Frank Zappa onstage at AWHQ, March 10, 1973. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
Gram Parsons, a revered figure ever since his work with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers, came to town in February of 1973. The show drew large numbers of fans out of the woodwork, many of whom happened to be attractive young females. People seemed to see whatever they wanted to see in Gram: to some, he was a cowboy maharajah; to others, a bad boy; and to still others, a stoic romantic poet. From what I saw, his jowls were going soft from bad food, bad liquor, and hard drugs. But there was a spiritual vibe there, or maybe that was from the reflected glow in the eyes of his singing partner, Emmylou Harris. She might well have been an underage preacher’s daughter who’d run off with the bad boy and gone pagan, and was now wildly intoxicated by a renegade spirit.
“We completely blew off the top of the AWHQ in Austin,” Emmylou said years later. “In fact, we had to go back and redo a song for the final encore because we had been called back so many times that we didn’t have anything left. So we started to do the show over again.”1
While they were in Austin, we learned that Gram’s band needed a place where Gram could teach his new guitarist some country licks. We moved the band into the pit under the Cabaret, which was about to be converted to a game room, so they could rehearse. Now all they needed was some weed. Lucky Pankratz came to the rescue, bringing what Gram Parsons said was the biggest bag of weed he’d ever seen. “Texas ounces would be close to a half pound anywhere else,” he said.
Together, Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons were mesmerizing. More than a few fans followed them to Houston for their next performance. The girls who followed Gram, the so-called Grievous Angels, did a lot to establish him as a cult figure, but a lot of the real heat coming off the stage was stoked by his main squeeze, Emmylou.
Man Mountain and the Green Slime Boys had done a great job as opening act at the Dillo, and our pals at the Houston venue, Liberty Hall, also booked the band for the Houston show. Ron Rose, Man Mountain himself, called it the highlight of his career. Gram Parsons’s song “Sin City” was one of the band’s most popular songs, a real crowd-pleaser. As the opening act, however, the band felt that playing the song before their hero’s set was a no-no. As it worked out, Gram left the song off his set in Austin and again in Houston. During sound check before the show at Liberty Hall, Ron finally found the courage to ask Gram if he minded.
“Up until the moment I mentioned ‘Sin City,’ Gram had been real standoffish,” Ron said years later. “As soon as I told him our dilemma, he changed. He turned into a puppy.”
That night, Man Mountain and the Green Slime Boys “played [their] asses off” and were called back for an encore. “When we went back out to do ‘Sin City,’” said Ron, “Gram and Emmylou came out with us. Gram waved out at the audience, and here came Neil Young and Linda Ronstadt to join the chorus. Best backup singers I ever had.”
Gram Parsons was dead six months after he played our place, overdosed on heroin. When Emmylou Harris returned a few months later to publicize her solo album, she seemed to be a changed woman. She wore high-buttoned collars and floor-length dresses. She seemed something like a widowed prairie schoolmarm, shrouded in mourning, uptight and defensive.
It was a sad thing to witness. So much country music has been inspired by alcohol-influenced infidelity and misery wallowing, but heroin seemed a lot more evil and insidious.
* * *
I was never much for hanging with the musicians who came through, with some notable exceptions, such as Freddie King, Loudon Wainwright III, and members of the Grateful Dead, Commander Cody, and Asleep at the Wheel. Some of my close encounters with other bands made me realize they weren’t like you and me. Fortunately, encounters like those stood me in good stead when the bookings for the spring of 1973 rolled around. Every night, we seemed to be in the presence of completely different, vivid personalities. Just looking at the calendar for the middle of the month of March, I have to scratch my head in wonder. I took great pride in the fact that the Dillo had become so much more than a big hippie music hall. But how did we deal with the weekly parade of royally quirky personalities?
3/8/73 Thu, French Italian Theatrical Troupe
3/10/73 Sat, Frank Zappa, Jean-Luc Ponty, Blind George McClain
3/11/73 Sun, Austin Ballet Theatre
3/15–3/17/73 Thu–Sat, Freddie King, Al “TNT” Braggs
3/18/73 Sun, Staff Party in Luckenbach, Kinky’s first gig
3/22–3/23/73 Thu–Fri, Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, Texas Instruments
3/24/73 Sat, Bette Midler, Barry Manilow
In the space of fourteen days, we welcomed Zappa, Kinky, and Midler. What a combination. Then there were the regulars: the theater and dance people, the bluesmen like Freddie King—who was like family by then—the folkies, the country rockers, the jazz fusion guys like John McLaughlin, and the legends of traditional jazz, such as one of my all-time favorites, Mose Allison. Most all of them were super talented and interesting in some special way or other, and some of them we’ll never be able to forget, no matter how hard we might try.
