It's 10:30 A.M. on a Friday in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Connie Hamzy is sitting at the bar of the Sticky Fingerz Rock'N'Roll Chicken Shack, telling a story to a small audience of busboys and cocktail waitresses. "So I'm out on the tour bus, smokin' dope and blowing roadies," she says in a lazy Southern accent. "And who comes into the back lounge? Neil fucking Diamond." A man pulls out a stool next to her. He is wearing a hat shaped like the snout of a hog. "Neil looks me up and down and nods his approval," Hamzy continues. "Then he gets high with us, and disappears backstage. A few minutes later, his manager says he wants to see me in his dressing room. So I knock on the door, and there's Neil waiting for me in a blue robe. And I didn't just suck him - there was fucking, too."

At first glance, Hamzy could be any middle-aged woman half-drunk on a Friday morning. But a closer examination reveals she's different somehow, maybe even important. Customers - mostly men- begin approaching her from all directions. They seem to know her name. They say hello and want to shake her hand. The man in the pig hat buys her a drink. She is, after all, a celebrity. As Grand Funk sang in "We're an American Band," "Out on the road for 40 days/ Last night in Little Rock put me in a haze/ Sweet, sweet Connie, doin' her act/ She had the whole show and that's a natural fact."