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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“From the top, now . . . Ahhhh, ah, ah, ah, ummmmmm, what’s up with that,” Paul Shaffer said while chewing gum and leading his band and ZZ through rehearsal. “Frank, can you hear [drummer] Anton [Fig] play? Why don’t you play together, record tempo? Yeah.” Shaffer was trying to get a fat, rich sound from his Hammond B-3 organ, one of several keyboards at his disposal, while Gibbons and Hill positioned themselves a few steps in front of Beard and harmonica whiz James Harman crouched off to the side. As the chorus was repeated over and over, the song’s hook potential became evident: It recalled “Respect Yourself,” the soul anthem popularized by the Staples Singers, only these lyrics posed a more personal question: “How much blues can you use / Before you use it up?”
When it came time to play the song for real, ZZ Top plus one delivered the goods, with Shaffer’s B-3 doodles, Fig’s additional drumming, and the orchestra’s backup vocals adding considerable punch to the band’s sound. The only glitch came after the song ended and Letterman shook hands with his guests; Shaffer had given the cue to start “Legs,” leading into the commercial break, but nobody had warned ZZ Top. A crew member had already unplugged Gibbons’ guitar. “They shoulda discussed what they were gonna do,” Gibbons muttered as he walked into the dressing room.
Harman shrugged. “It’s like a meat freezer in there.”
“Good job, James,” Gibbons told him quietly.
Hill sauntered into the hallway lighting up a cigarette. “They say you look ten pounds heavier on TV, but it makes your beard look longer,” he said with a chuckle.
Gibbons walked out and shook hands with him. “Real good, man.”
A short time later, two stretch limousines returned to the hotel, where Hill and Beard disembarked. Gibbons and Harman, however, decided to make a night of it. As their limo sped them down Fifth Avenue, Gibbons spoke of the five-voice, diminished seventh tone of the horn of a ’67 Cadillac; of Memphis, his favorite city outside Texas; and of his newfound interest in African art (“It’s like collecting guitars; it’s a sickness”). The two got off in SoHo outside the Museum for African Art, where Gibbons politely talked his way into an opening party. Then they moved on to St. Mark’s Place, where they rummaged through the racks of a few record shops (Gibbons was unsuccessful in his search for a particular long-player by Brigitte Bardot), purchased a beret with a leopard-skin print from a boutique, and popped into a deli for egg creams. Every few hundred feet, a head or two would turn in vague recognition of Gibbons’ beard.
Later, they dropped in at Mojo Guitars to talk shop with the owners, who escorted them to yet another record store and a Japanese restaurant called Sappora East. It turned out that the chef, Shige Motsumoeo, had once owned the guitar that Gibbons played on the Letterman show. Motsumoeo, a young man with a ring in his nose and a huge tattoo on his right arm, came outside dressed in his cooking whites. When he met Gibbons, he bowed toward him, then shouted excitedly, “Wow! I saw you in Tokyo!”
After stopping at a deli to pick up some Knorr tomato soup and fig bars, Gibbons and Harman headed back to their hotel just in time to watch themselves on TV. Both smiled broadly when Letterman sang ZZ’s praises: “Look at these guys. How ’bout these guys? Yessir, I like them guys. Ain’t they cool, Paul?”
WHEN ZZ TOP FINALLY TOOK A BREAK from touring in 1977, they needed the rest. They’d been on the road for almost seven years, barely squeezing in time to record two albums, Fandango! and Tejas. ZZ Top’s Worldwide Texas Tour had elevated them to the big time, but at a price: The boys were fried. Worse, they were in danger of becoming dinosaurs. The boogie beat and Southern sound were passé. Album rock radio had become as narrowly defined and rigidly formatted as the Top 40 sound it had replaced. Guitars were old hat; synthesizers and electronics were in. Kids were into a younger, cooler, shinier version of rock called New Wave, which encompassed the punk ethic and nurtured the ethos that would eventually make alternative mainstream. By any measure, ZZ Top had to be on its last legs.
While Ham negotiated a new contract with Warner Bros., the silence from the ZZ camp was deafening. Rumors spread that the band had been killed in a plane crash (false), that Beard had entered a drug rehabilitation program to kick his heroin addiction (true), that Gibbons had converted to Tibetan Buddhism (false) and moved to Paris (true), that Hill had sailed around the world (false; Beard sailed while Hill hung out in Mexico). The occasional publicity stunt kept their names in the news—in 1978 it was announced that ZZ Top had volunteered to be the first lounge act on the space shuttle—but basically nothing was happening. Even when ZZ resurfaced in 1979 with a new release, Degüello, and again in 1981 with El Loco, it was still pretty much the same old blues ’n’ boogie.
Then a newfangled concept called MTV came along and changed everything. The cable television channel mimicked radio by playing video clips of bands performing songs around the clock. At first, video was not part of Ham’s strategy for success; he believed radio was the most efficient means of getting music to the people. Sure, ZZ finally broke overseas thanks to the exposure brought about by their live, in-concert appearance on Rockpalast, a German TV program broadcast throughout Europe—but video clips played several times a day? That would spoil the mystique, Ham contended.
Several developments persuaded him to think again. Following the multi-year break, Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill showed up for work sporting full beards. The look was a stroke of unintended genius: The facial hair covered their wrinkles and defied time; they had become ageless in a young man’s game. Then Gibbons purchased a Fairlight keyboard synthesizer, which could be programmed to replicate any musical instrument. He started tinkering with it in Beard’s home studio with Linden Hudson, a would-be engineer who tweaked the knobs. According to David Blayney’s book, Hudson floated the notion that the ideal dance music had 124 beats per minute; then he and Gibbons conceived, wrote, and recorded what amounted to a rough draft of an album before the band had set foot inside Ardent Studios. Lone Wolf officials deny that Hudson was involved—they say the idea came entirely from Gibbons and Ham. In any case, the conspicuous presence of synthesizers marked a change of direction for the band (and prompted speculation that Hill and Beard didn’t even play their instruments on the recording. “The reaction was like when Dylan went electric,” Hill says). Another factor was a 1933 Ford coupe that Gibbons had had built. The bill was due and the builder wanted to get paid. Fortunately, Ham came up with an idea: He suggested featuring the souped-up car on the cover of the new album, thus allowing it to be written off as a prop. Mike Griffin, a friend of the band’s who had produced a documentary on drag racing, proposed that the album be called Top Fuel. Ham one-upped him and called it Eliminator.
Ham finally relented on his no-video policy when the album was finished. The synthesizer sound was perfect for the MTV generation, which until then had seen ZZ as an old-fogey band. Tim Newman, the cousin of songwriter-pianist Randy Newman, was hired to direct the video, which centered on a teenage gas-pump jockey, a bevy of beautiful babes, and the hot rod dubbed the Eliminator. Other than providing the song, the band’s involvement was limited to a brief appearance in a desert mirage: Gibbons, Hill, and Beard made a synchronized circular motion with their arms and tossed a ZZ key chain to the pump jockey so he could drive the hot rod off into the distance. All of a sudden, ZZ Top wasn’t just about Texas anymore; the band symbolized America as a land of rock and roll, cars, and girls. Videos for two other Eliminator songs, “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs,” followed, earning ZZ Top band of the year and video of the year honors at the 1984 MTV music awards. To date, Eliminator has sold 11 million albums in the U.S. alone.
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