While watching the ZZ Top documentary over the weekend I recalled meeting Billy Gibbons. A legend. Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame member....and of course, the beard!
I believe it was the summer of 2014. ZZ Top was opening all eight shows for Kid Rock at DTE. It was the final night of the stand and the party afterwards was at the Woodshop in downtown Clarkston. Two things always stick in my mind about that night. One...I lost $100 to Kid Rock in about a split second, maybe less. We were all screwing around upstairs. There is a pole in the middle of the room. One like you'd see in the middle of someone's cellar as a load pole. Anyway, Rock was pulling himself up on it and holding is body sideways. He bet me a hundred dollars that I couldn't do it for 5 seconds. I remember thinking to myself "This could be the fastest $100 I'll ever make". As it turns out, it was the fastest hundred I ever LOST! 5 seconds? Hell, maybe .5 seconds! And the second, meeting Billy.
At some point he came into the bar and was standing by me, kinda in an opening of the bar where the bartender would walk back and forth from the kitchen or whatever. My friend, Clay, had apparently met him a few times and introduced me to Billy. I can't recall the small talk we had, but somewhere along the line I grabbed a picture with him. He didn't have his sunglasses on, but they're never far away and he donned them and took a photo with me, no problem.
Billy was kind with his time and it was time for me to say my goodbyes. I told him it was great to meet him and continued success, as I said "with the Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame and the whole thing" (which they had been inducted into 4 years previous). He looked at me and said "You'll be there someday" to which I replied "No, I'm just a guy on the radio". He then went on to tell me that he knew who I was. Now, Billy is a very nice guy, but I'm almost certain he had, and has, no idea who I am. There was a little bit of an awkward silence, between me and him because the bar was loud, and at the point I didn't know if he wanted to say something else to me or he wanted me to leave. His eyes scanned the room for a few seconds before he motioned me to come closer to him. With his whiskers practically rubbing against my ear, in his cooler than all, southern, Texas accent he said to me "The people all need to be entertained". To this day, I'm not for sure what he meant, but no cooler words have ever been spoken to me.
The picture we took ended up on my yearly Christmas card with the saying "Merry Christmas from two sharp dressed men...one with cheap sunglasses"
-Meltdown-
