By James Casey
One evening, while enjoying the company and hospitality of friends, I was introduced to an old man who claimed to loathe ZZ Top with a passion unrivaled. More than the Tea Party hates Obama. More than a cook at McDonalds hates his job. More than a Macintosh devotee hates a PC. Even more than I hate Billy Joel. Serious enmity there, as you can see.
When I asked him why he detested that particular band so much, he was hesitant with a reply. He shuffled and shirked, then tried to change the subject. I pressed him. He avoided it like the plague. He turned to walk away, but I grabbed him by the sleeve of his jacket, pulling him back towards me before he had a chance to get even three steps.
“Dude,” I said. “It’s no big deal! I don’t think anyone here cares all that much. But there has to be a crazy explanation behind such malevolence. You’ve piqued my curiosity now, and I don’t intend to let you leave until you’ve spilled the beans. I mean, I can tell you exactly why I hate Billy Joel in five short words: ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire’. So what’s your story?”
“Well…uh…I suppose that IS a pretty good reason to show no love for the Piano Man. I’m afraid mine isn’t quite so solid.”
He took a look to the left…then he took a look to the right…making sure no one would be able to hear him. He bent toward me and whispered, in an almost conspiratorial tone. “Okay, I’m a-gonna tell ya.”
And so he began.
“Well, you see, it was some time in the early or mid seventies when I left Chicago for a joy ride. I’d recently quite my job as a carpenter. The pay sucked and I had a frightening suspicion that my boss had it in for me. So I packed my bags and fled.
“I’d just got paid and had a lot of extra pocket change, so I decided to look up an old friend in Austin. It wasn’t too difficult tracking him down and, as I suspected, he was open to my suggestion that we find a biker bar where we might be able to hook up with a little ‘tush’. I think he must have lived behind a rock somewhere most of his life, because he had no idea what ‘tush’ even was. He thought it had something to do with bacon and eggs. When I filled him in on the details he became extremely excited and put the pedal to the metal.
“So we found us a broke down pre-fabricated building with one of those hoaky yellow signs in front…You know, the kind with the light bulbs and pointing arrow? I know you’ve seen ‘em — they’re everywhere. Big black tile letters spelling ‘WELCOME’ and the name of the establishment that owns it…This one said, ‘HARLEY CHARLIE’S DEN OF INIQUITY: BIKERS WELCOME’.
“‘I think we’ve just found the place,’ I said to my tush-challenged friend. He pulled the car into the drive and shut down the engine.
“Apparently Harley Charlie was a very popular individual because his den was packed to the gills. We could hear the sounds of drunken debauchery at least 50 yards from the building, parked in the car, splashing liberal doses of Hai Karate on our chests to make a good, solid impression on the ladies. My friend turns to me and smiles. A lecherous smile as I’ve ever seen, and says one word: ‘JACKPOT!’”
I had no choice but to agree as I opened the door and stepped in. All the rumors about insanely wild biker parties? They’re true! That place was ALIVE with foul talk, the smell of burnt weed and rancid breath, ugly chicks with their shirts off, more Harley Davidson paraphernalia than I’ve ever seen in my life. Hell, someone had even put a nickel in the jukebox and played a Steppenwolf tune. John Kay’s intoxicated, weary voice was pumped loudly through speakers that sounded as if they had been blown a long time ago. He was singing something about smoking a lot of grass and popping a lot of pills. For some reason or another, he seemed to be extremely ungrateful to the man who had sold them to him.
“Now I like Steppenwolf a lot. Always have, always will. So it pleased me to no end that the patrons of Charlie’s seemed to appreciate it when I fed the jukebox a quarter and played not one, not two, but FIVE Steppenwolf songs. I figured that if this gesture didn’t endear me to the hoodlums, nothing would. ‘Sookie, Sookie,’ ‘Jupiter’s Child,’ ‘Never Too Late,’ ‘Rock Me, Baby,’ ‘Magic Carpet Ride’…a veritable iPod playlist of Steppenwolf songs. Now THAT, my new friend, is some honest-to-God kick ass motorcycle humpin’, fuel pumpin’, sweat drippin’, tattoo-gittin’ music for ya there. This also appeared to be the opinion of a buxom redhead with a huge red rose tattoo that covered roughly a third of her left breast. She gyrated, shimmied and shook like a meth-infused contestant on Dancing With The Stars.
“OK…just as ‘Magic Carpet Ride’ fades out, replaced by the sound of smacking pool balls and profanity, I got the undeniable impression that my plan had been successful. Several people had smiled in my general direction; a couple had even spoken to me. The fact that I was even still alive counted for quite a lot. With our shared love for the Wolf, I actually began to feel a kinship with these rough boys. A kinship, if I may add, which I hoped to parley into a night of hard lust and soft pillows, if you know what I mean ***nudge nudge***wink wink***say no more.