Frank Zappa intimidated me before we ever shook hands. Zappa and his band, the Mothers of Invention, were the most expensive act we’d ever booked, but their edgy, experimental brand of rock music appealed to our customer base to the point that the Dillo brain trust agreed the hefty performance fee was worth the expense.
Zappa’s contract stipulated that an Armadillo loading crew had to be on hand to unload the band’s eighteen-wheeler truck and have their equipment set up by noon. Four hours were blocked out for rehearsal, and a one-hour sound check was scheduled after dinner, before the doors opened at seven for the first of two shows that night.
We were already well aware that there was no slop factor in the timetable. Zappa’s reputation for exactitude was informed by stories of tantrums, rages, fits of stubbornness, and last-minute cancellations if his demands weren’t met.
It was the first time we’d ever attempted two shows in one night. That alone scared me stiff. The idea of ending one show, emptying the hall, cleaning it up, and refilling it with 1,500 more hippies, many of whom had bought tickets to both shows, all in less than an hour, seemed a bit far-fetched. I had a hard time picturing anything but resistance from 3,000 ticket holders who’d paid a premium price to see Frank Zappa. Dillo-philes were used to endless encores by bands who fed on rowdy applause and thunderous roars of appreciation from their rabid fans in our house.
The contract stipulated that the opening act be a solo performer and that the opening act’s equipment must be set up and removed without moving any of the Mothers’ equipment. I booked Blind George McClain to fill the bill and to prove to Zappa that he wasn’t the only weirdo in the business.
The truck with the Mothers’ equipment didn’t arrive before noon as scheduled. It didn’t arrive by one o’clock, either. It pulled up to the building shortly after five, by which time the bandleader was thoroughly steamed. I walked up behind him onstage as our guys were hauling the stuff off the truck and thought I saw smoke coming from his ears. It turned out to be smoke from a Winston, one of hundreds I saw Zappa suck down before the night was over.
By the time everything was in place, a huge gaggle of ticket holders had gathered in the beer garden. At seventeen minutes before showtime, some of the first-come-first-serve regulars began pounding the giant wooden doors, which created a booming jungle-drum effect. My nuts began to ache and shrivel. I was visualizing a standoff between Zappa and a riot of angry ticket holders.
Zappa’s eyes were coal-black, angry slits when he turned to a very nervous band, strapped on his guitar, raised its neck like a conductor’s wand, and brought it crashing down in a thunderous roar of rock ’n’ roll. The crowd outside fell silent. A four-hour rehearsal and a one-hour sound check were squeezed into those seventeen minutes. I didn’t know they would end at showtime until Marty Perellis, Zappa’s road manager, looked at his watch, pointed to Frank, and moved his finger across his Adam’s apple, indicating that time was up. The band nervously filed offstage followed by a thoroughly pissed Zappa, who snorted, “Some fucking sound check!” The doors flew open and a hoard of happy hippies surged in.
Frank Zappa and Blind George McClain backstage at AWHQ, March 10, 1927. Photograph by Burton Wilson.
I chose this moment to approach the Mother Superior. “Frank, I doubt if you usually have much interest in your opening act, but I thought you might want to meet Blind George McClain.”
Distracted but polite, Zappa said, “What’s he do?”
“He plays the piano and sings,” I said. “He’s kind of a cross between George Jones and Ray Charles. He’s blind, crippled, and mostly deaf.”
Zappa squinted at me. “I’d like to meet him right now.”
I led Zappa backstage and upstairs toward the office. I said to make sure to speak up because Blind George really was hard of hearing. We walked into the office where Blind George was sitting on the sofa, crumpled down into the cushions, waiting to be led to the piano onstage. Blind George had a skinny, twisted physique, and dark-black circles framed his sightless eyes. I leaned down and spoke loudly, “George, I’d like you to meet Frank Zappa.”
Blind George tilted his head back at me, and a glowing smile appeared on his face. He held out his bony hand, and Frank took it gently.
“Hi, George, I’m Frank Zappa,” said Zappa, his voice a low whisper.
George shouted, “What?”
Startled, Frank leaned down lower and spoke in a much louder voice, “Did you hear our sound check, George?”
“Yeah!” George yelled back. “You were way too fucking loud!”
During the day on Saturday, I drove Zappa out to a mesquite and cedar forest west of Austin, where a small group of philosophers, architects, teachers, and designers lived in yurts, round Mongolian huts with sloping roofs. There were four single-room yurts occupied by single individuals or couples surrounding a larger yurt that functioned as a communal kitchen, den, and living room. Another yurt, designated as the John Yurt, had a restroom and showers.
