Dave Grohl: I wrote this ballad, it goes like this... It goes...
( plays "Stairway To Heaven" ) ( all laughing )
I know it's kinda... It's kinda long.
It's got a bunch of parts to it.
We should record it in three different parts.
( music intro playing )
Wow, Chris, what's that?
Chris Shiflett: It's a little something I've been working on.
Grohl: Cool. ( drumsticks rapping )
Shiflett: What? I got it. I got it.
( strumming "Bohemian Rhapsody" )
Grohl: Oh, I like that. You ought to make...
Naw, I got nothing. I'll figure it out, though.
- Rami Jaffee: I got one. - Grohl: Hold on.
( playing "Layla" on keyboard )
- Oh. Oh! - Grohl: That's really pretty.
You know what we should do? We should tag that, uh...
at the end of this thing I've been writing.
Fuckin' fooled around with this thing... It goes...
( playing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" )
Whoa!
Yeah... No, I don't think that one's gonna work.
B side, B side.
( strums guitar ) Okay, ready?
- Taylor Hawkins: Ready? - Grohl: Let's record a song.
One, two, three, four.
( theme music playing )
Sync, corrected by icephoenix www.addic7ed.com
( guitar chord rings )
_
Grohl: It's an oasis, you know.
There's a lot of country out there.
I mean, there's a lot of space,
and then in the middle of all that space,
some of the coolest, freakiest stuff
comes out of this city, you know,
that goes on to inspire people around the world.
Tim Kerr: If you're into music, art,
any sort of self-expression like that,
you tend to kinda gravitate to here.
Jimmie Vaughan: There is a certain feeling
that you get when you go there,
and I think that's what happened to me when I was a kid.
It was wide open, it felt free.
You could do anything.
Jimmie Dale Gilmore: I think there's something here.
There's something geographically
or, I don't know, mystically or something.
It's not only an oasis in Texas,
I think it's an oasis in the whole country.
Gibby Haynes: You know, a lot of people think that it's
this oasis of liberalism in the middle of Texas...
The cowboy next door with his rodeo wife,
and the lesbian couple on the other side of you...
But what you don't realize
is the lesbian couple voted for Bush
and the rodeo wife is the closeted lesbian.
It's so... It's just a weird place.
I mean, there's so much stuff that's come out of this place
that kinda "started things"
that it's kind of... It is kind of amazing.
And I don't know if it's the water, the attitude or what,
but it's just...
( rock music playing )
David Yow: You know, in the '60s it was such a hippie town
and then late '70s and '80s, pretty punk rock.
Somewhere in the '90s
it really started turning into just crazy.
It became a big small town.
♪ Fight, fight, fight! ♪
♪ That's what we say... ♪
Boy, they will tell you what they are.
That is the "live music capital of the world," isn't it?
Isn't it what they say? "Live music capital
of bar bands," or whatever?
God bless 'em. I love Austin.
Gilmore: That was all a deliberate
Chamber of Commerce kinda thing... That Austin
is the "live music capital of the world" and everything,
but... But there's some truth to it.
Gary Clark Jr.: Then you can go from hearing a reggae band to rock,
to blues, to jazz, country...
like, next door to each other every single night.
People wonder why Austin has never become
like another Nashville or L.A. when it comes to the music business.
Austin is more of a creative incubator, really.
It's... It's a great place for musicians
to get together and just work it out.
( blues music playing )
And the scene began to take shape in the '70s
really when Willie came to town.
♪ Whiskey River, take my mind. ♪
♪ Don't let her memory torture me... ♪
Grohl: Now you were born in Abbott, Texas?
- Willie Nelson: Mm-hmm. - Grohl: It seems like
a lot of songwriters will go from Texas to Nashville,
but you seem like you were one of the few that went back.
Well, I went there for a while
and stayed there for quite a few years and liked it,
but most of my work
was in Texas, and west.
That's where, you know, I grew up,
and I hear it in my music,
and it's not hard to figure out where it came from.
( music playing )
♪ On the road again... ♪
Nelson: And I thought about Houston first.
My sister lived in Austin, so I visited her
and decided that, you know,
that's where I'd start out. Then we had the first
Fourth of July picnic over in Dripping Springs
and that changed a lot of things.
♪ On the road again... ♪
Gilmore: Austin already was a music town,
but it was really when Willie came to town
that somehow all the things converged.
That's sort of what really brought Austin
to a public knowledge.
Steve Earle: Willie moving back to Texas
kind of changed my life. I probably wouldn't, you know...
I definitely wouldn't be exactly who I am
if it hadn't been for that.
All of a sudden I didn't get my ass kicked
because I had long hair and cowboy boots.
♪ Whiskey River, don't run dry. ♪
♪ You're all I've got to take care of... One more time... ♪
Earle: You know, this thing that happened
where all these hippies were coming out to see Willie's gigs,
I mean, I can remember seeing Willie
at a place called the Half Dollar
and the hippies went and sat on the dance floor in the front.
And people started dancing by them and kicking them...
You know, cowboy boots, in the small of the back
as they came by... And Willie stopped.
He... Just in the middle in the song, he said,
"There's room for some to sit and for some to dance."
Terry Lickona: It was like the first time
that the rednecks and the hippies
had been in the same room anywhere, especially in Texas,
and they were all doing the same thing...
Pass the beer around, pass the joint around...
And, uh, realized that they had something in common,
namely the music.
