Today's Blind Item - The Idea- Part Three
When I was told who I was looking at, I knew SH would be the best choice. She was the key. She was the hero of the impossible. The impossible would do whatever SH suggested. Well, at least listen anyway. RO made the introductions. I didn't even know SH was going to be at this little gig. I was a big fan. Foreign born and her number one days were long behind her, but she still had a great voice and a couple of decades earlier she was all over the charts in the UK. Her songs were usually performed in the US by other acts. It was a time where a writer would churn out a great song and a pop act would sing it and someone would try and countrify it and then some act in the UK would also sing it. There we all were. In the basement of a record store. While I was talking to SH, I happened to look over and saw a photo of the impossible. She said she would try.
To this day, that little intimate show is one of the best I have seen. There could not have been more than 200 people in the room. All standing and listening to number one song after number one song. No one was more than ten feet from the stage.
SH promised to be quick. She knew there was only a certain amount of time and budget to stay in town. She came through. She got me a lunch. The impossible was going to sit down for lunch, or in his case a cup of hot tea with lemon. I ordered food, but didn't eat. SH just sat and would talk to fans who came up every few minutes either for her or the impossible. He would stop to say hello to every person who asked so it made what could have been a 20 minute conversation into a several hour long marathon. I didn't talk to him about money. I didn't talk to him about anything except why I wanted it to happen. I told him my story. I told him where I had seen him and what it would mean to a new group of people. It would mean more now. They were only a decade removed at that point. He asked about the unlikely. I kind of fibbed at that point. From some phone conversations I had the previous day, the unlikely was in. He thought it would be fun but the unlikely wanted the impossible to come to him. I told the impossible that he was the key. That if he said yes then everyone else would all fall into place. I just wanted the yes and I would deal with smoothing over everything else at a later time. The impossible wanted some time to think about it. He said he would let me know later that night.
About midnight I get a call in my hotel room. The impossible is downstairs. JC was set to leave the next morning, but since she did not get a chance to see the impossible at lunch wanted to say hi. I called her room and she had been asleep. She still managed to beat me down to the lobby where I found her being hugged by the impossible. The hug slowly became a little dance to the sounds of the music being pumped through the lobby speakers.
JC stayed for the first 20 minutes of what would end up being an all nighter. When I think about that night I'm always reminded of a scene in Four Weddings And A Funeral where Hugh Grant wants to spend time with Andie MacDowell and the guy he is drinking with and trying to escape says they might as well push through to the dawn and gets a bottle of whiskey. We pushed through to the dawn. I talked. He talked. At the end of it as much as I wish I could say there was a happy ending, there was not. It wasn't that he didn't want to do it. He just said that time had come and gone. He could get over his dislike of the unlikely but that he just didn't see the point. I have seen the impossible two dozen times since that night and most of the time I don't mention it. A couple of years ago though I happened to be around him for a few days in a row consecutively and brought it up. He is starting to waver. My point of bringing it to another generation is finally beginning to connect. The unlikely has become the likely. All that it needs is a yes.
