ZZ Top: C/D

Totally fucking undeniably classic - check the archives dude, I asked ILM if I should buy the box set about a month or two ago (I did - worth every penny!!)

My dream band would certainly include Billy Gibbons on guitar.

CLASSICCLASSICCLASSIC

I searched the archive for threads about ZZ Top and found nothing...

totally worth getting, for the first two and a half discs alone

Convince me not to shell out $70 for the ZZ Top box set
ZZ Top's "Deguello" - C/D, S/D
Is there a non-"remastered" version of ZZ Top's Tejas available on CD?
ZZ TOP: Eliminator and Afterburner
POX:ZZ Top

Oh, and very much classic.

Related, but off topic...

Bubble Puppy. If you haven't, there's a cheap remaster. It's good.

Point Blank. First album, way beyond "brown period" ZZ Top. Shotgun pointed at your head. Completely unacceptable beat-yer-wife-and-the-liberals-too crashing boogie on Arista. Never remastered -- except for my special "Sludge in the Seventies" series. "The Hard Way" is also good. That may still be in stock in various places.

Best Album: Tres Hombres

I been bad, I been good,
Dallas, Texas, Hollywood.
I ain't askin' for much.
I said, Lord, take me downtown,
I'm just lookin' for some tush.

Take me back way back home,
not by myself, not alone.
I ain't askin' for much.
I said, Lord, take me downtown,
I'm just lookin' for some tush.

- Frank Beard, Bill Gibbons & Dusty Hill

Classic.

http://www.cjnetworks.com/~leis/album/zztop/tejas.jpg

this might be the best album ever made

Got to see these guys when they played the Beacon Theatre in NYC a month or so back. They fucking tore the walls down. Tremendous.

It's getting hard to see the white lines rollin by...

What a totally classic band. I'm depressed I missed the Beacon show.

Customizer behind CadZZilla dies

http://www.havill.net/hobby/galaxie/images/cadzilla.jpg

I am itchin' to find out what Rick Rubin does with them. Itchin', I tell ya.

All acoustic covers of new wave acts.

But seriously, I'm into this idea.

I mean, the idea of ZZ Top ELECTRIC with Rick Rubin.

Yeah, I don't think even Rubin would unplug them. That would be Rubin self-parody.

oh man if he wants them to take it back to tres hombres this could be great news indeed....

Arguably the world's greatest living bluesman, Billy Gibbons

arguably, yes.

Why not Billy Gibbons? Fucking Brown Sugar off their first album, what an awesome blues song.

Just Got Paid may be my favorite song of all time.

I fucking love this band.

I'd be surprised if Rubin could jackhandle them into producing an album as interesting as Mescalero. The band was so down-tuned for half the numbers you could almost hear the strings scraping the pickups. Plus they did Lowell Fulson's "Tramp," which makes about half an album worthwhile all by itself.

However, I'm one who has liked ZZ Top's last couple of albums. XXX was a little off but Rhythmeen was singular in its wall-of-guitar tone. Check Vincent Price Blues, as per one sample.

ZZ Top and their 1st-RioGrandeMud-TresHombres period are like the American blue-collar worker and $20 buck/hour wages. The paradigm is gone and not coming back. If Rick Rubin gets people to pay attention to 'em a little more, that's fine.

What's exactly is there -to do- with ZZ Top if you're a producer, anyway?

Everything ZZ Top has done in the last ten years has been R&B as hard rock and blooz as jokey semi-heavy metal and vice versa. It's not been a bad way of writing for them.

The last revolution in tone they went through came with Eliminator when Billy started playing through Rockman equipment, Frank Beard was laced to sequencing and a click track and gated reverb was used on all the drums. Plus Dusty was singing a lot less.

They dumped all that when they went to RCA for Antenna. Rusty still isn't singing as much as he used to, though.

ZZ Top and their 1st-RioGrandeMud-TresHombres period are like the American blue-collar worker and $20 buck/hour wages. The paradigm is gone and not coming back.

What paradigm is that? When was ZZ Top ever defined by the year they were recording in? I know you're talking about sound here -- too narrowly, I think -- but either way, that seems like a blank argument.

What's exactly is there -to do- with ZZ Top if you're a producer, anyway?

I don't know what line of work you're in, but I hope it's not producing records. What exactly can you *do* with 4/4 time and 12 bars? It's just so limited...

I know, maybe my hopes are too high. But there's a lot of ZZ Top to work with. There's some serious raw blues, as was said, and their affinity for pure sonics, which was all-time greatness on a couple albums before it got a little out of hand and cloudy, and there's always that genius/weird sense of humor that produces songs like "Cheap Sunglasses," which is a joke with no punch line, so instead of being funny, it decides to just fuckin' rock. There are a lot of places for ZZ Top to go or go back to, which of course is Rubin's speciality.

