April 20, 2021 • 45 mins
Mechanical bulls are kind of weird, but they have certainly made a place in American pop culture over the years. Largely due to one movie, Urban Cowboy.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey you, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry is not here. She stepped
away for a minute digitally speaking, but she's still here
in spirit. So this is stuff you should know. Jerry's
(00:22):
looking for love and all the wrong places, right, that's right.
And Chuck. I was not really cognizant of what was
going on when all of this was happening. But there's
a period of time where like country was just beyond
cool in America, like it was the popular culture. Yeah,
(00:45):
I mean I really remember it. And you're, what five
years younger at least never gets old. Uh. It is
a time that I remember well in the TV show
Dallas and when country, you know, had these big crossover
(01:07):
stars like Eddie Rabbit and Juice Newton and Mickey Gilly
and Kenny Rogers and Kenney Rogers was making these big
Hollywood movies and Dolly Parton was making big Hollywood movies.
It was it was an interesting time, and it was
it was sort of the beginning of the change of
country music from sort of more underground outlaw cowboy Johnny Cash,
(01:30):
Willie Nelson, Whale and Jennings stuff to the big A
M A's country thing that we see today. And I
think the transition was kind of happening back then in
the seventies early eighties. That seems to be where it
finds its roots is is in this area of this
era where it turned into pop basically yeah. And the
(01:52):
transition from um, like you were saying that kind of
outlaw like hardcore country, um, you pop by way of
easy listening, which is a pretty hard left turn if
you think about it. But this that easy listening UM
was featured prominently on the sound check for a movie
called Urban Cowboy, which in one of the more surprising
(02:15):
things I've ever come across in our research in the
thirteen years we've been doing this. Happy anniversary by the way,
um yeah, like right now it's right basically yeah, alright
and close enough to that's worth saying happy anniversary for um.
One of the more surprising things I've ever come across
is that, since we're talking about mechanical bulls today, you
(02:36):
can't tell the story of mechanical bulls without John Travolta.
I know, right, who knew? Not me? Did you know
that that was tied together intimately Urban Cowboy and Mechanical Bulls. Well,
it was a big surprise for me, in a pleasant
one too, Like I'm still on cloud nine enough for
learning about that. Yeah, I mean this was I guess
(02:57):
I was a little kid, so you would have been
just a babe at the time, So it makes sense
that this is more cemented in my memory. But I
remember Urban Cowboy. I just remember it all being a
very big deal, like people like Olivia Newton John where
where people were making country albums that normally didn't because
it was just the hot ticket. It was a big deal. Yeah,
(03:19):
it really was. Um And like I like, I watched
enough um ME TV and stuff to to to be
able to recognize this era. It seemed weird to me.
Uh it's I think it stands for memorable entertainment television.
It's all like old three runs from the seventies. Is
it a channel or is it like a streaming app?
It's a channel. Um, we have one of those like antenna's.
(03:40):
You can get a digital antenna and there's a lot
of like really good um rerun Like, uh, what's the
word I'm looking for. I guess nostalgic TV out there
and me, TV is one of them. But anyway, you know,
every once in a while, probably every six their seventh
episode of Bionic Woman or six Million Dollar Man will
(04:03):
suddenly have some weird country trucker lumberjack theme going on,
and you can tell it's like it's because that was
the cool thing, right then, you know it was. I mean,
like I said, Dallas was a big TV show, and
the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders was the
biggest thing going, and and b J and the Bear
(04:24):
and the Dukes of Hazard and right it was. It
was this weird time in America where like the Southern
and Western country western culture was at the four it's
it's very strange, and it coincided with punkin new wave,
and you know, it's it's a very weird kind of
cool time in this country, I think. But the one
(04:45):
of the things that came out of this, one of
the things that was popular at the time that really
tied into this country zeitgeist that was like the basis
of the pop culture at the time was mechanical bull riding,
right that that is some thing you would do if
you were trying to show off at some bar. It
doesn't matter where the bar was in the United States,
(05:07):
and I suspect in other parts of the Western world
as well, um that that you would ride a mechanical
bull wearing a cowboy shirt and tight jeans even though
you were from you know, Miami or something like that. Yeah,
it's funny. When I was reading this and they were saying, like,
they have him in New York, and they had him
in New York, in Los Angeles, and it's popular everywhere.
(05:29):
The first thing I thought was, I bet they had
him in Japan. Surely I was looking. I'm like, I
wonder if it's just some like throwback retro uh like
mechanical bull riding trend somewhere in the world. I couldn't
find any any mention of it anywhere, but surely it
is somewhere, you know. It seemed like a good fit.
But the mechanical bull, if you don't know what one is,
(05:52):
you're not under a rock. Everybody. You could be very
much aware of many things in the world and not
know what one is. It is. Boy, Chuck, you've really
softened and Mellot in your old age, I really have
h it is. It is a a simulation of bull
riding the rodeo sport of bull riding. It isn't literally
(06:12):
a mechanical bull, and we'll talk about how it's made
and what it looks like, but you know it's uh,
go google a picture. You sit on it and someone
is in control of it on the other end, and
it mimics the bucking of a bull as if a
human were riding on it. And they are very popular
in bars, touristy bars usually and maybe in Japan. There's
(06:36):
one in New York City at Johnny Utahs. I have
some stories about later. But um, the mechanical bull basically
can be used to train a rodeo rider, although it's
usually just for entertainment purposes. Yeah, it's really interesting about
what you just said that it's used for training. Is
it's not entirely clear if the mechanical bull was used
(07:01):
to train rodeo riders first, or was used as an
amusement at Honky Tonk bars first and then became used
to train rodeo riders. It has a really hazy origin
and it's possible that it evolved um in parallel and
multiple places, because there there was a need for training
(07:25):
rodeo riders on artificial bulls because part of rodeo that
kind of grew out in the nineteenth century in America
as um rodeo riding developed based on some of the
Mexican blood sports with bulls um As they made their
way up north in the United States the southwestern US,
(07:46):
um bull riding just kind of came out of nowhere
rather than you know, toreo doors um. It was. It
got translated into bull riding, and if you want to
train on riding a bull, your way better off finding
something to simulate the bowl and learning how to ride
a bull by riding a bull. You know. Yeah, although
(08:07):
you know what it did see somewhere and I couldn't
verify it in a lot of places, but I did
see in the sixteenth century in Mexico they were actually
riding bulls. Uh yeah, so that might have just been
a part of the blood sport of bull fighting. If
you're a tough guy and you see a bull, you say,
I'm gonna ride that bull. Watch this maybe so uh.
(08:29):
And then the nineteen thirties in the United States, the
Rodeo Cowboy Association was formed, so it was a full
deal by the nineteen thirties, the one thing we do
know is that the precursor to the mechanics, the mechanized
or mechanical bull, was the bucking barrel, which, um, if
you could just do an image search for bucking barrel,
you've probably seen these at some point. It is a
(08:51):
barrel like an oil barrel, tipped on its side, with
a saddle on it, and its suspended off the ground
and tied at four corners with some pretty heavy duty
tight rope. And um, you would go sit on that
that barrel, on that saddle, and you would have four
ranch hands try and throw you off of it. And
imagine that was a lot of fun. Yes, which I
(09:12):
mean it's dangerous in and of itself, especially if the
ranch hands are jerks, but it's a lot safer than
riding a bull. When you're practicing writing to ride a bull, Yeah,
I would. I would write a bucking barrel. If I
was at one of those uh city slickers like cattle
rustling things and they were like, you want to get
on the bucking barrel, partner, I'd say, heck yeah, but
(09:33):
I would. You could not pay me to get on
a real mechanical bull. Oh, I don't know. I was
watching some um there's like mechanical bull throw compilations, people
falling off mechanical bulls. I watched quite a bit of this.
What's the funniest ones are the ones that happened in
slow motion, Like the camera's on in slow motion, is
just the person who is sliding off in slow motion. Yeah,
(09:56):
that's usually how it works instead of really being thrown, right,
it seems like legs on there. Pretty not dangerous. So
I would ride a mechanical bullet I ever encountered one. Yeah,
I'm not into it. That's fine, I won't yum your yuck. Well,
I mean there, we'll talk injuries later on. It's uh
oh yeah, pretty badly. I think we should. That's that's
(10:18):
it's worth saying. We're like, you can really get injured
on a mechanical bull maybe not live bul level, but
don't ride live bulls anyway. Let's just put that one
out there, and then if you're gonna ride a mechanical bull,
no that it's still very dangerous and can be. That's right. So, um,
should we take a break, Sure, Yeah, let's do it.
(10:38):
I'm not we won't come to blows. It's fine, it's fine.
I'll just go along one. All right, we'll take a
break and then we'll talk more about this funny thing.
Right after this m hm, so chuck um. I was saying, like,
(11:14):
the origins of mechanical bulls are fairly hazy. Um. We
are pretty sure that they came from the bucking barrel
that that preceded them, but it's not entirely clear that
the mechanical bull descended from the bucking barrel in the
rodeo world or into the amusement world. First, like Ed
put this together for us, and he looked high and
(11:35):
low to find primary source but couldn't find one. But
he saw a lot of like mentions of a place
called Bertrand Island, an amusement park in New Jersey that
supposedly had a mechanical bull back in the thirties. Yeah,
this was in New Jersey, and I think this is
what the deal is. I saw this referenced a lot online,
(11:55):
and there is a coffee table book about Bertrand Island
amusement Park. And I bet you dollars to donuts there's
a picture of this rightem cowboy ride in that book,
because they all referenced this book. But I didn't have
time nor the inclination to buy this book to prove
it to myself. But I have a feeling that there
was a picture of this right um cowboy ride in
(12:16):
this in this coffee table book about Bertrand Island Amusement
Park in the nineteen thirties. Okay, I've got a great idea.
