August 1, 2024 • 39 mins
Frank Beard and Dusty Hill take center stage as we examine ZZ Top’s self-produced 2019 documentary, “That Little Ol’ Band From Texas,” which leads to more questions about their origins. Plus, music writers Allison Hussey and Nadine Smith drop in to tell us what makes ZZ Top one of the greatest and most original American rock bands of all time.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The True Story of the Fake Zombies is a production
of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House and Nevermind Media. I'm back
from Bay City, the town in middle of nowhere, Michigan
that birthed the Fake Zombies. I went there looking for
(00:23):
anything and anyone connected to the four young men from
Texas who ended up in Bay City fifty five years
ago and called themselves the Zombies. I encountered question Mark
and one of the Mysterians, legendary garage rockers who shared
a manager with the imposter band. I talked to people
(00:45):
all over Base City looking for the Fake Zombies and
their managers, Bill Kehoe and Jim Atherton from Delta Promotions,
and after a lot of looking, I found Gordon Thayer,
lead singer and guitarist in the band Dick Rabbit.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
We were there and involved in the Zombies.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Saying Gordon and his two brothers, Rich and Phil were
the opening act. They spent months on the road with
the Texas Zombies, and as you'll hear later in this episode,
Gordon didn't just open up for the Texas Zombies. He
parted with them too. He was there when Frank Beard
and Dusty Hill the rhythm section of the now legendary
(01:33):
zz Top hit Bay City in nineteen sixty nine, but
before Gordon tells us what it was like on the
road with Frank and Dusty. I'm talking with two experts
on zz top to find out about the roots of
their sound, and I examined zz top self produced twenty
nineteen documentary That Little Old Band from Texas, which doesn't
(01:57):
mention fake British accents or Bay City, Michigan, but does
offer up some surprising information on how Frank and Dusty
ended up in The Fake Zombies. I'm Daniel Ralston. This
is the true story of the Fake Zombies. I have
(02:23):
a confession to make, one that might make a few
people in Texas upset. While I love the Zombies and
you could even call me an expert on them, I
can't say the same about zz Top. All I really
knew about Frank Beard and Dusty Hill before I went
digging up everything I could on the Fake Zombies was
(02:44):
the image they presented on MTV when I was growing up. Frank,
Dusty and Billy Gibbons, three rough customers armed with guitar,
bass and drums, driving souped up hot rods and singing
songs about them too, But I'm searching for a piece
of zz Top's origin story that doesn't exactly fit into
(03:07):
that carefully crafted narrative. A lost year when Dusty and
Frank traveled to Michigan, hooked up with Delta Promotions, and
called themselves the Zombies. I knew their distinctive sound. Of course,
nobody sounds like zz Top. I knew a few of
(03:28):
their songs about cars and girls, and I knew that
instantly recognizable look. They're hot chit guitarist Billy Gibbons and
bassist Dusty Hill sporting long disguise like beards, And of
course I knew their drummer, Frank Beard is the only
one in the band without a beard. Still one of
(03:49):
the greatest ironies in rock history. That was zz Top
To me, it turns out there's so much more to
them just below the circle.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I love zz Top because to me, it's like music
forgetting in trouble.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I called up to music writers I know, Alison Hussey
and Nadine Smith, both longtime Zeazy Top lovers, to get
me up to speed on the band. Frank Beard and
Dusty Hill would spend fifty years playing in together. Just
after their time in the Fake Zombies.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Loving zz Top is just kind of like embracing the
side of you that is just kind of like messy
and wants to kick around in the dirt and drive
around with the windows down and smoke a cigarette and
be bad.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
That's former Pitchfork writer and editor Alison Hussey, and she
sets me straight about all the is to love about
zz Top.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Oh zz Top were just these like guys with dark
sunglasses and the big long beards and the furry, spinny
guitars on MTV. But you know, by the time they
were doing that, they'd already been a band for like
almost fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
In searching for the Fake Zombies, I've gotten to know
the origins of the zz Top sound. It's steeped in
Texas blues, but unlike a lot of other artists in
that genre, zz Top never take themselves too seriously. It's
all about that balance.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
There's just like such uh like raw energy and power
to their music that is really a lot of fun.
It's genuinely pretty funny sometimes. You know, it's all of
these kind of heavy rock riffs, but songs that are
(05:53):
maybe not silly but are definitely like humorous. They're pretty
coy sometimes kind of crass, but in a funny way.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
They may be funny, but the zz top sound guitar,
bass drums and vocals is surprisingly complex. You need three
legitimately great musicians to keep a power trio going and
sounding original for over fifty years.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Each of them kind of accomplishes that on their own,
but then like all three of them coming together, and
then the fact that they're able to get so much
power out of like one guitar, one bass drums. There
have been like plenty of great three piece rock bands,
but like they are just like so thick and so loud.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
That signature sound thick and loud, there's all the hallmarks
of three guys who grew up absorbing every musical influence
they could.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
One thing that is key to how zz top got
to sound like zz top. They kind of talk about
it in a song on Fandango. It's called I Heard.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
It on the X.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Basically, back in the nineteen thirties, some American radio stations
established themselves kind of just on the other side of
the southern border with Mexico. It was basically a way
for them to get around FCC rules and with a
lot of these stations which were called border Blasters. It
was pretty much a free for all in terms of
both programming and pretty literally in terms of how people
(07:26):
were able to access it.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
The border Blaster station Zzy Top grew up listening to
played everything, including songs from the British Invasion, which might
explain why the zombies were on Frank and Dusty's radar.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
This was something that Frank, Billy and Dusty all kind
of would have grown up steeped in, not just like
blues music and rock and roll music, but also nor
tenno music and Chicano music from Mexico. They were getting
rhythm and blues music, stuff that was popular like from
(07:59):
the West coast, stuff that was popular from the South.
So like from a really young age, they were able
to just kind of like pull all of these different
kinds of music out of the air. They didn't even
have to buy records.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Billy, Frank, and Dusty took those sounds and ran with them,
creating something distinctive and strange, something only three unknowns from
Texas could make.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
They I think were pretty openly just like we were weirdos.