“It was at that moment that I heard, on the jukebox, crisp tickety tack snare drum taps…the subdued, hushed guitar plucking…a voice that sounded as if it had barely survived the carnage of 1,000 cartons of unfiltered Camels. The singer’s voice had a leering cockiness to it that got on my bad side. I knew I was probably mistaken, but I’d already had a belt or two, and for some reason I thought the guy was singing about a nursing home. Then, just before the rattlesnake drum sticks got serious and the song kicked in for real, I heard him say, ‘They got a lot of nice girls.’
I was aghast. Offended past the point of reason, because my mother was in a nursing home and I know exactly goes on in those places. I turned to my friend and I said, in retrospect, I suppose, a little too loudly, ‘Man, this is SICK. What is this shit, anyway?’
“I guess my voice carried a little farther than I thought it would. The bar became deathly silent. Someone kicked the electrical cord on the jukebox from the socket on the wall. The tension in the room was as thick as exhaust fumes from an overheated hog. Every one of those behemoths was staring straight at me, eyes gleaming with the prospect of violence. The rustle of leather jackets and chaps broke the stillness, and next thing I know I’ve got a whole club of motorcycle enthusiasts surrounding me.
“One of them, a toothless giant with at least 20 Harley Davidson logos on his arms and chest, stepped up to me, looked me square in the eye and said, ‘Don’t you know where you are, boy?’
“I didn’t have a chance to answer that million-dollar question, as I felt the blunt force of 69 fists pummeling me to the sawdust-sprinkled floor. I’m positive I would have wound up dead, had it not been for the intervention of my friend. Apparently, he calmed them down with promises of smoked ribs, fried okra and a huge sack of CDS I’d bought so the two of us wouldn’t get bored if the whole ‘tush’ thing didn’t work out. (not compact discs, but Controlled Dangerous Substances).
“‘Dude! What’s wrong with you?’ he asked. “That was ZZ Top you just slagged! Don’t you know where you ARE? You don’t go bad-mouthin’ the Top in Austin. ESPECIALLY in a place with a name like Harley Charlie’s!’
“I took his message to heart. As bitter a pill as it was to swallow, I felt as if I’d learned my lesson. There and then I made three resolutions I planned to keep until my dying day:
“Number One: Never, and I mean NEVER, dis ZZ Top in a biker bar.
“Number Two: Stay the hell away from biker bars.
“Number Three: Go back to Chicago and beg my boss for my old job back.”
…As the old man took a break from his tale, guzzling a swig from a bottle of Lone Star, I said, “Wow! That is one hell of a story! No wonder you hate ZZ Top so much. I’m glad it wasn’t me…I would have made the same mistake. I used to work in a nursing home myself and I know what goes on in them.”
“Hmmph,” he grunted. I probably should not have told him about my long forgotten season at Parkland Manor.
“But you have to admit, they DO have a lot of nice girls!”
He almost came unglued at those words, but I settled him down by insisting I was talking about the Nurse’s Aides. It was a lie, but hey, I wasn’t in the mood to be spit on and sucker punched.
“I see what you’re saying,” I told him. “But ‘La Grange’ ain’t such a bad song. At least it isn’t when you take out the whole mistaken ‘mother in the nursing home’ element. But you just can’t tack it onto the heels of a Steppenwolf marathon like that.”
“Amen, brother. It’s a legitimate reason to hate those three bozos, but surely not to the extent that I do. My bitterness runs much deeper.”
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “You mean there’s more to the story?”
“Oh, yes, sonny boy. There is, and none of it would have happened had I kept my second resolution.”
He continued his fascinating tale…
“It was about 10 years later. I was watching MTV, hoping they‘d show that Flock of Seagulls video again. I was out of luck on that front and was feeling depressed because of it (I loved those haircuts). But then they played a video that was even better! I’d never seen or heard anything like it before. There were three guys in the band, you see, and two of ‘em were sportin‘ some really, really crazy looking beards. There’s hot chicks, a sweet automobile, and the strangest thing I’d ever seen in my life: FURRY GUITARS! I didn’t have a chance to see who they were, as I had an appointment with a quack chiropractor I was already late in keeping. But it was easy to suss out the song title from the lyrics: “Legs.”
“A day or two later and I’m riding around town with a business acquaintance when the same song comes on the radio. I said, ‘HEY! Stop the car! I LOVE that song! Who is that?’
“You should have seen the look on my face when he answered with two letters and one word: ‘ZZ Top.’
“As you can imagine, I was shocked and confused. I simply could not reconcile this glossy, practically new wave ear candy with the nasty barbeque bar band boogie I’d heard that fateful night at Harley Charlie’s…the night I lost my left eye.”
Sure enough the old geezer had a glass eye. I hadn’t noticed in the dim light, but there was an unnatural sparkle shining from that side of his face.