Let's get in the way back machine and we'll go
to the printing of that book and we'll look through
one of the books. Are you ready? Well, why don't
we just go back to the Bertrand Island Amusement Park
in the thirties and ride the thing. I guess we
could have done. Okay, all right, let's see that. I mean,
(12:37):
we can go to a book branding shop. Okay, we'll
go to Bertrand Island. You're ready, look at it? Okay,
here we are there. It is there, it is. We
have definitively proven it. There was a rightem cowboy mechanical
bowl um Bertrand what year is it? Right now? Uh?
(12:58):
While I'm looking at my uh shark surf watch and
it says two. Okay, mechanical bull at Bertrand Island Amusement Park.
All right, I guess we should just go back, all right, well,
it's weird that we went back and we didn't ride
(13:19):
it or getting saltwater taffy or hit the big strongman
bell like could have just gone to do the printing
press place. I guess we should have. Huh. Probably had
a little candy dish with saltwater taffy there that we
could have gramped. So if you talk mechanical bulls, you're
gonna hear the name Sherwood cry or come up a lot. Uh.
Some people might mistakenly say he invented the mechanical bull. Uh.
(13:42):
Certainly is could be looked at as the sort of
grandfather of the mechanical bull. But he owned a mechanical
bull in his saloon in the seventies. That will get
too later. But it was built by a man name
Actually I don't know if he built it. Joe Turner
built it. But Joe Turner and knew my scope at
the very least, held a patent for this mechanical ball. Right. Um,
(14:05):
I saw it with my own two eyes, but it's
from six So Joe Turner definitely didn't invent the mechanical ball,
though he was an inventor of the mechanical bull. But
we can say definitively since Sherwood Cryer bought the patent
from Joe Turner, that Sherwood Cryer is not the inventor
of the mechanical Bull, even though I believe even um
Wikipedia cites him as the inventor. Yeah, I was surprised
(14:28):
to see that, UM, But yeah, he's very widely held
to be the the the inventor. But he even said
there was an interview with him in the Austin Chronicle
in the late nineties where he said he talked about
how he bought it off of UM Joe Turner for
thirty dollars, and it will become clear why he did
(14:49):
that and why that was actually a really good move
on his part later on. That's right. But if you
want to talk about the mechanics of the mechanical Bull,
it is a hydraulic based machine that has a couple
of motors on it. It's got a a center shaft
and a main gearbox that make up the spin motor,
and that's the one that's gonna spin. It's gonna turn
(15:10):
it back and forth. That usually when you see them operated,
they usually rarely even go a full three sixty before
they turn back and go the other way, because that's
kind of the whole object is to keep this thing
moving in different directions. Right and it's turned back, and
the other direction is usually very sudden and harsh. That
is abrupt. There's abrupt, thank you buddy, UM. And then
(15:31):
there's another motor usually above the bottom motor, and that
that that motor has to do with UM moving pistons
up and down. Like imagine a platform that that the
saddle sits on that the build the bowl is built
around that. The rider actually sits on this platform. It
moves from side to side and up and down and
left and right. So you have a you have a
(15:55):
a lot of yaw control is what you need, UM
when it comes to riding a mechanic ankle bull because
there's also there's pitch yaw and what's the third one
role role? You got all three of those going on
in this mechanical ball. I believe right. Uh, if you
see one of these in a bar, or if you
rent one, I love that. Ed did the research in
(16:16):
Ed lives in Buffalo, New York and said, and Buffalo,
you can rent one for three hours for nine bucks
and it comes with the operator and everything. I heard
that and then I thought that might be a have
been a fun fiftieth birthday party, but unfortunately quarantine to
be like three or four people standing around. That's not
You could ride it on zoom for all of the
other party guests. But it is mounted very very securely
(16:42):
to a big floor plate and uh, it is surrounded.
I think Sherwood Choir would drive around and collect mattresses
at first, but now they have this big inflatable ring
basically that surrounds it. And uh, it's got a saddle.
It's it's usually the horse itself is um fiberglass or
or it's it's metal maybe, but it's covered in this
sort of thick padding with leather and then a real
(17:05):
deal saddle. Yeah, and um, the ones today there, you
know there. There are plenty built in the seventies and
eighties and even in the nineties that look like old
carnival fun house rides. Basically the controllers are real like
old and Yankee looking and colorful and kind of cool
in retro. The ones today are um touchscreen. They have
(17:28):
like speakers built into them. The padding around them isn't
like a mattress, they're like blown air, like a bouncy castle.
Kind of thing. Um. So when you get thrown, it's
it's like doesn't feel like anything is actually kind of pleasant. Um.
And the controllers are much more computerized and less mechanized
than they used to be in times past. Yeah, and
(17:48):
these days if you look at Urban Cowboy too, it
is just sort of the body if you would of
the bowl. Uh. Now, if you go to a Johnny
Utah's in New York or any kind of fun house,
are you getting free drinks there or something? No? I
just learned of it, and I didn't know that there
was still an urban cowboy type place in New York
that you could go. I think it's it's got to
(18:09):
be close to Times Square. It's in Midtown and urban
urban Cowboy bar that's referential to point break. It's like
man covering all the bases. Um. You they have a
little fake foam bull heads and horns, and apparently you
can even find them with if you want to ride
a bison or or a ram like a sheep, you
(18:31):
can get a sheep's head put on or a ram's
head put on. It goes even more than that. I
literally you there's a hammer head, shark, camel, hot dog,
banana and then apparently there are there's like the this
tawdry thread of bull riding, there's a sexual element to it.
I think, uh yes, sure, I mean Ed ed found
(18:54):
one of the settings is sexy right right on the
actual operations of one machine. ED found it was like pro, intermediate,
beginner and sexy. So it's definitely fair to say, okay,
And also what I turned up goes way beyond a
sexy setting. There's there's a penis one you can get sure,
(19:15):
there's a one woman called Horny Hannah, and there's a
guy named Randy Roger Boy. So it gets pretty um stupid. Sure,
it gets pretty like dark bachelorette party really quick with
when you if you if you wanted to go that way,
apparently you can you can make it go that way.
(19:37):
That's right. We were just speaking of the settings. There
are those automated settings, usually that you can just hit
pro or beginner or whatever, but you can also be
in control. And I think the automated settings are much
more common these days. I think back in the urban
cowboy days was very much about a human operator trying
to you know, really simulate a rodeo. For these sort
(20:01):
of about say pseudo competitions. They were competitions in bars. Yeah,
I mean there would be like you know, you could
win you know, a hundred bucks or something like that. Okay, alright,
so so there was like a competition, but um also
like in bars, it was you know, just to show
off to like that was the whole reason. That's the
(20:22):
entire reason for mechanical bulls. If you're sitting there wondering, like,
why does anybody do this, it's basically to just show
off to stay on as long as you possibly can, basically,
And so, like you're saying with the original operator, the
operator's job was too humiliate you. That was the whole dynamic.
(20:43):
You showing off, the operator trying to throw you off
in a very humiliating fashion. And so the more you
could stay on, or the longer you could stay on
despite the operator's best efforts, you know, the more of
a show off you are. I guess. Yeah, I mean,
it's not any different. It it's not a far cry
from any carnival game where it shows some sort of
(21:05):
feet of strength, whether you're hitting the thing with a
hammer to make the bell ring or the punching bag
to see how hard you can punch a thing, right,
and the ones that you rent today for the parties.
Uh ed described as an all in one entertainment center.
I mean it's got a built in p A system
with speakers and a microphone and amplifier, and it's electric
(21:26):
scoreboard and timer, and it's just this big thing now,
whereas it started out as just sort of this very
very rudimentary, hydraulic thing. Yeah. Um, which makes sense because
again this is the kind of thing that you can
rent like a bounty house, but for grown ups, although
they have little kids ones too. About those. And then
(21:46):
something else I saw is there's a um so there's
like the riding the bull version, there's also a surfboard
version that you stand on. And I actually saw a
video of a dude who combines those two. Look up
on YouTube. Man dances a mechanical bull wearing best Sunday
suit and this guy is in a bar wearing a tie,
(22:09):
not not just standing up dancing on a mechanical bull
that's going at a pretty moderate rate, and it is
one of the most astounding things I've ever seen in
my life. Amazing. Yeah, but there's the version you can
you can rent that or by I guess if you're
into that kind of thing. That is, it's like a
surfboard and like the bounty area around you. The padding
(22:31):
is like a wave kind of thing. It looks pretty cool.
Well that's fun. I thought so too. It looks fun
at least. So if you're going to ride one of
these things, I will say most of the videos I
saw at Johnny Utah's among others, is they they keep
it pretty tame. Although we'll talk about the dark side
of that in a bit too. But um, if if
(22:53):
you're going to get like a real ride, then you
want to go is forward on that thing towards the
head of the bull as much as you can. Uh,
you want to grip that bull with your inner thighs
and dig those heels in and keep your feet ahead
of you and point those toes. Apparently you want to
you know, they have a strap that you put your
(23:14):
hand in and then you put the other arm up.
