Since 1977, almost 26 million people have visited the Super Drum. In 1980, after the passing of Frank Erwin, the Super Drum was renamed the “Frank Erwin Center.” Frank’s name never stuck on the conscious level of most people, but the name Super Drum did. The mission of the “Drum” was to “support the University of Texas and provide benefits to the Central Texas community. It was an academic, entertaining, sporting event center second only to the Astrodome in size in 1977. In 1986 fans of Van Halen paid a staggering ticket price of $16.00 to see Sammy Hagar singing and hanging from the catwalk unsecured.
For many who attended Texas, the most important function of the Drum was being the location for class additions and drops—a very important function indeed for Longhorn students.
Interesting Facts about the Frank Erwin Center
The Frank Erwin Center, which for 46 years hosted concerts, graduations, circuses, monster trucks, wrestling, Disney on Ice, and much more, can now only be visited by photos and memories.
1977- Construction of the Drum Cost $34 million.
2001-2003-Renovations and Expansions: Cost: $55 million- The Super Drum had life safety upgrades, new concession stands and restrooms, the addition of 28 suites, a new scoreboard and indoor electronic video signs, and the addition of outdoor electronic video sign, Lone Star Room (reception hall) renovations
First Event: UT Men’s Basketball vs. The University of Oklahoma
November 29, 1977 | Attendance: 12,650
First Concert: Lawrence Welk
March 12, 1978 | Attendance: 15,676
First Sellout: Lawrence Welk
March 12, 1978 | Attendance: 15,676
Largest Crowd: John Denver
May 6, 1978 | Attendance: 17,829
First Two-Night Run: Prince
January 29 & 30, 1985 | Attendance: 31,007
Other Two-Night Runs: George Strait
September 10 & 11, 1987 | Attendance: 25,368
Pink Floyd
November 19 & 20, 1987 | Attendance: 25,131
Janet Jackson
July 5 & 6, 1990 | Attendance: 25,228
Fastest Sellout: Garth Brooks | 47 minutes
October 15, 1992 | Attendance: 17,141
Most Recent Sellouts: Drake’s The Club Paradise Tour with special guests Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky February 27, 2012 Attendance: 11,669
Radiohead March 7, 2012 Attendance 11,689
Roger Waters The Wall Live May 3, 2012 Attendance 10,230
Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers with special guest Regina Spektor
May 5, 2012 Attendance 10,988
Highest Grossing Event: George Strait and Reba with special guest Lee Ann Womack January 14, 2011 | Attendance: 16,737
Special and Extraordinary Events:
Fire Relief Benefit Concert October 17, 2011
Davis Cup by BNP Paribas July 8-10, 2011
American Idol Auditions August 11, 2010
ESPN GameDay Live February 21, 2009
ESPN GameDay Live February 25, 2006
Neighbors in Need - Austin’s Katrina Relief Concert September 21, 2005
A Holy Talk with His Holiness the Dalai Lama September 20, 2005
American Idol Auditions August 23-27, 2005
Dixie Chicks Perform a Live Broadcast for the Academy of Country Music Awards May 21, 2003
Liz Carpenter Lecture Series featuring President Bill Clinton February 12, 2003
George W. Bush Presidential Announcement July 25 & 27, 2000
UT School of Liberal Arts Liz Carpenter Lecture featuring President Bill Clinton October 16, 1995
Superdrum Memoir: Lemons, Chrissie and Concerts
by Larry Carlson for https://texaslsn.org
Part I of 2
(TLSN writer Larry Carlson teaches broadcast journalism at Texas State University. He is a member of the Football Writers Association of America, and actually won the 1978 Southwest Conference Press Tour
Singles championship in 1978, beating up on out-of-shape media members who wilted in Houston's August humidity at the Rice University tennis complex.)
Okay, just being honest here. I don't recall any details from the Texas Longhorns' basketball debut in the spanking new Superdrum, back in late November 1977. Second-year coach Abe Lemons would pilot the burnt orange to a magical, 26-5 season. Texas was unbeaten in 13 games at their new home. Abe's first team on the Forty Acres played in venerable, cozy Gregory Gym, and went 13-13, with an equally equal 8-8 mark in Southwest Conference play. Nobody was raving about Lemons's second volume as the season approached but Texas was returning its top three scorers in Jim Krivacs, Ron Baxter and Johnny Moore, and the top two rebounders in Baxter and Gary Goodner, the center who stood only 6-7. All that experience, and it was still a young team. Among the starters, only Goodner was a senior.
