#ZZ TOP CONCERT FULL#

Micael Priest: My full moon sat in the middle of the darkened stage. Ralph Fisher: Meanwhile, also in pitch dark, me and my helper had walked the Longhorn and the buffalo up the ramps, on to the scissor-lift platforms on either side of the stage and raised them up maybe 25 feet above the band.

Then, while the stage was in complete darkness, I had to push this plexiglass pyramid full of rattlesnakes down to the bottom tip of Texas, then try to get off stage without bumping into any of the band as they came on.īilly Gibbons: The animal rights groups were always present to make sure that these critters were being taken proper care of.

Paula Helene (props manager and wife of Bill Narum): After the warm-up acts finished, the Texas-shaped stage had to be laid down and decorated with fibreglass boulders, cactus plants, cow skulls, every kind of Texan paraphernalia. It was me, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Point Blank. I was one of the support acts on the first date. That little dog was so eager to please, but he could not for the life of him figure out what this man wanted him to do.Įlvin Bishop (blues guitarist/singer): The tour started on in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. So, while we were painting, the wrangler was poking this dog under the chin with a bent-out coat hanger, and howling at him. So they got a little German shepherd dog instead, and the wrangler tried to teach it what to do. The idea was to train a wolf to sit in front of it, throw its head back and howl. One of my first jobs was to paint a full moon on plywood. Micael Priest: Bill Ham’s management company, Lone Wolf, had a logo of a wolf howling, silhouetted by a full moon. Going down forward or backing up was okay, but the sideways movements, when the stage was tilted, you don’t want to twist your ankle. He had it set at a six-degree angle so that people could clearly see the shape.īilly Gibbons: The angle of the stage required some careful realigning of one’s tiptoeing techniques. Jay Boy Adams: Bill Narum also constructed the Texas-shaped stage. Bill painted it to be a landscape of Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park, on the Rio Grande. Micael Priest: The backdrop Bill designed was made of nine fabric frames, each 20-feet high and 30-feet long. They were painted with a panoramic desert scene, and they had to travel down the highway in a certain order so the scene went from one to another. They’d rented the Houston Astrodome Arena for rehearsals and to build the sets and paint the tour trucks.ĭusty Hill (bass/vocals, ZZ Top): There were six or eight semi-tractor trailers to carry the gear. Five days before the tour started, Bill called me and said he was designing a stage for the band, but they were running late and could I help him. Micael Priest (poster artist, assistant to set designer Bill Narum): ZZ Top had used my friend Bill Narum as their album cover designer for several years.

Zz top concert