Beautiful Freedom

Photo Courtesy - Robert Altman
(collector editions prints of this photo available )


Mr Havens performed a very intimate show last Sat. night at the Napa Valley Opera House. Harry Manx opened - a special evening.

Havens played a 2 hour set strong, full of spirit and sweaty. The master strummer and vintage man gave us Freedom along with many other greats and closed out the evening with Cocker tune "You Are So Beautiful" and had full audience participation alternating back and forth lyric words of 'beautiful' with 'wonderful'.

Post show we quite literally ran into the legend at the elevator while exiting off the wrong floor mistakenly, which gave us a great opportunity to chat one-on-one with the man who exudes such immense warmth and kindness. One of my guests sat next to Havens in first class on a flight some 25 years ago during which the two had shared some great conversation ... some part about Haven's museum in NY for kids which he immediately recalled upon re-connecting. As the story goes, people in-flight kept coming up and kissing Haven's rings, my friend wasn't even sure who he was at that time...

We hugged and parted ways, but not before Richie graciously signed his photo in my personal copy of Robert Altman's "Sixties" book (pix above) taken by Altman in 1968 .



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