Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [28]
Are you a star?
Keep on smilin’ through the rain …
And you best believe it gave me chills.
Next day me and the rest of the passing freebooters pile into big daddy Phil Walden's limousine complete with Scotch and teevee in the back, and head down to Statesboro, home of Blind Mason Williams’ celebrated “Statesboro Blues” (also covered by Loggins and Messina) to get the Willies live and slithering just one more time. I made short work of the Scotch, turned off the toob when they started the 14th Andy Griffith rerun of the day, entertained the car with my Lou Reed tapes till they formally and politely requested I get that faggit crayup off or land on my ass in a Georgia gully.
Had a guzzlin’ contest with the Wet heads in the locker dressing room of the gym they’re playin’ at: Jack Hall, brother of aforescrawled lead holler Jimmy and the funkiest bassist this side of the Famous Flames, struts up to me with a bottle of Jack Daniel's and puts his finger on the side about an inch below the water line: “Laiester, can yew draink this down ta thair?” Shitcheah man, I grabbed that slumgullion and gozzled it whole, slammed it back in his mitt and didn’t even wiggle. Everybody else in the room whooped in admiration. I was in the South, and it felt fine.
Next minute while taking a piss I got a notion, so I asked ‘em if I could introduce ‘em when they went onstage. They assented, so I ran out and assaulted the rabble with thunderbolts of loving invective: “Ladies and gentlemen! Boys and girls! B-b-b-bruh-thuhs in s-s-siiiiis-ters! Streakers and Ralph Meekers! I am about to show you something the like of which you have never seen before! It's gonna blow your head clean on out the door! It's gonna have you down on your knees on the floor, baaaaiiigin’ for more! So all I wanna know is … are you ready for the night train, drivin’ you insane, straight outa your brain? Ready ready readuhreadahreadyeeeeeaaah! Gone, gone gone! I got my eyes wide open! I give you, on Capricorn Records, the Wet Willie Band!”
And then they came out and did it again. They tore that joint down and smoked awhile Jim. (If these crackers can play like niggers and get rich at it I can damn sure talk like one and get hung.) It was here that I first noticed the way Jimmy Hall takes immediate command of the stage, stalking from one end to the other like a mudcat in heat. I also noticed even more clearly what I had first beheld in the dressing room, that his sister Donna Hall, who sings soul jones backing with Ella Avery in the Williettes, is the hottest little piece I ever saw in my long lined life. She's got skin as succulent and fresh as hell yeah Dixie peaches that adorn the space just above her cute little bellybutton, big dark eyes you could fall into, and a mouth perfected in constant moue as though blessed with the power to suck a nectarine dry by remote control. That's just for a leetle taste of euphemism so she won’t think me uncouth like unto these Southland raggedymop bopboys. Unfortunately, I never copped her sweetmeat ‘cause next time I saw her she was in the company of a certain internationally famous popstar with big muscles.
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That was also the next and latest (but not last) time I saw Wet Willie, on my own turf in Detroit. They came up for a tour with Grand Funk but had to cancel out Thursday because Mel Schacher had sprained a lug nut. So we took ‘em out to the house and they immediately commenced to browsing my stack of skin magazines. “Sheeyit,” said Jack, “ah shore hope ah git laid whal ahm up here.” “Me too,” chimed Jimmy. “Ahm tard o’ jaikin’ off alla tam.”
“Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, boys,” I hoorawed them. “I’ll line up some priority-primoski local talent when you come back to make the gig on Monday.”
Thus did I simultaneously embark on my new career as a pimp (beats the pus outa rock writing) and discover that much as I had suspected through recent observation of other touring aggregations, the much-vaunted sexual wildebeasterity of popular rock musicians is in large part a myth. Now, I ain’t saying the Willies is queer or limp or