♪ Stay all night, stay a little longer. ♪
♪ Dance all night, dance a little longer. ♪
♪ Pull off your coat, throw it in the corner... ♪
Billy Gibbons: What I like about Willie
is he is quite underrated as a lead guitarist.
His solo work
on that crazy beat-up Martin guitar is phenomenal.
( playing solo )
♪ Someday, when we meet up yonder... ♪
Gibbons: We've remained pals for four decades.
Love Willie Nelson.
♪ We will stroll hand in hand again... ♪
David Fricke: It's one thing to listen to Willie Nelson on Spotify.
It's another thing to see him in Austin,
because there you're seeing him in his native habitat...
Why he is the way he is.
♪ Blue eyes cryin' in the rain... ♪
Grohl: I wanted to ask you about Austin City Limits.
- Mm-hmm. - Were you the first?
I was the first. Think I played it more than anybody.
Lickona: They talked Willie Nelson into doing it for 500 bucks.
Lone Star Beer put up some money to pay for it,
and the show aired on PBS.
♪ Well, it's a Bloody Mary morning. ♪
♪ Baby left me without warning sometime in the night... ♪
Without question, I think Austin City Limits
brought international attention to this small town.
- Grohl: Did you watch it a lot? - Oh, yeah.
I went to tapings from time to time.
You know, 'cause you could...
They weren't that hard to get into.
And you know that... That Austin City Limits
was in that old rusty building on campus forever and ever.
Now the last time I did it was one of the last tapings
in the old studios.
Lickona: It started in that room
and it stayed in that room for 36 years.
We're in a new room today,
brand-new, state of the art facility.
Although we have moved out of the original studio,
it's completely intact.
If you walked in the door you could turn on the lights
and the stage is still there, the bleachers are there,
the skyline is there
and nothing's changed.
Grohl: If we could go in and record on that stage, man,
that would be huge.
Like, I don't know how possible that is, but, you know, I'm...
It's totally possible. Like I said, the studio is there.
And even though the show is downtown in our new venue,
we still do all of our posts back at the old place.
So, I mean, if you wanted to do everything in there, man,
I'd be thrilled to work with you
and clear the time that you need to do it, whatever.
We have that on camera, Terry, just so you know.
- Cameraman: I'm still rolling. - Grohl: We didn't cut yet.
( song ends )
_ ( cheers, applause )
( man clapping )
Lickona: Well, this is it. This is the so-called
historic Studio 6A.
Nobody thought it was gonna be historic
when it was built in 1974.
Literally, this studio is designed
for all kinds of production except for music.
Nobody really anticipated that we would do
a live music show here.
( Grohl whistling )
( playing riff )
Oh, we're making...
Oh, we're recording and making a TV show.
- Man: Remember? - Yeah.
What's up? ( guitar playing )
- That's the... - Smear: That's a nice guitar.
Grohl: Have you played in here yet?
It's rad. It's really dry and fucking...
But then... What they did in there
soundwise is sick.
Okay, this is where we're gonna put the dead body.
Butch Vig: I think James and I were a bit stressed
before we came to Austin.
We knew it wasn't set up
like a traditional recording studio.
Two.
Dude, you got to hold the button down before you talk to me.
I can't hear ya. ( speaker beeps )
( voice garbled ) What?
Vig: I think James had been here before
and said the room was fairly "dry."
( thumping )
That's the one we used in Chicago, isn't it?
Vig: Because it's a television studio,
it doesn't have a lot of ambiance,
but we actually found out once we got here and we set up the mics,
it actually sounded really good... Really cool.
I started working at the radio station
in my hometown, in Poughkeepsie... WPDH,
and a listener called and said,
"Have you ever been to Austin?"
I said, "No. That's in Texas, right?"
And he said, "There is an incredible music scene in Austin,
and you really ought to go check it out someday."
So, I was kind of looking for an excuse for a road trip
to go to Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic.
Nelson: Thank you very much and welcome
to the Willie Nelson Fourth of July Picnic.
Is everybody loaded?
( cheers, applause ) Great! 'Cause we are, too!
( music playing )
Lickona: Spent a week in Austin
and a musician friend of mine and I
kinda made a pact that we were moving to Austin.
I landed a job at KUT-FM in the same building
as the PBS station where Austin City Limits was being born
and talked my way into the job
as producer of Austin City Limits.
I took over in season four,
and that's when we built this stage
where Roy Orbison hit those high notes
that only he could.
♪ You gotta take. ♪
♪ If your lonely heart... ♪
Hard to imagine that Ray Charles
and his 17-piece orchestra actually did fit here somehow.
♪ Georgia... ♪ ( cheers, applause )
Lickona: I always do the introductions to the show
from the stage
and I was getting ready to introduce Johnny Cash
and noticed he's off in the corner a little fidgety.
Asked him if there was anything he needed,
and he just kind of looked at me and said,
"Nah, uh, I'm all right,
it's just that this is a real music show,
and I just want to make sure that I get it right."
Hello, I'm Johnny Cash. Good evening.
( applause )
Lickona: And afterwards, Johnny called it
one of the best TV performances that he had ever done.
We have had a lot of historic moments
take place in this room
across all genres of music.
Nelson: And they had good sound for a change, on TV.
Most of the time TV sound hadn't got that good yet,
but Austin City Limits and Terry and those guys worked on it
and they came up with a pretty reasonable sound
for a studio in television,
and that's why a lot of the bands wanted to go there.
