August 7 and 8, 1970 was the opening weekend of the Armadillo World Headquarters. That’ll be 40 years ago all too soon and I’m still several years behind on my promise to publish my version of what happened to cause it, sustain it and kill it. I’ve renewed my vow to finish it, or to at least let it go, hopefully by my birthday in the fall. Austin is at a crossroad and maybe there’s something to learn from searching our past to discover what ingredients were important to the great well-spring of joy our city is known for around the world. It’s been a tough task for many reasons, mainly because I’m having more fun now than I had then and it’s hard to postpone today’s fun and write about struggles and stupid mistakes I made in yesteryear. My personal tale is best described by a word I made up: MemNoir. I easily described the scars I wear from it. I had to shut my eyes, lean back and relax forlong spells in order to remember the fun. Now, at last I’m about done. Here is the prologue.
Armadillo World Headdquarters Then
Threadgills Armadillo World Headquarters Today
ARMADILLO WORLD HEADQUARTERS,
AUSTIN, TEXAS
I swore for years I’d never write the Armadillo book. For a lot of very good reasons, I didn’t think it could be done, not in one book and certainly not by me. There are too many points of view, differences of opinion and memory, too much information and too much of everything to cram into too few pages for one single person to pull it off. That was certainly the case with the running of the old joint itself. Well, it turns out none of that matters. What does matter is that so many people have asked over the years, I’ve decided to give it a go. If this causes someone to write another book to contradict me or to help fill in the blanks, glory hallelujah.
AWHQ Plaque sits in parking lot on S. 1st & Barton Springs
Once upon a time in the pretty little city of Austin, Texas, I was one among a bunch of folks who thought we could alter the way a community functions and how it treats its citizens. We thought we could prevail through the simple application of right over wrong accompanied by large doses of caring. We were silly beyond belief. And we were charmed. Beulah, my mother, raised me by often delivering a very short sermon about being able to do anything I set my mind to. Looking back, this adventure was exactly what she’d been preaching about. I was a community leader by acclamation in a community of people that may not have been very organized, but found unity in being threatened and paranoid, angry and stubborn, disgusted and fed up and scared. Conflicted? You betcha.
Early in the life of our armadillo playhouse, we felt the rush of joyful and energetic optimism that comes from realizing along with a bunch of struggling coworkers that the giant tug-of-war is beginning to shift in your favor. Voices begin to speak in unison. New power rushes from your fingers through your shoulders then down your back into your legs and suddenly we’ve got the bastards on the run. It is for all those people who tugged on the Armadillo’s end of the rope that I’m writing this book. We were a trade school and an army. We shared a kinship with the doomed defenders of the Alamo. We spent incredible amounts of energy shoring up our fortress and we desperately sent out for help. We didn’t know each other all that well but we served together hoping that our efforts would contribute toward a future in which we could be proud. We were split into several camps that disagreed about the proper course of action but share the common belief that the show must go on.
I was intimidated by Frank Zappa before we ever met, mainly due to the contract for the Mothers of Invention’s first concert. Zappa and the Mothers were the most expensive act we’d ever paid for and now that the gig was only a few hours away, the paranoia was paralyzing. There was no slack in his demanded timetable. A crew would be on hand to unload his eighteen-wheeler full of equipment and set it up by noon. Then four hours for rehearsal. After supper, a one-hour sound check was scheduled before the doors opened at seven for the first show. His reputation for exactitude was built on stories of tantrums, rages, stubbornness and last-minute cancellations when his demands weren’t met.
Zappa was the first time we’d ever attempted two shows in one night. The idea of ending one show, emptying the hall, cleaning it up and refilling it with fifteen hundred more hippies, many of whom had bought tickets to both shows, seemed a bit far-fetched. I had a hard time picturing anything but resistance from three thousand ticket holders who’d paid a premium price to witness a rock iconoclast. These Dillophiles were used to endless encores by bands impressed with the rowdy applause and thunderous roars of appreciation. They’d never been easy to clear out and they always left a huge mess.