They say to hang on with your non dominant hand.
That's all I've seen. That's all I've seen too. I
don't know. I feel like I would be stronger with
my dominant hand, but I don't know. I think you're
using your non dominant hand because any stupid hand can
hold onto a strap. Your dominant hand is balancing. You're
(23:36):
holding up in the air to balance, and you need
a little more finesse. That is why, right, Well, that's
my guess, and it makes sense to me because that's
my guess. And what you want to do is you
want to go opposite. That's the whole idea. If the
bull bucks forward, you want to lean back. If it
goes back, you want to lean forward towards its nose.
(23:59):
You want to keep those legs tightened down as much
as you can, and you want to try and keep
everything from the waist up as loose as possible. But again,
if you've been throwing down cowboy boot mugs full of
beer uh at Jill Roy Rogers, just do whatever you
want and good luck. So this this advice comes from
(24:19):
a pro rider named Will Roberts, and um he uh.
He basically says that if you take each one of
these movements as like a wave that you're riding, and
think of think of them um discreetly, as discreet motions,
and you're just handling each one at a time, you
(24:42):
could stay on indefinitely. He didn't say the indefinite part,
and said. In fact, he said, you shouldn't stay on
longer than fifteen seconds or else you're gonna get hurt,
like with at full bore. But I think you could
stay on indefinitely. Well, one of those videos I saw
was titled something about woman rides bull for so long
that video cuts out or something. How is that right? Like?
(25:04):
She never fell off, I mean it was going really slow,
but uh, you know she she hung in there hanging. Yeah,
I don't know. I'm not sure. It depends on which
one you're rented. Uh, well, if you like we said
the rental price, if you want to buy one of
these systems, it's about twenty grand. I saw that too,
But I also saw one on eBay for the suspiciously
(25:25):
low price of hundred, and it's possible the whole thing
was used. I think if if trampolines are one of
those things you buy and then end up just wanting
to get rid of, a mechanical bull is probably ten
x that, you know. Yeah, I don't know if I
would get on a mechanical bull where someone's like, I
got a really good deal on it, right, it's basically free.
(25:48):
All right, let's take another break and we'll talk about
to me what is the most interesting part of this episode,
which is sort of the history of Gillies Saloon. Right
after this, Sorry Josh okay, Chuck, you promised to talk
(26:28):
about Gilly Saloon. What is that? Well, we talked about
Mr Cryer. He owned a saloon. It was really kind
of an oversized tent called Shelley's and Pasadena, Texas outside
of Houston, and this was in the early seventies, like
one and he would bring in country singers who weren't
big national acts yet, but they were sort of known
(26:50):
regionally and it was a popular bar, and it was
getting bigger and bigger because that was oil country. People
came in with some money and he said, you know what,
I think the needs to not be at tent, but
to be a real deal saloon. And he partnered up
with a man named Mickey Gilly right, and I mean
he gave him a pretty sweet deal. He said, look,
(27:10):
I want to build this thing out. I'm going to
build it out. We're gonna make it a more permanent
structure and turned it eventually into like a forty thousand
square foot bar, multiple multiple, multiple bars. Um that was
basically like a real deal Texas Roadhouse and honky tonk
Um you, Gilly, We're gonna name it after you and
(27:31):
you and your house band, um are gonna play basically
every night. And Gilly, did you say that that was
Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin? No, but he was? He? Yes,
he was Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin. Um still is possibly
is he's still alive? Yeah, Mickey Gilly is eighty five
and he had that big crossover hit with Looking for
(27:53):
Love or from the soundtrack, right, Uh, I don't Yeah,
it was it on the Urban Cowl Sounds. I'm pretty
sure was on the Urban Cowboys soundtrack yea yeah? Or
is is Buckwheat would call it? Uh booking panubub and um.
He was no slouch though he had forty two top
forty country singles in his career. So what's funny is
(28:16):
if I've read an interview with him, I think in
Texas Monthly on like the thirty fifth anniversary of Urban Cowboy,
and he basically talks about how, you know, he was
looking for love but it was an all all the
wrong places um he uh he he was looking for
stardom and he just could never quite get it. So
(28:36):
I guess he was one of those unsung like highly
successful people who never became a huge star. And apparently
he was trading on being Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin, was
doing like tribute shows, cover shows, that kind of stuff.
It was doing fine. But so when Um Sherwood Cryer
met up with him, informed a partnership with them, he
(28:58):
he became the namesake of Gail Least, this incredibly popular
honky talk outside of Houston. Um that that became the
setting for Urban Cowboy thanks to randomly enough uh an
Esquire article. Yeah, this reminded me very much. And it's
weird that they're both Trivolta. But Saturday Night Fever it's
(29:21):
tied even more closely than that. The very editor who
ran that Esquire article was the same co founder of
New York Magazine who ran Tribal Rights of the New
Saturday Night that gave rise that was the basis of
Saturday Night Fever. All right, so it all comes full circle.
I have I printed that out, the Tribal Rights of
Saturday Night back when we talked about it. I have
(29:43):
not read it yet, And now I'm going to pronout
the ballad of the Urban Cowboy in America's Search for
True Grit. And I'm gonna have just both those articles
sitting on my desk forever, probably, but I want to read.
I want to read them both because they were both
the basis of two sort of landmark seventies movies that
became cultural touchstones, and John Travolta was in both of them. Yeah,
it's really weird, but it's basically the same thing, except
(30:06):
one is disco said at a disco nightclub. The other
one is country music said at a country western bar.
But it's the same exact thing, same format, love, um, fighting, rivalry, jealousy,
competition on its basically on a weekend night while everybody's
getting trashed at a bar. It's just and they were
(30:27):
separated by two years. I think UM seventy six was
the Saturday Night UM New York magazine article and seventy
eight was the one that featured Gillies. Yeah, it's really
pretty interesting time in our country's history that they're almost
two sides of the same coin. And again, like I
mentioned earlier, this is all going on at the same
time that like punk music is is saying I hate
(30:50):
all of you people exactly and for good reason, looks
so so. This guy can't remember his name. Um, Irving. No,
he was one of the managers or promoters or he
had a lot to do with the Eagles. Um. He
(31:10):
bought the rights to that article for like two hundred
thousand dollars, which is a lot of money to spend
on a magazine article option at the time. And he
he just knew that no matter what happened, he was
going to have a huge soundtrack on his hands, just
like Saturday Night Fever. Um. And it worked twice. It
did work. He apparently wanted it to be all Eagles,
(31:32):
and the Eagles were like, no, that's okay. We suck
so terribly. We even we wouldn't want to do a
whole soundtop um. But I ended up being like a
really great soundtrack. I've never heard it, but I mean,
just looking at the roster. Kenny Rogers, Charlie Daniels, Bonnie
rate Um and Mickey Gilly had Looking for Love on
it as well. Yeah, it was. It was great. We
(31:54):
had the record in our house. Uh. Like you said,
they shot the movie, a lot of it was shot
at Gilly. Uh. That was the bar scene that you
know was predominant in the movie and the competition between
Scott Glenn and John Travolta. As you know, they battled
for for bragging rights, cash money, and Deborah Winger's heart
(32:15):
and glory of course the well the glory men. Scott
Um Scott. Yeah, I can't believe he just forgot his
last name. I think he's one of the coolest actors ever. Yeah.
Not a Carrodean, No, No, he's a Carredan plus yeah. He.
I think Scott Glenn was one of those that was
always I think he was always confused as a Carrodeine
(32:36):
with a lot of people because he sort of has
that look for sure. So it was the big success
of this movie that made Crier say, I need to
secure this patent because this thing is about to explode.
And I think by that point, uh, the gentleman who
he who held that patent, Yeah, Joe Turner said well,
let's up the price a little bit to to thirty
(32:56):
thou and criers Or still said, yeah, that's don't tell
this guy. But that's still a pretty good deal. Yeah.
Because the mechanical Bull is basically a third lead character
in this movie. Debra Winger, John Travolta and this mechanical
bull El Toro, the real mechanical bull at Gillies um
and became a huge part of the pop culture. And
(33:17):
in Sherwood Cryer was smart enough to realize how big
of a deal it was going to be bought the
patent for it. And now if you wanted a mechanical
bull for your bar that you just converted over to
a honky Tonk format, you had to go buy one
from Sherwood Cryer. And he made a lot of money
off of those, from what I understand he did. Uh.
I think he even won lawsuits when people tried to
(33:38):
dodge his license. And uh, yeah, he made a lot
of money off of this fad and it was indeed
a fad um for sure. Yeah. But like I said,
you go to Johnny Utahs. There was one on the
Sunset Strip to I don't know if it's still there.
There was a what's the name of that place? Another
(34:02):
canon Johnny movie I can't remember, but there was a
country western bar on the on the Sunset strip that
had a mechanical bull as well. Uh, I can't remember.
I can't remember either. I Um, I know exactly what
you're talking about and I can't remember the name of it.