“I thought about it for awhile and came to the conclusion that I liked this song ‘Legs’ so much that it didn’t matter to me WHO did it. ZZ Top, Mike and the Mechanics, the Outfield — it was all the same to me. I had a hard time believing it was even the same band. A personnel change, maybe? Whatever it was, I found myself in the rather ironic position of being a new convert…a true blue ZZ Top fan.
“I even bought their ‘Greatest Hits’ record. It immediately went into heavy rotation on my stereo, eventually replacing my worn-out copy of ‘Steppenwolf 7’. ‘Tube Snake Boogie’, ‘TV Dinners’, ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ — this was stuff I could relate to. You could keep your 10 dollar whores, give me a pair of cheap sunglasses, ya know?
“I went to a couple of their shows and marveled at those incredibly long beards and the guitars that looked like some kind of weird, extra-terrestrial stuffed animals hanging from their shoulders. The only bad thing about the entire concert was when they played ‘La Grange’. I had to excuse myself at that point. The enthusiasm of the crowd when that song began made me a wee bit uncomfortable, if you can sympathize. I availed myself of the arena’s restroom facilities and took the opportunity to clean my glass eye. All the pot smoke in the air had irritated it. I got back in my seat just in time to hear them throw down ‘Gimme All Your Lovin’.
“I decided then and there that I would go back to that biker bar in south Texas. After all those tattooed love boys had done to me…all the pain, all the humiliation…I STILL yearned to be ‘one of them’.
“So I hopped in my car and made that long journey down south. I had no trouble remembering how to find Harley Charlie’s. When I got there, it was almost as if nothing had changed since the days when Jimmy Carter steered us through the oil shortage and motion lotion was at a premium. Raucous noise poured from the open door. The stench of tobacco smoke and old beer wafted, cloud-like, through the windows. It was almost as if the party had never stopped, all the way down to the music on the jukebox: John Kay still rambling about how much he wanted God to punish his dealer. I felt an overwhelming sense of déjà vu which, for obvious reasons, was absolutely terrifying.
“None of them seemed to recognize me. I do look quite a bit different than I did way back then, what with this little crystal ball in my noggin. Still, I was not deterred. I was gonna get in good with these bikers if it killed me.
“I walked over to the jukebox with 50 cents to feed it. I could have played 10 Steppenwolf songs for half a dollar in the 70s. Now it was only good for one. I scanned the menu until I found THE one.
“B-13 — ‘Legs’ by ZZ Top.
“The first few chords hadn’t even played out when I heard the familiar sound of silence as the cacophony in the den abruptly came to a screeching halt. Someone barked out, ‘What the hell is THAT shit? ’ Next thing I know, I’m surrounded by 30 or 40 really mean looking gentlemen and the girl with the red rose tattoo on her tit.
“I felt the *crack* of a pool cue breaking against my back. Fists jabbed at me, punches landing, hitting their mark with a sickening, muffled sound. A bolt of pain went through my torso, as a rusty blade slashed in a downward motion from my navel to my groin. I hit the ground, fast and hard, and I felt the unique sensation of my glass eye being scooped from its socket. Beer bottles broke on my head, the sharp glass edges tearing the skin of my face until I looked a lot like Jim Cavaziel in The Passion of the Christ.
“I have no idea when they stopped. All I can remember is waking up in the intensive care ward at Austin Regional with a sharp pain where my eye used to be. I was a little pissed off because I‘d sort of become attached to that mini-globe. Not to mention the agony of having it fitted and inserted. I never found out what happened to the old one. I figured it was probably broken in the melee…but no, my friend returned to the scene of the crime to buy a dime bag from Harley Charlie and he swears he saw it floating in a jar of pickled pigs feet. He asked Charlie what it was. ‘A trophy,’ the grizzled vet with the black P.O.W. cap told him. Said he had no idea what became of my real eye…the one they’d poked out on my first visit. God, it pissed me off. I really missed my real one, for obvious reasons. But the prosthetic one? It was NOT a cheap eye! I wanted to retrieve it, but I sure as hell wasn’t going back to that crazy temple of hedonism and hatred.”
His expression turned melancholy as he politely excused himself. I never found out exactly WHY he wanted to buddy up with bikers, unless he thought it would help him procure some of that legendary ‘tush’ he was after. But I did feel like I’d gained a good understanding of why he hated ZZ Top so much. It may not have been a valid reason, but it was a good one. I would have felt the same, had it been me. Especially if they’d jabbed out my eye, then stole the replacement. It really was ZZ Top’s fault, I’m certain. You can’t just turn into a new band for MTV and expect your old school fans to hop on the bandwagon with the newbies.
I’d enjoyed our conversation, but I was glad he’d left. I didn’t want to have to tell him I’d been rooting for the bikers.
