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The following events are true, but names and other details have been changed or disguised to protect those involved...sorry I can't be more specific but you'll see why....
At a (non-music related) event somewhere in England last week I met (for the first time) and began a conversation with this guy (let's call him Harry). A few of the things he said raised my suspicions that he had connections with the music business and when I was brazen enough to ask him, he confirmed that he had indeed been a founder member of a well known and successful band. Of course, this was some time ago and since he clearly had some health problems, I wasn't surprised to hear he no longer played. I knew enough about the band to know he was never the most prominent member of said outfit, not a songwriter or frontman or media spokesman and I couldn't even picture him back then, but I certainly knew his name from things I'd read.
Harry played with the band for a few years and left at about the time they were hitting their peak musically and commercially. There are various accounts as to why he left, but he told me it was because his then wife was ill and he felt he needed to be at home to look after her. He said he'd asked for a year off but had been refused by the management and record company. Naturally, I had loads of questions about the band's early incarnations, the personalities within the band and their recording history which saw them rubbing shoulders with some very big names.
These were all answered to my reasonable satisfaction, allowing for the usual idiosyncracies of ageing musicians (tendency to embroider the legend a bit, slightly inflated idea of their own influence, celebrity packed yarns and the classic grumbles about other group members, musical differences, managers etc...) and the level of detail supplied in relation to instrumentation in particular was wholly convincing, given that Harry (deservingly) had a good reputation amongst his fellow players and even had a bit of a gimmick that marked him out.
He said he'd had money issues in recent years (ex-wives, a court case he lost, a bankruptcy) but he seemed very cheerful and chipper on the whole, said he was building his money back up and was thinking of trading his already rather plush car for something even classier. In all I spent around two hours talking to him and we looked forward to meeting up again.
I was honestly really pleased to have met Harry and full of curiousity when I got home, I dug out a few of the band's records to see how they sounded in relation to what I had learned. I watched a few videos and tried to imagine how the young Harry you occasionally glimpse in them had become the Harry I'd just met.
Then I saw a picture of Harry attending an event about four years ago. And he didn't really look anything like the guy I'd met. Similar age, similar middle age spread, but a nose and hair quite different and clearly an older version of the young guy in the videos. Also, though Harry had told me that he'd never smoked or drank, the guy in the photo was swigging from a beer bottle. Perhaps the caption on the photo was incorrect - after all, Harry was never a household name; but then I found a video of similar vintage, of another band introducing him by name as an onstage guest to help them cover one of Harry's band's old hits. It was the beer drinking guy in the photo, without a doubt.
So who was the 'Harry' I met? I know that other people believe him to be that former pop star - do I tell them? And what do I say if I meet him again, which is quite likely? It's freaked me out a bit - why would anyone do this? And how would they hope to maintain the subterfuge? Is it a psychiatric issue?
Anyone else ever experience something like this?
At a (non-music related) event somewhere in England last week I met (for the first time) and began a conversation with this guy (let's call him Harry). A few of the things he said raised my suspicions that he had connections with the music business and when I was brazen enough to ask him, he confirmed that he had indeed been a founder member of a well known and successful band. Of course, this was some time ago and since he clearly had some health problems, I wasn't surprised to hear he no longer played. I knew enough about the band to know he was never the most prominent member of said outfit, not a songwriter or frontman or media spokesman and I couldn't even picture him back then, but I certainly knew his name from things I'd read.
Harry played with the band for a few years and left at about the time they were hitting their peak musically and commercially. There are various accounts as to why he left, but he told me it was because his then wife was ill and he felt he needed to be at home to look after her. He said he'd asked for a year off but had been refused by the management and record company. Naturally, I had loads of questions about the band's early incarnations, the personalities within the band and their recording history which saw them rubbing shoulders with some very big names.
These were all answered to my reasonable satisfaction, allowing for the usual idiosyncracies of ageing musicians (tendency to embroider the legend a bit, slightly inflated idea of their own influence, celebrity packed yarns and the classic grumbles about other group members, musical differences, managers etc...) and the level of detail supplied in relation to instrumentation in particular was wholly convincing, given that Harry (deservingly) had a good reputation amongst his fellow players and even had a bit of a gimmick that marked him out.
He said he'd had money issues in recent years (ex-wives, a court case he lost, a bankruptcy) but he seemed very cheerful and chipper on the whole, said he was building his money back up and was thinking of trading his already rather plush car for something even classier. In all I spent around two hours talking to him and we looked forward to meeting up again.
I was honestly really pleased to have met Harry and full of curiousity when I got home, I dug out a few of the band's records to see how they sounded in relation to what I had learned. I watched a few videos and tried to imagine how the young Harry you occasionally glimpse in them had become the Harry I'd just met.
Then I saw a picture of Harry attending an event about four years ago. And he didn't really look anything like the guy I'd met. Similar age, similar middle age spread, but a nose and hair quite different and clearly an older version of the young guy in the videos. Also, though Harry had told me that he'd never smoked or drank, the guy in the photo was swigging from a beer bottle. Perhaps the caption on the photo was incorrect - after all, Harry was never a household name; but then I found a video of similar vintage, of another band introducing him by name as an onstage guest to help them cover one of Harry's band's old hits. It was the beer drinking guy in the photo, without a doubt.
So who was the 'Harry' I met? I know that other people believe him to be that former pop star - do I tell them? And what do I say if I meet him again, which is quite likely? It's freaked me out a bit - why would anyone do this? And how would they hope to maintain the subterfuge? Is it a psychiatric issue?
Anyone else ever experience something like this?
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