As the big screen bursts into life at a little after 11pm, a huge cheer erupts. It’s Saturday, January 9, 2016 and Classic Rock is at Big Red, a bar on London’s Holloway Road, for one of several memorial events taking place in the capital for one of rock music’s most loved characters.
Over the next couple of hours we will laugh, cry and whoop in affirmation as a procession of grieving relatives and bandmates, hard-rock superstars, wrestlers, publicists, roadies and people that our subject had met in bars before becoming lifelong friends – even his cobbler, the man responsible for those signature white boots – takes to the lectern to deliver their emotional tales.