But when the Horns lost a close opener to USC, 65-64, in La-La Land, not many in Austin even noticed. The day of that West Coast opener, the top-ranked Longhorn football team was whipping up on A&M,
57-28, in College Station, to put an exclamation mark on an 11-0 regular season. Earl Campbell had bruised the Ags for 224 yards and even took a Randy McEachern pass sixty yards for a TD. It was one of four scoring passes for McEachern and the table was now set for Earl to hoist the Heisman in two weeks.
But on Tuesday, Nov. 29, the hoops team opened up the sprawling new in the Special Events Center, as proper academic types wished for the arena to be called. To Texas fans and media, it was the Superdrum or just the Drum. Whatever it was, it had three times the seating capacity of Gregory, was loaded with burnt orange seats and even sported a Texas-sized scoreboard that loomed large, high above mid-court.
At least as far as furnishings went, UT had joined the basketball big-time.
The Horns' opener in their new digs was a beating of hated Oklahoma. And the winning didn't stop.
The sardonic Lemons, resplendent in western-flaired leisure suits, prowled the sidelines while a smallish and hardly stylish team just continued to pick on – and beat – teams that looked much prettier in warmups. The Horns would tie third-ranked Arkansas for the SWC title. Left out of the NCAA tourney that then fielded just 32 teams, the Lemons crew made lemonade and went on the then-prestigious National Invitation Tournament in high style, wowing Madison Square Garden fans while Lemons' entertaining person bewitched the Gotham City media. It remains, to this day, one of the greatest Texas seasons.
But now that the Superdrum has been converted to rubble and dust, I'm looking back fondly to events that highlighted the Drum's first 365 days, including concerts I attended featuring the Beach Boys in spring and Linda Ronstadt, at the time the hottest ticket in the USA, a few months later.
https://www.texaslsn.org/remembering-the-1977-nit-championship
The History of Longhorn Sports
www.texaslsn.org
END OF PART I OF PROFESSOR CARLSON’S MEMORIES OF THE DRUM. ****************
Certainly! The Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas, has hosted a wide array of musical artists and bands over the years. Here are some notable performers who have graced its stage:
Taylor Swift
David Bowie
Tina Turner
Lana Del Rey
Ariana Grande
KISS
U2
Bon Jovi
Pearl Jam
Paul McCartney
Def Leppard
George Strait
Garth Brooks
Van Halen
Rush
AC/DC
Pink Floyd
Prince
Guns N’ Roses
Rod Stewart
The arena has hosted three UFC mixed martial events: UFC Fight Night: Marquardt vs. Palhares in 2010, UFC Fight Night: Edgar vs. Swanson in 2014, and UFC Fight Night: Cowboy vs. Medeiros in 2018. Legendary professional boxer Miguel Cotto of Puerto Rico had his debut fight there, knocking out Jason Doucet in the first round of a boxing show headlined by a fight between Mexican Jesus Chavez and American Tom Johnson, a contest won by Chavez by an eighth-round knockout on February 23, 2001.[14]
February 28, 2004, men’s basketball vs. Texas Tech set the attendance record with 16,837
For women’s basketball, on March 27, 1987, 15,303 set an attendance record against Louisiana Tech.
Superdrum Memoir: Lemons, Chrissie and Concerts
by Larry Carlson for https://texaslsn.org
Part 2 of 2
What I recall with most clarity from the Superdrum's '78 files is a little bit personal. Allow me to share it.
I was fidgeting a bit when the post-match World Team Tennis press conference was set to begin at the Drum, on a pleasant night the following spring. Chrissie Evert, the number one player on the women's tour, was coolly staring me down from fifteen feet away. Then she whispered something next to Rosie Casals, seated next to her.
A little background. I was a 24-year-old guy, living the dream, wrapping up my first year as sports director for Austin's top-rated radio station, KVET. Covering the Longhorns every day at practices and games, earning $750 monthly, well, life was good. Even if I needed to regularly order cheeseburgers minus the cheese and drink water instead of iced tea for work-day lunches. I mean, you couldn't call this work.
In early spring, news broke that Chrissie and other female pros would be coming to Austin for a serving of team tennis at the drum. A former high school tennis player who could only hit off-speed junk at opponents, I loved following tennis. And I thought Chris Evert looked muy hot.
So I popped off in the newsroom one morning and told the crew that I was gonna be asking Chrissie for a date when she landed in Austin later that spring. I mean, why not? I was not a cocky guy because I had nothing to be cocky about. But in spite of the well-publicized news that Chrissie, often called "the Ice Maiden" for her cool court demeanor, had ended relationships with Jimmy Connors, then Burt Reynolds, I was undaunted. Maybe she was bored with fellow celebrities and millionaires.
