Near Misses

A co-worker just gave me a copy of Robert Plant's newest CD, "Mighty Rearranger", and it's really quite good. It reminded me of an experience I had earlier this year.

In my life I have had the good fortune and great fun of encounters with celebrities, including Lyle Lovett, Paul Reiser, Goo Goo Dolls, Jimmy Dale Gilmore, Kevin Bacon & Kyra Sedgwick (recounted in a previous post), John Doe of seminal punk band X, Dick Dale, actor John Hawkes ("Deadwood"), members of Cheap Trick, Steely Dan, the late great Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, Little Richard, and the saga of Oliver Stone and the movie "JFK", which is a long, fantastic story that someday I may take the time to post here.

I'm certainly not a celebrity stalker, and indeed am only interested in meeting and perhaps getting a photo w/someone if it's ok with them - I respect the fact that they are just people who may not always be in the mood for the ten thousandth person this year to come up to them and try to talk to them, etc. If that were not the case, the above list would be MUCH longer. So when I'm in the same room with someone famous, I usually just think, "Oh, that's cool that so-and-so is right here." If I get the chance to be introduced, great. If not, it was still cool.

And then there's Robert Plant.

There's fame, there's celebrity, there's superstars, and there's legends. The last category is very finite, very small. The members of U2, for example, one of my all-time favorite bands, are superstars. But I wouldn't call them legends. In my opinion, rock music legends can be counted on about 2 or 3 hands. And, as is the aforementioned Emancipator of Rock 'n' Roll, Robert Plant is most definitely a legend. So when I was in Austin for South by Southwest earlier this year, standing outside the hotel and overheard a couple of valet guys saying he was there, I had to find out exactly what the deal was. They said, "Yeah, he's right there in the bar." (He was at SXSW to be keynote speaker and play a couple of shows.) Poor guys didn't even realize exactly who they were talking about. So I rush over in a state of frenzy. Lucky for me, several co-workers were in there having a drink, so I identified the best vantage point and squeezed in with them. Robert Plant and his entourage of about ten people were directly across from us, about 10 ft. away. This is as close as I got, and that was just fine with me. I actually started to cry - I mean, here I was in the presence of greatness! Legend! Icon! One brave soul in the bar tried to approach him for an autograph, but a bodyguard shooed her away. I couldn't stay long because I had to go to work, but for about the next 2 hours my co-workers and I were in something of a trance - "I can't believe it, Robert Plant" we kept saying to ourselves and each other over and over.

He had red wine.