( music playing )
♪ Come on. Baby, don't you wanna go? ♪
♪ I wanted love. ♪
♪ I needed love, most of all... ♪
♪ I wanna know should I stay or go? ♪
♪ Make your dress all wet and send it to me... ♪
♪ Old man, take a look at my life. ♪
♪ I'm a lot like you... ♪
( blues music playing )
♪ Caught in the crossfire. Yeah... ♪
♪ Carry on... ♪
♪ All of you lie about something. ♪
♪ You know you do, all of you. ♪
♪ Shame on you all of you... ♪
All right, clap your hands! Come on, let's go!
♪ Send in your skeletons, send in your skeletons... ♪
Grohl: When the Foo Fighters played Austin City Limits
it was a big deal for all of us
because we'd all grown up watching the show.
When you walk into that room
and you step foot on that stage,
you can feel the ghosts and the spirits come out of it.
There's something about that stage
that's just different than anywhere else.
I don't know if they realized how important the show was
when they first started doing it.
There weren't too many of those shows on television when I was a kid.
Lickona: Music in Austin was always a big thing.
Their music scene goes back to at least
the 1930s and 1940s.
There was this club called the Victory Grill...
♪ Mmm, baby... ♪
Where people like B.B. King and Bobby "Blue" Bland
played some of their first live shows.
♪ Mm, mm... ♪
Lickona: There was the Skyline Club, which is the last place
that Hank Williams played before he died in 1952.
♪ Hey, hey, good lookin'... ♪
And Elvis played five times, you know,
before anybody knew who he was.
♪ Well, that's all right, mama... ♪
Earle: By the 1950s and 1960s,
Houston was really the music Mecca.
B.B. King, his entire band... From Houston.
Little Richard, first recordings in Houston.
In his autobiography, Ray Charles says,
"If you want to get a good band go to Houston."
Houston was the Mecca, but Austin was
where all the girls in the halter tops were.
( music playing )
Austin was, uh, quite a magnet.
♪ If you knew Peggy Sue... ♪
Lickona: I mean, it was a big college town.
The University of Texas is 50,000 students.
Earle: What Austin is
is it's a sister city to San Francisco or Berkeley.
There were health food stores,
there were... It was... You'd think
that you'd dropped off into California there.
And there was like, psychedelic bands, you know,
the 13th Floor Elevators and, you know,
the Moving Sidewalks, Billy Gibbons' first band.
The Sidewalks and the Elevators
lived in the same fucking house in Houston.
That was '66, '67.
I was like 16
and just learning
how to traverse new avenues of sound.
♪ To find myself on this dreary, dreary day... ♪
Grohl: I know that you had bands before the Moving Sidewalks,
or was that really the first one?
We were previously called the Saints.
We added horns,
we became this big rhythm and blues thing.
And then boom, 1966...
♪ Oh, yeah! Oh...! ♪
The 13th Floor Elevators appeared.
♪ You're gonna wake up one morning ♪
♪ as the sun greets the dawn. ♪
♪ You're gonna wake up one morning ♪
♪ as the sun greets the dawn... ♪
Gibbons: What Roky and his gang were doing
was off the chain.
We suddenly changed our name
to the Moving Sidewalks,
you know... "13th Floor Elevators,"
okay, "Moving Sidewalks."
It's about forward motion, go up, go forward.
♪ Oh, you're gonna miss me, baby. ♪
♪ Oh! ♪
♪ You're gonna miss me, baby... ♪
Gibbons: This was the same time everybody was discovering
mind-altering uh, "interests."
It was real live d-lysergic acid diethylamide,
you know, 25... And it was because Owsley himself
brought it there and set up another chemist
in the laboratories at the University of Texas.
And there was heroin... ( coughs )
And there was some coke,
every other kind of psychedelic you could imagine.
And some those "excursions" were not so popular
with, uh, law enforcement.
And the "straight and narrow" started becoming
wider and wider and wider.
( music playing )
Gibbons: Now because of their scrapes with the law,
the Elevators wound up in San Francisco
when basically the scene was coffeehouses.
It was more of a folk scene.
I went to school up there near San Francisco.
At that time the folk thing was huge up there
and jug bands and stuff like that.
Rock and roll, to us,
was like, "squaresville," you know?
We... You know, folk was cool.
And then, bang...
Everybody went electric.
( electric guitar playing )
Grohl: I didn't realize
that they were considered to be the pioneers...
Oh, yeah, 'cause they went to San Francisco and, like,
we're playing that stuff, and people were just like,
you know... Yeah.
♪ Within your glistening eyes♪
♪ I'm watching... ♪
Vig: The band I was in in college, uh,
we used to play
Roky songs and 13th Floor Elevator songs.
If you listen to those early records,
I don't know anybody who was quite doing what they did.
His music's fucking rad.
Grohl: Yeah, we got to learn "Two-Headed Dog."
Oh, cool.
- Smear: It was a good song. - Grohl: It's pretty good.
Gibbons: Roky Erickson's voice
is the most wickedly lovely, demonic sound.
Vig: And one of the greatest screams...
When he sings that first line of "Two-Headed Dog," man,
it's just one of the best moments in rock and roll.
♪ Two-headed dog, two-headed dog. ♪
♪ I've been working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog... ♪
Hawkins: What a goddamn pioneer.
And I truly love psychedelic rock.
I really do. I mean, I just do.
I mean, I'd put echo on everything if I could, you know?
