Of the many articles I have published, this is one of only a few that I can still look at without cringing. In fact, it proved to be a very rare journalistic triumph. Here's what happened...

It was saturday afternoon and my editor was waiting impatiently for my article about Sonny Greenwich, the legendary guitarist who was making his first appearance in Toronto in years. The piece had been due on Thursday and I had to deliver. Unfortunately, I was stuck. The musician who had given me Sonny's phone number had also given me this cryptic warning: "You can try to talk to him, but you'll have to get past his wives." I had also heard that he hated speaking with journalists and in general he was notoriously elusive. All this had sort of stopped me in my tracks and somehow I could not even bring myself to phone him. But the clock was ticking and I had to write something. So I wrote the article reprinted above. And to its credit the paper printed it.

Once it was published, however, I began to have second thoughts. I had taken a lot of liberties. What if he didn't get it? What if he hated it? I started to fret.

Sonny's band was playing a 5-night stint at the Top of the Senator, a plush club downtown. I finally mustered the nerve to show up at the club in time for the last set on the last night. As I loitered at the back of the club I was passed by Brian Hurley, the bass player in the band. I said hi. Brian had also been the bass player on my John Sobol Poetry band CD a couple years earlier and we knew each other. "Sonny's pissed off", Brian told me, or words to that effect. I sighed, disappointed. And when Mike Allen, the sax player, whom I vaguely knew from Montreal, walked by and gave me the old arched eyebrow, my spirits sunk even lower.

I listened to the set, which was scorching. Then, as the clapping died down, I made my way to the front of the club and scooted unobtrusively out the front door. But on my way down the stairs a woman grabbed my arm from behind and asked, "Are you the guy that wrote that article?". Now, I was disappointed but I wasn't afraid to face the music – so to speak – so I said, "yes, I am", preparing for the worst. "Sonny wants to meet you" she said. "He loved it!".

She led me back into the club where Sonny greeted me warmly in front of the rest of the band. "That's the best article anybody ever wrote about me" he said with a smile. Needless to say, I was beaming. We talked for a while and he gave me his address. Maybe one day I'll look him up.

As I said, it was a rare - very rare - moment of happy payback for having gone out on a limb. And it again proved what I have seen so often, that people tend to be very overprotective of bigshots whereas they themselves are often very open-minded and receptive to new ideas and energy. Sonny was deep. And he knew what I was trying to do. It was probably my most rewarding moment as a journalist.