One More Sharp-Dressed Man in Heaven

Sad news -- Frank Beard, aka the drummer guy in ZZ Top who didn't have an actual beard, has passed at the age of 76. The world is a significantly duller place in his absence.

And now a true story, which I am sharing to make all you kids jealous at just how fabulous it was to be involved, however periphally, in the music biz back in the day.

So sometime in the early-to-mid-70s, I happened to meet a visiting gal pal of a friend of mine who worked at the William Morris Agency in Manhattan, and became immediately smitten. Said gal pal lived, inconveniently for me, in Houston, so it occured to me there might be a way to shnorr a Texas trip. At which point I called up another gal I know at another big agency (for some reason the vast majority of the agents and publicists I knew back then were women -- I have no idea why), inquired if they had a band playing in the Houston area anytime soon, and was informed that the Top -- who were still more a less a local act, having not yet glommed onto the Sharp Dressed Men shtick they developed to world wide acclaim in the MTV 80s -- had a show coming up in a week or two at some Texas arena, and would I like to go?

I said yes, conned my bosses at Stereo Review into paying for a local hotel, and then hied myself off to the Lone Star State for a weekend of music and partying with the object of my affections. (In case you're wondering, the Top, who I had never previously seen live and wasn't crazy about their albums at the time, struck me as unremarkable, but the young woman who occasioned my Houston sojourn and I had, shall we say, a lotta fun).

The pre-facial hair ZZ Top a year or two before the time I saw them live

BTW -- I said it was a true story. I didn't say it was an interesting one. 😎