I think that there was some quote I saw maybe
from Dusty where he talked about being not just a
long hair in Texas, but a long hair who had
blue hair.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Zz Top's origins make for an unlikely success story. From
blue haired Texas proto punks to household names with cameos
and Back to the Future three and guest spots on
King of the Hill, Billy, Frank and Dusty became part
of the American psyche, their songs acting as a kind
of shorthand in pop culture. Need a song that highlights
(09:07):
how tough and self assured your character is. Nothing says
badass quite like zz Top.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I think my first memory of zz Top is the
scene in the Tim Allan movie The Santa Claus where,
like the Tim Allen is getting his really like swanky
flame proof suit and sharp dressed man hits and he's
like strutting down North Poles Avenue or whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
That's Nadine Smith, native Texan and another one of my
favorite music writers with a deep love for zz Top.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
There's a lot of like rawness, a lot of that
blues tradition, but there's also this, like I guess, like
blues futurism, and that's something that I think is so
singular about them.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
You know that futuristic element is what keeps zz top
from sounding like every other blue band. A lot of
their songs sound similar, but they never sound like anybody else.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
They really found a formula and did a kind of
like work smarter, not harder sort of approach in some ways,
which you know sounds maybe like a backhanded compliment, but
I don't mean it like that at all, because I
think these guys, the Fake Zombies band, I think is
a perfect example of this. That these were like very
much working touring musicians, guys who were steeped on the
(10:31):
like roadhouse juke joint circuit of Texas that like Stevie
ray Vaughn played on the outlaw country circuit.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
You know, that kind of era.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
But also at the same time, you know, you have
the sort of the sixties psychedelic movement that they come
out of.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
To those psychedelic elements of the sixties were shared by
Frank and Dusty before they'd link up with Billy Gibbons
and take over the world. I asked Nadine what it
is about Frank on drums and dust young bass that's
just so locked in.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
It's a really interesting combination because you have Gibbons who
is this peer of Jimmy Hendrix and very dynamic, doing
a lot of those same kind of things with the
space between notes, kind of playing with tone and not
just playing a guitar line, you know, playing with kind
of sound itself. There's just such a tight internal sense
(11:25):
of timing that you can only really get from schlepping
and working hard and playing those gigs where you're probably
at a lot of points, just like the soundtrack to
bar fights or to just rowdiness, and so you have
to keep it together as a band because everything else
is falling apart around you.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
That kind of musical camaraderie is extremely rare, and it
kept Dusty Hill and Frank Beard together until the day
Dusty died in twenty twenty one, a fifty five year
partnership that included a stint in the Fake Zombies. The
time Frank Beard and Dusty Hill from zz Top spent
(12:07):
in Bay City was never going to be part of
the band's official origin story. Frank, Dusty and Billy Gibbons
released their own career spanning documentary in twenty nineteen. It's
called that Little Old Band from Texas. It's their official
origin story. We found this out, Yeah, that's it. It
(12:30):
was time to take Texas culture to the world. They
became international superstars. There's no mention of Bay City, Michigan
or Delta Promotions playing a role in Frank and Dusty's
Prezzy Top lives, but there are some clues, some really
good clues. I didn't expect the fake zombies to make
(12:59):
it into the official story of zz Top, but even
in their own movie, something slips past the dark sunglasses
and the giant beards and we catch a glimpse. The
movie begins with the usual music documentary stuff, childhood photos,
early musical influences, a lot of Texas prairie footage. It's
(13:25):
Dusty Hill who tips his hand first while talking about
one of his early bands that he toured Texas with
as a teenager, Lady Wild and the Warlocks. There are
only a few Lady Wild recordings out there. Here's their
song another Year, Lady Raise Kiss the Ground around Us.
(13:49):
That's Lady Wild singing. Her name is Mary Smith, and
this is clearly a long way from the hard rocking,
earth shaking bass rifts. Dusty Hill will go on to
play in zz Top. Lady Wild and the Warlocks played
British Invasion covers, and notably, Lady Wilde was actually from England.
(14:10):
The hardest part of the fake Zombies to picture for
me has always been big old Dusty Hill from Texas
going up on stage and faking a British accent. Now
that I know about Lady Wilde and the Warlocks, it
doesn't seem like that much of a stretch. According to
the dock, Dusty recruited drummer Frank Beard into the Warlocks
(14:31):
in nineteen sixty four. They ditched Lady wild and the
Warlocks dyed their hair blue and became American Blues. Here's
their track, keep My Heart in a Rage. American Blues
(14:55):
cut a full length album in nineteen sixty seven, and
it's a lot closer in sound to the Reels Zombies
then you might expect from four Texas teenagers. According to
the liner notes on that album, American Blues were Dusty
Hill on bass and his brother Rocky on guitar, keyboardist
Doug Davis, and Frank Beard on drums. In the documentary,
(15:18):
they show a black and white photo of American Blues.
It's only on screen for a second before they move
on to zz Tops Meteoric Rise to start him. And
if you or anybody but me, a guy who's been
obsessed with this imposter band story for a decade, you
wouldn't have noticed. But that picture of the American Blues
(15:39):
is actually a picture of the Fake Zombies. It's the
same black and white promotional photo of the original Zombies
the Delta promotions used, but the band name and the
Delta address in Bass City are cropped out. I'm not
surprised by this slight alteration of the truth. In fact,
(16:00):
Dusty Hill and Frank Beard tell us what we're gonna
get with zz Top in the trailer for their own documentary.
We'll tell three stories and then on will be tripped.
Dusty and Frank would go on to sell somewhere around
(16:21):
fifty million albums after their run in the Fake Zombies
to blues and hard rock fans, particularly in Texas, their
household names and an all time great rhythm section. But
that year on the road, before the fame and fortune,
that's why we're here. And finally I'm talking to somebody
(16:45):
who was actually there with them in Bay City and
on tour.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Okay, yeah, Gordon there, member of the Dick Rabbit Brothers
band who is Nick Stair and Phil Fair, myself.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Gordon Thayer and his brothers Rich and Phil opened for
the Texas Zombies back in nineteen sixty nine with their
all brother power trio Dick Rabbit. And that's Gordon singing
and playing guitar on Dick Rabbit's debut single you Come
On Like a Train. That song was recorded in nineteen
(17:27):
sixty six and it's among.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
The heaviest, scuzziest and loudest songs I've ever heard from
that year. I didn't just find the opening act in Gordon.
I found a garage rock pioneer.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
After that initial fifteen minute phone call where Gordon absolutely
blew my mind by revealing that he was on tour
with the Texas Zombies, I call him back with a
better connection to get the full story, and damn what
a story.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
We were there and involved in the Zombie thing, and
the bands that played for Delta Promotions went in a
contract with Delta Promotions in approximately nineteen sixty seven. Lived
at the warehouse in Days City, was under Jim Atthison's
personal management.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I've talked to a lot of people about the Fake
Zombies and their managers in Bay City, Delta Promotions and
Gordon was right there in the heart of it.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I remember it all. I saw things.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Gordon was there watching as Kejo and Atherton assembled the
fake zombies.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Now I understand they were considered a scam, and I
know what they were trying to do. They were trying
to perceive people to think that these were the real guys.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
He saw that Texas Forsom come to town and try
to inhabit the roles of the real zombies.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I recall at the time, Dusty and those guys walking
all day long, Bryan Jay imitate the British accent, saying
and all that and sound like them and stuff when
they talked, So if they had an interview, they would
talk with that accent.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Fifty five years later, Gordon knows the fake zombie scheme
couldn't last, but he thinks with a small change to
the name, it might have been ahead of its time.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
If they would have said the Zombie Experience or the
Zombie Resurrection or something, it would have been probably one
of the first tribute bands.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Gordon's right, there is a fine line between tribute band
and what Delta Promotions cooked up with the fake zombies,
but generally tribute acts don't go around telling people the
singer of the original band is dead, like Delta promotions did.