It's super famous, right, it was for a while, and
it wasn't even that long ago, Like I think when
(34:23):
I lived there, it was still there super cuts, No,
not hogs and heifers. That was in the meatpacking district
in New York. But uh, this is what genuinely kicked
off that whole movement that we talked about at the beginning,
with Southern culture and Western culture kind of being at
the forefront and all these people doing crossover records and uh,
(34:44):
pop music and country sort of intertwining and the lines
being blurred, and the Dallas Cowboys and JR. Eu ing
like this sort of all started with Urban Cowboy and
this mechanical bull El Toro. I would argue that it
started before that, and that or been Cowboy was was
catching a wave that was developing. Yeah, yeah, and gets credit.
(35:06):
But I mean, like if you look at Convoy, that
Chris Christofferson movie, so that was a couple of years
before that, but it was the same year that article
was published in Esquire, So it was all kind of
coming together congealing at the same time. Yeah, every we
didn't kick it off, it capitalized early on on what
it was coming, for sure, but it came in a
(35:27):
like at a time when it could still be considered
cool and a huge contributor to the spread of it, right, Yeah,
And this was like, it's it's funny, Like I kind
of looked back with some fondness, even though it's it
wasn't my scene. But if you talk to any of
the old timers from back then, they called him Gilly Rats.
He's real. You know, these these local bar patrons that was,
(35:48):
they were the real deal. They hated all this stuff, man, Yeah,
because it brought in all the posers and the tourists
and yeah, you know people people on business trips passing
through Houston had to go to Gilly And I'm sure
it just took something that was really sacred and special
to them and and commodified it in a really sad way.
I'm sure it was terrible at least for a while.
(36:10):
And then I'm sure it went back to normal again generally,
and they were still on that bar stool in the
same place exactly. It's just all kind of happened around him. Um.
But speaking of that kind of country chic trend, that
urban cowboy was a huge part of I saw a
reference to a Fantasy Island episode from called Everybody Goes
(36:32):
to Gillies. Mickey Gilly played himself and his fantasy was
to make it big in the country music scene, and
I think may have gotten it. I think it was successful.
I wonder if Tattoo got up on that thing. I
don't know. I could not find the episode. I just
was reading about it, which is kind of disappointing, right
(36:53):
it comes to Fantasy Island. I wanted to see that movie,
the Lache movie with Peter Dinklage, but I never got
around to it. Did you see that? I forgot that
they made that. No, I haven't seen it. So as
far as Gillies goes, um, I wondered. You know, I
wasn't sure the deal and I was like, surely you
can still go to Gillies. But you can't because Gillies
burned to the ground. It did suspiciously. Apparently it was
(37:16):
ruled in Arson and this came after there was a
dispute between Mickey Gilly and Sherwood Cryer, and apparently Mickey Gilly,
who had been approached by Sherwood Crier to basically come
in as a partner on his bar, came out victorious, triumphant,
and UH ended up on the winning end of this
this dispute and apparently walked away with most of the profits.
(37:39):
And I guess Gilly said in at least one interview that,
um he he expected that it was Sherwood Crier who
had burned Gillies to the ground in n It's quite
an accusation, it really is. But I was reading again
that Texas Monthly article. I think it's called Urban Cowboy
turns thirty five. It's like an oral history, which is
(37:59):
the la easiest form of journalism, but it's still do Yeah. Well,
then I explained why they keep making them. I thought
it was just like I don't feel like actually writing today,
I'm just gonna transcribe. It's them. Well, you would like this,
you should read. It's very long and it's really in depth.
And they talked to some of the original Gilly rats,
(38:19):
and a couple of them who worked for Sherwood Cryer
have to say like this, this guy was an amazing
human being, but he was also somebody who would beat
someone with a pool que if like they were causing
trouble at Gillies and did do that, and like you
did not want to run a foul of this guy. Um,
but was also like a really fascinating, interesting, smart human
(38:41):
being too. Yeah, shout out to Texas Monthly too, that's
a really good rag. I really I read a couple
of things from there for some podcasts we're developing a
couple of years ago, and it was really good. They
did these great deep dive not not oral histories, but
like you know, long form. Yeah, there's a guy named
Skip something. Oh man, I can't remember Skip's name. I'll
(39:04):
look it up. Everybody, don't worry about it. But Skip
Hollandsworth or something like that. He's one of their better
journalists for long form at Texas Monthly. He's great. But
there's a lot of them. They have a good, good
stable there. Um. And then uh, they announced that there
would be a new Gillies but it's not just gonna
be a bar, it's gonna be a sixteen acre multi
(39:27):
use development. And apparently El Toro survived the fire and
they're bringing the original El Toro back just to put
on display. So I found one reference that El Toro
survived the fire. It was in the Ocalis Star banner.
What does anybody in Ocaliflorida. Now I don't know, but
they said that El Toro survived fire and then it
(39:49):
was moved to Cowboy Jack's in Woodberry, Minnesota. So it
looks a Cowboy Jack's. There is a cowboy right, I
thought so too. Cowboy Jack's makes no men and of
having the original or El Toro at any point, that's
suspicious because you would really lean into that. Oh dude,
it's all I would ever talk about to anybody. But
that's that's what the Ocalistar banner says. Cowboy Jack's does
(40:11):
not back it up. So who knows exactly what happened
to El Toro? That's right, Like, don't get on that
bullet Johnny Utah's, you're gonna catch something. You come right,
El Toro, You're gonna catch some Johnny demonic on that thing. Uh.
There was there were some injuries though that we um
would be remiss without mentioning there have been plenty of
lawsuits over the years. There was a woman in Santa
(40:33):
Barbara County that was left a quadriplegic when she landed
on her neck. So obviously if you get thrown off something,
if you land wrong, that can be bad news. Uh.
A man in Bergenfield, New Jersey, in Bergen County that
was left with permanent injuries. And then at Johnny Utah's,
a New York woman won seventy thousand dollars because she
tore her a c l at Johnny Utah's, and her
(40:57):
lawyer said this, they just kind of throw people around
while they're drunk. I think that summed up the mechanical
bull about as good as anybody ever had. Yeah, that
was how he described the operators. He said, they just
kind of throw people around. And then I went to
YouTube looked up Johnny Utahs and if you want to
(41:18):
spend some time looking at very bad camera phone videos
of drunk friends filming drunk friends writing very slowly on
these mechanical bulls to bad music, you can do it.
But you can sort of see and a few of
these videos that would be some drunk lady or a
drunk guy who was just you know, being kind of obnoxious,
(41:40):
and you could tell that the but they weren't coming off,
and you could tell that the operator was would get
sick of it and they were going real slow. Then
there'd be like a and just a really quick little
flick of that switch and it would just like toss
him off of their real fast. There's no way that
there's not a term long mechanical bull operators for that move.
(42:02):
For that move, there has to be I wonder what
it is. If you know, please let us know because
we have to know. We got gillid Yeah, that's right. Um,
you got anything else? Thankfully? No? Okay, Well that's it
for mechanical bulls. If you want to know more about
(42:22):
mechanical bulls, then start watching throwing off mechanical bull videos. There's,
like you said, a lot of them. Uh. And since
I said throwing off mechanical balls, it's time for listener mail.
You know what. I was just thinking this could be
the jackhammers of the next generation of stuff. You should know, listeners.
Mechanical bulls, I don't know. I think urban cowboys saved
(42:46):
it without urban cowboy absolutely, I think, and to save
the day again. And then it hit me, I was like,
the common denominator hydraulics. We got to avoid hydraulics from
here on out. I think you might be right. All right,
so where are we listener mail? Yep? I think Jerry
already did the China all right, I'm gonna call this
c I a correction from anonymous. Oh hey, guys, have
(43:11):
been a stuff you should not listener for years. I
love the work you do. Someone who was formally employed
by the CIA, I particularly enjoy the latest episode on
Havana Syndrome. Have since left that job because of ethical concerns.
But I've one nit to pick, and that's when you
talk about people who work in the CIA. Uh, you
call them agents, which is not right. They're actually officers.
(43:32):
There's no such thing as the CIA agent. H this
is this is basically ruined the entire episode for them.
That one thing. No, they're nice, but I mean we
always say CI agent because we're children of television and film.
I didn't know if that's not even a thing. Everybody
says that. Uh, they say this. I know the media
gets wrong, gets this wrong a lot, so it's understandable
(43:52):
that's the terminology that folks use. But in the interests
of always learning and improving, I thought I'd passed this along. Um,
Josh actually did say officer a couple of times somewhere
in the middle, and that was the exception for you guys.
That's great. Other than this admittedly small quibble, I love
everything you guys do, and often use my favorite old
episodes to calm my anxiety or to help is I
(44:13):
fall asleep? Uh? Currently in the heavy rotation of the
max setterm incident in Star Wars Holiday special episode. Those
are that that will calm you down for sure. Yeah,
thanks very much for reading the message. All the best,
Anonymous and uh. Initially Anonymous said maybe use my initials
because it might be a little paranoid about this being
former CIA, but then they said, you know, how about
(44:36):
just no initials. I think that's smart. Just go with
anonymous exactly. In fact, I made this whole thing up.
There is no former officer that left for ethical concerns.
This listener mail will self destruct in three seconds. Two one. Well,
if you want to get in touch with us, we
love hearing from people, whether they are from the CIA
(44:58):
or the n s A or the FBI. Who else,
chuck oh a t F sure and that's it, no
one else? Okay, Um, if you want to get in
touch with us and send us some trade secrets, we
would love to hear that stuff. You can wrap it up,
send it in an email off to Stuff podcast at
(45:19):
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you should know is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey you, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry is not here. She stepped
away for a minute digitally speaking, but she's still here
in spirit. So this is stuff you should know. Jerry's
(00:22):
looking for love and all the wrong places, right, that's right.
