', to which he escorts us to the actual backstage area where 20-odd people are hanging out, with JC himself off in a smaller dressing room across the corridor. By this point, I pretty much felt like The Horror Master wasn't going to be too thrilled to see me so I let TG go off to be intro'd and managed to actually have a pretty good chat with Daniel Davies (which sortof saved the day for me tbh, being a huge Kinks fan!) JC then emerged with Cody and TG, and proceeded to have pics taken etc. While I tried to will myself into invisibility.
The haunting and painful thing about it all was that if I had just waited 2 more fucking seconds, both myself and TG would have been escorted by Cody backstage and introduced to his old man as his 'friends', and fuck wouldn't that have been a better lay up for my fan-attempt to engage him about the Coupes LP than my premature pouncing?! Yep....still kills me to this day. But in the scheme of things, I know it wasn't as bad as it felt, and hey - upside, he did actually have the grace to sign my damn LP even though I was, in his eyes, a deadbeat moocher who was circumventing the VIP fee/protocol. I guess I can live with that! (I guess....... :(
So there you have it, finally - the whole sorry tale, based only on the secret testimonies of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal. *
(*Criswell)