These young guys like Gordon and the Fake Zombies put
a lot of faith in Delta.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I think that there was like my brothers and I
had m Keyhole and the Delta promotions that all the
teas had been crossed and the eyes had been dieted
and everything was up and up.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Gordon's band, Dick Rabbit, started out as a four piece.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
We were just a little hick tom Boys, and we
were from the North. We hadn't been involved in much.
We'd played around a lot, but we were just a
local club band and we just did things. Started out
as a four piece, then we dropped a three after
up in Trafvers City, Michigan, there was a bar brawl
just because of the way we looked or whatever, and
(20:38):
our fourth guy just forget it. He skipped out. So
we went to three pieces.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Dick Rabbit now an all fayer power trio. We're ready
to hit the road looking for more welcoming audiences than
the ones they found in rural Michigan.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I think it was my old brother who was the
bass player of Phil. He had gone to Ann and
seeing the music scene down there, and somehow said we
would be down and play this place in Bay City.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Dick Rabbit managed to get on the bill at Band Canyon,
the teen nightclub run by Delta Promotions, and who was
waiting in the wings for them.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
We took a break and the Ascent came up and
started chatting with us and asked us if we'd be
interested in having a manager, and he would really like
to be our personal manager and give us his car.
About Delvia Promotion.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Jim Atherton, the man I've always suspected was responsible for
assembling the fake Zombies. Gordon says, Atherton was very persuasive.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
He was a very personable guy who was larger, so
he had a big presence. He just commanded that attention.
I thought he kind of reminds me of that picture
you have of the guy with a big cigar, even
though he didn't I don't understand the smoke cigar. Like
(22:01):
they say, what all this? This guy comes in and
here's the falling who knows everything, and he was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So Jim Atherton was the guy recruiting these bands into
the Delta roster. After talking to Atherton's high school girlfriend,
Ria Thompson. I got a better picture of Jim back
in the sixties. He sounded sweet and ambitious and loved
helping young rock and roll bands take off. In the
photos I found from the Delta touring days, Jim is
(22:35):
a towering figure right there with the bands and the
thick of the action. I'm growing to really like Jim Atherton.
Gordon liked Jim two. It probably didn't hurt that Atherton
offered to manage Dick Rabbit immediately after Gordon and his
brothers came off stage the first night they crossed paths.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Well, we met, he talked to us and we said, yeah,
we hed interested. He in his pocket. He pulls out
the ten page management agreement, I guess, and he flops
that down, says, you guys looked this over and come
on out to the office. Blah blah blah. And he said,
but I'll just tell you right now he should there's
two things we won't put up with, and three of
(23:15):
us being pretty green. He says, that's underaged women and drugs.
And he turned, reached back in his pocket, pulled out
a diamond bag of weed and slapped it on the table,
said have a good time. He walked out, and that
was aiding just the way he was. He was that
(23:38):
way he was, but he didn't He did us pretty
good and tell the big drug bust came and that
was another whole deal.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
The drug bust, the same one I heard about from
Rhea Athson's longtime friend. I showed Gordon the newspaper article
I found about the raid from nineteen sixty eight, the
one with the photo of him and his brothers standing
over bags of confiscated weed while the police look on.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
Yeah, I think I showed you. I have the front
page of that paper with the picture of it's on there. Ye,
accept Atherton's not in the picture.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I asked Gordon if he knows why Jim Atherton, although
named in the article, isn't in the photograph.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Well, there was quite a few people that were at
that party as such that weren't in that picture. Because
that was the big thing that was We all shared
that house. But when the bus came, I think Keyhole
and Dell the promotions and stuff, separated Afterton from that
(24:46):
whole thing so that they wouldn't be necessarily implicated or evolved.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Gordon and his brothers didn't have key Hoost protection like
Atherton did. They were facing serious consequences for the bust.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Twenty years. We were facing twenty years each.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Gordon and his brothers were in limbo waiting to find
out whether they be charged with possession and intent to sell.
They tried to stay busy with the help of Bill Keho.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
He was more of what we call the businessman. In fact,
he was our business manager, so keyo. You only seen
him when something came up or you had a contract
to go play somewhere or something.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Delta Promotions one of their bands on the road making money,
so Keho booked a residency for them at a club
away from their legal troubles in Bay City.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah. It was a a six week gig of some
local club or not too far away. And we went
played it the first night and owner came up and
said that, you know, you guys gotta play some tune
of people know and stuff, and we just well, we
aren't that band and we aren't that where musicians as
(26:06):
such an artist.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
Gordon and his brothers were a real band. They didn't
want to play covers and so we bailed.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
We loaded everything up and left, came back and Gold
asked them we weren't going to play there no more,
and Kehole wasn't happy with us. He had a six
week contraction, He had an hang a ladder or something.
I guess it was all a big thing.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Keho wasn't having it. He didn't care about the band's
artistic integrity, so he doubled down and asked Dick Rabbit
to just become another band.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
They want to say, a flying for real brothers, but
I can't be a certain of that. I can't say
that's for sure, but there was because they gave us
forty five.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Dick Rabbit stuck to their guns. Eventually, Bill Keyhill hooked
the Thayer brothers up with a place to live where
they could focus on nothing but their own music.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
He took the upstairs in his big warehouse and hung
blankets and my brothers and I we lived up there
as we were there at twenty four to seven and
we were just in the upstairs and wasn't the best
of accommodations, but that's who we were.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
The Thayer brothers practiced day and night honing the Dick
Rabbit sound.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
We jammed it in the early morning hours and stuff
out there. My younger brother was he treated his drumming
like a nine to five job. He would get up
in the morning, he'd go down into the room where
the drums were and shut that door. He basically wouldn't
come out unless he had lunch and end of the
day five six o'clock.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Dick Rabbit became a tight and musically muscular power trio.
The hard work paid off. The book shows all around Michigan,
sometimes sharing the stage with future legends.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
We get the Flint Pop Festival with a Bob Seekers system,
Iggy Pop and SRV and MC I have all those guys.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Kejo must be given some credit here. He didn't turn
his back on Gordon and his brothers when they dug
in their heels and insisted on remaining an original band.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
That's why he threw us into the studio in Detroit.
He just said, you're going there and come up with
two tunes that we can put out, and then I'm
gonna put you on the road with the Zombies and
or see if we can make any money. No, maybe
we just weren't to talented, but I still feel that
(28:48):
we were kind of right on the edge of all
that stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Gordon and his brothers almost made it in an alternate universe,
the Thayer Brothers, the guys who stuck to their guns
and insisted on playing their own music ended up superstars
like Frank Beard and Dusty Hill. I'm hoping Gordon can
(29:17):
put the biggest piece of this puzzle together for me.
How did the guys from Texas end up in Michigan?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I never knew. I don't know how that how. The
only thing I could think of was one fulla that
I can't remember. I don't remember. His name was Sean
or Chef. He kind of gives him flying the V guitar.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
That guy with the Gibson flying V guitar, that's Seb.