And I love the fact
that one of my favorite bands of all time,
ZZ Top, was totally influenced by him.
Now he's not necessarily
in the finest of mental health
or whatever, he... He's brilliant.
You know, kind of a genius.
♪ Two-headed dog, two headed dog. ♪
♪ I've been working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog... ♪
Grohl: How would you describe the Elevators
for someone that's never heard 'em?
Well, uh, I guess they'd get into it right off, you know,
'cause it... That music,
it's kind of careful music, you know.
But we did come up with it,
you know, and everything, you know.
Once you guys became an established band,
did you see the whole thing, like, getting bigger and bigger?
Roky Erickson: Uh, well, we just, uh,
each time we'd play, you know,
we'd feel more confident about what we were doing, you know.
We'd get flashy clothes and stuff like that
that would look like, you know,
Davy Crockett or something like that.
You know, I've met Billy Gibbons...
- Mm-hmm. - I like him a lot. He's a really good dude.
And, um, someone once told me that they named their band
kind of as a tribute to you guys.
- Is that right? - Did you not know that?
Wow, I didn't know about that.
- That's great, yeah. - I mean, you know.
Well, how did ZZ Top start?
They just... Somebody said "Well, you know,
it'd be better to call you ZZ Top" or something?
( both laughing )
Grohl: Did you get to see the 13th Floor Elevators?
Yeah, I saw them in a...
I saw them in a Chinese restaurant.
- Grohl: What was it like? - They were crazy.
And, you know, the guy had the electric jug and everything.
( music playing ) Roky: Yeah! Yeah!
You know, it wasn't mainstream, if you know what I mean,
but they had records, you know.
That's what I mean,
that was what was cool about Austin...
They were getting away with it. They were doing it.
And they played all the time, so...
♪ I'm not coming home... ♪
Gilmore: In the period when I came here,
the 13th Floor Elevators had become really famous,
and it was beginning the decline of Roky.
Grohl: How long did it last, that band?
Oh, about... Oh, until, uh,
they started, uh... Tried to help me about...
if they thought I was in trouble
for drugs or something like that, you know.
And then, that first time, you know, they came over there
and they said, "Wow."
They decided, "Look, this guy's quit school in the 11th grade,"
he's... And why, because he has long hair
and he's "too morbid" and "weird beliefs," you know,
and... And, um,
and here he is, uh,
in a psychedelic band.
"Well, hey, buddy, we got to put our finger on this."
And they did.
They had him, uh, incarcerated for years and years
on a trumped-up count of whatever
and he had a choice...
Either go to prison or go to a mental hospital.
And he was advised, "Don't go to prison.
Maybe... Maybe you can make it
out of the mental ward."
And fortunately he did,
thanks to his brother and some well-wishers
that had never forgotten
what Roky stood for in the '60s...
That turning point.
Grohl: 'Cause when I listen to your voice,
there's part of me that I wondered if...
If you like James Brown, you know.
- Yes, I do like James Brown. - Do you really?
Uh-huh. Yeah.
Because when your voice gets up there into that high stuff, like, "Yeah!"
I always thought, "Well, that sounds like James Brown."
I'd say I've been influenced by...
well, James Brown, you know. He screams like...
I've been getting into screaming like that
real thing that hurts you.
It just, you know, wonder where he is, you know.
It just... ( voice fades )
Gibbons: He's the living embodiment of psychedelic music.
He invented it. And that's to say a lot.
It's really saying a lot.
Tony Brown: Then Austin became kind of a focal point
of... music against the grain,
a place with no boundaries.
There was a counterculture in Austin
before there was one in other cities.
I was, um, counterculture because my uncle was
and, you know, I was the kid among a group of people
that was... That for the most part,
five and up to 10 years older than I was.
Not much interested in school,
and I ran away from home when I was 14.
They brought me back and I ran away again
in the middle of the second semester.
♪ Well nothin' ever happened 'round my hometown. ♪
♪ I ain't the kind to just hang around. ♪
♪ Then I heard someone callin' my name one day, ♪
♪ and I followed that voice down the lost highway... ♪
Earle: I moved out of the house when I was 16
and I was very heavily interested in music
and I started hanging out around, you know,
this coffeehouse called the Gate House.
And I started going over to Houston
'cause I started hearing about a place called the Old Quarter
and a place called Sand Mountain, a coffeehouse.
The main thing I went over there looking for was Townes Van Zandt.
As soon as I started playing coffeehouses,
I started hearing about Townes and people played Townes' songs,
and I went to the record store and there were Townes' records.
And I didn't know any difference between Townes van Zandt
and, you know, Jackson Browne,
or anybody else that had a record in the record store.
Anybody that had a record in the record store was...
Was a big star as far as I knew.
I met him in a place... In the Old Quarter in Houston,
and I followed him around for a couple years.
Grohl: Did you feel akin to what his whole vibe was?
We... Yeah, we... It was a cult.
We... We... All of us... Me,
Lucinda Williams, Guy Clark, even...
Everybody went through their own stage
of wanting to be him.
Some people emulated the wrong things...
Including me sometimes.
♪ But they'd shut down all the honky-tonks tonight, ♪
♪ and say a prayer or two. ♪
♪ If they only knew. ♪
♪ You always said the highway was your home. ♪
♪ We both know that ain't true. ♪
♪ It's just the only place... ♪
Earle: When I got to know him I realized he didn't...
