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own songs, but he did do the occasional cover, homage to his heroes, and I remember that night he sang Dylan’s “Eternal Circle.” Perhaps the song cast a spell on the evening, but it describes almost exactly how things went. Perhaps he even performed it with her in mind, as it wasn’t exactly in regular rotation on his set list.
    She was sitting at a table with some friends, and there might as well have been a spotlight on her. Their eyes met and held. For once, Tony’s gaze wasn’t fixed on the floor. I could feel the waves of desire and attraction pulsate between them. At the end of Tony’s set, she was still there, whereas the girl in the Dylan song had left. And I have to say that I have never heard Tony sing so well, so soulful and heartfelt. He wasn’t showy at all, but actually quite subdued, and absolutely spot on. His voice soared effortlessly into places it had never been before, and he took the audience’s emotions wherever he wanted to take them.
    After the set, Tony couldn’t just walk off the stage into the audience and take her hand. They’d tear him to bits, civilized as they seemed. The applause seemed to go on forever, then there was the obligatory encore. And another. But some sort of signal must have passed between the two of them, because when Tony got back to his dressing room, she was waiting for him.
    H ER NAME WAS C ONNIE , AND perhaps it’s stating the obvious to say how beautiful she was, to mention the luster of her tumbling auburn hair, those large dark eyes and the full lips just crying out to be kissed. And her figure—slight, but curved in all the right places. That night she was wearing a satiny green dress, I remember, fairly low cut and ending halfway down her thighs, showing off her long slim legs to perfection. But her beauty was more than just her looks. It went deeper. I could sense that even on our first meeting. She had an inner intelligence, beauty, and calm; she had soul, and she made an immediate and electric connection with Tony.
    Connie was in her early twenties, like Tony, and in no time they were chatting away as if they had known one another all their lives. Tony later told me that after I’d left, they went back to her flat and did nothing but sit up and talk about art and books and drink wine and listen to Roy Harper, Al Stewart, and Bert Jansch until dawn. The closest they came to anything sexual was holding hands and looking into one another’s eyes. There was certainly no lack of desire between them, he said, but that night, talking and wine and music were enough.
    I liked Connie. People have said that I was jealous, among other things, that I felt she came between Tony and me, or Tony and the band, but that’s simply not true. I loved her like a sister, and she was good for Tony. She was wise beyond words. If ever he got upset about anything, all she had to do was touch him gently and he calmed down right away. She was also a very talented artist and had paintings hanging in famous collections and galleries. I liked her stuff well enough, but to me it was abstract art, and it always surprised me that her most loyal fans saw so much more in it, a reflection of their own desires and struggles and images of the enslavement of women over the ages. I never saw any of that; they were just colored shapes to me. Beautiful shapes, and expertly arranged, but only shapes and colors, nonetheless. Still, she had her loyal followers, and she had ties with a loosely knit group or movement of female artists who wanted to lift up the art world by the scruff of its neck and shake it.
    With Connie in his life, Tony’s songs got even better, his stage presence more assured, more confident. Even though The Blackbird had attracted his mate, that didn’t diminish the beauty of his song. Now Tony looked audiences in the eye, and even his game leg didn’t seem such an encumbrance any more. His skin was still pale,