I always assumed it was Frank or Dusty who looked
up with Atherton, but according to Gordon, it was guitarist
Seed Meta with the Delta connection. When Dick Rapid started
to come apart at the Seams due to the pressures
of the drug bust and their lack of studio success,
(30:07):
Gordon joined forces with the Texas contingent.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Our older brother had gone down to ann Arbor and
left the scene because he wasn't happy with what was
going on, and so we were kind of falling apart
as far as the favoue one. But the younger brother
and I were together for a while there, and we
were actually doing some gigs and partying and playing with
Dusty Hill, and he had done the same thing with this.
(30:34):
It wasn't South, was that one.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
I was pronounced Seed Meta. When you see the grainy,
faded photos of the Fake Zombies, Steve is the one
your eyes are instantly drawn to. Seb had impeccable style,
and it must be said, it was incredibly good looking.
And while Frank and Dusty were established musicians when they
toured as the Fake Zombies, Seed was already a bona
(30:56):
fide rock star. Now that's sixteen year old Sebe on
guitar with his band The Gentleman. That song, It's a
Crying Shame, recorded in nineteen sixty six, has become a
(31:18):
favorite among record collectors in audio files. It's the perfect
distillation of Southern garage rock, and Sebe co wrote it.
When Sebe and Dusty hit Bass City, Gordon was blown
away by their playing.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I was always impressed by them. They were good, Hey,
they knew what they were doing, and to me at
that time, they sound just like them.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I always assumed that the four boys from Texas just
passed through Michigan before heading out on tour. But it
turns out Dusty, Frank, Sebe, and Mark were hanging around
the Delta prom Oceans offices for months. In fact, Gordon's
fondest memory of the fake Zombies was the time they
spent in Bay City together before they hit the road.
(32:11):
Gordon and Dusty Hill, in particular, became fast friends.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
We considered ourselves bugs. He was quite a comical guy.
He's short, stubby, blonde headed, but he thought he was Elvis,
so he was funny. In fact, that's why I think
they did the Joe Alice Rock and the Viva Las
Vegas because he was a als freaks. He always try
(32:36):
to imitate Alvis. When you're coming into a party, you'd
push open the door and do a little Elvis move
and whatever. It was quite common.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
While Dusty Hill was hanging around Bay City crashing parties
and impersonating Elvis, Gordon and his brothers were still reeling
from the pot bust and having their faces plastered on
the front page of the local paper. And even though
the drug charges were dropped eventually, Dick Rabbit was persona
on grata around Bay city, So the Thayer brothers, at
(33:10):
the urging of Bill Keho, took the opening slot for
the Fake Zombies. This is the first time I'm actually
hearing what it was like out on the road. For months,
Dick Rabbit and the Texas Zombies toured without a problem.
Gordon said that the Headliner sounded like the real thing.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Duskin sounded like him, and they practiced talking like him.
And I don't even know how it really came out.
They weren't because when we did the shows, umping down
these coach I mean, we were like, well they considered
the warm up band at that time. We'd go out
and play our twenty twenty five minutes and then they
(33:54):
closed the curtain up into the Zombies would come out
and play.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
The Texas Zombies played almost every night. They pack up
their gear and head to the next town.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
They actually were in a van, and if I recall
a van, but my brothers and I you couldn't get
me to step out of the plane. So we traveled
by car and we had a driver and it was
a sixty eight Cadillac El Dorado, and the three of
us were chauffeured everywhere in that car.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
While the Fake Zombie slept around the country in a van.
Gordon and his brothers rode in the back of a
brand new Cadillac. Not bad for three guys from nowhere Michigan.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
We were sitting at the airport, I think some are
New York, Boston somewhere, and I remember this woman coming
out out of the terminal with the big per coat
on and stuff. And she walked by and seeing the
three of us sitting in the backseat of this fancy
El Dorado, and she stopped, capped down the window and
(34:57):
my brother rolled it down and she's just my my boys,
things are really looking up. She just walks away. So
I remember that I happened yesterday.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Deltas Fake Zombies operation was making enough money to pay
for Cadillacs and a driver. The shows were getting bigger
and the money kept rolling in, enough money that Jim
Atherton didn't even mind it. When the shows got canceled.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
They flew in all the things equipment, we used, sun stuff,
and we were all set up at this one concert hall.
All of a sudden, assing come up and said the
show has been canceled, boys, and there's five hundred bucks
and said go on yourself. Is a good guy. I
(35:44):
felt that that was the breaking point of where the
word must have gotten out. People were starting to catch
on that this was a scam of these guys, and
I just think nobody showed up and nobody buy any tickets.
So because shortly after that, I remember we were back at.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Basically after our first phone call, I sent Gordon the
article I wrote about the Fake Zombies in twenty seventeen.
Even though there's no mention of Dick Rabbit in it.
I didn't even know Gordon and his brothers existed back then.
Reading it was an emotional experience for him.
Speaker 5 (36:18):
You said that the article brought up some memories and emotions.
What kind of emotions did it bring up?
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Well, the main thing is my both brothers are gone
and passed on. They just kind of brings back all
those times that we had.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I picture Gordon and his brothers writing in that sixty
eight Cadillac El Dorado, speeding their way to the next gig,
three young men escaping their troubles back home, sharing the
stage with the Texas Zombies, dreaming of fame and fortune.
Just around the corner that fame and fortune would come
to Gordon's old friend Dusty Hill, and it would come
(36:59):
to Frank Beard, the only remaining Texas Zombie. Even Seed Meta,
who passed away in nineteen eighty, he's a memorable figure
to blues fanatics. Just read the comments on any of
his songs with The Gentleman or his later band the
were Wolves, and you'll see how beloved he was in
his native Texas.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Before I say goodbye to Gordon, I asked him about
the fake zombie who never made it big, the one
who started all this for me. You don't buy any
chance to remember Mark Ramsey.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
No, no, I didn't. I don't remember him as that name.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Mark and I never met in person. I got close once.
I had a plane ticket to Dallas booked back in
twenty sixteen, but the day before my flight, Mark changed
his mind. We talked on the phone a few times
and traded a few dozen emails before Mark passed away
in twenty seventeen. Mark didn't play on any lost classics
(38:09):
like seb and he didn't make it big like Dusty
and Frank. Mark never toured again after the Fake Zombies.
He became a math teacher, but he carried his memories
and a few grainy photos with him all those years.
(38:41):
On the next episode, we focus on the two members
of the Fake Zombies who didn't go on to become
rock and roll icons. Seb Meta, the hotshot League guitarist
who brought his Texas friends north to Michigan, and Mark Ramsey,
the man who brought the Fake Zombies back to life.
Seb and the unsung members, this is their story too.
