Robyn Hitchcock’s Purple Sunglasses

Robyn Hitchcock performing with the Venus 3; photo by Carina Jirsch

OK, I promise I will finish blogging SXSW very soon (after all, I have all the YouTube videos from Days 3 and 4 uploaded and posted) but first, a quick one about meeting a hero of my youth.

In the spring of 1989, I had one of my best jobs ever (at least before arriving at Paste), making deliveries for a florist in suburban Columbia, S.C. The job was great because I was on my own, in a car (not in a warehouse with a watchful boss) and people were always happy to see me. (The funeral home stops creeped me out, but that was a minor quibble.) Plus, I got to provide my own soundtrack. The cassette (yes, I’m that old) that got the most in-car play was Queen Elvis by Robyn Hitchcock, a record I still love. I’ve followed Hitchcock’s prolific career avidly ever since.

One of the nice things about this job is that I occasionally get to meet my heroes, so after SXSW I arranged a podcast interview with Hitchcock (which—long story abridged here—ended up turning into a print interview.) After the interview I ended up driving Robyn and wife Michele Noach back to their hotel in my rattletrap 1996 Nissan Maxima (with car seat for my four-year-old). (For a brief, surreal moment, I almost had to remove the car seat to accommodate R.E.M.’s Peter Buck, who was touring with Robyn — but he decided to don his iPod and stroll the neighborhood around the club.) Sometimes these kinds of personal encounters end up negatively coloring my perception of the music, but I’m happy to say that Robyn, at 54, is anything but the cynical veteran one would expect him to be — despite some vocal difficulties and an acute need for a nap, he was charming, friendly and quite willing to discuss his songwriting for every moment of the 10-minute drive.

After a warm handshake at the door of his hotel, I drove back home with a silly grin on my face, listening to Eye. But when I got home, I discovered Robyn had left his famous, purple, John Lennon-style sunglasses in my car, wedged between the passenger seat and the door. Resisting the momentary urge to claim them as a one-of-a-kind souvenir (for my own, personal Hard Rock Café, thrilling to maybe 10 other people who share my quirky tastes) I called back the tour manager and arranged a guest list spot for the show. After all, Robyn needed his sunglasses back, right? Fortunately, I found Michele just inside the door and got a great evening of music as a bonus, including an amazing encore cover of The Byrds’ “Eight Miles High” with Robyn and Peter teaming up on the McGuinn solo.