He wasn't making any money.
And Townes could have made a lot more money than he made,
but what's important is it didn't cause him
to stop doing what he was doing.
I witnessed somebody that had committed to being an artist
no matter what the outcome of that was
as far as their livelihood.
♪ It never really was your kind of town, ♪
♪ but you went around with the Ft. Worth Blues. ♪
Austin City Limits put Austin on the map nationally.
The early seasons, it's pretty strictly,
you know, country and blues and folk,
stuff that was popular in the...
In the country region and the South,
but it gave it a national voice.
One of the first shows that I booked
in my first year as producer was Tom Waits
who had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do
with country music or with Austin.
♪ Well, sticks and stones may break my bones, ♪
♪ but I always will be true... ♪
Lickona: Tom Waits was kind of one big step
in a different direction for the show.
And to this day, that is still, like,
one of the most in-demand shows...
A 40-year-old Tom Waits show.
♪ Well, they're lined up all around the block. ♪
♪ On the nickel over there... ♪
_ ( Lickona speaking )
- Grohl: We are, actually. - Lickona: For the song?
- Grohl: Do you have an old piano here? - I bet we do.
Do you have the old piano here?
Yeah, I think so. The Steinway.
It's behind these bleachers.
- Grohl: Oh, really? - Okay, so it's a baby grand.
Yeah.
But it is the piano
that Ray Charles, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis...
Did you just film what just happened?
Lickona: But I haven't used it much for anything.
- Grohl: What?! - Man: It's still in good shape.
Why this shit's on it, I have no idea.
People always said it sounded...
Who's played on this?
Man: Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino,
Ray Charles, everyone.
Was it here for Tom Waits and stuff?
Yeah, he played this. He play... He played this, too.
I'm sure Tom Waits played this piano.
What other piano would he have played?
Oh my, God. We got to get that down on stage.
Lickona: Nobody really knows the history of this piano.
( stammers ) Why is this place... Why is... Why is it...
( laughing )
Why... What is going on in here?
Well, they used it for the PBS pledge drives
and for local productions and staff brown bag lunches...
Man: Private parties.
Lickona: And, uh, you know.
But, you know, so far it still looks exactly the same.
It's weird, man.
It's like The Twilight Zone with the cigarette
- still in the ashtray. - Lickona: Yes.
Grohl: It just looks like you had a show in here last night.
Wow, man.
Okay, I'm going to tell those guys right now!
♪ Blue Monday, how I hate Blue Monday. ♪
♪ Got to work like a slave all day... ♪
( music playing )
I had forgot that song.
Ah, whatever.
You want to give me a level of the track
so this thing works right?
Brown: And can you relay a message to everybody out there
they need to shut the fuck up and stay still?
'Cause we're picking up everything.
Shut the fuck up if you're in this room.
No farting. Okay, let's try it again.
( piano music playing )
Grohl: Archie Bunker's chair is in the Smithsonian
and this piano's in the corner of the room
with blankets over it
and a bunch of stuff on top of it.
I... I was shocked.
Sorry. ( laughs )
You're just a hair late on the
"da da da da da da da da-bum."
( music playing )
Lickona: And when the Armadillo world headquarters opened,
that was a milestone in Austin's musical evolution.
When I moved to Austin
in 1970 at 18
and got an efficiency apartment,
across the street was the Armadillo... Had just opened up.
Lickona: It was a former armory building
that could hold couple of thousand kids
and they'd have rock and Grateful Dead,
and Springsteen played one of his first Texas shows there.
But they also booked Willie and Waylon.
Vaughan: And that place would be packed.
There'd be thousands of people in there
doing the Cotton-Eyed Joe or whatever they did.
Announcer: Let's hear a hoot and a holler right now!
My little bands were sort of anti that, you know.
We didn't want to be country,
we wanted to be blues.
The first song I learned was "Honky Tonk" by Bill Doggett.
You know... ( mimics guitar riff )
And I basically haven't progressed very much since then.
( cheers, whistles, applause )
People think, "Oh yeah, that blues stuff..."
that's, you know, that's easy
until you start listening and then try and learn it.
My buddy, Jimmie Vaughan, said,
"Oh yeah," he said, "just when you think it's easy..."
( music continues )
"...you start realizing just how tough it is."
( music continues )
Vaughan: We said, we're gonna have a blues band.
And they go, "You can't do that. You'll never get anywhere."
( chuckles )
We didn't care. We were having fun.
♪ Well, the east to west... ♪
Vaughan: This guy named Clifford Antone,
he was totally into blues.
All he cared about was Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters
and finally he just opened a club and said,
"Okay, this is Antone's and we're gonna have blues here."
And we got to be the house band, the Thunderbirds.
( music playing )
Sometimes there's a fulcrum of a music scene
and that was Antone's.
Gilmore: You knew if you went to Antone's
that you were gonna hear something good.
Quality, all the time.
( music playing )
Vaughan: Albert King, Albert Collins...
All the guys from Chicago...
Would come there and play for like a week.
And we got to learn, you know, from watching these guys.
Albert King played
left-handed, like Hendrix,
and not restrung,
but just turned the guitar over and play.
( music playing )
Vaughan: You didn't go and ask Albert King to sit in.
He was a huge mean guy
and he was Albert King, you know,
the meanest guitar player you've ever heard of.
All of us right-handed guitar players go nuts
trying to figure out
how Albert King played like that.
