Like the state of Texas, where they come from, Top Z Z it combines rural primitivism and urban imagery in a way that has led to a perfect synthesis between country rock’n’roll and high-tech.

When Forbes magazine published the list of top-earning entertainment celebrities worldwide in the late 1980s, only one rock group, U2, ranked above ZZ Top among those who had amassed the most. fortunes. However, they have managed to stay curiously removed from the circus of rock’n’roll high society, and remain immune to the “rock messiah” syndrome that generally plagues other artists of their stature. In nearly thirty years they’ve toured the globe, though they’ve never strayed very long from their base in southern America, and someone’s description of them when they started, “that little old lady from Texas,” still strikes you today. they fit like a glove.

billy gibbons, who was a graphic arts student, began playing guitar in The Moving Sidewalks, a 1960s psychedelic “garage” band whose debut single, “99th Floor,” topped the charts. Texas charts for five weeks in 1967. dusty hill Y frank beardFor his part, he graduated from The American Blues, a Dallas band best known for the fact that its members wore dyed blue hair more than anything else. The three met in 1970 and the pact they sealed then has stood the test of time with overwhelming strength. Except for the fleeting contribution of a guitar accompaniment by an unknown person on one of their first albums, the three men have been self-sufficient to the last note and the last rhythm that they have included in their records, although they have even had that much of learn to play the saxophone or play a section of three brass, as is the case with some songs on his album Degüello. They have never enriched their live performances with extra musicians, nor have they recorded or played with other bands.

Their manager and producer from day one has been Bill Ham, a maverick Texan with a management style very similar to Led Zeppelin’s first manager, Peter Grant. Ham categorically separated ZZ Top from television throughout the 1970s, preferring the band’s live performances to other procedures that guaranteed easier success. Although such principles must have been hard by force, the truth is that the foundations of the band were already unshakable by 1976, when the Taking Texas to the People tour took place, an ambitious production that took them on tour for a long time. along with all of their outdoor gear and abundant wildlife (an ox, a 2,000-pound buffalo, half a dozen vultures, two six-foot rattlesnakes, a pig, and a wolf). Their aversion to television softened in the 1980s, when they became quirky MTV stars thanks to a trilogy of videos directed by Tim Newman for the songs “Gimme All Your Lovin,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs.” all included on his hit 1983 album, Eliminator.

Presenting themselves since the eighties as the “mausoleums of rock”, ZZ Top is the only group that has seriously faced the commitment to age in a market, that of rock’n’roll, which always trades in the currency of youth. . Undoubtedly, the image that Gibbons and Hill conceived for the group when its members were barely thirty years of age has contributed to this staying power, an image in which the most outstanding note is the long beards that have not been in fashion since the Old Testament times. This strategy freed them from worry thereafter, for unless they dramatically gained weight, twenty years from now they will not look any older than they do now.

Given the enormous number of works published by this band throughout its history, only those that have been most relevant are mentioned. The first is a 1973 LP titled Tres hombres, which peaked at number three on their output at the time. Some people think that this has been the best album of his career. The album’s opening tracks, “Waitin’ for the Bus” and “Jesus Just Left Chicago,” are two of the greatest opening salvoes of all time, along with “Route 66” from the Rolling Stones’ first album, and “Whole Lotta Love” by Led Zeppelin II. In fact, the two inseparable songs continued to be an essential component in the set of songs they played live on the occasion of the 1991 Recycler tour. Another interesting cut is “La Grange,” a raunchy tale set in a brothel that was a minor hit in America, as were “Precious and Grace” and the surreal “Master of Sparks,” whose offbeat lyrics are embellished with a somewhat questionable Texan folklore. Although Tres Hombres reached number eight on the American charts, it was never recorded on the British charts, and is one of the most ignored great albums in rock history.

Another of ZZ Top’s great works is Degüello, released in 1979. This is a new collection of seemingly haphazard brilliance, illuminating, among other things, Gibbons’ consummate control of guitar textures. It oscillates between the perfect Fender sound of “A Fool for Your Stockings” and the Marshall sound of “Cheap Sunglasses.” Half a decade before Michael Jackson and LL Cool J entered the scene, ZZ Top demonstrated perfect familiarity with street language on “I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide.” The band’s fascination with auto racing is also revealed through another one of those surreal fantasy lyrics, “Manic Mechanic,” sung by Gibbons as if he were speaking through a broken megaphone. Dazzling covers of Isaac Hayes’ “I Thank You” and Elmore James’ “Dust My Broom” culminate in spectacularly rich composition.

When someone asked Gibbons what a guitarist could do to improve his technique, his answer was to go out and buy a record called The Sound of the Drags (a recording that captured the peculiar sound of drag racing), and I absorbed all the warm feeling it emitted. The success of Eliminator, an album released in 1983, is based precisely on having managed to capture that “warm feeling”; So much so, that the LP has become part of the legendary history of rock’n’roll, along with the car, the girls, the videos and the ten million copies that were sold of it. The trick they discovered was simple, but surprisingly effective. They trumpeted the sound of the guitar, energized the choirs and banished any type of rhythmic mass. Contrary to what is common in a heavy rock album, “Gimme All Your Lovin”, “Got Me Under Pressure”, “Sharp Dressed Man”, “Legs”, “Dirty Dog” and “If I Could Only Flag Her Down”. they are carried out exclusively with a basic drum pulse.

In addition to Afterburner (1985), which was number two in the UK, we must also mention two compilation albums by the band: The Best of ZZ Top (1977) and Greatest Hits (1992), compilations that only share two songs, “Tush ” and “La Grange”, which gives a good account of the group’s creativity. The Best of ZZ Top includes a decent selection of the band’s work up to 1977, with special attention to Tres Hombres (which provides four songs out of a total of ten). Greatest Hits, which catapulted to the singles charts with its version of the song “Viva Las Vegas”, shows the more modern and commercial side of ZZ Top. However, there are several notable omissions (“TV Dinners”, “Velcro Fly”, “Stages”) and other rather debatable inclusions (“Gun Love”, “Give It Up”) that make this, according to some, a summary of Little trust.