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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But even if the good vibe carried through to 1985’s Afterburner and 1990’s Recycler, all was not well at home. In the late eighties Lone Wolf moved its offices from Houston to Austin, ostensibly to let Ham spend more time on his Hill Country ranch, which was closer to the Austin music scene. But in truth, a change was called for. Behind the curtain, the organization had taken its share of hits. A trusted bookkeeper was found to have embezzled nearly $2 million from the company. Linden Hudson successfully sued the band for $600,000 in damages for copyright infringement after he was neither credited nor paid for writing the song “Thug” on Eliminator. And there were other suits too, including one by the Nightcaps, a Dallas band that contended ZZ’s “Thunderbird” had borrowed too liberally from a song of the same name that the Nightcaps had recorded in 1961. (A U.S. District Court judge eventually ruled that the Nightcaps had waited too long to challenge the copyright.)
In 1991 ZZ and Clint Black, Ham’s other prominent client, were among the top ten grossing acts in the rock and country genres, respectively. Ham had taken Black out of the Houston lounges and built him into one of the first country acts who could pack an arena. But Black was preparing to file suit to sever their business relationship. Then Ham’s wife, Cecile, was murdered by an ex-con who had just been paroled in Houston and stole her red Cadillac from a parking lot because he was tired of walking. All of a sudden, show business seemed trivial. “It made us all aware how insignificant success is,” said Ham aide J. W. Williams. In 1994 Ham himself nearly died when his aorta ruptured. With mortality staring him in the face, neither he nor Lone Wolf would ever be the same. Meanwhile, Gibbons seemed to be getting thinner and thinner, triggering more rumors: He was dying of AIDS, he was bulimic, he was propped up on Prozac, he was trying to live up to his reputation as the Howard Hughes of blues. (For the record, Lone Wolf officials have said that Gibbons is not sick and that his weight loss has been “a conscious decision. That’s how he wants to look.”)
With the master of mystique sidelined by tragedy, it was almost miraculous that ZZ pulled off its biggest coup of all in 1993: a five-record, $35 million deal with RCA. On the surface, it appeared to be a win-win situation for the boys, their manager, and their new label. The contract was one of the most lucrative in the business and brought instant prestige to RCA, a company not known for rock acts. But it also marked the end of ZZ’s happy relationship with Warner Bros. and brought on a new set of career pressures. If the band didn’t deliver the sales necessary to justify the deal, there was a danger that RCA might eat the contract and cut its losses. When the first release of the RCA deal, 1994’s Antenna, sold just over a million copies, that danger seemed more real. To keep the machine going, the next release would have to do better. That release is Rythmeen, and while the jury is still out on its success, the signs are fairly ominous.
Understandably, people wonder why the band even trifles with such problems. Unlike thousands of musicians who’ve quit the straight life to devote themselves to music, ZZ Top has actually succeeded at it. They’re not hungry teenagers anymore; they’re what passes in the music business for aristocracy. Gibbons collects African art and travels the world. Hill rides Harleys and shares courtside Houston Rockets season tickets with a group that includes Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer and society swan Carolyn Farb. Beard subsidizes a car racing team by buying and selling Porsches, Ferraris, and American muscle cars. Ham, meanwhile, is presently handling the career of two promising Austin alternative acts, Pushmonkey and El Flaco. Hamstein Cumberland Music Group, which Ham co-owns, was the number two music publishing company in Nashville last year—even though its parent company is in Austin—and has one of the largest staffs of any independent song publisher in the U.S.
Past suspicions about what Ham and the band might be hiding behind the curtains have evaporated. Even the most recent rumor about ZZ Top—that Gibbons has a “ghost” do his vocals in the studio—is beside the point. Whatever it is, however they do it, it’s some kind of art. Every two or three years, they manage to crank out an album’s worth of songs that are as loud, macho, greasy, and distorted as ever, stuffed with the kind of unrepentant, misogynistic references that represent, as Charles M. Young observed in Musician magazine, “the optimum balance between gonads and technoglitz.” Strip away the artifice and it still boils down to three guys and three chords.
ON THURSDAY NIGHT, FOLLOWING A photo shoot, Hill motioned to Gibbons, who was getting into a car sent by the Letterman show. “Hey, Billy!” he shouted, miming guitar licks. “Look good now.”
Once the tinted window was rolled up, Gibbons turned quiet. He leaned over and switched off the radio, which was playing some classic Moody Blues; the music clearly irritated him. But he sprang back to life at the Fifty-third Street stage-door entrance to the Late Show set. After exiting the car, he signed autographs and slid past Letterman regular Calvert DeForest, who was rehearsing his role as Larry “Bud” Melman by sputtering the line “You skinny talk show host.”
Just before rehearsal, Shaffer sidled up to Gibbons, checking out the African knife necklace he calls his Johannesburg boxing glove.
“How did it sound last night?” Shaffer asked.
“Cool,” Gibbons replied, giving him the thumbs up.
After a bit of small talk, Shaffer asked, “Are you ready to rock?” and they went to work. For the taping, Shaffer’s band would do an instrumental version of “What’s Up With That” with Shaffer assuming James Harman’s harmonica part. At the rehearsal, Gibbons was tentative and deferential as the band ran through “Legs” (“It’s actually C sharp minor, F sharp minor,” he told them with a smile), “Green Onions,” a peppy version of “Yellow Rose of Texas,” and the theme from The Honeymooners. But by the time Shaffer conducted a blues shuffle in the key of C and Freddie King’s “Goin’ Down,” Gibbons felt confident enough to throw in a few trademark riffs.
When the taping started an hour later, Gibbons got a couple of nice lead licks in, several close-ups, and more positive comments from Dave. There was a nice shot of him laughing, his gold tooth gleaming, in reaction to Letterman’s story about how ZZ Top’s music inspired him. “I love to drive,” Letterman said. “Couple years ago, I put a ZZ Top CD in the car and drove to Kansas City. The other thing I like to do while listening to ZZ Top is fight. Drive and fight.” When Letterman made fun of his “toupee,” the camera zoomed in for a tight shot of him, then switched to a close-up of Gibbons’ African hat. When the orchestra reprised “Legs” as an instrumental break to commercial, guitarists Felicia Collins and Sid McGinnis and Huntsville-born bassist Will Lee sashayed in place and swung their guitar necks in unison with Gibbons, just like ZZ Top.
After the taping, Gibbons stuffed several cans of Diet Coke into his backpack and described what it had been like to play on national television without Dusty and Frank. “It was like a fine limousine ride,” he said. “Through my earpiece, I could hear Paul say, ‘C’mon, Dave, give me one more [verse]. This is too good.’ Anton told me, ‘I was handing you that Texas backbeat.’”
Back at the hotel, several fans were waiting for autographs and pictures. Gibbons obliged them, making nice with one admirer holding an Instamatic by telling him, “Anyone with a camera like that deserves a photo. Hey, now, how you doin’?” Once he was inside the lobby, the shucking and jiving eased up. When the elevator door closed in front of him, Gibbons cast a furtive glance to his companions, J. W. Williams and crew members Pablo Gamboa and Graeme Lagden, and as if on cue, the four let out a collective sigh. For the next few hours, whoever the guy behind the beard and shades really was, he could step out of character if he so desired. In the morning, the show would start all over again.
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