“So I try and fail. The incident that really broke me was the one with Ariel Zilber. I moved around with him a lot in the 1970s. We even wrote a little together. One night he had a gig at a club in Dizengoff Center, and I went with him. The show was supposed to start at 10, and of course, Ariel showed up at 12. Most of the people had already gone home and the four people left were antsy. And then he gets up and says to them, there’s also a warm-up artist. That’s me.

And I try to sing a song, a heavy song of mine called ‘Kaftu oti,’ and I get totally mixed up and the crowd starts shouting ‘go home.’ I stepped down embarrassed and stayed quiet. That’s it. A good reason to keep quiet for a few more years.