ZZ Top

• 1. Introduction

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  ZZ Top, the rock band from Houston, Texas, earned a Guinness world record in 2018 as the longest-running active group with no lineup changes. Behind that record stood three men: guitarist and singer Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard, and bassist and singer Dusty Hill. They played Texas blues with a grin, wrote lyrics full of winks and double meanings, and eventually became a fixture on television screens around the world.

  Their story raises some odd questions. How does a band take its name from a wall of concert posters? Why did two of its members swap ordinary looks for sunglasses, hats and chest-length beards? How did a group rooted in boogie and the blues end up in heavy rotation on MTV? And what happens to a trio that stayed together for more than fifty years when one of them is gone?

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• 2. Posters on the Wall

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  In 1966, Billy Gibbons formed a Houston band called Moving Sidewalks, with Dan Mitchell on drums, Tom Moore on keyboards and Don Summers on bass. Their single "99th Floor" became a local hit, and they opened for the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and the 13th Floor Elevators. They released the album Flash in 1969. By then, Moore and Summers had both been drafted into the United States Army to fight in the Vietnam War. Gibbons and Mitchell recruited bassist and keyboardist Lanier Greig, and that trio became the first version of ZZ Top.

  The name came out of a small apartment covered in concert posters. Gibbons noticed how many performers went by initials, and two caught his eye: B.B. King and Z. Z. Hill. He first imagined joining them as "ZZ King" but judged it too close to the name it borrowed from. Then he reasoned that "king is at the top," and the band had its name.

  Their manager was Bill Ham, a native of Waxahachie, Texas, who had befriended Gibbons a year earlier. In 1969 the band released its first single, "Salt Lick," with "Miller's Farm" on the B-side. Gibbons was credited as composer of both songs. Soon after "Salt Lick" was recorded, Greig was replaced by bassist Billy Ethridge, who had played alongside Stevie Ray Vaughan. Mitchell gave way to Frank Beard, who came from a band called American Blues.

  Major American record companies showed little interest, so ZZ Top took an offer from London Records, the American affiliate of Britain's Decca label. Ethridge refused to sign a recording contract and quit. Dusty Hill, who had played with Beard in American Blues, took over the bass in late 1969. At that moment, all three members were 20 years old. Hill moved from Dallas to Houston, and the band signed with London in 1970. Their first concert together took place at a Knights of Columbus Hall in Beaumont, Texas, on the 10th of February 1970. Radio personality Al Caldwell of KLVI booked the show, and he also helped put the band's first recordings on the air.

  Gibbons took on the role of leader, main lyricist and musical arranger. With Ham and engineer Robin Hood Brians beside him, he was ready to make a first album.

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• 3. Boogie on the Road

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  ZZ Top's First Album arrived in 1971 with barrelhouse rhythms, distorted guitars, double meanings and innuendo. The songs showed their blues roots plainly. The follow-up, Rio Grande Mud, came out in 1972 and produced their first charting single, "Francine."

  Tres Hombres, released in 1973, reached number eight on the Billboard 200 by early 1974. Its sound came from the driving support of Hill and Beard and from Gibbons's "growling" guitar tone. Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote that the album "brought ZZ Top their first top-10 record, making them stars in the process."

  The record included the boogie-driven "La Grange," written about the Chicken Ranch, a notorious brothel in La Grange, Texas. That same brothel also inspired the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

  The tour that followed sold out across the United States. The band recorded live tracks on it that filled one side of the 1975 album Fandango!, while the other side held new studio songs. The single "Tush" peaked at number 20 on the Billboard Hot 100.

  In May 1976, ZZ Top began the Worldwide Texas Tour to support Fandango!. It ran into 1977 and totaled 98 shows over 18 months. During a break in the tour, the band recorded Tejas, released in November 1976. It was the last album under their London Records contract. Tejas reached number 17 on the Billboard 200 but was not as well received as the two albums before it. Its singles, "It's Only Love" and "Arrested for Driving While Blind," both missed the top 40 of the Hot 100, and the band's biggest change was still ahead.

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• 4. Sunglasses, Synthesizers, MTV

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  In 1978, after almost seven years of touring and a string of successful albums, ZZ Top went on hiatus. Beard was struggling with addiction. He later said he had spent "every bit" of his touring money on drugs. He described the pills as a response to the workload, and the heroin as something he simply liked. Beard entered rehabilitation in the 1980s and was sober as of 2020.

  During the break, Gibbons traveled to Europe and Beard went to Jamaica. Hill went to Mexico, and he also spent three months working at DFW Airport. He said he wanted to "feel normal" and "ground himself" after years of performing.

  In 1979, the band came back to record a new album, and Gibbons and Hill now wore chest-length beards. ZZ Top signed with Warner Bros. Records and released Degüello in late 1979. It went platinum but reached only number 24 on the Billboard chart. Two singles stood out: "I Thank You," a cover of a David Porter and Isaac Hayes song first recorded by Sam and Dave, and the band's own "Cheap Sunglasses."