And Chuck. I was not really cognizant of what was
going on when all of this was happening. But there's
a period of time where like country was just beyond
cool in America, like it was the popular culture. Yeah,
(00:45):
I mean I really remember it. And you're, what five
years younger at least never gets old. Uh. It is
a time that I remember well in the TV show
Dallas and when country, you know, had these big crossover
(01:07):
stars like Eddie Rabbit and Juice Newton and Mickey Gilly
and Kenny Rogers and Kenney Rogers was making these big
Hollywood movies and Dolly Parton was making big Hollywood movies.
It was it was an interesting time, and it was
it was sort of the beginning of the change of
country music from sort of more underground outlaw cowboy Johnny Cash,
(01:30):
Willie Nelson, Whale and Jennings stuff to the big A
M A's country thing that we see today. And I
think the transition was kind of happening back then in
the seventies early eighties. That seems to be where it
finds its roots is is in this area of this
era where it turned into pop basically yeah. And the
(01:52):
transition from um, like you were saying that kind of
outlaw like hardcore country, um, you pop by way of
easy listening, which is a pretty hard left turn if
you think about it. But this that easy listening UM
was featured prominently on the sound check for a movie
called Urban Cowboy, which in one of the more surprising
(02:15):
things I've ever come across in our research in the
thirteen years we've been doing this. Happy anniversary by the way,
um yeah, like right now it's right basically yeah, alright
and close enough to that's worth saying happy anniversary for um.
One of the more surprising things I've ever come across
is that, since we're talking about mechanical bulls today, you
(02:36):
can't tell the story of mechanical bulls without John Travolta.
I know, right, who knew? Not me? Did you know
that that was tied together intimately Urban Cowboy and Mechanical Bulls. Well,
it was a big surprise for me, in a pleasant
one too, Like I'm still on cloud nine enough for
learning about that. Yeah, I mean this was I guess
(02:57):
I was a little kid, so you would have been
just a babe at the time, So it makes sense
that this is more cemented in my memory. But I
remember Urban Cowboy. I just remember it all being a
very big deal, like people like Olivia Newton John where
where people were making country albums that normally didn't because
it was just the hot ticket. It was a big deal. Yeah,
(03:19):
it really was. Um And like I like, I watched
enough um ME TV and stuff to to to be
able to recognize this era. It seemed weird to me.
Uh it's I think it stands for memorable entertainment television.
It's all like old three runs from the seventies. Is
it a channel or is it like a streaming app?
It's a channel. Um, we have one of those like antenna's.
(03:40):
You can get a digital antenna and there's a lot
of like really good um rerun Like, uh, what's the
word I'm looking for. I guess nostalgic TV out there
and me, TV is one of them. But anyway, you know,
every once in a while, probably every six their seventh
episode of Bionic Woman or six Million Dollar Man will
(04:03):
suddenly have some weird country trucker lumberjack theme going on,
and you can tell it's like it's because that was
the cool thing, right then, you know it was. I mean,
like I said, Dallas was a big TV show, and
the Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders was the
biggest thing going, and and b J and the Bear
(04:24):
and the Dukes of Hazard and right it was. It
was this weird time in America where like the Southern
and Western country western culture was at the four it's
it's very strange, and it coincided with punkin new wave,
and you know, it's it's a very weird kind of
cool time in this country, I think. But the one
(04:45):
of the things that came out of this, one of
the things that was popular at the time that really
tied into this country zeitgeist that was like the basis
of the pop culture at the time was mechanical bull riding,
right that that is some thing you would do if
you were trying to show off at some bar. It
doesn't matter where the bar was in the United States,
(05:07):
and I suspect in other parts of the Western world
as well, um that that you would ride a mechanical
bull wearing a cowboy shirt and tight jeans even though
you were from you know, Miami or something like that. Yeah,
it's funny. When I was reading this and they were saying, like,
they have him in New York, and they had him
in New York, in Los Angeles, and it's popular everywhere.
(05:29):
The first thing I thought was, I bet they had
him in Japan. Surely I was looking. I'm like, I
wonder if it's just some like throwback retro uh like
mechanical bull riding trend somewhere in the world. I couldn't
find any any mention of it anywhere, but surely it
is somewhere, you know. It seemed like a good fit.
But the mechanical bull, if you don't know what one is,
(05:52):
you're not under a rock. Everybody. You could be very
much aware of many things in the world and not
know what one is. It is. Boy, Chuck, you've really
softened and Mellot in your old age, I really have
h it is. It is a a simulation of bull
riding the rodeo sport of bull riding. It isn't literally
(06:12):
a mechanical bull, and we'll talk about how it's made
and what it looks like, but you know it's uh,
go google a picture. You sit on it and someone
is in control of it on the other end, and
it mimics the bucking of a bull as if a
human were riding on it. And they are very popular
in bars, touristy bars usually and maybe in Japan. There's
(06:36):
one in New York City at Johnny Utahs. I have
some stories about later. But um, the mechanical bull basically
can be used to train a rodeo rider, although it's
usually just for entertainment purposes. Yeah, it's really interesting about
what you just said that it's used for training. Is
it's not entirely clear if the mechanical bull was used
(07:01):
to train rodeo riders first, or was used as an
amusement at Honky Tonk bars first and then became used
to train rodeo riders. It has a really hazy origin
and it's possible that it evolved um in parallel and
multiple places, because there there was a need for training
(07:25):
rodeo riders on artificial bulls because part of rodeo that
kind of grew out in the nineteenth century in America
as um rodeo riding developed based on some of the
Mexican blood sports with bulls um As they made their
way up north in the United States the southwestern US,
(07:46):
um bull riding just kind of came out of nowhere
rather than you know, toreo doors um. It was. It
got translated into bull riding, and if you want to
train on riding a bull, your way better off finding
something to simulate the bowl and learning how to ride
a bull by riding a bull. You know. Yeah, although
(08:07):
you know what it did see somewhere and I couldn't
verify it in a lot of places, but I did
see in the sixteenth century in Mexico they were actually
riding bulls. Uh yeah, so that might have just been
a part of the blood sport of bull fighting. If
you're a tough guy and you see a bull, you say,
I'm gonna ride that bull. Watch this maybe so uh.
(08:29):
And then the nineteen thirties in the United States, the
Rodeo Cowboy Association was formed, so it was a full
deal by the nineteen thirties, the one thing we do
know is that the precursor to the mechanics, the mechanized
or mechanical bull, was the bucking barrel, which, um, if
you could just do an image search for bucking barrel,
you've probably seen these at some point. It is a
(08:51):
barrel like an oil barrel, tipped on its side, with
a saddle on it, and its suspended off the ground
and tied at four corners with some pretty heavy duty
tight rope. And um, you would go sit on that
that barrel, on that saddle, and you would have four
ranch hands try and throw you off of it. And
imagine that was a lot of fun. Yes, which I
(09:12):
mean it's dangerous in and of itself, especially if the
ranch hands are jerks, but it's a lot safer than
riding a bull. When you're practicing writing to ride a bull, Yeah,
I would. I would write a bucking barrel. If I
was at one of those uh city slickers like cattle
rustling things and they were like, you want to get
on the bucking barrel, partner, I'd say, heck yeah, but
(09:33):
I would. You could not pay me to get on
a real mechanical bull. Oh, I don't know. I was
watching some um there's like mechanical bull throw compilations, people
falling off mechanical bulls. I watched quite a bit of this.
What's the funniest ones are the ones that happened in
slow motion, Like the camera's on in slow motion, is
just the person who is sliding off in slow motion. Yeah,
(09:56):
that's usually how it works instead of really being thrown, right,
it seems like legs on there. Pretty not dangerous. So
I would ride a mechanical bullet I ever encountered one. Yeah,
I'm not into it. That's fine, I won't yum your yuck. Well,
I mean there, we'll talk injuries later on. It's uh
oh yeah, pretty badly. I think we should. That's that's
(10:18):
it's worth saying. We're like, you can really get injured
on a mechanical bull maybe not live bul level, but
don't ride live bulls anyway. Let's just put that one
out there, and then if you're gonna ride a mechanical bull,
no that it's still very dangerous and can be. That's right. So, um,
should we take a break, Sure, Yeah, let's do it.
(10:38):
I'm not we won't come to blows. It's fine, it's fine.
I'll just go along one. All right, we'll take a
break and then we'll talk more about this funny thing.
Right after this m hm, so chuck um. I was saying, like,
(11:14):
the origins of mechanical bulls are fairly hazy. Um. We
are pretty sure that they came from the bucking barrel
that that preceded them, but it's not entirely clear that
the mechanical bull descended from the bucking barrel in the
rodeo world or into the amusement world. First, like Ed
put this together for us, and he looked high and
(11:35):
low to find primary source but couldn't find one. But
he saw a lot of like mentions of a place
called Bertrand Island, an amusement park in New Jersey that
supposedly had a mechanical bull back in the thirties. Yeah,
this was in New Jersey, and I think this is
what the deal is. I saw this referenced a lot online,
(11:55):
and there is a coffee table book about Bertrand Island
amusement Park. And I bet you dollars to donuts there's
a picture of this rightem cowboy ride in that book,
because they all referenced this book. But I didn't have
time nor the inclination to buy this book to prove
it to myself. But I have a feeling that there
was a picture of this right um cowboy ride in
(12:16):
this in this coffee table book about Bertrand Island Amusement
Park in the nineteen thirties. Okay, I've got a great idea.