And you can't comprehend it
until you'd turn the guitar over like this,
because all those pulls were...
down,
down...
not up.
So Albert became my favorite guy.
You didn't go up and ask Albert King to sit in.
Nobody did.
But Clifford said, "Hey, there's this kid named
Stevie Ray Vaughan that wants to sit in with you.
He can play just like you."
And so Albert's like, "Okay."
And he got my brother up when my brother was 17.
( music playing )
This was way early ZZ Top.
♪ But you did, and I thank you... ♪
We were doing a show at a club called Arthur in Dallas
and Stevie tiptoed in,
of course I was friends with his older brother, Jimmie.
I said, "Come on up, man."
And he was already tearing it up.
And he couldn't have been maybe 15.
( music playing )
Grohl: Do you remember the first time you played
- Austin City Limits? - Yeah, yeah.
There would be like 300 people in there.
Everybody'd be dancing and pretty fast forgot
what you were doing and you just had a good time.
( song ends ) Vaughan: We were on the show,
and I think Stevie opened the show
and, uh...
♪ Lovin' makes me feel like a mighty, mighty man. ♪
♪ Love me, baby, ain't I your man? ♪
♪ I'm a love struck baby. ♪
♪ Yeah, I'm a love struck baby. ♪
♪ You got me love struck, baby. ♪
♪ And I know just what to do... ♪
Lickona: The first time Stevie Ray did the show
he was just a sweaty mess on the stage
and he kept leaving the stage and going off thinking,
you know, "Man, I... I just can't do this," you know,
"I've never... I've never played this bad,"
while everybody in the audience was just like,
"Wow, this is some awesome, incredible shit."
( music continues )
Hawkins: You know, I just have a vague memory
of being a kid and seeing Stevie Ray Vaughan
on Austin City Limits. I just remember it,
like... Like a dream almost, I remember seeing it.
Shiflett: I've seen a bunch of the old episodes
that were filmed in this room,
and, uh, I mean... I guess most notably,
you know, the Stevie Ray Vaughan stuff,
you know, one of the greatest guitar players
that ever walked the earth.
I mean, even then, even as a kid, you could tell
that he was something special.
♪ Stranded. ♪
♪ Caught in the crossfire... ♪
Lickona: The last show that he did in 1990, literally,
just months before he died in that helicopter crash
_
was so incredibly powerful.
_
Eric Clapton probably described it better than anybody,
that there was like this power
that was being channeled through him
that was almost not quite human.
Gibbons: Blues comes and goes, it ebbs and flows,
it'll be around. One by one,
somebody's gonna like it enough to chase it.
♪ Save the strong, lose the weak... ♪
Grohl: Did you ever listen to the blues?
Were you a blues person?
Um, a little bit. I like Delta blues.
I don't really care for northern blues, like Chicago blues.
I don't like "perky" blues.
If you have to suffer to sing the blues, um,
I don't think you necessarily have to suffer
to be punk rock, but it helps.
I don't think you have to be angry, but it probably helps.
♪ Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, better look at your son... ♪
Houston and Dallas had their little scenes,
but they weren't so good. Not compared to Austin.
God, that scene was so cool.
Those days were just the most awesome.
And when the punk stuff really started up
I was working at a record store
and kinda gravitated more towards Clash
than I did Sex Pistols 'cause Sex Pistols
just sound like a rock and roll band to me
and Clash kind of sounded more like the Beatles.
♪ Rock the casbah... ♪
Grohl: Did you have musical aspirations
- before any of this, or not? - Haynes: Perhaps.
However, with no musical ability.
I was the worst accountant probably in the history of that
Peat, Marwick, Mitchell office in San Antonio, Texas.
I wanted to go to art school and teach college art.
I thought that way I could have summers off
and hang out with, you know, hot coeds during the year
and teach them how to draw.
And then punk rock came along.
( punk rock music playing )
Playing a show at a big place was just so unobtainable.
And then here comes punk rock
where anybody can get up here and do this.
♪ Oh, I want to make you see... ♪
The music isn't what got me first.
What got me first was the whole idea
that the guy in the back that's yelling,
"Sound asleep, we're sound asleep!"
is just as important as the people up on stage
and the people in the crowd are making fanzines,
they're doing photos, they're doing stuff.
They're all being creative, hook, line and sinker.
I thought, "This is the greatest thing ever."
♪ Say hey, hey, hey, whatcha got to say... ♪
Grohl: The Big Boys, you know,
they were one of the first.
In a scene that lasted for about a decade,
they were really one of the first.
♪ Hollywood... ♪
Big Boys started when I'd gotten out of... I was out of college.
It was my first year out of college,
and Chris and I were out skating and flipped a coin,
see who was gonna play bass 'cause we both played guitar,
and, uh, he got bass, I got guitar.
And like, if it would have been the other way around
that band would have been a completely different band.
( music playing )
Grohl: They had the energy of a band
like Black Flag or the Sex Pistols,
but you could dance to it.
Or you could stage dive to it.
Or you could skateboard to it.
♪ What we're tryin' to say... ♪
That's the skating connection of all of this
is I probably wouldn't even be here
if it wasn't for skating.
The urethane wheels had just come out
and we all skated together.
And Biscuit skated with us and we're skating to, like,
"Brick House" and just all this kind of funk stuff
is what we're skating to, you know, kind of thing,
and since there were no rules or no uniform,
we started playing funk and stuff
'cause that's what we listened to.
