It was in April that year that Status Quo were playing at Beau Sejour on their Famous in the Last Century Tour. Myself and photographer colleague Adrian Miller were despatched to do a pre-gig story.
Our brief from then chief photographer Dave Pearson was an off-the-wall suggestion for the two of us to flank either Rick or Francis Rossi as they signed my copy of the Piledriver LP while the other took the picture.
Having seen the band 16 times, the last in Liverpool minus Rick the day before his death, and a self-confessed member of the Quo Army, Adrian paced the pavement outside the Duke of Richmond Hotel like an expectant father outside the delivery room in an Ealing comedy as we waited for his idols to arrive.
Rick answered my questions, including one about his 1997 quadruple heart by-pass, and he even unbuttoned his shirt to show me the scar.
Surprisingly – to me at least – they liked the photograph idea. Adrian and myself sat either side of Francis Rossi as Rick got to work with Adrian's camera. In the next day's Guernsey Press, 18 April 2001, we gave him a credit for his work.
Before the concert later that night – Quo's third in the island – I was standing at the back of the Beau Sejour Hall when a member of the road crew approached me.
'Rick said to thank you for his photo credit,' he said.
Tongue-in-cheek I replied: 'Please tell him that it's fine, but I hope he's not expecting a freelance fee.'
Some weeks later a media colleague gave me a photograph they had taken of Rick taking the picture. How many people can say they have a photograph of a big star taking a photograph of them? Well, I did say it was off the wall.
On 22 July 2003, Beau Sejour was part of the itinerary for Status Quo's Heavy Traffic tour.
I was not involved in the pre-gig interview on that occasion but I asked a colleague to take along the photograph and to ask Rick and Francis if they remembered that day as well as I did.
Though they obligingly put their signatures on it, neither remembered it in the slightest.
While I could not call myself the biggest Status Quo fan, the band has an enormous following in the Bailiwick and beyond and Rick will be greatly missed by a multitude, me included.
