I saw Rob Davis from Mud on Saturday night, on his way in to the ELO concert at Wembley. He was just going in the same entrance as me, had to show his ticket like everybody else. He was a great guitarist, and I liked nearly all of what Mud did - sure, they were kind of throwaway, and not to be taken seriously, but I didn't WANT to take anything seriously back then.
My wife said, "How did you know it was him?"
I said, "Well, he was wearing his salmon pink jumpsuit with massive flares that he wore in the video for Dyna Mite, and long dangly earrings, and he was carrying a guitar..." But the truth is more prosaic: I was looking up how to play the riff from Tiger Feet recently, and lo and behold there was a video of him showing that very thing.
One story always comes to mind about Rob Davis. Back at the height of his fame with Mud, I saw an article in a tabloid or a Sunday paper about a girl who was obsessed with following him. She was about 15, and was from some small town in then West Germany. She'd run away from home several times in order to stalk him, so her mother had decided to accompany her on this latest trip that made the British papers. There was a photo of them both, looking kind of forlorn. It was rather bizarre. What did they think Rob Davis was going to do - court her, marry her? Play her 'Lonely This Christmas'? The story made me feel a bit gosh-aren't-people-fucking-weird and a bit sad, too. I forgot about it.
The next day I went to Tower Hill tube to get a train, and the mother and daughter were sitting on a bench in the station. As I'd seen their photo the day before, they were instantly recognizable. I wonder how it all turned out.