ZZ Top’s most manic moment: When a buffalo unleashed the rattlesnakes
On record, ZZ Top have always taken great pleasure in keeping things straightforward. For over 50 years, they’ve existed on a strict diet of no-bullshit blues rock, and they’re likely to take that ethos with them to their graves. I imagine their late bassist, Dusty Hill, is still abiding by this way of thinking from the afterlife, boogying on down to some good ol’ Texan rock and roll with the devil. If he’s not doing that and pouring himself one tot of whiskey on the rocks after another, then he’s disobeying the golden rules that the band lived by.
In a live setting, however, the band were far more extravagant than their music ever let on. It was always a spectacle with ZZ Top, who used to flaunt their incredibly macho personas on stage by parading around in their bejewelled jackets. It was all about rocking out as hard as possible, and even though there was little deviation in the structure of the songs or the lyrical themes of chasing women and frequenting the local watering holes, they always made sure they went the extra mile in their performances.
On one occasion, this perhaps went a little too far – even by their standards. In an effort to make their stage show for their fifth album, 1976’s Tejas, even more of a spectacle, they went all out and brought in every hazardous prop imaginable, and ran with the theme of their Texan heritage a tad too much. We’re not just talking pyrotechnics, but we’re talking a stage shaped like the Lonestar State itself, and we’re also talking a zoological assortment of buffalo, vultures and rattlesnakes.
While it might have seemed as though the band were setting themselves up for certain tragedy, things went according to plan for several dates of their tour. There were no fires, no accidental tumbles into the Gulf of Mexico, and no rowdy animals save for their fanbase. The band were performing at the top of their game, and the wild beasts were on their best behaviour.
It wouldn’t take long for things to go awry though, and as frontman Billy Gibbons recalls, “one night one buffalo decided he’d had enough. He rammed two glass cages containing the snakes. Suddenly we had a dozen rattlers crawling around onstage.” The berserk reaction of the buffalo was hardly surprising given their unruly temperament in the wild, and it’s probably fair to say that the band had had it coming with an idea so reckless.
None of the animals that they’d selected were especially safe to be around, and while no injuries happened at the show in question, there could have been plenty of opportunity for casualties with pecking, stampeding and poisoning from the animals they’d brought with them. Even the wranglers they’d brought with them supposedly had a tough time curbing the chaos.
Gibbons still found the whole ordeal amusing rather than a catastrophe, and while he has fond memories of drummer Frank Beard suggesting they played soothing music to calm the snakes – “a stupid idea, ’cause most snakes are deaf” – he decided that the best course of action in the moment was to abscond the scene and let their crew deal with the menagerie. “We didn’t even attempt it,” he recalled. “We just fled and left the roadies to minimise the damage.”
