They, whoever they are, say to never meet your heroes, presumably because they’ll always let you down. With a few exceptions, I’ve found that very much not to be the case. On the contrary, I’ve usually found that the bigger the star, the nicer the person with the memorable exception of a former hero and cricket legend Ian Botham, for whom the word obnoxious may have been invented. Last night I met another hero and he was absolutely lovely.
We were at the Fleece in Bristol to see the excellent Lanterns on the Lake when the lead singer Hazel Wilde introduced the drummer who, it turned out and it hadn’t occurred to me, was only Philip Selway, a truly world class musician normally seen and heard in Radiohead. I very much doubt that Lanterns on the Lake earn stellar amounts of cash when touring, so it’s unlikely that Selway would be on a large wedge either, so, I concluded, he was there for the music. And of course his drumming was magnificent.
When the show was over, I noted that Selway had come back on stage to chat with fans. This elderly fan boy just had to meet him. I said something along the lines of how much I had always loved the music he had been involved in, particularly Radiohead but also his wonderful solo projects. He was so nice, so humble and I touched him, which is to say we shook hands. I decided that I would never wash that hand again, but that would put me in the same category of so many men who never wash their hands after using the gents, so that plan was swiftly abandoned.
I don’t know what it is about me that I feel so compelled to meet with famous people, but I have rarely been disappointed. My old friend Joe Vitale, who has drummed and played keyboards with such superstars as the Eagles, and is the nicest man in rock, gave us backstage passes for the Crosby, Stills and Nash show at the Royal Albert Hall over a decade ago and we were thrilled to meet Stephen Stills and Graham Nash. At a Brian Wilson show at the Festival Hall, we were sitting in front of Manics front man James Dean Bradfield, who was lovely, and I met Kinks legend Ray Davies at the interval.
Over the years, I’ve met the great Brian Wilson and Al Jardine from the Beach Boys, the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, cricket legend Viv Richards, Tony Blair and even top selling author Jilly Cooper and not one of them disappointed me. In fact, I think even more of them now than I did before. And as you may gather, “I’ve met him”, has become a popular, if somewhat tiresome, part of my conversational repertoire.
Philip Selway is another in a long line of famous people who didn’t let me down. And every time I see a Radiohead video or listen to a Radiohead song – and both happen very often – I’ll remember the time we spent together.
Naturally, none of these famous people will remember me because their whole lives are spent in the public eye and Brian Wilson certainly won’t because every time I met him I suspect he had little idea of where he was, let alone who he was with. But put him on a stage and a light switched on and the music was magical.
God knows what the stars think when they are confronted by an elderly gushing groupie but I know for me it’s lovely.