And while rationally I know better, I want to believe that there's such a thing as Huge Fuck-Off Beard Magic, and that Rubin and Billy and Dusty all have it in spades.

With all the southern rock haters I've seen on ILX I'm surprised at how positive this thread is.

This is the first band I can remember liking. Ecstatically at that. A tape of Eliminator that I think belonged to my dad.

Kenan, I made the same mistake with the new Stooges album.

:(

I'M BAD

I'M NATIONWIDE

They dumped all that when they went to RCA for Antenna.

There's still silly polish and f/x all over their last few records, including Antenna.

They need to release a for-real live album. I saw them at the Beacon Theater late last year and had my brain yanked out and hurled around the room.

I've heard they can still dominate live. No news on any of the old shit being remastered like fandango and 3 hombres, right? Too bad, I'd love to upgrade the first two.

No, none of the others are on the Rhino remaster list, as far as I know. You're right, they definitely should remaster the first two - hell, I'd like remasters of everything up through Eliminator (which is coming as a 2CD deluxe edition later in the year).

I read that and inferred that ZZ Top played in some sort of kids’ tent at Woodstock.

Okay yeah wow that woodstock 99 show is fantastic

https://heads.social/@theheatwarps/112567672957311842

"Ever wish the motorik 4-bar intro to ZZ Top's "I Thank You" lasted much, much longer? I've given into my darkest impulse by looping that sweet groove for a full 17 minutes.

Folks, it rips. #krautrock #zztop

I would like to express my gratitude to you for posting that.

Oh my goodness, that track is perfect.

excellent

the tail end of the crash cymbal at the loop point is kinda sick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTYc6G1BZGM

"I was there, I saw him! I was on my way home from work. The same street musician, the owner of the guitar, had been there a couple of days. This day ZZ Top had embarked on a nearby hotel - The Kämp, the best hotel in town, and was going to have a consert the same evening. Bill decided to go for a stroll and noticed the street musician and he asked him if he could borrow his guitar. It was amazing and most people didn't noticed him or didn't know who he was. Bill played for about half an hour before he handed over the guitar to its owner."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FgShtvyfVw

Soundboard of ZZ Top in Kansas City March 8, 1980
https://ijwthstd.blogspot.com/2026/03/zz-top-kansas-city-mo-1980-03-08-sb.html

This rules.

Many thanks, hoss

perfect for monday morning at the office

aw yeah

Man, this show already starts off great and just keeps ripping harder

I have a plane flight tomorrow and I’m really looking forward to rocking out to this on the trip.

Thanks so much, Elvis! Have you listened to any of those others? Just now downloaded the Alice Coltrane-McLaughlin-Carlos-friends, may come back for more (Kinks live in '72, for inst).

I can hear an electric piano during "Cheap Sunglasses". How did that work? Did they have someone backstage to add occasional keyboards?

dow, I've been following that blog in my feedreader for about a year. I really can't take anymore "law battery cassette recorder in audience pocket" recordings, but somehow that blog has been posting above average stuff along with the ZZ Top soundboard. It's freaky because I think they're were based in Los Angeles/Southern California so I often see recordings of shows I was at - Robyn Hitchcock at Rhino Records, the Geraldine Fibbers with Nels Cline - what a show and hfs someone caught a recording of that?

Pre-Eliminator live recordings are pretty scarce (Bill Ham's invisible hand?) and soundboards are uncommon, but fingers crossed that whatever shakes loose will get archived and not just trashed as their kids don't want it.

Hail and farewell:

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/frank-beard-zz-top-drummer-dead-obituary-1235607415/

A while back, someone made a claim that ZZ Top was the closest that America ever got to motorik in a classic 70s sense, that eternal drive down the freeway. I have no problem in equating Frank Beard with Klaus Dinger in that regard.

"The tireless drummer anchored the Texas band on hits like "La Grange," "Tush," and "Legs"" - well, he famously didn't anchor the band on anything at all from Eliminator, and when he first heard the demos, he angrily grabbed Gibbons and demanded to know who was playing the drums.

A fine musician. RIP.

That Rolling Stone obit is well worth reading, especially for the story about how their management would deliberately book them as openers for hack bands on their last legs, whom ZZ Top would proceed to blow off the stage.

haha

“And we’d get out there and just kick their ass. We did Mott the Hoople that way, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple. They were through, and they didn’t care who knew it, so people would remember us.”