  In April 1980, ZZ Top made their first appearances in Europe. They played for the German television show Rockpalast and for the BBC show The Old Grey Whistle Test. In the BBC studio they shared space with the English electronic group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, known as OMD. Gibbons felt they "were great." Inspired by OMD, ZZ Top added a jerky dancing style to their live show and started experimenting with synthesizers. Those synthesizers stood out on El Loco, released in October 1981. The album peaked at number 17 and carried the singles "Tube Snake Boogie," "Pearl Necklace" and "Leila."

  Eliminator, released in March 1983, pushed even further toward a modern sound. It produced two top-40 singles, "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Legs," plus two more Top Rock hits, "Got Me Under Pressure" and "Sharp Dressed Man." The album sold more than 10 million copies and reached number 9 on the Billboard pop chart. It remains the only ZZ Top album certified diamond.

  Gibbons kept his signature guitar style but added new wave elements, citing the electronic band Depeche Mode as an influence. Drum machines and synthesizers set a faster tempo. Terry Manning supervised the main sessions in Memphis and worked with Gibbons to replace many of the contributions from Hill and Beard. Singer Jimi Jamison joined Manning on backing vocals. Gibbons even called Jamison the fourth member of the band, and he sang again on Afterburner and Recycler.

  Several Eliminator videos ran in regular rotation on MTV and brought in many new fans. At the first MTV Video Music Awards the band entered, they won Best Group Video for "Legs" and Best Direction for "Sharp Dressed Man." Those videos were collected on a Greatest Hits video that quickly went multiplatinum.

  Afterburner, released in 1985, sold fewer copies than Eliminator, at five million. It still became their highest-charting album, at number four on the Billboard chart. Every single from it reached the top 40, and "Sleeping Bag" and "Stages" topped the Mainstream Rock chart. The video for "Velcro Fly," their last Hot 100 top-40 hit, was choreographed by future pop singer Paula Abdul. The Afterburner tour was the highest-attended and highest-grossing of 1986.

  In 1987, the band released The Six Pack, which gathered their first five albums plus El Loco. Each was remixed with new drum and guitar effects for a more contemporary sound. That reworking brought the older records to new listeners in a form close to the sound of Eliminator.

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• 5. Uncredited Hands

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  Stage manager David Blayney described a quieter story behind the Eliminator sound. Gibbons had worked closely with Linden Hudson, a live-in engineer at the band's rehearsal studio in Texas. According to Blayney, Hudson co-wrote much of the album's material without receiving credit.

  The band also recorded Hudson's song "Thug" without his permission. Hudson proved in court that he held the copyright, and in 1986 the band finally paid him $600,000.

  Hudson's work on "Groovy Little Hippie Pad," from the 1981 album El Loco, likewise went uncredited.

  The pattern reached back much earlier. In 1972, ZZ Top claimed sole writing credit for "Francine," the hit from Rio Grande Mud, cutting out co-writers Steve Perron and Kenny Cordray. That song had been the band's first charting single.

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• 6. A Long Second Act

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  Recycler, released in 1990, was ZZ Top's final studio album with Warner Records. It closed a distinct sonic trilogy and turned back toward a simpler, guitar-driven blues sound with less synthesizer. That shift did not entirely suit the fans Eliminator and Afterburner had won. Recycler went platinum but never matched their sales. Still, the single "My Head's in Mississippi" reached number one on the Billboard Album Rock Tracks chart that year.

  In 1992, Warner released a Greatest Hits collection with a new Rolling Stones-style track, "Gun Love," and an Elvis-inflected video, "Viva Las Vegas." In 1993, ZZ Top inducted one of their major influences, Cream, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

  In 1994, the band signed a $35 million deal with RCA Records and released the million-selling Antenna. Rhythmeen followed in 1996, and in 1999 came XXX, the second ZZ Top album to include live tracks. Both sold well but did not reach earlier heights.

  Mescalero, in 2003, was the last RCA album. It was thick with harsh Gibbons guitar and ended with a hidden track, a cover of "As Time Goes By." RCA executive Clive Davis had wanted a collaboration record in the mold of Carlos Santana's successful Supernatural. In an interview with Goldmine, Davis said Pink, Dave Matthews and Wilco were among the artists planned for the project.

  Also in 2003, the four-CD collection Chrome, Smoke & BBQ gathered recordings from the London and Warner Bros. years. It held both sides of the band's first single, rare B-sides, a 1979 radio promotion and extended dance mixes of their biggest MTV hits. It even included three tracks from Gibbons's old group, Moving Sidewalks.

  In 2004, ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones gave the induction speech, and the band played "La Grange" and "Tush." Two years later, Tres Hombres and Fandango! came out in expanded, remastered editions. They used the original mixes, free of echo and drum machines, and added bonus live tracks.

  La Futura, produced by Rick Rubin, arrived on the 11th of September 2012. Four of its songs had appeared on the 5th of June 2012 on an EP called Texicali. The first single, "I Gotsta Get Paid," debuted in an advertising campaign for Jeremiah Weed Whiskey and appears in the film Battleship. It reinterprets "25 Lighters" by Texan hip hop DJ DMD with rappers Lil' Keke and Fat Pat. DJ Screw was also a major influence on the album, partly because Gibbons and Screw had both worked with engineer G. L. Moon in the late 1990s.

