I was 13 years old when I heard X-Ray Spex for the first time. My older brother had just befriended a kid named André — an art-school waif who wore his motorcycle jacket in the summer and carried his entire tape collection in the backseat of his car. I sensed that my brother regarded André as someone important, as a tastemaker, so I paid attention to him whenever he came around. At one point, André stayed with us for the weekend. I built up the nerve to ask him if I could make copies of some of those tapes. André was so excited to pass this on — so excited for me to hear whatever was on those cassettes — that he just gave me the keys to his car.

“Just take as much as you can before Sunday night,” he said. It became like a race.

I made well over a dozen tapes that weekend. It was the first time I’d hear Discharge, Stiff Little Fingers, GBH, The Damned, and Blitz — bands that arguably changed the course of my life — but in the end, I was most fascinated by X-Ray Spex. Poly Styrene seemed to be singing from a different place than everyone else; her indignation came from a different place. Blitz sang lyrics like “Smash the system that smashes you,” but it was entirely unclear in what way they were being smashed. X-Ray Spex sang lyrics like “We gotta be exploited by somebody,” and I felt — even back then — an almost palpable feeling that this was a person who genuinely felt used up. Unlike the choleric delivery that announced the arrival of the male punk frontman, Poly’s anger was nestled in pathos: Her songs didn’t make me angry because she was angry, but rather, angry because she was sad.

Many years later, my friend Graham started a band with Poly called Flower Aeroplane. I don’t have them anymore, but the demos he gave me were just outright fucking gorgeous. In the ten-year interim between hearing X-Ray Spex for the first time and finding myself one-degree of separation from this woman I adored, Poly and I had both become Hare Krishna devotees — she adopted the name Maharani devi-dāsi; mine had become Narottama dāsa — and it occurred to me that actually meeting her was no longer an outlandish fantasy. It occurred to me that I might actually get to talk to Poly Styrene someday.

This happened once, backstage at a Shelter show in London in 1998. When she walked into the room I was 13 years old again — just as naïve, just as awkward, just as clumsy — and I had no idea what I’d say to her. The last thing I remember about that moment, in fact, was simply being introduced to her, greeting her with folded palms and saying “Hare Krishna.” We spoke for a few minutes, but my imagination ran far too wild to recall specifics. Instead, I remember generalities: how pretty, how soft-spoken, how composed she was. In my life, I’ve met more famous, more accomplished, more intimidating persons than Poly Styrene who utterly failed to paralyze my faculties the way she did that night.

The only other thing I remember was walking off stage and muttering to myself. Holy shit, I said. Poly Styrene just watched me play guitar.

I would have killed for a second chance to meet.