My wife Monique and I quickly made it to the very front of the stage and directly in front of Todd. It has been 26 years since I have seen our hero and at that ocassion I sat in the very last row of the O'keefe Centre in Toronto. To see Todd's passion from up this close was amazing!!
Todd was in wonderful spirits and was very talkative and relaxed all night. The one exception was being dipleased about how Ian Gillian, the voice of Deep Purple, was getting better advertising for his upcoming concert. We were, not suprisingly, treated to the opening chords in a very sarcastic manner of "Smoke on the Water".
I have always been a huge fan of Todd's guitar playing and to see his hands working a few feet from my face was absolutely magical!
The show is very similar to The Power Trio tour and what a great band! Besides the constant two guitar attack of Todd and Jesse, Tony Levin and Jerry Morotta live up to their world class status. Tony had his own set of fans at the show who let out a great roar when he was introduced.
Personal highlights for myself included when my wife leaned onstage and yelled "hey Todd" as he was leaving the stage for the first time and he stopped and signed my "Live in Chicago '91". Another was meeting Don from Vancouver who is travelling across country for the whole tour. It was great hearing all of his stories and after driving him back to his hotel he gave us a set list that he had from a previous show. He said it was an extra. Just like the old days, a large part of the fun is meeting the other Todd fans.
Although he did not come back into the bar after the show to sign autographs, he did sign out back afterwards and after all of these years I was finally able to shake my hero's hand.
What a thrill and what a night!!!
