Welcome to My First Metal Shirt, a regularly-occurring feature on Metal Insider where we talk to people involved in metal about the first-ever metal T-shirt they owned, their memories about it, and hopefully, a picture of them in it. This week’s installment comes from GWAR’s Jamison Land, more commonly known as Beefcake the Mighty’s Slave.
When I was growing up in Louisville, KY, my father, Greg Land, was the manager of vintage guitar shop called Guitar Emporium. He would often get invited to bring vintage guitars to big concerts in the area, hopefully to sell to the artists. I was in sixth grade when he was asked to bring some instruments to show to AC/DC on The Razor’s Edge tour. He brought me along. I believe it was only my second concert I had ever attended, and I was pretty excited. I remember that it was like nothing I’d ever imagined before! Huge cannons firing, a giant inflatable bikini girl, and thousands of AC/DC dollars with Angus’s face on them dropped onto the crowd below. It was awesome!
After the show, we went back to the dressing rooms and as soon as we walked in Brian Johnson walked right up to me and said in his booming Geordie accent “hey keed…d’ya wont a tee shurt?” I, of course, accepted. My first ever concert tee! Given to me by AC/DC. You can’t much cooler than that.
As a side note to the story, I must mention meeting Angus. He was in the next room, and for those that don’t know Angus is a rather short fellow, about 5’2. He was standing there, with two women; one on either side of him. The women appeared to be supermodels; one blonde one brunette and they were both extremely tall and towered over Angus. Angus, himself, was eating an enormous submarine sandwich. It was an amusing site seeing this little guy in the middle of two tall, beautiful girls, eating a giant sandwich. I will never forget that image as long as I live. The t-shirt I was given, alas, was not of very good quality and hasn’t survived the years. But I do still have my Ballbreaker concert tee that I got at their show a few years later.
