In 1984, the Gillette Company reportedly offered Gibbons and Hill $1 million each to shave their beards for a television commercial, but they declined stating, “We are too ugly without ‘em.”Įliminator was released in 1983 and stayed on the charts for over three years and eventually became certified ten times platinum. Ironically, Beard usually spots just a mustache. Beginning with the 1979 song “Cheap Sunglasses”, Gibbons and Hill are almost always pictured wearing sunglasses, similar clothing, and chest-length beards. The Texas trio’s first big hit single, “Tush,” hit the charts in 1975. ZZ Top drew 80,000 fans to a 1974 Labor Day stadium concert that they dub “ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q.”
To date, they have released 20 full-length albums. Their third album, Tres Hombres (1973), hit the Top Ten and became the band’s first gold album.
The group toured extensively on the eve of their anniversary, co-headlining with county superstars Brooks & Dunn, as well as on their own in an intimate concert that was called the “In Your Face Tour” that recalled their roots. The personnel line-up has not changed in the intervening years: no other major band can make that claim. Now celebrating its 40th anniversary, ZZ Top formed in 1969 and played its first show in February 1970 at a Knights of Columbus Hall in Beaumont, Texas. Where most veteran artists turn to Rick Rubin for a back-to-basics reboot, ZZ Top’s 2012 dalliance with the famed producer yielded “I Gotsta Get Paid,” a sleazy, grease-fried reinterpretation of DJ DMD’s Houston-rap standard “25 Lighters.Band members: Billy F Gibbons – lead guitar, lead vocals, Dusty Hill – bass, Frank Beard – drums, percussion Since then, ZZ Top have kept on rollin’ past the half-century mark, and they remain the rare classic-rock institution that always keeps its ear to the ground for fresh inspiration.
ZZ TOP GREATEST HITS ARTWORK SERIES
And it wasn’t just their appearance that had changed: With 1983’s blockbuster Eliminator, ZZ Top crosswired their gritty grooves with New Wave synths and sequencers to the tune of over 10 million copies sold, while a series of videos featuring hot models cruising around in the album cover’s customized vintage Ford Coupe made the band icons of the then-nascent MTV. Though ZZ Top often played the part of Southern showmen with their cowboy hats and Nudie suits, by the early ‘80s, Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill had grown out their beards past their chests, lending this workmanlike band a quirky visual trademark just in time for the music-video era. But thanks to guitarist Billy Gibbons’ pedigree in ‘60s garage outfit The Moving Sidewalks, horndog rave-ups like “Tush” and “La Grange” eschewed epic, Skynyrd-sized jams for a raw, raunchy energy tailor-made for a target demographic of (as another one of their early standards put it) beer drinkers and hell raisers.
Upon forming in Houston in 1969, ZZ Top were among a wave of Southern rock bands outfitting bluesy, British Invasion-schooled riffs with countrified fingerpicking and desert-baked grooves. The strangest thing about ZZ Top is that they can lay claim to being both the dirtiest no-nonsense blues-rock band of the ‘70s and the glitziest camera-ready electro-boogie group of the ‘80s. The only member of ZZ Top without a beard is drummer Frank Beard, but that’s just the second-strangest thing about this Texan trio.