The truck with the Mothers’ equipment didn’t arrive before noon as scheduled. It didn’t arrive at one o’clock, either. It pulled up to the building shortly after five o’clock, by which time the bandleader was thoroughly steamed. I walked up behind him on stage as our guys were hauling the stuff off the truck and swear I saw smoke coming from his ears. It turned out to be smoke from a Winston, one of dozens I saw him suck down before the night was over. By the time everything was in place there was a huge crowd of ticket holders in the beer garden- a mere seventeen minutes before show time. Some of the first-come, first-served regulars began pounding the giant wooden doors. Their efforts created a booming, jungle drum effect that caused my gonads to ache and shrivel.
Zappa’s eyes were coal-black, angry slits when he turned to a very nervous band, strapped on his guitar, raised its neck like a conductor’s wand, and brought it crashing down in a thunderous roar of rock and roll. The crowd outside fell silent. A four-hour rehearsal and a one-hour sound check were squeezed into those seventeen minutes. I didn’t know it would end at show time until the road manager looked at his watch, pointed to Frank and moved his finger across his Adam’s apple indicating that time was up. The crowd outside broke its hush and cheered. The band nervously filed off stage followed by a thoroughly pissed Zappa, snorting, “Some fucking sound check!” The doors flew open and a hoard of happy hippies surged into the Dillo.
In the ten years of astonishing performances at the Armadillo there was never a tighter, more professional show, never a more thunderous and yet courteous response. It was the beginning of a beautiful romance between the uber-maestro of rock and roll and the wild and crazy hippies who put Austin’s noisy appreciation of its musical heroes on the A list map of touring acts around the world.
The following day, I drove Zappa out west of town to a mesquite and cedar forest where a small group of philosophers, architects, teachers, and designers lived in yurts. A yurt is a round hut, Mongolian in origin, with a sloped roof. There were four single-room yurts occupied by a single or a couple surrounding a larger yurt that functioned as a communal kitchen, den, and living room. Another yurt designated as the John Yurt had a restroom and showers.
They were a cordial bunch so I talked Zappa into checking it out. He listened with rapt attention to the yurt dwellers’ tales, fixating his coal-black laser eyes on them as they proselytized. He asked questions. They regaled him with tales of catatonic and schizophrenic patients making dramatic behavioral improvements after living in yurts for three weeks. We all knew too many serious crazies for this not to be good news. Frank was captivated.
As we drove back to the Armadillo, swerving our way in and out of a gravel ditch, Zappa suddenly snapped his fingers and snorted, “Shit!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“It won’t work.” His face had fallen. He had a glum and disappointed look.
“What won’t work?” I asked, still in the dark.
His brow furrowed and the corners of his mouth turned down.
“If something is going to save the world, that something has to pass several tests. One of those tests is, it’s got to work in New York City.” I realized right then and there that yurts would not save the world.
Van Morrison performs at the Armadillo World Headquarters
A year later, I took Van Morrison to see the yurts. Van brought the Armadillo into the concert promotion mainstream. He was big box office. We had to raise the cover to $3 for his show. The buzz around Yurt Town at the time was all about the psychological healing powers yurts possessed. Van listened, but never asked a question or spoke a word. That wasn’t surprising since he’d been staying at my house for three days and nights while playing to three sold out shows to kick off his Caledonia Soul Express tour and hadn’t said a thing there, either. He communicated only through a pretty young female companion who was introduced as his masseuse and interpreter.
“Van would like an omelet.”
“OK, I’ll be glad to make Van an omelet.”
Whisper, whisper, whisper.
“Van would like me to make his omelet.”
“Sure thing. No problem”
It had been three very weird days and nights. As we finally left Yurtsville, I couldn’t help but ask, “What does Van think about the yurts?”
Whisper, whisper, whisper.
“Van says he really needs his corners.”