(39:08):
If you want to get in touch about the Fake Zombies,
we've set up an email address Fake zombiespod at gmail
dot com. This podcast was written by Daniel Ralston. Executive
produced by Ian Wheeler, Melissa Locker and Daniel Ralston. Produced
by Anna McClain and Nick Dawson. Score, original music and
additional audio engineering by Robin Hatch. Additional production support from
(39:31):
Cooper Mall in Los Angeles. The True Story of the
Fake Zombies is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House
and Nevermind Media. For more podcasts from iHeart Podcasts, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The True Story of the Fake Zombies is a production
of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House and Nevermind Media. I'm back
from Bay City, the town in middle of nowhere, Michigan
that birthed the Fake Zombies. I went there looking for
(00:23):
anything and anyone connected to the four young men from
Texas who ended up in Bay City fifty five years
ago and called themselves the Zombies. I encountered question Mark
and one of the Mysterians, legendary garage rockers who shared
a manager with the imposter band. I talked to people
(00:45):
all over Base City looking for the Fake Zombies and
their managers, Bill Kehoe and Jim Atherton from Delta Promotions,
and after a lot of looking, I found Gordon Thayer,
lead singer and guitarist in the band Dick Rabbit.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
We were there and involved in the Zombies.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
Saying Gordon and his two brothers, Rich and Phil were
the opening act. They spent months on the road with
the Texas Zombies, and as you'll hear later in this episode,
Gordon didn't just open up for the Texas Zombies. He
parted with them too. He was there when Frank Beard
and Dusty Hill the rhythm section of the now legendary
(01:33):
zz Top hit Bay City in nineteen sixty nine, but
before Gordon tells us what it was like on the
road with Frank and Dusty. I'm talking with two experts
on zz top to find out about the roots of
their sound, and I examined zz top self produced twenty
nineteen documentary That Little Old Band from Texas, which doesn't
(01:57):
mention fake British accents or Bay City, Michigan, but does
offer up some surprising information on how Frank and Dusty
ended up in The Fake Zombies. I'm Daniel Ralston. This
is the true story of the Fake Zombies. I have
(02:23):
a confession to make, one that might make a few
people in Texas upset. While I love the Zombies and
you could even call me an expert on them, I
can't say the same about zz Top. All I really
knew about Frank Beard and Dusty Hill before I went
digging up everything I could on the Fake Zombies was
(02:44):
the image they presented on MTV when I was growing up. Frank,
Dusty and Billy Gibbons, three rough customers armed with guitar,
bass and drums, driving souped up hot rods and singing
songs about them too, But I'm searching for a piece
of zz Top's origin story that doesn't exactly fit into
(03:07):
that carefully crafted narrative. A lost year when Dusty and
Frank traveled to Michigan, hooked up with Delta Promotions, and
called themselves the Zombies. I knew their distinctive sound. Of course,
nobody sounds like zz Top. I knew a few of
(03:28):
their songs about cars and girls, and I knew that
instantly recognizable look. They're hot chit guitarist Billy Gibbons and
bassist Dusty Hill sporting long disguise like beards, And of
course I knew their drummer, Frank Beard is the only
one in the band without a beard. Still one of
(03:49):
the greatest ironies in rock history. That was zz Top
To me, it turns out there's so much more to
them just below the circle.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I love zz Top because to me, it's like music
forgetting in trouble.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I called up to music writers I know, Alison Hussey
and Nadine Smith, both longtime Zeazy Top lovers, to get
me up to speed on the band. Frank Beard and
Dusty Hill would spend fifty years playing in together. Just
after their time in the Fake Zombies.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Loving zz Top is just kind of like embracing the
side of you that is just kind of like messy
and wants to kick around in the dirt and drive
around with the windows down and smoke a cigarette and
be bad.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
That's former Pitchfork writer and editor Alison Hussey, and she
sets me straight about all the is to love about
zz Top.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Oh zz Top were just these like guys with dark
sunglasses and the big long beards and the furry, spinny
guitars on MTV. But you know, by the time they
were doing that, they'd already been a band for like
almost fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
In searching for the Fake Zombies, I've gotten to know
the origins of the zz Top sound. It's steeped in
Texas blues, but unlike a lot of other artists in
that genre, zz Top never take themselves too seriously. It's
all about that balance.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
There's just like such uh like raw energy and power
to their music that is really a lot of fun.
It's genuinely pretty funny sometimes. You know, it's all of
these kind of heavy rock riffs, but songs that are
(05:53):
maybe not silly but are definitely like humorous. They're pretty
coy sometimes kind of crass, but in a funny way.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
They may be funny, but the zz top sound guitar,
bass drums and vocals is surprisingly complex. You need three
legitimately great musicians to keep a power trio going and
sounding original for over fifty years.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Each of them kind of accomplishes that on their own,
but then like all three of them coming together, and
then the fact that they're able to get so much
power out of like one guitar, one bass drums. There
have been like plenty of great three piece rock bands,
but like they are just like so thick and so loud.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
That signature sound thick and loud, there's all the hallmarks
of three guys who grew up absorbing every musical influence
they could.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
One thing that is key to how zz top got
to sound like zz top. They kind of talk about
it in a song on Fandango. It's called I Heard.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
It on the X.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
Basically, back in the nineteen thirties, some American radio stations
established themselves kind of just on the other side of
the southern border with Mexico. It was basically a way
for them to get around FCC rules and with a
lot of these stations which were called border Blasters. It
was pretty much a free for all in terms of
both programming and pretty literally in terms of how people
(07:26):
were able to access it.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
The border Blaster station Zzy Top grew up listening to
played everything, including songs from the British Invasion, which might
explain why the zombies were on Frank and Dusty's radar.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
This was something that Frank, Billy and Dusty all kind
of would have grown up steeped in, not just like
blues music and rock and roll music, but also nor
tenno music and Chicano music from Mexico. They were getting
rhythm and blues music, stuff that was popular like from
(07:59):
the West coast, stuff that was popular from the South.
So like from a really young age, they were able
to just kind of like pull all of these different
kinds of music out of the air. They didn't even
have to buy records.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Billy, Frank, and Dusty took those sounds and ran with them,
creating something distinctive and strange, something only three unknowns from
Texas could make.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
They I think were pretty openly just like we were weirdos.
I think that there was some quote I saw maybe
from Dusty where he talked about being not just a
long hair in Texas, but a long hair who had
blue hair.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
Zz Top's origins make for an unlikely success story. From
blue haired Texas proto punks to household names with cameos
and Back to the Future three and guest spots on
King of the Hill, Billy, Frank and Dusty became part
of the American psyche, their songs acting as a kind
of shorthand in pop culture. Need a song that highlights
(09:07):
how tough and self assured your character is. Nothing says
badass quite like zz Top.
Speaker 4 (09:14):
I think my first memory of zz Top is the
scene in the Tim Allan movie The Santa Claus where,
like the Tim Allen is getting his really like swanky
flame proof suit and sharp dressed man hits and he's
like strutting down North Poles Avenue or whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
That's Nadine Smith, native Texan and another one of my
favorite music writers with a deep love for zz Top.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
There's a lot of like rawness, a lot of that
blues tradition, but there's also this, like I guess, like
blues futurism, and that's something that I think is so
singular about them.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
You know that futuristic element is what keeps zz top
from sounding like every other blue band. A lot of
their songs sound similar, but they never sound like anybody else.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
They really found a formula and did a kind of
like work smarter, not harder sort of approach in some ways,
which you know sounds maybe like a backhanded compliment, but
I don't mean it like that at all, because I
think these guys, the Fake Zombies band, I think is
a perfect example of this. That these were like very
much working touring musicians, guys who were steeped on the
(10:31):
like roadhouse juke joint circuit of Texas that like Stevie
ray Vaughn played on the outlaw country circuit.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
You know, that kind of era.
