![]() ![]() record companies, ZZ Top accepted a record deal from London Records. Immediately after the recording of “Salt Lick”, Greig was replaced by bassist Billy Ethridge, a bandmate of Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Mitchell was replaced by Frank Beard of the American Blues. They released their first single, “Salt Lick”, in 1969, and the B-side contained the song “Miller’s Farm”. ZZ Top was managed by Bill Ham, a Waxahachie, Texas native, who had befriended Gibbons a year earlier. He then figured that “king is going at the top” which brought him to “ZZ Top”. Hill and thought of combining the two into “ZZ King”, but considered it too similar to the original name. The band had a little apartment covered with concert posters and he noticed that many performers’ names used initials. The original line-up was formed in Houston and consisted of Gibbons, bassist/organist Lanier Greig (died February 2013) and drummer Dan Mitchell. ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. By 2014, ZZ Top had sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. That includes 11 gold, seven platinum and three multi-platinum records as of 2016, according to the RIAA. Total record sales of 25 million place ZZ Top among the top-100-selling artists in the United States, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The band’s top-selling album is their 1983 release Eliminator, which sold more than 10 million copies in the United States. Their songs have a reputation for containing humorous lyrics laced with double entendres and innuendo. Beginning with blues-inspired rock, the trio later incorporated new wave, punk rock and dance-rock by using synthesizers. The band released its first album-called ZZ Top’s First Album-in 1971. “Gibbons is one of America’s finest blues guitarists working in the arena rock idiom while Hill and Beard provide the ultimate rhythm section support.” ![]() “As genuine roots musicians, they have few peers”, according to critic Michael “Cub” Koda. The band has, since 1970, consisted of bassist/vocalist Dusty Hill, vocalist/guitarist Billy Gibbons (the band’s leader, main lyricist and musical arranger), and drummer Frank Beard. 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.ZZ Top is an American rock trio formed in 1969 in Houston, Texas. 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. 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. ![]()
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