Still ZZ After All These Years
They may no longer be topping the charts, but after nearly three decades, around 50 million records sold, and more than $200 million in concert tickets, the bearded boys of ZZ Top are still the reigning aristocrats of blues rock.
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EVENTUALLY, THOUGH, HAM DECIDED he’d rather be pitching songs by someone he had a personal investment in. So he cemented his relationship with Gibbons, and according to David Blayney’s Sharp-Dressed Men (Hyperion), together they enlisted drummer Dan Mitchell from the Sidewalks and Lanier Greig, a keyboardist from Houston’s Neil Ford and the Fanatics who had sat in with the Sidewalks and played the bass lines. They called themselves ZZ Top, a name whose origins are shrouded in mystery though it is thought to be either a hybrid of Zig Zag and Top cigarette rolling papers or a tribute to blues singer Z. Z. Hill. That lineup recorded the band’s first single, “Salt Lick,” on Scat Records, a small independent label that Ham had invented. But the single went nowhere, and the band split up: Greig was fired and replaced by bassist Billy Etheridge, and Mitchell quit before his slot was filled by Dallasite Frank Beard, a drummer whose skills were honed on the midnight-till-dawn shift at the Cellar clubs in Fort Worth, Dallas, and Houston. A few months later, Etheridge was fired for being a bad influence on Beard. Several other bassists filled in before Beard called his friend and fellow Dallasite Dusty Hill for a tryout. Playing a borrowed bass, Hill suggested a shuffle in the key of C. Two hours later, he was hired.
On February 10, 1970, at the Beaumont VFW Hall, Dusty, Frank, and Billy took the stage together for the first time. That same year their first album, titled ZZ Top’s First Album, was released by London Records, thanks in large part to a deal that would eventually enmesh Ham in his first bit of controversy. When ZZ landed its deal with London, the Daily company kicked in money to help pay recording expenses. In exchange, Ham agreed to split the profits with the company, which he did for the first three recordings. Then Ham decided he had paid Daily enough. Daily sued and later settled for $240,000.
ZZ Top immediately established itself as a band that played loud boogie through Marshall amplifiers. The three-man lineup and the towers of speakers paid homage to the wall-of-noise volume barrage popularized by Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, the James Gang, and other power trios, while the rhythms were straight out of the Texas school of electric blues, handed down directly from Lightnin’ Hopkins and Freddie King. The band also understood the frequency of hormonal overload among their mostly teenage fans. Every album had at least one song with a risqué reference: “(I’m Just Looking for Some) Tush,” “Woke Up With Wood,” “Tube Snake Boogie.”
The first three years of the band’s existence were character builders. Ham managed, booked, and drove the band in vans and rental trucks from club to club, playing perhaps 750 shows during that time (including a legendary gig at the National Guard Armory in Alvin in front of a single paying customer). He also produced their records at Robin Hood Brians’ studio in Tyler whenever they could scrape up the cash. With the zeal of an evangelical preacher, the politely aggressive manager generated excitement however he could, always in the name of getting them in front of as many people as possible. To avoid being typecast as just another regionally popular Southern boogie band, ZZ rarely double-billed with the Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd; instead, Ham sought out British bands. ZZ solidified their fan base with a novel single, “Francine,” a Rolling Stones—inspired cut released with an English-language version on one side and Spanish on the other, but it wasn’t until a 1972 show at the University of Houston’s Jeppesen Stadium that the hype and roadwork began to pay off. Topping a bill with Savoy Brown, the Doobie Brothers, and Blue Öyster Cult, ZZ Top drew 38,000 fans.
Ham finally grabbed the rock world’s attention with ZZ’s third album, Tres Hombres, whose inside cover featured a full-color portrait of a combination plate at Leo’s Mexican restaurant in Houston. The album was finished at Ardent Studios in Memphis, which remains ZZ’s studio of choice today, and contained an immediately popular, chart-climbing single, “La Grange,” which took a rhythm similar to that of John Lee Hooker’s “Boogie Chillen” and pumped it up with Gibbons’ badass “Ah, haw, haw, haw, haw” growl. Even today, “La Grange” remains a between-innings favorite at the Ballpark in Arlington and a deejay staple at too many topless bars to count.
But Ham wasn’t satisfied: He wanted to do something really out there, something unforgettable. His big idea was the ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q. at the University of Texas’ Memorial Stadium in Austin, where ZZ headlined an impressive bill that included Santana, Joe Cocker, and the American debut of Bad Company. There was a dearth of barbecue and barn dancers—and in the P. T. Barnum tradition, there was never a second annual event—yet 80,000 people showed up. Ham’s point was well taken: This wasn’t a regional act; this was serious. Tres Hombres went platinum, and promoters outside Texas took notice. (UT took notice too. After learning that a fan had lifted the protective plywood used to cover the floor and cut out a Texas-shaped souvenir of newly installed AstroTurf, university officials instituted a ban on concerts at the facility that lasted twenty years.)
After that, ZZ Top hit the road for two straight years with its Texana concept in tow: Hay bales, wagon wheels, and live Longhorns, wolves, and buzzards adorned the largest stage ever constructed for a rock concert tour, setting new standards for wattage, production values, and concert grosses. Before it was over, ZZ Top’s Worldwide Texas Tour sold close to $100 million in tickets.
Clearly, the success owed as much to the salesman as the product. Bill Ham pulled all the strings from behind a series of curtains, like some good ol’ boy Wizard of Oz (or, if you prefer, the Wizard of OZZ). It’s no coincidence that his management company is called Lone Wolf, for Ham operates at a remove from the traditional entertainment power centers of Los Angeles and New York—and does it deliberately, to maintain a mystical upper hand and keep his adversaries guessing. “There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. That’s him, although I think he falls more on the genius side,” said a former employee whose name I promised not to reveal. (Never in my 25 years of writing about Texas music have so many sources requested anonymity, a testament to Ham’s real and perceived influence.) If Ham is unpredictable, the former employee said, it’s by design: “He’d be in meetings with record people, reach a point where the lawyers started drawing up the papers, then he’d suddenly bolt from the room, leave town, and not return calls for a week.” Yet such behavior shouldn’t be mistaken for something it isn’t. “People in New York and L.A. have made Ham out for a dimwit,” Dusty Hill said, “and they’ve paid dearly.”
“He takes things personally,” said a record label executive who has worked with numerous managers. “Others leave their work at the office. Ham doesn’t. He really is the fourth member of that band. I can’t think of another act that has been as carefully controlled by management as they have.”
It’s true that Ham came of age during an era when differences were settled with guns and knives instead of accountants and lawyers, so it makes sense that he looked to the gang model as a blueprint for his organization. He surrounded himself with people he trusted and placed a premium on loyalty above all else. If you were in with Ham, you were in all the way. If you were out, you were out forever—especially employees who struck out on their own without his blessing. “I don’t think Bill would actually do it,” said one, “but I was convinced my phone was being tapped by him for years after I left.”
Still, there are those who say the cutthroat reputation is closer to a good Texas brag than fact. “They’re not thieves, and they don’t stomp on people,” insisted an industry veteran who has sat at the negotiating table with Ham and his associates. “But they cloud situations to get what they want. Reality never gets in the way.”
WEDNESDAY NIGHT ON THE SET OF the Letterman show: Dusty Hill was in a jolly mood because his daughter—a high school senior—was in the audience for the taping of ZZ’s performance. By Letterman’s decree, the temperature in the studio hovered in the mid-fifties, but that didn’t bother Hill, who was dressed in a black coat, a black shirt, black Ray-Ban sunglasses, and a black baseball cap. “I like the cold,” he said before taking his spot onstage.
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