Speaker 4 (10:41):
But also at the same time, you know, you have
the sort of the sixties psychedelic movement that they come
out of.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
To those psychedelic elements of the sixties were shared by
Frank and Dusty before they'd link up with Billy Gibbons
and take over the world. I asked Nadine what it
is about Frank on drums and dust young bass that's
just so locked in.
Speaker 4 (11:03):
It's a really interesting combination because you have Gibbons who
is this peer of Jimmy Hendrix and very dynamic, doing
a lot of those same kind of things with the
space between notes, kind of playing with tone and not
just playing a guitar line, you know, playing with kind
of sound itself. There's just such a tight internal sense
(11:25):
of timing that you can only really get from schlepping
and working hard and playing those gigs where you're probably
at a lot of points, just like the soundtrack to
bar fights or to just rowdiness, and so you have
to keep it together as a band because everything else
is falling apart around you.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
That kind of musical camaraderie is extremely rare, and it
kept Dusty Hill and Frank Beard together until the day
Dusty died in twenty twenty one, a fifty five year
partnership that included a stint in the Fake Zombies. The
time Frank Beard and Dusty Hill from zz Top spent
(12:07):
in Bay City was never going to be part of
the band's official origin story. Frank, Dusty and Billy Gibbons
released their own career spanning documentary in twenty nineteen. It's
called that Little Old Band from Texas. It's their official
origin story. We found this out, Yeah, that's it. It
(12:30):
was time to take Texas culture to the world. They
became international superstars. There's no mention of Bay City, Michigan
or Delta Promotions playing a role in Frank and Dusty's
Prezzy Top lives, but there are some clues, some really
good clues. I didn't expect the fake zombies to make
(12:59):
it into the official story of zz Top, but even
in their own movie, something slips past the dark sunglasses
and the giant beards and we catch a glimpse. The
movie begins with the usual music documentary stuff, childhood photos,
early musical influences, a lot of Texas prairie footage. It's
(13:25):
Dusty Hill who tips his hand first while talking about
one of his early bands that he toured Texas with
as a teenager, Lady Wild and the Warlocks. There are
only a few Lady Wild recordings out there. Here's their
song another Year, Lady Raise Kiss the Ground around Us.
(13:49):
That's Lady Wild singing. Her name is Mary Smith, and
this is clearly a long way from the hard rocking,
earth shaking bass rifts. Dusty Hill will go on to
play in zz Top. Lady Wild and the Warlocks played
British Invasion covers, and notably, Lady Wilde was actually from England.
(14:10):
The hardest part of the fake Zombies to picture for
me has always been big old Dusty Hill from Texas
going up on stage and faking a British accent. Now
that I know about Lady Wilde and the Warlocks, it
doesn't seem like that much of a stretch. According to
the dock, Dusty recruited drummer Frank Beard into the Warlocks
(14:31):
in nineteen sixty four. They ditched Lady wild and the
Warlocks dyed their hair blue and became American Blues. Here's
their track, keep My Heart in a Rage. American Blues
(14:55):
cut a full length album in nineteen sixty seven, and
it's a lot closer in sound to the Reels Zombies
then you might expect from four Texas teenagers. According to
the liner notes on that album, American Blues were Dusty
Hill on bass and his brother Rocky on guitar, keyboardist
Doug Davis, and Frank Beard on drums. In the documentary,
(15:18):
they show a black and white photo of American Blues.
It's only on screen for a second before they move
on to zz Tops Meteoric Rise to start him. And
if you or anybody but me, a guy who's been
obsessed with this imposter band story for a decade, you
wouldn't have noticed. But that picture of the American Blues
(15:39):
is actually a picture of the Fake Zombies. It's the
same black and white promotional photo of the original Zombies
the Delta promotions used, but the band name and the
Delta address in Bass City are cropped out. I'm not
surprised by this slight alteration of the truth. In fact,
(16:00):
Dusty Hill and Frank Beard tell us what we're gonna
get with zz Top in the trailer for their own documentary.
We'll tell three stories and then on will be tripped.
Dusty and Frank would go on to sell somewhere around
(16:21):
fifty million albums after their run in the Fake Zombies
to blues and hard rock fans, particularly in Texas, their
household names and an all time great rhythm section. But
that year on the road, before the fame and fortune,
that's why we're here. And finally I'm talking to somebody
(16:45):
who was actually there with them in Bay City and
on tour.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Okay, yeah, Gordon there, member of the Dick Rabbit Brothers
band who is Nick Stair and Phil Fair, myself.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Gordon Thayer and his brothers Rich and Phil opened for
the Texas Zombies back in nineteen sixty nine with their
all brother power trio Dick Rabbit. And that's Gordon singing
and playing guitar on Dick Rabbit's debut single you Come
On Like a Train. That song was recorded in nineteen
(17:27):
sixty six and it's among.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
The heaviest, scuzziest and loudest songs I've ever heard from
that year. I didn't just find the opening act in Gordon.
I found a garage rock pioneer.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
After that initial fifteen minute phone call where Gordon absolutely
blew my mind by revealing that he was on tour
with the Texas Zombies, I call him back with a
better connection to get the full story, and damn what
a story.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
We were there and involved in the Zombie thing, and
the bands that played for Delta Promotions went in a
contract with Delta Promotions in approximately nineteen sixty seven. Lived
at the warehouse in Days City, was under Jim Atthison's
personal management.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
I've talked to a lot of people about the Fake
Zombies and their managers in Bay City, Delta Promotions and
Gordon was right there in the heart of it.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I remember it all. I saw things.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Gordon was there watching as Kejo and Atherton assembled the
fake zombies.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Now I understand they were considered a scam, and I
know what they were trying to do. They were trying
to perceive people to think that these were the real guys.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
He saw that Texas Forsom come to town and try
to inhabit the roles of the real zombies.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
I recall at the time, Dusty and those guys walking
all day long, Bryan Jay imitate the British accent, saying
and all that and sound like them and stuff when
they talked, So if they had an interview, they would
talk with that accent.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Fifty five years later, Gordon knows the fake zombie scheme
couldn't last, but he thinks with a small change to
the name, it might have been ahead of its time.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
If they would have said the Zombie Experience or the
Zombie Resurrection or something, it would have been probably one
of the first tribute bands.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Gordon's right, there is a fine line between tribute band
and what Delta Promotions cooked up with the fake zombies,
but generally tribute acts don't go around telling people the
singer of the original band is dead, like Delta promotions did.
These young guys like Gordon and the Fake Zombies put
a lot of faith in Delta.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
I think that there was like my brothers and I
had m Keyhole and the Delta promotions that all the
teas had been crossed and the eyes had been dieted
and everything was up and up.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Gordon's band, Dick Rabbit, started out as a four piece.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
We were just a little hick tom Boys, and we
were from the North. We hadn't been involved in much.
