A conversation from last night reminded me of the time that I met the late bassist for The Who, John Entwistle, in New Orleans in 1998.
He was walking down Bourbon Street with some of his road crew, and no-one else seemed to recognize him but my friend Kirk and I. We followed him into Pat O'Brien's bar, where we ordered some hurricanes and struck up a conversation. The Ox told me that he was playing the House of Blues in New Orleans the following night, and then was getting in a bus for a show in Minneapolis after that. I laughed. While Entwistle didn't have much of a solo career, you'd think that a member of one of the biggest bands in history could have found at least a few shows to play in between one of the southernmost cities in the U.S. and one of the most northernmost major centres. After talking for a while longer, Entwistle said that he'd put our names on the guest list for the following night's show. We walked out and my last memory is seeing Entwistle and his entourage trying to get into a strip club, and him being extremely indignant at the bouncer who didn't know who he was.
We went to House of Blues the next night and found that we weren't on the guest list. We figured that if the guy had a hard time getting into a Bourbon Street sin palace, he wasn't worth our spending $20 each to see him. We went bar-hopping yet again instead.