I could take her out for Italian food at The Red Tomato. Maybe a drink at The Veranda or over at the Driskill.
The male, 24-year-old mind is a wonderful thing. Nonsensical but wonderful.
I was sharing an apartment with my buddy and ol' college roomie, Paul Alexander, the toast of Austin TV as sports anchor for KTBC-TV. Paul encouraged me to extend an invitation to Chris, even offering up the reward of one of those sizzling steaks at Hill's Cafe, way down South Congress. Just to ask her out.
People at KVET, plus other friends, kept asking me, as Evert's Austin match approached, if I was still gonna ask the Ice Maiden for a date. Somebody told me they'd fill up my car with gas. The beat-to-hell '71 Ford Maverick was barely chugging. So was my very thin wallet.
At the station, another co-worker offered up five bucks if I'd greet Chrissie with an invite. I believe another friend offered up the purchase of something amber and slightly aged from Chris's Liquor. They seemed to doubt my full and foolhardy heart and my promise to try my luck. So they were gonna either entice or taunt me with bets that I wouldn't follow through. They need not have doubted my commitment.
And now that there were carrots out there, in these inflationary days of the Jimmy Carter presidency, I was fortified by bounty in addition to the prospect of a goodnight kiss from America's sporting sweetheart.
Figured I'd just find out when the World Team Tennis entourage would arrive at Robert Mueller Airport, put on a crisp shirt, shine my loafers and let my Texan charm do the rest.
But something went awry within 48 hours of my date with destiny. Apparently my friends and co-workers conspired and didn't want to have to pay up in this malaise-ridden era of the American economy.
I was confronted. They wanted to know how they could be sure I had actually asked the tennis superstar to dinner. "I'm not gonna lie," I said. "And if she goes, it'll be in the National Enquirer."
That wasn't good enough. Some wiseacre ringleader came up with a huge, very unfair asterisk on the bet.
I would have to ask Chris Evert out AT the press conference after she had flown in.
Not cool. Not cool at all.
But the afternoon Chrissie arrived, still 30 hours before the scheduled World Team Tennis bout,
there I was with all the other media at the Hilton Hotel near Highland Mall.
My stomach was jumping.
But I managed a semi-smart, "inside tennis" question to establish credibility.
A few questions later, I again raised my hand and was called on by the moderator and addressed Chrissie.
"Well, since y'all aren't playing until tomorrow night...would you like to go to dinner tonight?"
The place went silent. After a few seconds, Chrissie, straight-faced, lobbed me a huge favor, not instantly rejecting me or having me thrown out of the session.
"I'll talk to you after....," she calmly said.
More silence, before a local sportswriter recovered and asked another question.
My young ticker was beating like a rabbit.
After the presser adjourned some moments later, I walked on shaky legs to follow the 23-year-old, three-time defending U.S. Open champ as she, unaccompanied, headed from the assembly. I told her I hadn't meant to be a wise guy, that I just thought I'd ask. Courteously, she told me she had team functions she was obligated to attend.
So there I was the following night, at a Superdrum media set-up, following Austin's taste of World Team Tennis. I was among ten to twenty reporters, writers and photogs, seated not far from the few players chosen to speak with us about the match. My KVET microphone was already where it was supposed to be, so I checked my notebook and pondered appropriate queries.
Then I saw her, impassively scouting me and whispering to her friend, another of the best-known players on the world tour.
I actually got a jolt of restored confidence. "Maybe she's pointing me out, maybe she's gonna catch me after this media malarkey." Ahhh, the wonders of the resilient but stupid, 24-year-old heart. I was half expecting a note to be passed my way as the players left the stage. I'm serious.
It didn't come, dammit. She probably told Casals that it was that guy, the tall knucklehead, who disrupted the previous day's news conference. I'll never know. Hell, maybe she was at least amused.
Earlier that day, I turned "the tape" over to the deejays at KVET, who had fun running and re-running my invitation and Chrissie's response over the Austin airwaves. I got plenty of plaudits from my sports media cohorts on the UT beat. And I went on to collect the bets, at least most of them.
In the coming year, I would semi-regularly run into one of the news photogs from area TV who had covered things that spring day at the Hilton. "That took (guts)," they would say, shaking my hand.
Every now and then, though, I still wonder. Maybe I should've disdained the bets.
Should have just asked her out, one-on-one, the way it was supposed to be.
Chrissie never got to eat a flame-kissed hamburger at Holiday House, never sipped a cheap drink at Ego's.
Maybe, as a couple, we coulda been the tennis world's love match.
A man's gotta keep his dreams alive.