Steve Tilston was 21 years old, starting out in music, when a ZigZag magazine interview brought him to John Lennon’s attention. Asked by journalist Richard Howell whether wealth and fame would change his songwriting, Tilston said yes, it probably would. Lennon read the piece, disagreed, and wrote Tilston a letter explaining why, with his home phone number at the top and a question at the end asking for a reply. Tilston never got that letter. He didn’t find out it existed for 34 years.
That missing piece of correspondence became the basis for the 2015 film Danny Collins, and Tilston ended up meeting Al Pacino, who played a fictionalised version of the story on screen.
In this extract of a forthcoming Strange Brew Podcast episode with Jason Barnard, Steve takes us through the Cousins Folk Club scene that launched his career in 1969-70, the Lennon letter and what might have happened if he’d received it, working with Al Pacino, winning the Radio 2 Folk Award for The Reckoning, and his music today.