The yurt folks were a cordial bunch, so I talked Zappa into checking it out. He listened with rapt attention to the tales of the yurt dwellers, fixing his eyes on them as they proselytized and asking them questions. They regaled him with tales of catatonic and schizophrenic patients making dramatic behavioral improvements after living in yurts for three weeks. Frank was captivated.
As we drove back to the Armadillo, swerving our way in and out of a gravel ditch, Zappa suddenly snapped his fingers and snorted, “Shit!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“It won’t work.” His face had fallen. He had a glum and disappointed look.
“What won’t work?” I asked, still in the dark.
His brow furrowed, and the corners of his mouth turned down.
“If something is going to save the world, that something has to pass several tests. One of those tests is it’s got to work in New York City.”
I realized right then and there that yurts would not save the world.
Zappa didn’t do illicit drugs. He chain-smoked Winston cigarettes and drank coffee by the gallon, but he was more vocally antidrug than any musician I’d ever met, even though his Dada-absurdist music was the soundtrack for millions of LSD trips.
Jan Beeman learned that the way to Zappa’s heart was through his stomach. The Armadillo kitchen even got special thanks on Zappa’s Bongo Fury album, most of which was recorded at the Dillo with Captain Beefheart in 1975. That was after Jan learned that the mere scent of weed was sufficient to piss him off. After the band had been served, Zappa appeared in the kitchen and summoned her backstage. He was waiting for her in the greenroom with his coffee machine and his cigarettes. “You smell like marijuana,” he said. “The next time I come back here, don’t let me smell any marijuana around you.”
“You’ve been smoking and drinking coffee ever since you got here,” Jan said. “What do you have against marijuana?”
“I’m allergic to it,” he said.
Zappa returned to the Armadillo the next year. At one point during the show, he made a request to the audience. Pointing to the open doors of the emergency exit at stage right, he said, “Please blow your smoke that way.”
Not long afterward, the show was stopped because of a bomb threat. The hall was cleared, with everyone directed to leave through the aforementioned exit. Had the caller been an irate pot smoker? We never found out. After the place was searched, people were allowed to reenter, and Zappa resumed the show on the exact note where the band had left off.
Zappa was constantly on the watch for scofflaws on his crew. If anyone was caught with contraband, they were fired immediately and had to pay their own way home. Apparently, his policy dated back to an experience with a former Armadillo employee named Leon Rodriguez. On a tour with Zappa in England, Rodriguez and another crew member were partying in their hotel room with two girls when the London bobbies busted them. Zappa picked up their legal tab—bailing them out of jail, paying their lawyers, sending them back to England for their court dates, and then paying for their return to the United States. Understandably, he never wanted to have to do that again.
Zappa was extremely business oriented, especially for a musician, always aware that he was running an organization as well as leading a band. He hired several of our crew to go on the road with him, and that raised his already significant profile around the Armadillo. Since his crew included some of our people, we went out of our way to accommodate the crew whenever they wanted to discreetly get high. We let them use the Chicanoline, the break room for security where roadies and staff could drink and smoke weed out of public view. Zappa knew all about the Chicanoline and told his crew to stay the hell out of there if they wanted to keep their jobs.
* * *
Kinky Friedman called me late one night and asked if we could meet for coffee. We’d never met before. After we decided on a place, he said, “I hear you look like Jerry Garcia.”
“That should make me easy to spot,” I said.
“I’m easy, too,” he said. “Look for somebody who looks like a swarthy Arab skyjacker.”
Mike Tolleson had already cautioned me to be patient with the singer-songwriter, who preferred to be called “the Kinkster” and who routinely referred to himself in the third person, as crowned heads of state traditionally do.
We met, and within a short time I decided that I was impressed with Kinky’s intelligence, cunning, and guile, all of which he bragged about possessing. I agreed to join his conspiracy, and we drew up plans to promote the debut of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys at an Armadillo staff party, which would be held at an old dance hall in a rural community west of Austin called Luckenbach. The population there was in the single digits.
Poster for a Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys show at AWHQ, March 22–23, 1973. Artwork by Cliff Carter.
