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“Get high everybody get high,” Billy Gibbons sang some 32 years ago when ZZ Top played New Orleans’ fabled music venue, The Warehouse, a night that was immortalized on the band’s breakthrough album Fandango. His greeting to the crowd in the opening lines of “Thunderbird” pretty much summed upGibbons’ experiences in New Orleans, his party town of choice over his many years in music. Gibbons was still learning the ropes during his days in the late 1960s in Houston with the Moving Sidewalks when he started hanging out in New Orleans clubs. Those experiences were formative for him and ZZ Top, the band he, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard turned into an American rock institution that is still going strong today. Gibbons, Hill and Beard will return to New Orleans as part of this year’s Jazz Fest lineup with a special set designed to showcase their love of the city’s musical history.
I think ZZ Top is an appropriate selection to play at Jazz Fest. Are you looking forward to the gig?
It’s going to be a real delight. For starters, we’re dusting off some New Orleans-written and recorded material that has been in our repertoire for quite some time. Wasn’t it Ernie K-Doe who said I’m pretty sure all music started in New Orleans?
That’s right.
Let’s just say U.S.A. That pretty much covers the territory. Some of the Specialty numbers we grew up on have a definite New Orleans stamp. Hopefully, we’ll be able revisit Professor Longhair, Fats Domino and a number of other New Orleans notables within a ZZ Top afternoon of entertainment. It’s a little known fact, but we made a very special appearance at a Warner Brothers private function in New Orleans many years ago. In addition to the little band from Texas trio, we had three saxophones and a piano player, some black brothers of ours from Houston who knew the music well. We did “Tipitina,” we did “Blue Monday” and a number of other New Orleans-related songs. After the show, Ahmet Ertegun came up to us and said, “I just want you guys to know that that’s some of the best renditions of that stuff I’ve ever heard.” That was good enough for me. Little did I tell him that we took the arrangements right off the records. [laughing] We couldn’t stray too far.
What were your first impressions of New Orleans when you started to come here?
My first experience with New Orleans? Oh, man. I remember going to New Orleans on field trips with my folks when I was five years old. I moved to New Orleans when I was 17 and have made a nuisance of myself ever since in the Crescent City.
Did you hear any music while you were there as a kid? Did your folks take you to Bourbon Street?
Yes indeed. My dad was an entertainer and I got to visit Cosimo Matassa’s joint back in the ’50s and got to see a lot of stuff going on. I guess what was notable about that experience was that being a fan of that kind of music and seeing it performed live put me one step closer toward realizing not only how it was done but why it was done. It was an impression that has stayed with me ever since.
When you say you moved there at 17, was this after the time covered in material you wrote about growing up in Texas such as “Master of Sparks?”
The “Master of Sparks” event was happening about that same time. The Moving Sidewalks band was up and running at that time. We had some friends that had an apartment in the French Quarter, right on Jackson Square in the Pontalba apartments, and they were going on a holiday and we very casually hinted that we would take care of it in their absence. Hah! Suuure we will! That was one more New Orleans experience. Pretty fine. It was summertime. If you’re willing to put up with the excessive heat and humidity, why not do it in New Orleans? The French Quarter was wild, particularly at that point back in the ’60s, everything was breaking open, going crazy. There was lots and lots of music. It was a great spot to be in at the time.
Where did you hang out?
Oh, all the usual places, Papa Joe’s. The Bourbon Street joints all had live bands. Frogman Henry had his own joint, Fats was playing on occasion, Joe Barry, he was always down there with his band. Some of the big bands were there, the Boogie Kings, the Texas soul revue bands, the Rollercoasters, Jiving Gene, the National Soul Revue, some of the R&B bands, both black and white, that were doing all that kind of material. All of those bands were playing the Port Arthur triplets as they called it (sings) Dah – na-na-na-na-na, Dah – na-na-na-na-na.
Did you sit in?
I sat in with Cookie and the Cupcakes. The guitarist was Leon Jacobson. He saw me watching and watching and he asked me, “Do you play guitar?” I told him I was trying to pick it up. He was on a break and we were sitting at the side of the stage and I was playing around with his guitar and he said, “I’ve got another guitar up there. C’mon up and join me.”