♪ Who am I? ♪ ♪ Identity Crisis! ♪
♪ I don't know why... ♪
Grohl: And you guys used to tell the audience
- to go start their own band. - Kerr: Yeah.
And, you know, these paintings, you know what they're signed?
"Your name here."
Because if you look at the bottom of this thing
to see who painted this and you see "Your name here,"
it's like, "Yeah, come on, you can do this, too.
You can do something."
Grohl: Someone pointed that out to me...
"Don't follow in the footsteps of the masters, seek what they sought."
Kerr: Yeah, you should always
walk your walk, stay true, do what you're doing,
'cause you never know when you might plant a seed
and something might happen, you know. It's... It's amazing.
♪ Identity Crisis... ♪
Grohl: It's crazy to think about
in the early '80s in Texas
there's a punk band playing funk
with an outrageous crossdressing front man.
( music playing )
There's pockets in Dallas and San Antonio and Houston,
but for the most part this is the only place in Texas
that was pretty much like that and kind of still is.
When you bailed from your hometown, wherever it was,
you landed in Austin.
We'd come up to Austin
to go hang out at Raul's, which was the punk rock club.
Yow: There was Raul's on Guadalupe
on the main drag by the university.
Frat boys would drive by and throw beers at us
and yell "Devo" out the window.
There was a stop light like, right... Like, it's here,
and then there's a stop light here,
so when idiot frats were like, screaming
and hollering at us and throwing stuff,
they wouldn't realize that the light was red
and the car in front had stopped... And, slam!
And all of us would be like...
♪ Yeah! ♪
Yow: It was just a really cool community
of nut cases and misfits and stuff.
I remember touring bands would come through
and always marvel about how there was slam dancing going on.
And people in Austin would help somebody who fell down,
they would help them up.
( music playing )
♪ I don't give a fuck about anything... ♪
Haynes: The San Antonio newspaper
found out we were playing in Austin... I don't know how...
They came down to Austin and took a picture of me on stage
naked with an American flag wrapped around my waist
and it was on fire. And their headline...
This was on the front page of the "entertainment" section
of the Sunday newspaper and it said,
"Could this be the worst band in the history of rock and roll?"
( screaming )
It was absolutely hopeless.
We were in a band called the "Butthole Surfers."
I mean, give me a break.
James Murphy: I remember there was an all-ages show
and they just brought out a naked woman
and the people that owned it were like,
"You can't do this. This is an all-ages show or you get shut down."
So Gibby lit part of the place on fire.
Yeah.
In 1985 there wasn't a band on earth
who could touch them live.
♪ I don't mind the sun sometimes. ♪
♪ The images it shows... ♪
Haynes: You know what, I like what
Thurston Moore said one time...
"The last psychedelic band."
I wonder why they've never asked us
to play on Austin City Limits.
( laughing )
Just like skating,
as big as people think all this stuff was back then,
it was this small, little thing
and we might as well have all been from Mars or Saturn.
Grohl: It's interesting because
it seems like with South By Southwest
it's become this huge music industry capital.
The people that started "South By" were all at Raul's.
Louis Black, who runs the Chronicle...
All those people were Raul's.
It started here in 1987,
really as a reaction from Roland Swenson
who's the founder... Who was a band manager
and couldn't get the music industry
to come to pay attention to any of his bands.
He got $5,000 from the Austin Chamber of Commerce
and it was partially underwritten
by the Austin Chronicle where he was still an employee.
Kerr: It was all these bands nobody really knew about,
and they were just trying to play for people.
Me and my buddies, we used to call it "South By So What?"
Klein: It started out with 800 people
and I think 200 bands and 15 clubs.
It was pretty exciting when it started.
Everybody had gigs and they were playing in different clubs.
I mean, we get now...
10,000 applications to play
for about 2,300 slots.
( music playing )
Vaughan: It's not really a local thing anymore.
You know, you see bands from all over the world.
A couple of years ago I think it was,
there were 120-something bands just from Australia.
There's a Korean night, there's a Dutch night, there's a Japan night.
I don't think it's really a music festival anymore.
It's spring break.
And then now, the record companies come, and they have budgets,
and there's bands playing on the corner.
Everybody else has glommed onto South By Southwest which takes away
from what the heart of what South By Southwest
was created to be.
Then I think as South By Southwest came along
it drew more attention to Austin.
Gibbons: There's still evidence of "small town-ness"
to be found in Austin, but by and large,
it's... It's really grown up.
It's not so much isolated or localized as it once was,
but there's still a history and a legacy there, you know,
that deserves a lot of respect
and that we can learn a lot from.
Grohl: Because you were born and raised here,
you have probably
one of the better perspectives on this city.
Growing up you must have known
that this was somewhat of a music capital, right?
I didn't know.
I never really crossed the river
to go anywhere other than like, my grandmother's house.
Every now and then we would drive down Sixth Street
and, you know, check it out during the day,
but I didn't know all this stuff was happening
until I went down for my friend Eve's birthday party
and I was like, "How could you keep this from me?"
Like, "This is everything that I want in my life."
So I jumped in, man.
I started skipping school,
I started missing out on projects,
I wasn't doing homework,
I was hanging out in smoky bars way too late
and showing up to school in the morning
just disinterested, like, "Where were you?"
I was like, "I was hanging with Jimmie Vaughan
and Pinetop Perkins and James Cotton
at Antone's last night."
Grohl: You remember him from when he was a little kid.
