Billy Gibbons has cancelled his disastrous Australian tour and dragged his sorry arse back to the USA but maybe this isn’t all his fault. In fact, it isn’t.
Gibbons Australian shows have been a complete embarrassment but only because what the public was sold appears to be something totally different to what the ZZ Top legend thought he was meant to be doing.
He wasn’t so lucky in Newcastle. Fans started pelting him with whatever they had during his third song. He only got two and a half songs into that set before basically re-enacting the chicken wire scene from Blues Brothers unintentionally.
One final show in Brisbane on Friday has been cancelled to avoid a re-enactment of the Blues Brothers Carrie Fisher scene.
The problem with this tour actually isn’t Gibbons or the people who brought him out but how it was sold to the public. Noise11 understands that potential “buyers” of the show (the venues) were sold “a Q&A with a couple of songs.” To that point, Gibbons gave the audience what he was told he was meant to give.
The problem is that this whole debacle doesn’t seem to be contractually documented to well. In a normal agreement, the venue would have a minimum time the artist had agreed to play written into the agreement.
From what Noise11 understands, this whole tour was a mates agreement and a couple of handshakes.
Gibbons is in Australia “for a mate” doing something he is passionate about – talking about hot rods. While the Q&A revolved around hot rods, that wasn’t Billy’s fault. That is what Billy was brought out for.
Somewhere between a Texan guitar legend jumping on a plane to travel to the other side of the world to talk about hot rods and strum a few chords this thing became “Billy’s Up Close & Personal Show consists of intimate life stories, while kicking back with Billy as he plays and reflects on some of his favorite tunes and famous riffs.
“To perform some of his greatest hits Billy will be joined by his Australian band the Billy T’Zz. Also accompanying Billy will be his long time friend, Hot Rod guru Jimmy Shine, as they share their “Rock and Rod” stories”.
So, 15 minutes on stage … yeah we’ll accept that as a rip-off. As for the content of the show, it was what it was.
Let the buyer beware. This doesn’t end well for Billy Gibbons and sadly it will impact on ZZ Top every touring Australia again.
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