What’s the story behind ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas-Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q.?

From KUT News:

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There’s a framed photo in Tierney Rezac’s house. It’s an aerial image of Memorial Stadium at UT Austin — an insert that came with ZZ Top’s 1975 album “Fandango!” There’s text on it that reads “ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas Sized Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance & Bar B.Q.” It claims it happened in the summer of 1974 with 80,000 “friends.”

The insert that came with Tierney’s copy of ZZ Top’s 1974 album, “Fandango!” Matt Largey / KUT News

Tierney was curious about the story behind this concert. So, she asked ATXplained about it.

“I’ve heard a lot of my dad’s stories about going to shows in the ’70s,” Tierney said. “His stories are pretty crazy, so I’m assuming that this one is absolutely bonkers.”

It is, in fact, absolutely bonkers. But maybe not for the reasons you’d expect.

Let’s put on a concert

The whole thing started in 1973 — a year before the concert.

UT Austin’s student government was looking to raise some money after the university cut its budget. They had done some movie nights and stuff but hadn’t really raised much cash.

So, they hatched a plan.

“We came up with the idea of doing a concert,” recalls Barry Leff, the student government financial director at the time. “I was appointed the guy to make it happen.”

The only problem was that Barry knew nothing about putting on a concert. He was a political science major. But, he did know they needed a venue. This was about four years before the Frank Erwin Center was finished.

Still, they were thinking big. Real big. They wanted to use Memorial Stadium, where the Texas Longhorn football team played.

To do this, Barry needed to get permission from UT Football Coach Darrell Royal, who was basically a god in Texas. Royal led the Longhorns to national championships three times as head coach.

So Barry went to Royal’s office and waited for him.

Eventually Barry saw him and flagged Royal down.

“He looked at me and — of course I was intimidated,” Barry recalls. “And he said ‘What do you want, what can I help you with?’”

So there’s Barry, a 20 year-old kid looking a Texas god in the face — asking him to use his cathedral for a rock n’ roll concert.

“He gave me that look, like ‘Oh my god…’ and he says ‘Well, how many people do you think you’re going to do?’ and I said ‘You know, we’re hoping to do maybe 10-20,000?’ And he said: ‘It’ll never happen.’”

But Barry didn’t back down.

“I said ‘Well, if you really believe that, would you mind signing this piece of paper and giving us permission to do the show?’”

To Barry’s surprise, Royal signed the paper.

He had a god’s signature. He took it and went to see everyone else he needed permission from.

“They all signed it thinking this thing was never going to happen,” Barry said.

So they had permission to do the show at the stadium. Now they needed a band.

Barry started calling around to concert promoters. What he didn’t realize is that having permission to use the stadium meant promoters saw an opportunity and took him seriously. Big arena concerts had become a thing by that point.

“I kinda had the golden ticket,” Barry said.

He talked to a guy named Terry Bassett who ran a big concert promotion company in Dallas. Next thing you know, Barry is on a plane to Dallas, getting the VIP treatment. Bassett took him to the Cotton Bowl, where he met The Eagles who were rehearsing for a show there.

“You can imagine, you know, a 20 year-old kid and I was like ‘Man, this is pretty amazing.’”

Barry was in business. More promoters were brought on to help organize the show. It took months, but eventually they locked in a lineup.

British supergroup Bad Company.

Blues-y British singer Joe Cocker.

Burgeoning guitar legend Santana.

And the headliner, the Tres Hombres, that little ol’ band from Texas: ZZ Top.

An ad that appeared in The Daily Texan in August 1974. Daily Texan Archives

This wasn’t just a concert anymore. It was a festival. Now it was — maybe aspirationally — ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q.

Barry had his hands full between going to school full-time and helping organize this huge event. His political science major hadn’t prepared him for this. But he was learning on the fly, even as the thing got bigger than the student organization had imagined.

“They didn’t know what the scope of it was going to be,” Barry said. “We didn’t know!”

The day approaches

Posters went up. Ads were in newspapers and on the radio. Everywhere from Austin to Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Louisiana and Oklahoma — the word was out.

Tickets went on sale a month or two before the show at $8 each. But Barry had no idea how many tickets were being sold.

“I guess somebody had an idea? But I never heard a number, I really didn’t,” he said

The night before the show, they started to get a sense. A crowd gathered near the stadium. Barry said Coach Royal was growing concerned about the field — the AstroTurf they had installed only a few years earlier.

The organizers had borrowed a field covering from the Cotton Bowl. On the eve of the concert, they were putting it down, but the covering didn’t fit.

“Twenty-five percent of the field wasn’t covered,” Barry said

Royal and then-UT Regent Frank Erwin demanded the student group cover the rest.

“They basically said ‘if you don’t cover this field, you’re not doing your show,’” Barry said

It was definitely too late to cancel. The show must go on.

Someone knew someone at the sports retailer Academy, so they called and bought all the tarps and tents — whatever they could use to cover the field.

A Rompin’ Stompin’ time

On September 1, 1974, 80,000 people showed up to Memorial Stadium. This was more than the stadium’s seating capacity at the time. A lot of those people were on the field, though.

“Every square inch of the field was full of people,” said James Wright, who was in the crowd. “There was no place in that stadium that wasn’t covered with humanity.”

Temperatures that September afternoon were in the 90s. The sun beat down on the field. Before the music even started, it was clear there was a problem.

“The stadium sold out of all their food. They sold out of their drinks,” Barry said. “People were having a hard time getting water.”