Yes.
What did you think the first time you saw this little kid?
Well, I... I just didn't think anything about it.
I just figured his parents, you know, brought their kid
and then I started hearing about him... "Gary Clark...
And he plays with that little girl named Eve,
you got to hear 'em play."
( music playing )
Yeah, I don't read music
so it was either by sight or, you know, by ear.
Had mad VHS tapes of Austin City Limits
and they're worn.
Like, you can tell like, parts where...
I just watched them over and over again.
"Okay, well, it's somewhere in here...
That awesomeness is in this section of the neck."
You know what I mean? So let me figure that out.
I spent a lot of time like, this close to the TV,
like, "What is that?"
And so finally one night, uh, we got him up.
He had that smooth thing that he's got now...
( music playing )
But there's a smoothness on top of the...
The "soulful roughness" that's going on
that you immediately get... Bam!
You get it when you hear him.
( music continues )
And he had that when he was a little kid,
so we're... Everybody's like, "Okay, we know he's got it."
He's just heavy of...
As a blues player as anybody. He's for real.
He's not faking it, you know what I mean?
He asked me to open up some shows for him
and took me on the road for my first time.
I'd just graduated high school, I was like, 19 or something...?
Yeah, I was young.
I couldn't even get into most of the clubs.
I would play the set and then they'd make me sit outside.
And, uh, yeah, I still got pictures
of, like, me in the club with Xs on my hands,
you know, I was too young.
We're real proud of him, you know, in Austin,
because he's sort of like the new generation.
He's just like a mentor and a teacher.
I'll always be grateful. I can...
He changed my life, you know what I mean?
( music ends ) ( cheers, whistles )
We're gonna get everybody.
Gary Clark, Jr.,
y'all know Jimmie Vaughan on the guitar.
Clark, Jr.: First time that I played
on this stage was with Jimmie Vaughan.
It's like the first time
I saw Austin City Limits with Jimmie Vaughan,
it was on, you know what I mean? It's a trip.
I mean, I'm tripped out right now sittin' here.
It's crazy.
- Grohl: It gets weirder, too. - Does it?
- Oh, yeah. - Awesome.
( music continues )
Lickona: We have almost 40 years
of these incredible classic historic performances.
♪ I keep a close watch on this heart of mine... ♪
Lickona: I'd love it to think that people...
Anybody, anywhere in the world, can someday
go and watch that Johnny Cash song from 1982
or the Willie Nelson song from his pilot show
when he was 39 years old.
Or, you know, pick an artist, pick a song.
That's history, man.
Grohl: Now have you played
on Austin City Limits, the TV show?
I performed on Austin City Limits
with Roky Erickson.
( music playing )
Gibbons: He's, uh, emerged and risen from the ashes
of a really challenging period
and it's a... It's a real bonus.
♪ Two-headed dog, two-headed dog. ♪
♪ I've been working in the Kremlin with a two-headed dog. ♪
♪ Two-headed dog... ♪
Grohl: The idea of putting people together on stage
to perform live for an audience
with no holds barred, no editing,
just musicians in a room...
Usually those moments are only seen
in smoky bars and small clubs
and basements and theaters,
but they managed to capture them
and share them with the world.
( whirring )
I worry about cities like Austin
because it's only a matter of time
before that candle blows out, man.
When cops started to come around with decibel meters
at the gigs, telling people to turn it down
because, you know, neighbors or residents
of like, new condos that went up
weren't feeling the noise, I was like, "Okay,
this is... This is a game changer."
Like, that's what we do, you know what I mean?
Like, we make noise and people love it.
That's why we're here... Like a thing,
it's like music, food, outside, the river...
Like, that's what we do. Like, don't fuck with that.
Klein: I mean, my biggest concern
is that the prices of places to live become too high,
that it pushes the creative people out.
I mean, we need those people in our community
to continue to make it interesting.
Grohl: So with South By Southwest getting bigger
and ACL and their new venue getting bigger...
Yeah.
Grohl: Like, then how do you "keep Austin weird"?
( sighs ) That's a good question.
Reason why all the artists moved here in the first place
was because you can move here and live on basically nothing.
You could, you know, make music or do art
or do your craft and be able to survive.
And there's a lot of people
who think it's growing too fast.
Maybe I gotta move further west.
And maybe, you know, at some point you might want to
because the population is growing,
but there's plenty of room out west.
( Grohl chuckles ) That's true.
Nelson: It's a long way to El Paso. ( Grohl laughs )
Clark, Jr.: Decisions.
Like, which decisions do I make?
Do I make the ones that preserve this thing?
Or do I do other things people think should happen?
That's where I'm at. I'm like,
I don't know what to... I don't know, and...
All right, here we go.
_
Hawkins: One, two, three...
( music intro plays )
_
( music stops )
_
( drumroll plays )
_
( solo plays )
_
( music fading )
Sync, corrected by icephoenix www.addic7ed.com
( music playing )
♪ Two-headed dog, two-headed dog. ♪
♪ I've been working in the Kremlin ♪
♪ with a two-headed dog. ♪
♪ Two-headed dog, two headed dog. ♪
♪ I've been working in the Kremlin ♪
♪ with a two-headed dog. ♪
♪ Peace brought back, brought back. ♪
♪ Relaxed be nyet brought back. ♪
♪ Did you dry her out, wind her out like jerky? ♪
♪ To me, she's healed, don't attack... ♪