At the time, only a handful of people outside the Texas Hill Country could’ve found Luckenbach on a map. It was completely off the cultural radar. Not until the following summer did bands start playing there regularly. Then, in 1977, Waylon Jennings’s recording of a song by Bobby Emmons and Chips Moman called “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)” touched the little German settlement with the gilded brush of fame.2
Our promotion of the Kinkster’s debut on FM rock stations in Austin and San Antonio attracted an audience that was just about as hip, tolerant, and open-minded as Kinky could have hoped for. But the night got off to an unsettling start. Just as the targeted demographic began to arrive, all the benches around the dance floor started filling up with big, husky German farmers—women with white- or blue-tinted perms and men with silver pomaded hair and complexions that had turned beet red after decades of hard work under the unforgiving Hill Country sun. This was their community hall, after all, and we were interlopers from Austin. If you’re familiar with the history of German settlements in Texas, you’ll know that the Germans immigrated here beginning in the 1840s, and that many of them were progressive thinkers, abolitionists, and seekers of a utopian ideal. That was then, however, and this was now. The descendants of the original immigrants were not known for having a tolerant attitude toward long-haired dope smokers seeking their own utopian experiences.
Kinky and the Texas Jewboys looked frightened. I was frightened.
“Wilson, I can’t go out there,” Kinky said. “Those Germans will tear me apart.”
“Kinky, you’ve got no choice,” I said. “You don’t stand a chance against me and this hammer.”
Kinky bravely took the stage and sailed into “Get Your Biscuits in the Oven (and Your Buns in the Bed).” He followed with one classic after another—“The Ballad of Charles Whitman,” “Ride ’Em Jewboy,” and so on.
Caught off guard by the laughter from the city kids as well as by the edgy style of the country music, the Germans seemed oblivious to the lyrics. Somewhere in there was the key to Kinky’s survival.
On the following Thursday and Friday, Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys played at the Armadillo. Initially, critic Joe Gracey wasn’t impressed. He didn’t like the band and commented that there was a certain “overblownness” to Kinky’s act. The world would soon realize that for the Kinkster, “overblownness” was just a starting place.
* * *
What a season. After Zappa, then three nights of Kinky, we had the Divine Miss M on Saturday. Bette Midler, the showstopping song belter newly signed to Atlantic Records, was on her first national tour, and the Armadillo was her only Texas date. There were far glitzier places to play in the state, but here she was at our hippie palace.
The show attracted a large contingent of black cross-dressers. Splendidly attired in flowing gowns and high heels, they all appeared to be over six feet tall. It was quite the sight. Despite the fact that Midler had jump-started her career performing at the Continental Baths, a gay bathhouse in New York City, the sight of our Lone Star queens of color seemed to freak her out. They crowded close to the edge of the stage, trying to touch her dress.
I admit that Bobby Hedderman, Hank Alrich, and the rest of us were a little freaked out, too. We hadn’t known that there were enough drag queens in Austin to fill a VW Bus, much less the Armadillo.
Bette Midler was one of the sharpest entertainers I ever met. A minute before she walked onstage, she grabbed me by the collar, pulled me down into her intense gaze, and said, “OK, stud, you’ve got sixty seconds to tell me everything about this little town.”
“Pardon me, ma’am,” I said, “this is the capital of Texas. Our university has a three-hundred-foot-tall phallic symbol that glows on the tip when there’s a victory by the mighty ’Horns.”
“Far out,” she said, whistling through her oversized, toothy grin. Charging onto the stage, she ripped into a routine that sounded like it had been put together by a team of top-shelf comedy writers. Her backing band was led by pianist Barry Manilow, of whom you may have heard.
The Divine Miss M left the sellout crowd panting for more. In her wake, we wondered about all those cross-dressers. What other communities existed out there that we didn’t know about? Every night at the Dillo could turn out to be an education.
In mid-May we saw even more glitter and makeup on men, with big teased hair, flashy earrings, platform shoes, and other feminine flourishes on both sexes. The occasion was a show by Slade, a glam band from the UK who had a string of hit singles to their credit, songs with catchy hard-rock hooks and slangy titles: “Cum On Feel the Noize,” “Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me” . . . you get the picture. Slade owed a lot to the David Bowie–New York Dolls glam scene. Years later, bands ranging from the Ramones to Nirvana would claim to have been influenced by the band.
Under the makeup and bangles, the guys in Slade looked like British street toughs. The singer, Noddy Holder, had puffy muttonchops and a pug face. He wore plaid suspenders and a top hat with mirrors all over it. Illuminated by spotlights as he sang and danced, the hat doubled as a disco ball.
Slade was the loudest band ever to play the Armadillo. Even Jesse Sublett, whose band the Skunks was reputed to be the loudest rock band in Austin in the late seventies, said that the band was “painfully, excruciatingly loud.”
The backstage-door security man, Steve Russell, a huge Native American who went on to be a lawyer, writer, and judge, made his only ever request/demand that night. Steve asked to be moved to parking lot duty during the show. Guns and knives in the dark, he said, were far less risky to his health.
