When Brad Gillis returned to Night Ranger after his brief but pivotal stint with Ozzy Osbourne following the death of Randy Rhoads, the guitarist didn’t exactly ease back into life with his old band. Night Ranger’s first tour with Gillis was opening for Kiss, followed soon afterward by a run with ZZ Top.
Gillis remembers both bands taking the newcomers under their wings — and the ZZ Top tour produced one particularly unforgettable backstage incident involving bass guitarist Jack Blades and a scorpion.
“When I left Ozzy and came back with Night Ranger, our first tour was going out with Kiss. You can’t beat that,” Gillis told Eddie Trunk on his SiriusXM show, Trunk Nation. “We started right there on top. I did this nice tour with them. And then, right after that, a little after that, we went out with ZZ Top and did a bunch of shows nationwide.”
Night Ranger was still a new band, having released its debut album, Dawn Patrol, in 1982 and scored an early hit with “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me.” Gillis says the band was struck by how warmly it was treated by two of rock’s biggest acts.
“Just like Kiss, you know, the guys in ZZ kind of took us under their wing. You know, we were a new band, just came out with ‘Don’t Tell Me You Love Me’ for our first single. And it was so nice that these big bands that are so established would take us under their wing and treat us well, you know.”
Billy Gibbons, in particular, would hang out with the younger band. During one show — Gillis thinks it was in New Mexico — that hospitality extended to a situation nobody could have anticipated.
“Billy Gibbons would come and hang out with us. And there was one point where we were playing a show, I think in New Mexico or something, and Jack, we were backstage and he put his coat, or shirt or coat, on a chair, but it fell off the chair.”
Blades apparently didn’t notice that something had found its way into the garment.
“We got done, we came back. We all took our showers, get ready, get dressed, and Jack put on his coat and gets stung by a scorpion. He opens up his coat and this little baby scorpion drops out. And we’re like, ‘Oh crap, what the fuck?’”
When Billy Gibbons found out, he got curious.
“He goes, ‘Was it a little one?’” Blades said it was. Billy knew what that meant. “He goes, ‘Oh, those are the most poisonous.’ You know, and Jack’s like, ‘Oh, shit.’”
The band captured the scorpion and rushed Blades the hospital, where his treatment for the sting was successful.
But the story didn’t end there. Gibbons turned the baby scorpion into a rather macabre souvenir.
“Somebody got it in a glass, and Billy Gibbons got it and encased it in one of those glass globes, you know, with the scorpion in it, and had a little wood frame on the bottom that said, ‘To Jack Blades. Lord have mercy from Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top.’”
More than four decades later, Night Ranger and ZZ Top are still sharing stages. Gillis said the bands had played together just a couple of months before his conversation with Trunk, making the recent news of ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard’s death particularly poignant.
“But, you know, we just played with ZZ just a couple months ago. And we’ve done shows with them, a couple shows a year with them. So, you know, it’s sad to hear about Frank Beard.”
For Gillis, Beard’s death marked the loss of a musician from a band that had been part of Night Ranger’s story from its earliest days. The scorpion may have made for a bizarre souvenir, but Gillis’s memories of ZZ Top are ultimately rooted in the generosity he says the band showed Night Ranger when they were just getting started.