Did you ever run into Earl King back then?
I ran into him, but just as an observer. We weren’t pals but he was such an impressionistic figure. How can you mention New Orleans without Earl King? Snooks Eaglin was around. Dr. John was a guitar player back in those days, I saw him. I saw the late Jerry Long, he was from Port Arthur. He was a session man; he played on “We Got a Good Thing Going” as well as some of his own records. He was a great entertainer.
Were those experiences influential on the ZZ Top sound?
Oh yeah. Definitely. I wouldn’t call us a Crescent City band, but that music stamped its impression on our domain.
Side One of Fandango was recorded live at The Warehouse. Do you recall any particulars about that night?
Back then, in order to make a live rock record you had to stage the setting in the right place. The Warehouse back in the ’70s was THE PLACE. It doesn’t get any better than telling stories about The Warehouse. The recording was done by a mobile service that just pulled up to the site and because that building was so old, all those warehouses down there were old. Though the building was still standing, one of the reasons it was turned from an actual warehouse into a night club called The Warehouse was because it was in such bad shape it was cheap to rent. There were holes in the walls. When the mobile truck pulled up, they said, “Oh, this is going to be an easy in. We’ll just use this hole in the wall to run our wires through.”
It was a fun evening. We played there a number of times. We found it one of the more attractive destinations. It was just so much fun to hang out. There were a lot of characters that made it their local haunt. We couldn’t wait to get back and play The Warehouse, cooking up red beans and rice on the side. It was a great sounding room, just giant wooden timbers and brick walls, all the elements that go into making it a great sounding room. It was all in the palm of your hand at The Warehouse, it was just a giant resonant speaker box. Great spot.
That’s a good description, and it points out how much the secret to ZZ Top’s success has been understanding how to make your music sound a certain way. You’ve had a great ability to sculpt your sound over the years. The sound itself sometimes can be as important as the playing.
The most handy understanding of that comes through the tone line. It goes back to what we were talking about before: What kind of impressions make you do what you do? That didn’t stop by just watching performers and learning how to play the classic three chords. It was about creating the kind of sounds that you wanted to hear. When people ask me, “What great words of wisdom can you share?” I tell them, “Learn to play what you want to hear and learn to make it sound like you want to hear it.”
Many of your songs are about events in your life. Did any of your experiences in New Orleans show up in any of your songs?
Was I moved to write about it? We could fashion a pamphlet about my experiences there. Though the heart of it might be the French Quarter, for most people it doesn’t stop there. There are pleasures all over that crazy place that still linger on and would be worthy of making note of.
Many of your songs are impressionistic. It’s like the section in Easy Rider when they get to New Orleans and they have that psychedelic experience in the brothel and the graveyard. It’s all dream imagery. Many of your songs remind me of that kind of dream sequence. It could be inspired by New Orleans or somewhere else.
That one segment of Easy Rider, that dream sequence, I think the reason that resonates with so many people is that it was not from the screenplay’s direction but it was basically revisiting what most people experienced down there. No one could ever design that experience any other way than through a dreamlike trance state.
Did you have any friends who were affected by the flood?
We enjoyed the presence of a good friend of mine as a youngster, Robert Fortune. He’s running a blues rock trio called the Robert Fortune Band. They’re quite talented. They rode it out. He said that he would think twice about doing it again the next time. But they stuck it out, and they didn’t pull up stakes afterwards. Most of my friends with a vested interest to stay lived in the Quarter or close to the river, which didn’t get as devastated as other areas of the city. We took care of them while they were unable to return, but most of our pals are back there. Right there on the corner of St. Philip and Royal Street, there’s a young lady named Tracy who specializes in making hats. Oh, she was miserable about having to leave New Orleans. People from New Orleans, they have a good attitude. They take it all in stride.
What can we look forward to from ZZ Top down the road?
In addition to the Jazz Fest gig, we’re doing a series of shows, and new material is being written as we go along the highways and byways. Most of the songs ZZ Top is known for are about experiences we’ve survived, if you want to call it that. [laughing] Let’s see, there’s a European run during the summer, and then back in the States at the end of the year. So it’s going to be quite a busy year for us.
