ZZ Top

(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)

ZZ Top descend from Texas-rooted blues-rock and psychedelia. Since 1966, guitarist Billy Gibbons had led a local band, the Moving Sidewalks, the last great Hendrixian visionaries on tracks like 99th Floor and Joe's Blues. The band, however, broke up after a single album, Flash (Tantara, 1969). Gibbons then formed ZZ Top with the structure of a classic blues-rock trio, leaning into “urban cowboy” poses and delivering a robust, gritty boogie.

The blend evolved and was enriched with First Album (London, 1970), adopting hard-rock and psychedelic sounds (Brown Sugar), and the catalog was filled with a series of energetic Southern sketches: Francine, the hit from Rio Grande Mud (London, 1972), La Grange, their masterpiece and the quintessence of Texas blues-rock (hypnotic guitar riff, rough-hewn vocals, archaic rhythm section), and the apocalyptic vision of Jesus Just Left Chicago on the landmark Tres Hombres (London, 1973), Tush from Fandango (London, 1975), one of many tracks showcasing Gibbons’ narcissistic guitar shows, and Arrested For Driving While Drunk from Tejas (London, 1976).

Deguello (WB, 1979), by contrast, simply offered a generic imitation of their style, aimed at a broader audience, with tracks like HiFi Mama, Cheap Sunglasses, and I'm Bad I'm Nationwide.

Capitalizing on a rough-and-ready rural image and a mythic-touristic rediscovery of Spanish-border charm, ZZ Top added charm to their natural concert prowess. In Texas, their popularity reached phenomenal heights, and all their later albums went at least gold.

Starting with Tube Snake Boogie, which evokes Led Zeppelin-style rock and roll, and Pearl Necklace, a melodic track stripped of the rough edges of earlier work—two highlights from El Loco (WB, 1983)—ZZ Top in the ’80s, by slightly pushing their boogie toward heavy metal and adding dazzling electronic rhythmic effects, decisively entered the national charts.

The album of their new consecration was Eliminator (WB, 1983), yielding ferocious masterpieces like Sharp Dressed Man (one of Gibbons’ great solos), TV Dinners, Gimme All Your Lovin, Legs, and Got Me Under Pressure, which simply update the Tush riff for the electronic era and launch it into techno rhythms. While Deguello had already marked a half-betrayal, these supersonic tracks decisively sever ties with the archaic blues-rock of their origins.

Sleeping Bag on Afterburner (WB, 1985) perhaps overdoes the danceable arrangement, bordering on industrial music, and Planet Of Women would be one of their fiercest boogies if it weren’t wrapped in a layer of synthesizers. The sumptuously arranged ballad Rough Boy further reshapes the band’s personality.

Recycler (WB, 1990) pays homage to their past with My Head's In Mississippi (a major hit, a “La Grange” twenty years later), but otherwise tiresomely recycles the same ideas from previous albums in uninspired tracks like Doubleback and Give It Up.

Billy Gibbons, an emulator of Elmore James and Robert Johnson, remains one of the few white guitarists to have truly “understood” the blues—its phrasing, timing, dynamics—and successfully adapted it to the electric guitar, ranking among the fastest ever.