The legendary Honky Tonk Man was a recent guest on Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw, where the Hall of Famer spoke about his iconic look, and reveals the advice he gave to Stone Cold Steve Austin during the Rattlesnake’s meteoric rise in WWE. Highlights from the interview are below.
Explains why he started dying his hair black:
“The way I ended up with the black hair was I did a ‘hair dye match.’ You know, typically in the wrestling business, [you have] the ‘hair cut match’. You know someone is gonna lose their hair. It was me and Austin Idol. And we did the interviews and stuff about how there’s only room here for one guy with blond hair. ‘I’m gonna get rid of you Idol. I’m gonna – You’re gonna have green hair and orange hair.’ Anyway, I went around the territory and we did that every night for six nights and I spray-painted the hair at the end and came back on TV with black hair.”
Reveals how the iconic look of his character came together:
“So, some fans there in Birmingham saw the way I looked and asked me about doing the Elvis thing. I said, ‘No. Bill Dundee does that. Somebody else is doing that. I don’t care about it.’ They ended up fixing – making me a jumpsuit and brought it to me about two weeks later. Robert Fuller saw it and said, ‘Man, you know anything about a guitar?’. And I said, ‘No. I don’t know anything about it.’ ‘Good. That’s even better.’ So he said, ‘Man, I tell you what. I’ll bring this guitar. I got one at home. I’ll bring it over here. You hit Bob Armstrong. Man, we’ll be off and running.’ And that’s what I did.”
Shares the advice he gave to Steve Austin during his rise in WWE:
“He said, ‘These fans are cheering for me. Man, I want to be a heel. I don’t know what to do. They’re cheering everything I do.’ I said, ‘Steve, keep doing what you’re doing. Do the same thing. Don’t change it. If they want to cheer for you, just keep doing it. Let them switch you.’ I said, ‘If they switch you, they’re gonna love you. No matter what.’ So he kept doing the finger and ‘Hell yeah!’ and all that stuff and it worked for him.”
(H/T and transcribed by 411 Mania)