  On the 3rd of March 2015, ZZ Top began a North American tour at the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey. After rescheduled dates and additions, it ended on the 27th of August at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois, with Blackberry Smoke opening. Jeff Beck joined the band for seven concerts. In 2019, the compilation Goin' 50 marked the band's 50th anniversary.

  Gibbons told the Las Vegas Review-Journal in April 2020 that the band had been preparing another album. On the 21st of June 2020, he said he would like Beck to appear on it.

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• 7. Sound, Screens, Honors

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  The Guardian once described ZZ Top as "part traditional, part contrary, and part of the deep seam of Texas weirdness that stretched from the 13th Floor Elevators through to the Butthole Surfers." Texas Monthly called the music "loud, macho, greasy, and distorted," with "unrepentant misogynistic references." Critics and listeners have filed it under blues rock, hard rock, boogie rock, Southern rock, blues and Texas blues.

  Onstage, Hill and Gibbons worked as a kind of double act. They looked alike and used simple choreography that Hill described as "low-energy, high-impact."

  In 1990, the group appeared in the film Back to the Future Part III as an Old West band, playing an acoustic version of "Doubleback" with a large fiddle band. They also played the "Three Men in a Tub" in the movie Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme. On the medical drama St. Elsewhere, a dream sequence parodied their video for "Legs." They turned up in an episode of King of the Hill in 2007 and in an episode of Two and a Half Men in 2010, and they guest hosted an episode of WWE Raw.

  Billy Gibbons had a recurring role on the show Bones as the father of Angela Montenegro. The character is never named, but it is strongly implied that Gibbons plays himself. "Sharp Dressed Man" served as one of the theme songs of Duck Dynasty. In that show's series finale, the band appeared with Si Robertson, who sang the song on stage at his retirement party.

  In 1997, ZZ Top played "Tush" and "Legs" at the Super Bowl XXXI halftime show, alongside the Blues Brothers and James Brown. They also performed at the 2008 Orange Bowl in Miami and at the Auto Club 500 NASCAR event in Fontana, California. On the 22nd of January 2010, Gibbons, Will Ferrell and Beck joined a band playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" on Conan O'Brien's last Tonight Show, and O'Brien joined in on guitar. In June 2011, the new song "Flyin' High" was reported to be headed for space. Astronaut Michael Fossum, a friend of the band, was given the single to listen to on his trip to the International Space Station. On the 4th of June 2014, the band opened the CMT Awards with "La Grange," joined by Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line.

  The honors piled up as well. Their video for "Rough Boy" won Best Art Direction at the MTV awards. The band entered Hollywood's RockWalk in 1994. The Texas House of Representatives named them "Official Heroes for the State of Texas," and then-governor Ann Richards declared the 4th of May 1991 "ZZ Top Day" in Texas. At the 2007 VH1 Rock Honors, actor Billy Bob Thornton gave the members commemorative rings.

  By the numbers, the band has released 15 studio albums and sold an estimated 50 million records. They have won three MTV Video Music Awards and scored six number-one singles on the Mainstream Rock chart. The Recording Industry Association of America has certified four of their albums gold, three platinum, two multiplatinum and one diamond. In 2015, Rolling Stone ranked Gibbons the 32nd-greatest guitarist of all time. The members have supported Childline, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the Delta Blues Museum.

  In November 2020, it was announced that their 2019 Netflix documentary, That Little Ol' Band from Texas, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Music Film. The ceremony was scheduled for March 2021.

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• 8. Without Dusty Hill

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  In 2017, the band began the Tonnage Tour but canceled its last few dates because of Hill's declining health. The next time that health made headlines, it was far more serious.

  In July 2021, a hip injury forced Hill to leave a tour. ZZ Top played without him at the Village Commons in New Lenox, Illinois, with Hill's guitar tech Elwood Francis on bass. Five days later, on the 28th of July, the band announced that Hill had died at his home in Houston at the age of 72. His wife later reported that he had suffered from chronic bursitis. At Hill's own request, ZZ Top carried on with Francis on bass.

  Raw, released on the 22nd of July 2022 through Shelter Records and BMG, was the soundtrack to the band's 2019 documentary. It was one of their final live albums with Hill.

  On the 21st of July 2023, ZZ Top began the Sharp Dressed Simple Man Tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd in West Palm Beach, Florida. The first leg ended in Camden on the 17th of September, and a second leg began in Savannah, Georgia, in March 2024. On the 2nd of March 2024, the band also launched the Elevation tour in Key West, which ran to the 24th of November 2024 in Lubbock. It resumed on the 2nd of March 2025 in New Orleans and ended on the 22nd of November 2025 in Biloxi.

  In March 2025, Beard temporarily left the tour because of illness. His place behind the kit was taken by the band's longtime drum technician, John Douglas.

  In August 2021, Gibbons had confirmed that Hill recorded bass and vocals before his death for the band's upcoming sixteenth studio album.

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