Let's get in the way back machine and we'll go
to the printing of that book and we'll look through
one of the books. Are you ready? Well, why don't
we just go back to the Bertrand Island Amusement Park
in the thirties and ride the thing. I guess we
could have done. Okay, all right, let's see that. I mean,
(12:37):
we can go to a book branding shop. Okay, we'll
go to Bertrand Island. You're ready, look at it? Okay,
here we are there. It is there, it is. We
have definitively proven it. There was a rightem cowboy mechanical
bowl um Bertrand what year is it? Right now? Uh?
(12:58):
While I'm looking at my uh shark surf watch and
it says two. Okay, mechanical bull at Bertrand Island Amusement Park.
All right, I guess we should just go back, all right, well,
it's weird that we went back and we didn't ride
(13:19):
it or getting saltwater taffy or hit the big strongman
bell like could have just gone to do the printing
press place. I guess we should have. Huh. Probably had
a little candy dish with saltwater taffy there that we
could have gramped. So if you talk mechanical bulls, you're
gonna hear the name Sherwood cry or come up a lot. Uh.
Some people might mistakenly say he invented the mechanical bull. Uh.
(13:42):
Certainly is could be looked at as the sort of
grandfather of the mechanical bull. But he owned a mechanical
bull in his saloon in the seventies. That will get
too later. But it was built by a man name
Actually I don't know if he built it. Joe Turner
built it. But Joe Turner and knew my scope at
the very least, held a patent for this mechanical ball. Right. Um,
(14:05):
I saw it with my own two eyes, but it's
from six So Joe Turner definitely didn't invent the mechanical ball,
though he was an inventor of the mechanical bull. But
we can say definitively since Sherwood Cryer bought the patent
from Joe Turner, that Sherwood Cryer is not the inventor
of the mechanical Bull, even though I believe even um
Wikipedia cites him as the inventor. Yeah, I was surprised
(14:28):
to see that, UM, But yeah, he's very widely held
to be the the the inventor. But he even said
there was an interview with him in the Austin Chronicle
in the late nineties where he said he talked about
how he bought it off of UM Joe Turner for
thirty dollars, and it will become clear why he did
(14:49):
that and why that was actually a really good move
on his part later on. That's right. But if you
want to talk about the mechanics of the mechanical Bull,
it is a hydraulic based machine that has a couple
of motors on it. It's got a a center shaft
and a main gearbox that make up the spin motor,
and that's the one that's gonna spin. It's gonna turn
(15:10):
it back and forth. That usually when you see them operated,
they usually rarely even go a full three sixty before
they turn back and go the other way, because that's
kind of the whole object is to keep this thing
moving in different directions. Right and it's turned back, and
the other direction is usually very sudden and harsh. That
is abrupt. There's abrupt, thank you buddy, UM. And then
(15:31):
there's another motor usually above the bottom motor, and that
that that motor has to do with UM moving pistons
up and down. Like imagine a platform that that the
saddle sits on that the build the bowl is built
around that. The rider actually sits on this platform. It
moves from side to side and up and down and
left and right. So you have a you have a
(15:55):
a lot of yaw control is what you need, UM
when it comes to riding a mechanic ankle bull because
there's also there's pitch yaw and what's the third one
role role? You got all three of those going on
in this mechanical ball. I believe right. Uh, if you
see one of these in a bar, or if you
rent one, I love that. Ed did the research in
(16:16):
Ed lives in Buffalo, New York and said, and Buffalo,
you can rent one for three hours for nine bucks
and it comes with the operator and everything. I heard
that and then I thought that might be a have
been a fun fiftieth birthday party, but unfortunately quarantine to
be like three or four people standing around. That's not
You could ride it on zoom for all of the
other party guests. But it is mounted very very securely
(16:42):
to a big floor plate and uh, it is surrounded.
I think Sherwood Choir would drive around and collect mattresses
at first, but now they have this big inflatable ring
basically that surrounds it. And uh, it's got a saddle.
It's it's usually the horse itself is um fiberglass or
or it's it's metal maybe, but it's covered in this
sort of thick padding with leather and then a real
(17:05):
deal saddle. Yeah, and um, the ones today there, you
know there. There are plenty built in the seventies and
eighties and even in the nineties that look like old
carnival fun house rides. Basically the controllers are real like
old and Yankee looking and colorful and kind of cool
in retro. The ones today are um touchscreen. They have
(17:28):
like speakers built into them. The padding around them isn't
like a mattress, they're like blown air, like a bouncy castle.
Kind of thing. Um. So when you get thrown, it's
it's like doesn't feel like anything is actually kind of pleasant. Um.
And the controllers are much more computerized and less mechanized
than they used to be in times past. Yeah, and
(17:48):
these days if you look at Urban Cowboy too, it
is just sort of the body if you would of
the bowl. Uh. Now, if you go to a Johnny
Utah's in New York or any kind of fun house,
are you getting free drinks there or something? No? I
just learned of it, and I didn't know that there
was still an urban cowboy type place in New York
that you could go. I think it's it's got to
(18:09):
be close to Times Square. It's in Midtown and urban
urban Cowboy bar that's referential to point break. It's like
man covering all the bases. Um. You they have a
little fake foam bull heads and horns, and apparently you
can even find them with if you want to ride
a bison or or a ram like a sheep, you
(18:31):
can get a sheep's head put on or a ram's
head put on. It goes even more than that. I
literally you there's a hammer head, shark, camel, hot dog,
banana and then apparently there are there's like the this
tawdry thread of bull riding, there's a sexual element to it.
I think, uh yes, sure, I mean Ed ed found
(18:54):
one of the settings is sexy right right on the
actual operations of one machine. ED found it was like pro, intermediate,
beginner and sexy. So it's definitely fair to say, okay,
And also what I turned up goes way beyond a
sexy setting. There's there's a penis one you can get sure,
(19:15):
there's a one woman called Horny Hannah, and there's a
guy named Randy Roger Boy. So it gets pretty um stupid. Sure,
it gets pretty like dark bachelorette party really quick with
when you if you if you wanted to go that way,
apparently you can you can make it go that way.
(19:37):
That's right. We were just speaking of the settings. There
are those automated settings, usually that you can just hit
pro or beginner or whatever, but you can also be
in control. And I think the automated settings are much
more common these days. I think back in the urban
cowboy days was very much about a human operator trying
to you know, really simulate a rodeo. For these sort
(20:01):
of about say pseudo competitions. They were competitions in bars. Yeah,
I mean there would be like you know, you could
win you know, a hundred bucks or something like that. Okay, alright,
so so there was like a competition, but um also
like in bars, it was you know, just to show
off to like that was the whole reason. That's the
(20:22):
entire reason for mechanical bulls. If you're sitting there wondering, like,
why does anybody do this, it's basically to just show
off to stay on as long as you possibly can, basically,
And so, like you're saying with the original operator, the
operator's job was too humiliate you. That was the whole dynamic.
(20:43):
You showing off, the operator trying to throw you off
in a very humiliating fashion. And so the more you
could stay on, or the longer you could stay on
despite the operator's best efforts, you know, the more of
a show off you are. I guess. Yeah, I mean,
it's not any different. It it's not a far cry
from any carnival game where it shows some sort of
(21:05):
feet of strength, whether you're hitting the thing with a
hammer to make the bell ring or the punching bag
to see how hard you can punch a thing, right,
and the ones that you rent today for the parties.
Uh ed described as an all in one entertainment center.
I mean it's got a built in p A system
with speakers and a microphone and amplifier, and it's electric
(21:26):
scoreboard and timer, and it's just this big thing now,
whereas it started out as just sort of this very
very rudimentary, hydraulic thing. Yeah. Um, which makes sense because
again this is the kind of thing that you can
rent like a bounty house, but for grown ups, although
they have little kids ones too. About those. And then
(21:46):
something else I saw is there's a um so there's
like the riding the bull version, there's also a surfboard
version that you stand on. And I actually saw a
video of a dude who combines those two. Look up
on YouTube. Man dances a mechanical bull wearing best Sunday
suit and this guy is in a bar wearing a tie,
(22:09):
not not just standing up dancing on a mechanical bull
that's going at a pretty moderate rate, and it is
one of the most astounding things I've ever seen in
my life. Amazing. Yeah, but there's the version you can
you can rent that or by I guess if you're
into that kind of thing. That is, it's like a
surfboard and like the bounty area around you. The padding
(22:31):
is like a wave kind of thing. It looks pretty cool.
Well that's fun. I thought so too. It looks fun
at least. So if you're going to ride one of
these things, I will say most of the videos I
saw at Johnny Utah's among others, is they they keep
it pretty tame. Although we'll talk about the dark side
of that in a bit too. But um, if if
(22:53):
you're going to get like a real ride, then you
want to go is forward on that thing towards the
head of the bull as much as you can. Uh,
you want to grip that bull with your inner thighs
and dig those heels in and keep your feet ahead
of you and point those toes. Apparently you want to
you know, they have a strap that you put your
(23:14):
hand in and then you put the other arm up.