We'd played around a lot, but we were just a
local club band and we just did things. Started out
as a four piece, then we dropped a three after
up in Trafvers City, Michigan, there was a bar brawl
just because of the way we looked or whatever, and
(20:38):
our fourth guy just forget it. He skipped out. So
we went to three pieces.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
Dick Rabbit now an all fayer power trio. We're ready
to hit the road looking for more welcoming audiences than
the ones they found in rural Michigan.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
I think it was my old brother who was the
bass player of Phil. He had gone to Ann and
seeing the music scene down there, and somehow said we
would be down and play this place in Bay City.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Dick Rabbit managed to get on the bill at Band Canyon,
the teen nightclub run by Delta Promotions, and who was
waiting in the wings for them.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
We took a break and the Ascent came up and
started chatting with us and asked us if we'd be
interested in having a manager, and he would really like
to be our personal manager and give us his car.
About Delvia Promotion.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Jim Atherton, the man I've always suspected was responsible for
assembling the fake Zombies. Gordon says, Atherton was very persuasive.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
He was a very personable guy who was larger, so
he had a big presence. He just commanded that attention.
I thought he kind of reminds me of that picture
you have of the guy with a big cigar, even
though he didn't I don't understand the smoke cigar. Like
(22:01):
they say, what all this? This guy comes in and
here's the falling who knows everything, and he was pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So Jim Atherton was the guy recruiting these bands into
the Delta roster. After talking to Atherton's high school girlfriend,
Ria Thompson. I got a better picture of Jim back
in the sixties. He sounded sweet and ambitious and loved
helping young rock and roll bands take off. In the
photos I found from the Delta touring days, Jim is
(22:35):
a towering figure right there with the bands and the
thick of the action. I'm growing to really like Jim Atherton.
Gordon liked Jim two. It probably didn't hurt that Atherton
offered to manage Dick Rabbit immediately after Gordon and his
brothers came off stage the first night they crossed paths.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Well, we met, he talked to us and we said, yeah,
we hed interested. He in his pocket. He pulls out
the ten page management agreement, I guess, and he flops
that down, says, you guys looked this over and come
on out to the office. Blah blah blah. And he said,
but I'll just tell you right now he should there's
two things we won't put up with, and three of
(23:15):
us being pretty green. He says, that's underaged women and drugs.
And he turned, reached back in his pocket, pulled out
a diamond bag of weed and slapped it on the table,
said have a good time. He walked out, and that
was aiding just the way he was. He was that
(23:38):
way he was, but he didn't He did us pretty
good and tell the big drug bust came and that
was another whole deal.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
The drug bust, the same one I heard about from
Rhea Athson's longtime friend. I showed Gordon the newspaper article
I found about the raid from nineteen sixty eight, the
one with the photo of him and his brothers standing
over bags of confiscated weed while the police look on.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
Yeah, I think I showed you. I have the front
page of that paper with the picture of it's on there. Ye,
accept Atherton's not in the picture.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
I asked Gordon if he knows why Jim Atherton, although
named in the article, isn't in the photograph.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Well, there was quite a few people that were at
that party as such that weren't in that picture. Because
that was the big thing that was We all shared
that house. But when the bus came, I think Keyhole
and Dell the promotions and stuff, separated Afterton from that
(24:46):
whole thing so that they wouldn't be necessarily implicated or evolved.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Gordon and his brothers didn't have key Hoost protection like
Atherton did. They were facing serious consequences for the bust.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Twenty years. We were facing twenty years each.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Gordon and his brothers were in limbo waiting to find
out whether they be charged with possession and intent to sell.
They tried to stay busy with the help of Bill Keho.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
He was more of what we call the businessman. In fact,
he was our business manager, so keyo. You only seen
him when something came up or you had a contract
to go play somewhere or something.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
Delta Promotions one of their bands on the road making money,
so Keho booked a residency for them at a club
away from their legal troubles in Bay City.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah. It was a a six week gig of some
local club or not too far away. And we went
played it the first night and owner came up and
said that, you know, you guys gotta play some tune
of people know and stuff, and we just well, we
aren't that band and we aren't that where musicians as
(26:06):
such an artist.
Speaker 5 (26:09):
Gordon and his brothers were a real band. They didn't
want to play covers and so we bailed.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
We loaded everything up and left, came back and Gold
asked them we weren't going to play there no more,
and Kehole wasn't happy with us. He had a six
week contraction, He had an hang a ladder or something.
I guess it was all a big thing.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Keho wasn't having it. He didn't care about the band's
artistic integrity, so he doubled down and asked Dick Rabbit
to just become another band.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
They want to say, a flying for real brothers, but
I can't be a certain of that. I can't say
that's for sure, but there was because they gave us
forty five.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
Dick Rabbit stuck to their guns. Eventually, Bill Keyhill hooked
the Thayer brothers up with a place to live where
they could focus on nothing but their own music.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
He took the upstairs in his big warehouse and hung
blankets and my brothers and I we lived up there
as we were there at twenty four to seven and
we were just in the upstairs and wasn't the best
of accommodations, but that's who we were.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
The Thayer brothers practiced day and night honing the Dick
Rabbit sound.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
We jammed it in the early morning hours and stuff
out there. My younger brother was he treated his drumming
like a nine to five job. He would get up
in the morning, he'd go down into the room where
the drums were and shut that door. He basically wouldn't
come out unless he had lunch and end of the
day five six o'clock.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Dick Rabbit became a tight and musically muscular power trio.
The hard work paid off. The book shows all around Michigan,
sometimes sharing the stage with future legends.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
We get the Flint Pop Festival with a Bob Seekers system,
Iggy Pop and SRV and MC I have all those guys.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
Kejo must be given some credit here. He didn't turn
his back on Gordon and his brothers when they dug
in their heels and insisted on remaining an original band.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
That's why he threw us into the studio in Detroit.
He just said, you're going there and come up with
two tunes that we can put out, and then I'm
gonna put you on the road with the Zombies and
or see if we can make any money. No, maybe
we just weren't to talented, but I still feel that
(28:48):
we were kind of right on the edge of all
that stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Gordon and his brothers almost made it in an alternate universe,
the Thayer Brothers, the guys who stuck to their guns
and insisted on playing their own music ended up superstars
like Frank Beard and Dusty Hill. I'm hoping Gordon can
(29:17):
put the biggest piece of this puzzle together for me.
How did the guys from Texas end up in Michigan?
Speaker 2 (29:28):
I never knew. I don't know how that how. The
only thing I could think of was one fulla that
I can't remember. I don't remember. His name was Sean
or Chef. He kind of gives him flying the V guitar.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
That guy with the Gibson flying V guitar, that's Seb.
