The guitarist who made Stevie Ray Vaughan “wet his pants”
A chance encounter can change everything, and musical history is built on them.
Sometimes a single meeting is enough to spark a band, like when John Lennon first met Paul McCartney. Other times, something far simpler can set a future hero in motion. All it takes is one moment of inspiration to light the fuse, and for Stevie Ray Vaughan, that moment came when he was just 16.
Up until then, not much had happened for Vaughan. His story followed a familiar path: a young boy receives a guitar, falls in love with rock and roll, teaches himself to play, forms a few teenage bands and dreams of something bigger. It was classic in another way, too. His family wanted him to choose a stable career, especially after his older brother, Jimmie Vaughan, had already dropped out of school to pursue music. It did not take long for Stevie to follow that same road, committing himself more and more to the guitar, but everything truly shifted after a chance moment in a Dallas bar.
At only 16, it was complete chance that Vaughan just happened to be there one night at Arthur’s in downtown Dallas. He wasn’t really old enough, but occasionally, he’d manage to get in to watch the jam nights where musicians would take their instruments and play together, there with his guitar, waiting for a moment to go up, and then a pivotal band walked in.
“Hey, we’re a South Texas band fixing to release an album. We want to take two of your sets tonight to get some exposure,” they said to the host. They obliged, and that was the night that ZZ Top played a random show at a random bar, and Vaughan watched transfixed.
“They got up there, and Stevie just about wet his pants; he couldn’t wait to play some blues with Billy,” Vaughan’s friend and old bandmate, Mike Steinbach, recalled as the young guitarist was losing his mind as the band began.
This was around 1970, when ZZ Top already were building a cult following but had yet to release ZZ Top’s First Album, and of course, Vaughan had heard of them. The band formed in Houston, which was basically the neighbouring scene to Dallas, and whispers of bands from one would quickly spread to the other. In particular, as a young player, Vaughan had obviously heard of Billy Gibbons, especially with his older brother Jimmie travelling around the play, encountering ZZ Top’s crowd along the way.
But that night, Vaughan didn’t just get to watch them; he got to join them. “They squared off and traded licks, and it was amazing,” Steinbach recalled, and it’s tough to think of any better encouragement for a young up-starter than direct approval from someone they admire, or a chance to prove their worth right alongside them.
From then on, the two would stay in each other’s orbit. Jimmie Vaughan and Gibbons ended up as close friends, and ZZ Top would go see the older Vaughan sibling’s shows, as Stevie recalled, “Billy’s done a lot of things for a lot of us that were coming up. He used to [get] like buses and ship two or three buses loaded with people to go see The Thunderbirds [Jimmie Vaughan’s band], just for fun.”
Making a friend in a high place is proof that you should always say yes to going to the blues bar.
