Follow me, was the terse instruction as the Florida dermatologist set off at a fair clip towards the VIP Area.
These people are with me. They’re OK, was the comment as we passed the security bloke on the door, and made our way into the hospitality area. Under different circumstances you might have been tempted to stop and sticky-beak, but Doc wasn’t wasting time and repeated the same message as he passed the security bloke monitoring access to the backstage area.
Security Dude’s arm, however, came down, and if previous events had been slightly surreal what came next kicked the surrealism into overdrive.
Alerted to the difficulty, Skindoc turned to the security bloke and stated, These people are personal friends of Little Feat. The band would really like to see them. You have to let them through. The progression from looking at photos just in case to personal friends of the band in under forty-eight hours was more than a little mind-boggling, and mine duly boggled.
But, countered Security Dude, they’re wearing the wrong wristbands. I can’t let people with those wristbands past here.
Doesn’t matter, (or words to that effect). You have to.
And through we went.
Arriving backstage, the first person I sighted was Bill Payne.
I think, Bill remarked, we nailed that one. I thought it was a remarkably accurate assessment.
Meeting up with Tony and Marcel revealed a further complication. Tony’s car was parked at the resort in Ballina and we’d need to head back there on the coaster bus, which was fully loaded, to pick it up.