I always assumed it was Frank or Dusty who looked
up with Atherton, but according to Gordon, it was guitarist
Seed Meta with the Delta connection. When Dick Rapid started
to come apart at the Seams due to the pressures
of the drug bust and their lack of studio success,
(30:07):
Gordon joined forces with the Texas contingent.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Our older brother had gone down to ann Arbor and
left the scene because he wasn't happy with what was
going on, and so we were kind of falling apart
as far as the favoue one. But the younger brother
and I were together for a while there, and we
were actually doing some gigs and partying and playing with
Dusty Hill, and he had done the same thing with this.
(30:34):
It wasn't South, was that one.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
I was pronounced Seed Meta. When you see the grainy,
faded photos of the Fake Zombies, Steve is the one
your eyes are instantly drawn to. Seb had impeccable style,
and it must be said, it was incredibly good looking.
And while Frank and Dusty were established musicians when they
toured as the Fake Zombies, Seed was already a bona
(30:56):
fide rock star. Now that's sixteen year old Sebe on
guitar with his band The Gentleman. That song, It's a
Crying Shame, recorded in nineteen sixty six, has become a
(31:18):
favorite among record collectors in audio files. It's the perfect
distillation of Southern garage rock, and Sebe co wrote it.
When Sebe and Dusty hit Bass City, Gordon was blown
away by their playing.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
I was always impressed by them. They were good, Hey,
they knew what they were doing, and to me at
that time, they sound just like them.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
I always assumed that the four boys from Texas just
passed through Michigan before heading out on tour. But it
turns out Dusty, Frank, Sebe, and Mark were hanging around
the Delta prom Oceans offices for months. In fact, Gordon's
fondest memory of the fake Zombies was the time they
spent in Bay City together before they hit the road.
(32:11):
Gordon and Dusty Hill, in particular, became fast friends.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
We considered ourselves bugs. He was quite a comical guy.
He's short, stubby, blonde headed, but he thought he was Elvis,
so he was funny. In fact, that's why I think
they did the Joe Alice Rock and the Viva Las
Vegas because he was a als freaks. He always try
(32:36):
to imitate Alvis. When you're coming into a party, you'd
push open the door and do a little Elvis move
and whatever. It was quite common.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
While Dusty Hill was hanging around Bay City crashing parties
and impersonating Elvis, Gordon and his brothers were still reeling
from the pot bust and having their faces plastered on
the front page of the local paper. And even though
the drug charges were dropped eventually, Dick Rabbit was persona
on grata around Bay city, So the Thayer brothers, at
(33:10):
the urging of Bill Keho, took the opening slot for
the Fake Zombies. This is the first time I'm actually
hearing what it was like out on the road. For months,
Dick Rabbit and the Texas Zombies toured without a problem.
Gordon said that the Headliner sounded like the real thing.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
Duskin sounded like him, and they practiced talking like him.
And I don't even know how it really came out.
They weren't because when we did the shows, umping down
these coach I mean, we were like, well they considered
the warm up band at that time. We'd go out
and play our twenty twenty five minutes and then they
(33:54):
closed the curtain up into the Zombies would come out
and play.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
The Texas Zombies played almost every night. They pack up
their gear and head to the next town.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
They actually were in a van, and if I recall
a van, but my brothers and I you couldn't get
me to step out of the plane. So we traveled
by car and we had a driver and it was
a sixty eight Cadillac El Dorado, and the three of
us were chauffeured everywhere in that car.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
While the Fake Zombie slept around the country in a van.
Gordon and his brothers rode in the back of a
brand new Cadillac. Not bad for three guys from nowhere Michigan.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
We were sitting at the airport, I think some are
New York, Boston somewhere, and I remember this woman coming
out out of the terminal with the big per coat
on and stuff. And she walked by and seeing the
three of us sitting in the backseat of this fancy
El Dorado, and she stopped, capped down the window and
(34:57):
my brother rolled it down and she's just my my boys,
things are really looking up. She just walks away. So
I remember that I happened yesterday.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Deltas Fake Zombies operation was making enough money to pay
for Cadillacs and a driver. The shows were getting bigger
and the money kept rolling in, enough money that Jim
Atherton didn't even mind it. When the shows got canceled.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
They flew in all the things equipment, we used, sun stuff,
and we were all set up at this one concert hall.
All of a sudden, assing come up and said the
show has been canceled, boys, and there's five hundred bucks
and said go on yourself. Is a good guy. I
(35:44):
felt that that was the breaking point of where the
word must have gotten out. People were starting to catch
on that this was a scam of these guys, and
I just think nobody showed up and nobody buy any tickets.
So because shortly after that, I remember we were back at.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Basically after our first phone call, I sent Gordon the
article I wrote about the Fake Zombies in twenty seventeen.
Even though there's no mention of Dick Rabbit in it.
I didn't even know Gordon and his brothers existed back then.
Reading it was an emotional experience for him.
Speaker 5 (36:18):
You said that the article brought up some memories and emotions.
What kind of emotions did it bring up?
Speaker 2 (36:25):
Well, the main thing is my both brothers are gone
and passed on. They just kind of brings back all
those times that we had.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
I picture Gordon and his brothers writing in that sixty
eight Cadillac El Dorado, speeding their way to the next gig,
three young men escaping their troubles back home, sharing the
stage with the Texas Zombies, dreaming of fame and fortune.
Just around the corner that fame and fortune would come
to Gordon's old friend Dusty Hill, and it would come
(36:59):
to Frank Beard, the only remaining Texas Zombie. Even Seed Meta,
who passed away in nineteen eighty, he's a memorable figure
to blues fanatics. Just read the comments on any of
his songs with The Gentleman or his later band the
were Wolves, and you'll see how beloved he was in
his native Texas.
Speaker 5 (37:22):
I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (37:30):
Before I say goodbye to Gordon, I asked him about
the fake zombie who never made it big, the one
who started all this for me. You don't buy any
chance to remember Mark Ramsey.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
No, no, I didn't. I don't remember him as that name.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Mark and I never met in person. I got close once.
I had a plane ticket to Dallas booked back in
twenty sixteen, but the day before my flight, Mark changed
his mind. We talked on the phone a few times
and traded a few dozen emails before Mark passed away
in twenty seventeen. Mark didn't play on any lost classics
(38:09):
like seb and he didn't make it big like Dusty
and Frank. Mark never toured again after the Fake Zombies.
He became a math teacher, but he carried his memories
and a few grainy photos with him all those years.
(38:41):
On the next episode, we focus on the two members
of the Fake Zombies who didn't go on to become
rock and roll icons. Seb Meta, the hotshot League guitarist
who brought his Texas friends north to Michigan, and Mark Ramsey,
the man who brought the Fake Zombies back to life.
Seb and the unsung members, this is their story too.
(39:08):
If you want to get in touch about the Fake Zombies,
we've set up an email address Fake zombiespod at gmail
dot com. This podcast was written by Daniel Ralston. Executive
produced by Ian Wheeler, Melissa Locker and Daniel Ralston. Produced
by Anna McClain and Nick Dawson. Score, original music and
additional audio engineering by Robin Hatch. Additional production support from
(39:31):
Cooper Mall in Los Angeles. The True Story of the
Fake Zombies is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Talk House
and Nevermind Media. For more podcasts from iHeart Podcasts, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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