They say to hang on with your non dominant hand.
That's all I've seen. That's all I've seen too. I
don't know. I feel like I would be stronger with
my dominant hand, but I don't know. I think you're
using your non dominant hand because any stupid hand can
hold onto a strap. Your dominant hand is balancing. You're
(23:36):
holding up in the air to balance, and you need
a little more finesse. That is why, right, Well, that's
my guess, and it makes sense to me because that's
my guess. And what you want to do is you
want to go opposite. That's the whole idea. If the
bull bucks forward, you want to lean back. If it
goes back, you want to lean forward towards its nose.
(23:59):
You want to keep those legs tightened down as much
as you can, and you want to try and keep
everything from the waist up as loose as possible. But again,
if you've been throwing down cowboy boot mugs full of
beer uh at Jill Roy Rogers, just do whatever you
want and good luck. So this this advice comes from
(24:19):
a pro rider named Will Roberts, and um he uh.
He basically says that if you take each one of
these movements as like a wave that you're riding, and
think of think of them um discreetly, as discreet motions,
and you're just handling each one at a time, you
(24:42):
could stay on indefinitely. He didn't say the indefinite part,
and said. In fact, he said, you shouldn't stay on
longer than fifteen seconds or else you're gonna get hurt,
like with at full bore. But I think you could
stay on indefinitely. Well, one of those videos I saw
was titled something about woman rides bull for so long
that video cuts out or something. How is that right? Like?
(25:04):
She never fell off, I mean it was going really slow,
but uh, you know she she hung in there hanging. Yeah,
I don't know. I'm not sure. It depends on which
one you're rented. Uh, well, if you like we said
the rental price, if you want to buy one of
these systems, it's about twenty grand. I saw that too,
But I also saw one on eBay for the suspiciously
(25:25):
low price of hundred, and it's possible the whole thing
was used. I think if if trampolines are one of
those things you buy and then end up just wanting
to get rid of, a mechanical bull is probably ten
x that, you know. Yeah, I don't know if I
would get on a mechanical bull where someone's like, I
got a really good deal on it, right, it's basically free.
(25:48):
All right, let's take another break and we'll talk about
to me what is the most interesting part of this episode,
which is sort of the history of Gillies Saloon. Right
after this, Sorry Josh okay, Chuck, you promised to talk
(26:28):
about Gilly Saloon. What is that? Well, we talked about
Mr Cryer. He owned a saloon. It was really kind
of an oversized tent called Shelley's and Pasadena, Texas outside
of Houston, and this was in the early seventies, like
one and he would bring in country singers who weren't
big national acts yet, but they were sort of known
(26:50):
regionally and it was a popular bar, and it was
getting bigger and bigger because that was oil country. People
came in with some money and he said, you know what,
I think the needs to not be at tent, but
to be a real deal saloon. And he partnered up
with a man named Mickey Gilly right, and I mean
he gave him a pretty sweet deal. He said, look,
(27:10):
I want to build this thing out. I'm going to
build it out. We're gonna make it a more permanent
structure and turned it eventually into like a forty thousand
square foot bar, multiple multiple, multiple bars. Um that was
basically like a real deal Texas Roadhouse and honky tonk
Um you, Gilly, We're gonna name it after you and
(27:31):
you and your house band, um are gonna play basically
every night. And Gilly, did you say that that was
Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin? No, but he was? He? Yes,
he was Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin. Um still is possibly
is he's still alive? Yeah, Mickey Gilly is eighty five
and he had that big crossover hit with Looking for
(27:53):
Love or from the soundtrack, right, Uh, I don't Yeah,
it was it on the Urban Cowl Sounds. I'm pretty
sure was on the Urban Cowboys soundtrack yea yeah? Or
is is Buckwheat would call it? Uh booking panubub and um.
He was no slouch though he had forty two top
forty country singles in his career. So what's funny is
(28:16):
if I've read an interview with him, I think in
Texas Monthly on like the thirty fifth anniversary of Urban Cowboy,
and he basically talks about how, you know, he was
looking for love but it was an all all the
wrong places um he uh he he was looking for
stardom and he just could never quite get it. So
(28:36):
I guess he was one of those unsung like highly
successful people who never became a huge star. And apparently
he was trading on being Jerry Lee Lewis's cousin, was
doing like tribute shows, cover shows, that kind of stuff.
It was doing fine. But so when Um Sherwood Cryer
met up with him, informed a partnership with them, he
(28:58):
he became the namesake of Gail Least, this incredibly popular
honky talk outside of Houston. Um that that became the
setting for Urban Cowboy thanks to randomly enough uh an
Esquire article. Yeah, this reminded me very much. And it's
weird that they're both Trivolta. But Saturday Night Fever it's
(29:21):
tied even more closely than that. The very editor who
ran that Esquire article was the same co founder of
New York Magazine who ran Tribal Rights of the New
Saturday Night that gave rise that was the basis of
Saturday Night Fever. All right, so it all comes full circle.
I have I printed that out, the Tribal Rights of
Saturday Night back when we talked about it. I have
(29:43):
not read it yet, And now I'm going to pronout
the ballad of the Urban Cowboy in America's Search for
True Grit. And I'm gonna have just both those articles
sitting on my desk forever, probably, but I want to read.
I want to read them both because they were both
the basis of two sort of landmark seventies movies that
became cultural touchstones, and John Travolta was in both of them. Yeah,
it's really weird, but it's basically the same thing, except
(30:06):
one is disco said at a disco nightclub. The other
one is country music said at a country western bar.
But it's the same exact thing, same format, love, um, fighting, rivalry, jealousy,
competition on its basically on a weekend night while everybody's
getting trashed at a bar. It's just and they were
(30:27):
separated by two years. I think UM seventy six was
the Saturday Night UM New York magazine article and seventy
eight was the one that featured Gillies. Yeah, it's really
pretty interesting time in our country's history that they're almost
two sides of the same coin. And again, like I
mentioned earlier, this is all going on at the same
time that like punk music is is saying I hate
(30:50):
all of you people exactly and for good reason, looks
so so. This guy can't remember his name. Um, Irving. No,
he was one of the managers or promoters or he
had a lot to do with the Eagles. Um. He
(31:10):
bought the rights to that article for like two hundred
thousand dollars, which is a lot of money to spend
on a magazine article option at the time. And he
he just knew that no matter what happened, he was
going to have a huge soundtrack on his hands, just
like Saturday Night Fever. Um. And it worked twice. It
did work. He apparently wanted it to be all Eagles,
(31:32):
and the Eagles were like, no, that's okay. We suck
so terribly. We even we wouldn't want to do a
whole soundtop um. But I ended up being like a
really great soundtrack. I've never heard it, but I mean,
just looking at the roster. Kenny Rogers, Charlie Daniels, Bonnie
rate Um and Mickey Gilly had Looking for Love on
it as well. Yeah, it was. It was great. We
(31:54):
had the record in our house. Uh. Like you said,
they shot the movie, a lot of it was shot
at Gilly. Uh. That was the bar scene that you
know was predominant in the movie and the competition between
Scott Glenn and John Travolta. As you know, they battled
for for bragging rights, cash money, and Deborah Winger's heart
(32:15):
and glory of course the well the glory men. Scott
Um Scott. Yeah, I can't believe he just forgot his
last name. I think he's one of the coolest actors ever. Yeah.
Not a Carrodean, No, No, he's a Carredan plus yeah. He.
I think Scott Glenn was one of those that was
always I think he was always confused as a Carrodeine
(32:36):
with a lot of people because he sort of has
that look for sure. So it was the big success
of this movie that made Crier say, I need to
secure this patent because this thing is about to explode.
And I think by that point, uh, the gentleman who
he who held that patent, Yeah, Joe Turner said well,
let's up the price a little bit to to thirty
(32:56):
thou and criers Or still said, yeah, that's don't tell
this guy. But that's still a pretty good deal. Yeah.
Because the mechanical Bull is basically a third lead character
in this movie. Debra Winger, John Travolta and this mechanical
bull El Toro, the real mechanical bull at Gillies um
and became a huge part of the pop culture. And
(33:17):
in Sherwood Cryer was smart enough to realize how big
of a deal it was going to be bought the
patent for it. And now if you wanted a mechanical
bull for your bar that you just converted over to
a honky Tonk format, you had to go buy one
from Sherwood Cryer. And he made a lot of money
off of those, from what I understand he did. Uh.
I think he even won lawsuits when people tried to
(33:38):
dodge his license. And uh, yeah, he made a lot
of money off of this fad and it was indeed
a fad um for sure. Yeah. But like I said,
you go to Johnny Utahs. There was one on the
Sunset Strip to I don't know if it's still there.
There was a what's the name of that place? Another
(34:02):
canon Johnny movie I can't remember, but there was a
country western bar on the on the Sunset strip that
had a mechanical bull as well. Uh, I can't remember.
I can't remember either. I Um, I know exactly what
you're talking about and I can't remember the name of it.
