ZZ TOP
"He's our kind of
guy." -- Frank Beard to Billy Gibbons after Beard introduced himself to
Dusty Hill in a bar. Hill passed out drunk before returning Beard's
greeting.--1969
Best known for: Classic rock trio known for its Texas heritage, bearded, haggard look,
reclusive mystique, hard-nosed business tactics, and blues-rock sound.
Born: ZZ Top (aka,
That Little ol' Band from Texas):
1
969; Billy F. Gibbons
(guitar): Houston,
September 16, 1949; Dusty Hill (bass): Dallas, May 19, 1949; Frank Beard
(drums): Dallas, June 11, 1949; Bill Mack Ham (manager): Waxahachie, 1937.
Family: Billy Gibbons, the
son of a financially well-off family living in the Tanglewood
suburb of Houston,
never married. Dusty Hill is divorced with a college-age daughter. Frank Beard
is married and has two twin boys and a daughter who reportedly goes to college
in Houston and
will be part of the University class of 2001.
Education: While growing up in
suburban Houston,
Gibbons learned about R&B music from his family's maid, who was
African-American.
Career: Guitarist Billy
Gibbons met his future manager, Waxahachie native Bill Mack Ham, backstage at a
Doors concert in Houston
in 1967. Gibbons' band at the time, the Moving Sidewalks, had a local hit with
the song "99th Floor." They soon opened on the Doors' Texas tour. After later
opening for the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Hendrix
named Gibbons his favorite guitar player during an appearance on "The
Tonight Show With Johnny Carson." The Sidewalks broke up and Gibbons and
Ham contracted to form a new band.
After a
few false starts with other musicians, the Gibbons-Hill-Beard version of ZZ Top
was founded in 1969. According to Gibbons, the name came from one or more of
the following: the two brands of rolling-paper, Zig-Zag
and Top, a tribute to blues legend Z.Z. Hill, and/or Gibbons seeing the two
words running together on a dilapidated bill board. Hill and Beard had been
members of a Dallas
band called American Blues.
The trio
spent its first few years playing mostly regional concerts. Ham's bosses,
Houston record producer Pappy Daily and family, cut a deal with him to finance
"ZZ Top's First Album" (1970). Five other records followed on the London Records label. The
third album, "Tres Hombres" (1973), brought
them national attention. Its hit song "La Grange," about a whorehouse, was
allegedly based on John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen."
It is still the band's signature riff tune. Also included was "Beer
Drinkers & Hell Raisers," the would-be anthem.
In an
event that tried to be a rock-style Willie
Nelson Picnic, the group was the featured headliner in the "Rompin' and Stompin' Barndance and Barbecue," held in Austin on Labor Day, September 1, 1974. Appearing with them before a crowd of 80,000 was San Francisco
legend Bill Graham, Santana, Joe Cocker and Bad Company making its U.S. debut.
This was ZZ Top's first concert in which they were seen as more than just a Texas act. It was the
biggest concert in Austin's history, and the
last to be held in Memorial Stadium on the University of Texas Campus
for another twenty years. The stadium had been trashed by concert-goers, who
had suffered from the heat and lack of food, water and toilets.
The year-and-a-half-long
Worldwide Texas
Tour, with stage props like haystacks, ranch tools and Longhorn cattle, began
in 1975. It featured songs from "Tres
Hombres" and "Fandango," their fourth album. Although their
concert earnings were now in the tens of millions, by the end of the tour the
group was exhausted. They took a break that ended up lasting three years.
Manager Bill Ham stayed busy, however, shrewdly negotiating a lucrative
recording contract with Warner Brothers that is still talked about in the music
business. Their next two albums, "Deguello"
and "El Loco," were well received with hits like "Cheap
Sunglasses" and "Tube Snake Boogie."
The next
album, "Eliminator," featuring musically controversial electronic
instruments, debuted ZZ Tops biggest hits, "Legs"
and "Sharp-Dressed man." The synthesizers and drum machines caused
controversy in other ways as well. According to former roadie David Blayney in his book, "Sharp Dressed Men," sound
engineer Linden
Hudson co-wrote much of the material on the album as a live-in high-tech music
teacher to Beard and Gibbons. Hudson claims that in addition to not getting
songwriting credit, Ham worked to cover up his contributions to the album.
Despite continued denials by the band, it settled a five-year legal battle with
Hudson, paying
him $600,000 after he allegedly proved he held the copyright on the song
"Thug." Another copyright suit was brought by a co-writer of John Lee
Hooker's "Boogie Chillen," the alleged
basis of "La Grange."
That case was settled and sealed. The group's eighth album,
"Afterburner," with its continued use of synthesizers, became a
worldwide smash hit.
Until MTV
came along in the '80s, ZZ Top had declined all offers for TV appearances.
Their first video, "Gimme All Your
Lovin'," set the style for follow-ups
"Legs" and "Sharp-Dressed man." The addition of videos took
the band's famous mystique and popularity to an all-time high.
In 1981,
ZZ Top joined a diverse group, organized by art patron and civic leader Marilyn
Lubetkin and including such philanthropists as
Dominique de Menil, to donate money to purchase J.D. McKissack's Orange Show
from his heir. The Orange Show, an open-air, multimedia sculptural installation
dedicated to the orange, is Texas'
leading example of an art form called "folk art environment." For
their support of the blues and an art form, the band
was given a piece of wood from Muddy Waters' shack in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
They had it made into a guitar, named it the "Muddywood,"
and sent it on a tour to raise funds for the Delta Blues
Museum.
By 1990,
the band had sold 50 million records. Tragedy struck in 1991 when Ham's wife,
Cecile, was murdered. A 23-year-old man on parole with three prior convictions
strangled her for her car so he wouldn't have to walk to his halfway house. In
spite of hard times personally, ZZ Top's 1996 album, "Rythmeen"
was considered one of their best. Gibbons called it the "first pure trio
record of our career," because only the three of them played on it. That
return to an earlier sound, made more pure and raw, continued on their 1999
album, "XXX," which celebrates the band's thirtieth anniversary. At
the turn of the century, ZZ Top was the only rock group with its original
members after three decades.