Dan, We never met Bela Tarr. That picture was me and an old singer who lost his voice and his name to cancer. We weren’t yet drinking age but the singer’s daughter put us on the VIP list and the bar begrudgingly let us in. You remember that bar, used to be on the corner of Cornflower and County Line, the stage was up against the windows and there were always kids heckling from outside. Eventually the place came down and in its place there’s a parking lot for a department store. During the concert we stood between the singer’s daughter and a couple guys who tried to hit on her. Between sets we were still and silent, like all our noble thoughts were made of concrete. We thought the show was over when you worked up the nerve to ask if we could meet him and the daughter, who took the stage twice to sing with the band, was as surprised that we asked as we were that she took us backstage, an attic above the bar. The singer refused to put a shirt on while we asked him questions about his old band and he whispered back to us the recipe for rock ‘n roll, and that David Bowie was truly a square, and that “Sexy Sadie” was written about the Maharashi but Paul made John change it around. I don’t know about you but I couldn’t take my eyes off his daughter, who had inherited so many of her father’s genes and was destined to become a star, though she didn’t after making some choices, which I think it’s best to keep out of this public forum. The singer convinced his tired and sweaty band to give the crowd, who still hadn’t left and who we could hear cheering in the bar downstairs, a second encore and just as they were leaving I asked the singer if we could possibly get a photo with him. The daughter was more excited about the photo than the singer or even us and she stopped her father from storming the stage and asked us to stand with her him. You should have been in the photo too, but you turned to the daughter and refused. “Sorry,” you said, “I can’t photograph.”
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