It's super famous, right, it was for a while, and
it wasn't even that long ago, Like I think when
(34:23):
I lived there, it was still there super cuts, No,
not hogs and heifers. That was in the meatpacking district
in New York. But uh, this is what genuinely kicked
off that whole movement that we talked about at the beginning,
with Southern culture and Western culture kind of being at
the forefront and all these people doing crossover records and uh,
(34:44):
pop music and country sort of intertwining and the lines
being blurred, and the Dallas Cowboys and JR. Eu ing
like this sort of all started with Urban Cowboy and
this mechanical bull El Toro. I would argue that it
started before that, and that or been Cowboy was was
catching a wave that was developing. Yeah, yeah, and gets credit.
(35:06):
But I mean, like if you look at Convoy, that
Chris Christofferson movie, so that was a couple of years
before that, but it was the same year that article
was published in Esquire, So it was all kind of
coming together congealing at the same time. Yeah, every we
didn't kick it off, it capitalized early on on what
it was coming, for sure, but it came in a
(35:27):
like at a time when it could still be considered
cool and a huge contributor to the spread of it, right, Yeah,
And this was like, it's it's funny, Like I kind
of looked back with some fondness, even though it's it
wasn't my scene. But if you talk to any of
the old timers from back then, they called him Gilly Rats.
He's real. You know, these these local bar patrons that was,
(35:48):
they were the real deal. They hated all this stuff, man, Yeah,
because it brought in all the posers and the tourists
and yeah, you know people people on business trips passing
through Houston had to go to Gilly And I'm sure
it just took something that was really sacred and special
to them and and commodified it in a really sad way.
I'm sure it was terrible at least for a while.
(36:10):
And then I'm sure it went back to normal again generally,
and they were still on that bar stool in the
same place exactly. It's just all kind of happened around him. Um.
But speaking of that kind of country chic trend, that
urban cowboy was a huge part of I saw a
reference to a Fantasy Island episode from called Everybody Goes
(36:32):
to Gillies. Mickey Gilly played himself and his fantasy was
to make it big in the country music scene, and
I think may have gotten it. I think it was successful.
I wonder if Tattoo got up on that thing. I
don't know. I could not find the episode. I just
was reading about it, which is kind of disappointing, right
(36:53):
it comes to Fantasy Island. I wanted to see that movie,
the Lache movie with Peter Dinklage, but I never got
around to it. Did you see that? I forgot that
they made that. No, I haven't seen it. So as
far as Gillies goes, um, I wondered. You know, I
wasn't sure the deal and I was like, surely you
can still go to Gillies. But you can't because Gillies
burned to the ground. It did suspiciously. Apparently it was
(37:16):
ruled in Arson and this came after there was a
dispute between Mickey Gilly and Sherwood Cryer, and apparently Mickey Gilly,
who had been approached by Sherwood Crier to basically come
in as a partner on his bar, came out victorious, triumphant,
and UH ended up on the winning end of this
this dispute and apparently walked away with most of the profits.
(37:39):
And I guess Gilly said in at least one interview that,
um he he expected that it was Sherwood Crier who
had burned Gillies to the ground in n It's quite
an accusation, it really is. But I was reading again
that Texas Monthly article. I think it's called Urban Cowboy
turns thirty five. It's like an oral history, which is
(37:59):
the la easiest form of journalism, but it's still do Yeah. Well,
then I explained why they keep making them. I thought
it was just like I don't feel like actually writing today,
I'm just gonna transcribe. It's them. Well, you would like this,
you should read. It's very long and it's really in depth.
And they talked to some of the original Gilly rats,
(38:19):
and a couple of them who worked for Sherwood Cryer
have to say like this, this guy was an amazing
human being, but he was also somebody who would beat
someone with a pool que if like they were causing
trouble at Gillies and did do that, and like you
did not want to run a foul of this guy. Um,
but was also like a really fascinating, interesting, smart human
(38:41):
being too. Yeah, shout out to Texas Monthly too, that's
a really good rag. I really I read a couple
of things from there for some podcasts we're developing a
couple of years ago, and it was really good. They
did these great deep dive not not oral histories, but
like you know, long form. Yeah, there's a guy named
Skip something. Oh man, I can't remember Skip's name. I'll
(39:04):
look it up. Everybody, don't worry about it. But Skip
Hollandsworth or something like that. He's one of their better
journalists for long form at Texas Monthly. He's great. But
there's a lot of them. They have a good, good
stable there. Um. And then uh, they announced that there
would be a new Gillies but it's not just gonna
be a bar, it's gonna be a sixteen acre multi
(39:27):
use development. And apparently El Toro survived the fire and
they're bringing the original El Toro back just to put
on display. So I found one reference that El Toro
survived the fire. It was in the Ocalis Star banner.
What does anybody in Ocaliflorida. Now I don't know, but
they said that El Toro survived fire and then it
(39:49):
was moved to Cowboy Jack's in Woodberry, Minnesota. So it
looks a Cowboy Jack's. There is a cowboy right, I
thought so too. Cowboy Jack's makes no men and of
having the original or El Toro at any point, that's
suspicious because you would really lean into that. Oh dude,
it's all I would ever talk about to anybody. But
that's that's what the Ocalistar banner says. Cowboy Jack's does
(40:11):
not back it up. So who knows exactly what happened
to El Toro? That's right, Like, don't get on that
bullet Johnny Utah's, you're gonna catch something. You come right,
El Toro, You're gonna catch some Johnny demonic on that thing. Uh.
There was there were some injuries though that we um
would be remiss without mentioning there have been plenty of
lawsuits over the years. There was a woman in Santa
(40:33):
Barbara County that was left a quadriplegic when she landed
on her neck. So obviously if you get thrown off something,
if you land wrong, that can be bad news. Uh.
A man in Bergenfield, New Jersey, in Bergen County that
was left with permanent injuries. And then at Johnny Utah's,
a New York woman won seventy thousand dollars because she
tore her a c l at Johnny Utah's, and her
(40:57):
lawyer said this, they just kind of throw people around
while they're drunk. I think that summed up the mechanical
bull about as good as anybody ever had. Yeah, that
was how he described the operators. He said, they just
kind of throw people around. And then I went to
YouTube looked up Johnny Utahs and if you want to
(41:18):
spend some time looking at very bad camera phone videos
of drunk friends filming drunk friends writing very slowly on
these mechanical bulls to bad music, you can do it.
But you can sort of see and a few of
these videos that would be some drunk lady or a
drunk guy who was just you know, being kind of obnoxious,
(41:40):
and you could tell that the but they weren't coming off,
and you could tell that the operator was would get
sick of it and they were going real slow. Then
there'd be like a and just a really quick little
flick of that switch and it would just like toss
him off of their real fast. There's no way that
there's not a term long mechanical bull operators for that move.
(42:02):
For that move, there has to be I wonder what
it is. If you know, please let us know because
we have to know. We got gillid Yeah, that's right. Um,
you got anything else? Thankfully? No? Okay, Well that's it
for mechanical bulls. If you want to know more about
(42:22):
mechanical bulls, then start watching throwing off mechanical bull videos. There's,
like you said, a lot of them. Uh. And since
I said throwing off mechanical balls, it's time for listener mail.
You know what. I was just thinking this could be
the jackhammers of the next generation of stuff. You should know, listeners.
Mechanical bulls, I don't know. I think urban cowboys saved
(42:46):
it without urban cowboy absolutely, I think, and to save
the day again. And then it hit me, I was like,
the common denominator hydraulics. We got to avoid hydraulics from
here on out. I think you might be right. All right,
so where are we listener mail? Yep? I think Jerry
already did the China all right, I'm gonna call this
c I a correction from anonymous. Oh hey, guys, have
(43:11):
been a stuff you should not listener for years. I
love the work you do. Someone who was formally employed
by the CIA, I particularly enjoy the latest episode on
Havana Syndrome. Have since left that job because of ethical concerns.
But I've one nit to pick, and that's when you
talk about people who work in the CIA. Uh, you
call them agents, which is not right. They're actually officers.
(43:32):
There's no such thing as the CIA agent. H this
is this is basically ruined the entire episode for them.
That one thing. No, they're nice, but I mean we
always say CI agent because we're children of television and film.
I didn't know if that's not even a thing. Everybody
says that. Uh, they say this. I know the media
gets wrong, gets this wrong a lot, so it's understandable
(43:52):
that's the terminology that folks use. But in the interests
of always learning and improving, I thought I'd passed this along. Um,
Josh actually did say officer a couple of times somewhere
in the middle, and that was the exception for you guys.
That's great. Other than this admittedly small quibble, I love
everything you guys do, and often use my favorite old
episodes to calm my anxiety or to help is I
(44:13):
fall asleep? Uh? Currently in the heavy rotation of the
max setterm incident in Star Wars Holiday special episode. Those
are that that will calm you down for sure. Yeah,
thanks very much for reading the message. All the best,
Anonymous and uh. Initially Anonymous said maybe use my initials
because it might be a little paranoid about this being
former CIA, but then they said, you know, how about
(44:36):
just no initials. I think that's smart. Just go with
anonymous exactly. In fact, I made this whole thing up.
There is no former officer that left for ethical concerns.
This listener mail will self destruct in three seconds. Two one. Well,
if you want to get in touch with us, we
love hearing from people, whether they are from the CIA
(44:58):
or the n s A or the FBI. Who else,
chuck oh a t F sure and that's it, no
one else? Okay, Um, if you want to get in
touch with us and send us some trade secrets, we
would love to hear that stuff. You can wrap it up,
send it in an email off to Stuff podcast at
(45:19):
iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you should know is a
production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows.
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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