I don't know anything about ZZ Top really but I just saw on bluesky that they sampled Autechre, which felt like something ilx would want to know

oh my god

They certainly did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O27gYrqYPYI

One of the few bands that can be heard as a direct influence on Van Halen, Beard (and his boogie) in particular.

The Rio Grande meets the Arroyo Seco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-__xR22ozTs

Aw man.

I still listen to "Breakaway" regularly

RIP, just the perfect drummer for that band. Shame Billy Gibbons isn't called Billy Dead because then he'd be the only member of ZZ Top who isn't, although he does have a beard.

"The tireless drummer anchored the Texas band on hits like "La Grange," "Tush," and "Legs"" - well, he famously didn't anchor the band on anything at all from Eliminator, and when he first heard the demos, he angrily grabbed Gibbons and demanded to know who was playing the drums.

I guess they got word because they changed the headline, hah

They’re cancelling shows tonight and tomorrow but resuming this weekend!? Holy hell…

I just finished relistening to Raw, which is exactly as the name suggests, stripped down, revved up, excellent setlist. If those guys could rock that hard in their 70s I guess there’s no reason Billy can’t continue.

Billy did a solo tour last year - smaller venues too (he played two sold-out shows at City Winery in NYC, mostly ZZ top numbers too).

FWIW, in terms of replacing Dusty when he passed, I didn't know this:

Gibbons confirmed that ZZ Top would continue with Elwood Francis, the band's longtime guitar tech, on bass, per Hill's wishes. According to Gibbons, "Dusty emphatically grabbed my arm and said, 'Give Elwood the bottom end, and take it to the Top.' He meant it, amigo. He really did.

Lil Bubba's Chicken - R2G Style:

I had the pleasure of serving Mr. Frank Beard — Drummer of ZZ Top — for years.

Long story short, years ago I delivered scaffolding to his home near the gallery. He had two Dalmatian dogs. It was lunch time when I delivered it to him.

He didn't know me at all, but he said, "Hey, it's lunch time, you want a sandwich?"

I was working for United Rentals at the time and I hadn't taken lunch yet, so I said sure.

We sat in his backyard and ate turkey sandwiches and drank tea. We talked like we had known each other for years. That's how down to earth he was.

Many years passed, and I started running 9er's BBQ in Richmond, TX for a wonderful family. He walked in the door and I reminded him who I was. I didn't think he would remember... but he did.

He always ordered two chopped beef baked potatoes all the way.

Bless you and your family. I've been in your mansion on earth — show me around the one you have in Heaven when I get there.

Rest Easy Sir.

- J Riley

Anyone else see the more than solid doc from a few years ago? I had no idea Frank had a bankrupting hard drug addiction!

(I sort of figured that's partly why Billy was messing with drum machines and why Frank had no problem with it.)

uh

i thought i read something (maybe in the RS article) where it said he was pissed when he first heard the drum machines

Yeah that was my impression too

I seem to recall both Frank and Dusty were displeased with their reduced roles on the record, Dusty doesn't really play on it either

I meant, it wasn't a deal breaker or anything, and obv. they both learned to live with it.

Here's the nuts story that's probably been posted before:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/welcome-linden-hudson-of-zz-top-fame.1112917/

Incl. this amazing demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QZ8WUTaS18

imho : the rick rubin album was a glorious old school cliche 'return to form'.

Deep dive on the "La Grange" shuffle. Unsurprisingly, Frank is some kind of freak genius.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D1sOFyqvTk

(ignore obnoxious key frame "reacts" style that's all the rage and really the whole xxxxx teacher reacts to yyyyyy style. nevertheless it's the best breakdown of Frank's East Texas Motorik style)

I had a very interesting discussion this week with someone who knows the ZZ Top guys pretty well. He told me:

- the Gibbons/Beard relationship was 100% business; according to him, they'd never even been to each other's houses
- Beard's deal was he got $1 million a year and for that he would tour the US and a certain number of weeks in Europe and that was it
- a lot of the show is lip-synched these days (Gibbons hasn't been able to hit the high notes in "Legs," for example, for years)

8 and a half minutes of Landover, MD - 11 Nov 1976
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_mj1o_C0C0

a lot of the show is lip-synched these days

i just saw them give a free show a few days ago. it sounded more like a vocoder to me. "legs" is around 22 minutes in. i did hear keys cropping up every now and then that weren't there. the drummer was not very good. still a fine show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vYPWnmWPAw

When I saw them a few yrs ago, before Dusty passed, there was definitely some offstage assists and possibly some drum trigger as well, but jah still a great show