The organizers hadn’t anticipated a crowd like this. And people thought barbecue was going to be included. I mean it was billed as a “Barndance AND Bar B. Q.”

“I never even saw any food, water or barbecue,” James said.

But the water was the biggest problem. Again, it was hot. People were getting overheated and passing out. But it was so crowded out on the field, there wasn’t any place for them to fall.

“You’d see these people — they were still on their feet — and they were kinda getting pushed to the sideline and then, boom, they’d go down and the EMTs would come and get them,” Barry said.

People were doing whatever they had to just to cool off.

“I remember going into the bathroom at one point and there were girls trying to get in the sink to get water on them to cool off because it was so hot,” said Susan Prior, another concertgoer. “And they broke the sinks off the wall.”

Barry was getting worried.

“I’m like sitting back [stage] there going ‘Please God just don’t let anybody die today — that’s all I’m asking,’’ he said. “At that point it was like survival.”

They had to do something.

So they just opened the gates. People could come and go as they pleased. Eventually food and drinks started to find their way into the stadium, as people cleared out nearby convenience stores and restaurants.

“There was one enterprising young guy who was selling ice for $10 a bag, which was a lot of money 50 years ago,” James said.

“At one point, a guy was carrying a bag of ice right in front of me,” recalls Andy Sieverman, who was covering the concert as a photographer for The Daily Texan. “Just as he passed me, the bag of ice broke, and everybody from there just went ‘woosh’ — because they wanted some ice and cold water.”

But in spite of everything, most people were having a great time.

“There was kind of a good feeling in the air,” said Blaine Pennington, who was also at the concert. “Everybody seemed happy. Just looking around that big stadium and seeing that it was full, even up to the upper decks — that they were at something special.”

And the best part was still to come.

The openers

The band Bad Company was up first with Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin playing with them.

“It was like a big exhale from the audience, and then they just filled up with this energy from the music,” Barry said. “They were like, electrified.”

After Bad Company, Joe Cocker got on stage. It did not go well.

“He was just completely drunk. He was just incapable of giving a show,” Blaine said. “He was actually barfing off the front of the stage. I mean it was awful.”

Joe Cocker performs at the ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas-Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q. on Sept. 1, 1974. AS-74-88256-064, Austin American-Statesman Photographic Morgue (AR.2014.039). Austin History Center, Austin Public Library

No one seems to have a great recollection of his set — except for the barfing.

As the sun started to set, it was time for Santana.

“It was the best show I’ve seen him at — before or since,” Blaine said.

It was almost time for the final act of the night and the crowd was ready. People were tossing each other in the air with blankets and building human pyramids. Someone set off a smoke bomb, which apparently caught a mattress that someone dragged out onto the field on fire.

“It was biblical. It was epic,” Blaine said. “It was the right place at the right time for a lot of people to have this party — and they were going to have a party one way or the other. Even if the stuff they were promised was not provided.”

The headliner

By the time it got dark and cooled off some, people were a bit more comfortable.

“They had survived the masses and the heat — the music was carrying them,” Barry said. “And when ZZ came on, it was just … magical.”

The band pulled out all the stops for this show. There were pyrotechnics, live animals, sequined jumpsuits. And of course they played the hits and a few curveballs.

“More than that, they were hilarious. They were just so funny,” Blaine said. “Their stage routine and their costumes and so forth — this was the first time we had seen a full-blown version of that.”

ZZ Top played their set and did two encores.

And that was it. The crowd left. Barry was feeling good.

“It was a really beautiful thing seeing these people come from all over Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana — and I’m sure much further than that,” he said. “I had never seen anything like this in my life.”

They raised $25,000, today’s equivalent of about $150,000, for student government — remember this was a fundraiser. In total, the concert brought in nearly $700,000 — more than $4 million today. Most of that went to the bands and the promoters.

The aftermath

Then came the light of day.

There was trash a foot deep all over the stadium. Broken sinks and toilets. Someone carved the shape of the state of Texas into the precious AstroTurf.

The next day, Barry was at Memorial Stadium looking over the damage. He saw a man walking over to him. He knew exactly who it was: Coach Royal.

“I remember this like it was yesterday,” recalls Barry. “He says ‘Barry, I don’t believe this is the kind of thing the University of Texas wants.’”

Most people who were there agree that the damage wasn’t all that bad. The stadium wasn’t left in shambles. Even Frank Erwin called the destruction “minimal.”

“I’m sure they replaced a lot of toilets and a lot of sinks and patched up the field and cleaned up the trash — but, you know, they played football that season,” said Barry.

Still, it seemed that Memorial Stadium wouldn’t host another concert until hell froze over.

Incidentally, hell DID freeze over in 1995. When the Eagles played Memorial Stadium as part of their Hell Freezes Over tour. But there were only 33,000 people at that concert.

It might have been ZZ Top’s ONLY Annual Texas Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q., but it wasn’t the end for Barry.

He said the concert had awakened something in him and it changed his life.

“It was such a personal moment for me — number one, the accomplishment. But it also was the first moment in my life where I ever felt my passion. And my passion was the audience,” he said.

He knew he wanted to follow that passion of making great shows for audiences. And with some connections from the Memorial Stadium show, that’s exactly what he did.

He spent the next 48 years in concert promotions — including working with ZZ Top.

So I guess the moral of this story is: Don’t be afraid to ask for what you want. You might get a great career out of it. Or at least you’ll get a really bonkers story.

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