Since 1969, ZZ Top has been bringing their unique brand of blues-tinged southern rock around the world. Despite losing founding bassist Dusty Hill in 2021, Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard, and new bearded bassist Elwood Francis show no signs of slowing down.
ZZ Top has also certainly made their presence known in Colorado. From early shows at a now-defunct restaurant called Pinocchio’s in Pueblo, to a notoriously rainy performance at Fiddler’s Green in 2013 resembling a memorable scene from The Perfect Storm, the power trio has graced the Centennial State with numerous memorable concerts over the years.
The band will once again be heading to Colorado for a show at the Union Colony Civic Center in Greeley on March 24. In preparation for the show, we were fortunate enough to pick the brain of bandleader Billy Gibbons about the past, present, and future of the unstoppable force that is ZZ Top.
Billy Gibbons and the Pre-ZZ Top Years
Prior to forming ZZ Top, lead guitarist and vocalist Billy Gibbons was in a band called the Moving Sidewalks, a group highly influenced by his would-be friend Roky Erickson’s 13th Floor Elevators. Regarding the band’s name, Gibbons puts it simply: Elevators go up, sidewalks go forward. He elaborated, stating that the 13th Floor Elevators “in a flash, showed the path to rhythmic weirdness.”
It was also in the Moving Sidewalks that Gibbons would befriend Jimi Hendrix, who once called the Texan his favorite guitarist. Gibbons said of the friendship, “Jimi Hendrix was a huge inspiration showing off what could be done with a guitar.” He noted that offstage, Hendrix was kind and shy, but “a wild man took over when the lights went on,” calling the contrast “the inherent duality of rock ‘n’ roll.”
The Moving Sidewalks would eventually split up, but it wouldn’t be long before Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard, and bassist Dusty Hill would form the legendary power trio that we now revere as the unmistakable ZZ Top.
That Little Ol’ Band From Texas Brings the Lone Star State on Tour
While ZZ Top’s first two albums would see the band experience moderate success, it would be their 1973 release Tres Hombres that would introduce the world to the little ol’ band from Texas with classics including, “La Grange,” and “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers”. The band would follow this record with 1975’s Fandango!, led by the single “Tush.” Then another record called Tejas, before embarking on the notorious Worldwide Texas Tour.
On ZZ Top’s Worldwide Texas Tour, the band didn’t just pack guitars, drums, and amps, but also a menagerie of wild, often dangerous animals, including buzzards, rattlesnakes, and buffalo, a spectacle Gibbons called “wild and wooly from day one,” adding that calling it “over the top” would be an understatement.
Following the quite literally wild Worldwide Texas Tour, ZZ Top took a break and Gibbons would find himself enthralled with a new type of music that would mark a significant shift in the band’s sound.
ZZ Top Break New Ground with ‘Eliminator’
During a short hiatus, Billy Gibbons was introduced to the electronic sounds of new wave via a trip to Europe and a friendship with Chicago industrial pioneers Ministry. This exposure the guitarist compared to Muddy Waters plugging his guitar in for the first time and “discovering” electricity.
This newly discovered sound would highly influence the band’s smash 1983 album Eliminator, which contains the singles, “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs,” and “TV Dinners”.
However, it wouldn’t be just the music that gave Eliminator such a massive level of success, but also a random night of drummer Frank Beard flipping through the channels and discovering a new, eclectic station known as MTV.
MTV would serve as the catalyst that introduced the world to the visuals of the long beards and sunglasses, the red 1933 Ford Coupe, the ZZ Top keychain, and, as Gibbons puts it, “those pretty girls for which we served as kind of sideline supporters.”
The success of Eliminator would help carry the band through nearly four more decades before, on July 28, 2021, the longtime trio of musicians would suffer a massive loss.
The Loss of Dusty Hill and a New Chapter for ZZ Top
On July 28, 2021, ZZ Top’s founding bassist and co-vocalist Dusty Hill would pass away, marking the end of an era for a band that consisted of the same three members, and only the same three members, for over 50 years.
However, it wouldn’t be long before the band’s guitar tech Elwood Francis would step into Hill’s shoes, a transition Gibbons calls “quite rightly nothing short of seamless.”
Today, ZZ Top shows no signs of slowing down with the latest release being the soundtrack from the aptly titled documentary ZZ Top Raw – That Little Ol’ Band From Texas and Gibbons’s solo project, Billy F. Gibbons and the BFG Band, plan to release a new record entitled Brown Paper Bag for Concord Records in the near future.
ZZ Top will be performing at the Union Colony Civic Center in Greeley, Colorado on Tuesday, March 24.
