IN 2013, I RECEIVED A NUMBER OF E-MAILS FROM FORMER CELLAR DOOR employee Morty Glickstein (a pseudonym for my friend Keith Krokyn). Morty (Keith) worked at the Cellar Door for several years in the 1970s. Each e-mail had a humorous attachment. Most of the attachments were letters written to the Cellar Door—some irate, some mundane, all amusing.
One of the letters intrigued me. It was from a teenage girl named Claire threatening suicide if Cellar Door wouldn’t sell her two front-row tickets to see Yes in concert. Part of me (a very small part of me) wondered if she got her tickets or if she committed suicide. I thought that it might be easy to track her down in the Internet age. Her letter included her last name and the address of where she lived in 1976. I redacted those facts from the letter printed below:
May 6, 1976
Dear Cellar Door promoters:
I have kept my ears open for months to hear about a Yes concert. Now, tonight, I heard Surf on WHFS say the tickets are on sale already for a Peter Frampton/Yes concert on June 13. Those are my two favorite groups in the whole world.
I know that promoters have good tickets set aside and I want you to know that I will commit suicide if I can’t buy two front row tickets. Or at the very least, tickets in the first few rows. I swear that my friend and I are the biggest Yes freaks in Washington, and we are going to go all over town to get tickets if we have to. But I really think you should sell me two front row seats PLEASE! Right now I feel like that’s the only thing in the world I want. I’m going to KILL myself if I don’t get them. Please write me back, I trust you.
Love,
Claire M.
Don’t worry. I can get the money to pay for the tickets. PLEASE help me.
The only spelling error in her letter was the name “Surf.” The deejay on WHFS spelled/spells his name Cerphe, but one wouldn’t know that unless one saw his name in print. Using various databases, including LinkedIn and Google, I found a woman named Claire with the same last name as the letter writer. She was also from Washington, D.C., but living and working in Paris. I wrote her the following e-mail:
Hello Claire,
Please ignore this email if you are not the same Claire M. who loved the British group, Yes. If you are one and the same . . . please let me know. I have a copy of a very funny letter you wrote to Cellar Door Concerts attempting to get front row tickets to their concert in D.C. in 1976.
Kindest regards,
Michael Oberman
Claire responded,
Hey Michael,
Wow, you are really the champion of follow-up!
Yep, that is me . . . or I should say YES.
I’d love to have the letter. If you have scanned it, please copy it also to my best friend Melissa with whom I doubtless wanted to attend that concert.
I’d also be delighted to know how you came upon the letter—and figured out how to find me now.
Kindest regards,
Claire M.
Paris, France
I felt that I should respond,
Hi Claire,
Last things first . . . finding you was easy. Just put your name in Google and there you were . . . process of elimination allowed me to hone in on someone who seemed to be the right age and was American. The letter was emailed to a number of us who had worked at Cellar Door Concerts at some point in our lives. For the last year we have been having some fun reading letters from fans of acts . . . mainly pleas for tickets. Out of the current batch . . . your letter stood out. Not many people (with one exception . . . you) said they would commit suicide if they didn’t get tickets. Since I found you alive and hopefully well, I assume you got tickets.
If you ever get back to the D.C. area . . . give me a shout.
Michael Oberman
Claire wrote me back that she did not get the tickets. However, she said that she would be visiting her aunt and uncle who lived in Potomac, Maryland, in the future. She did visit them, and I had a delightful dinner with them. We have been friends ever since. She visited again in 2018, and we spent another delightful day together. If anyone is waiting for a fairy-tale ending, there isn’t one. Claire is happily married, and I wasn’t looking for a romantic encounter. I am happy that I have a friend—and a friend who lives in Paris. Perhaps I can couch surf at some point.