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ZZ Top

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File:March 1991 - Guitar World.JPG
ZZ Top on the cover of the March 1991 issue of the Guitar World magazine.

ZZ Top is a rock band, most prominent in the 1970s and 1980s, from Houston, Texas. The band members are Billy Gibbons (vocals and guitar, of Moving Sidewalks), Dusty Hill (bass, of The American Blues) and Frank Beard (drums, of The Cellar Dwellers, The Hustlers, and The American Blues).

As well as a distinctive guitar sound and hard-driving, innuendo-laced lyrics (many of which are about places and events in their home state of Texas), the band is probably best known for its distinctive look. Gibbons and Hill are always pictured wearing sunglasses, trenchcoats and their trademark waist-length beards. (Frank Beard, ironically, does not wear a beard.) In 1984, the Gillette company offered Gibbons and Hill $1 million apiece to shave their beards for a commercial, but they declined. The name comes from two Z-shaped barn-door handles Gibbons once saw at a farm, and decided it would be a good idea to start a band name with. The first ideas were "ZZ Gibbons" and "ZZ Hill", but were later rejected in favor of "ZZ Top".

The band first gained wide attention with their "Tres Hombres" album, which contained the classic song "La Grange", referencing the bordello that is the subject of the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. They reached new heights of popularity with the 1983 album Eliminator, boosted to prominence by music videos for the tracks "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Legs" and "Sharp Dressed Man" each of which featured a small bright red vintage coupe called The Eliminator and a mysterious trio of beautiful women who travel around helping various people in the videos. The album also featured a distinctive synthesizer-laced sound, a rarity in the blues genre which added a modern edge to the music, and also helped the album to be as successful as it is.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted ZZ Top in on March 15, 2004.

Billy Gibbons will appear on Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell's solo album Two Sides Of If.

The band is also working on an album of new material, due out sometime in 2006.

Discography

Singles

  • "Cheap Sunglasses"
  • "La Grange"
  • "Nationwide"
  • "Tush"
  • "Velcro Fly"
  • also, the songs listed under "Music Videos" below

==Music videos== (not on the "Greats Hits" VHS/DVD)

  • "Pincushion"
  • "Breakaway"
  • "World of Swirl"

DVDs

Books

  • "ZZ Top: Bad and Worldwide" (1985)
  • "ZZ Top" by Mitchell Craven (July 1, 1985)
  • "ZZ Top" by Philip Kamin (March 3, 1986)
  • "ZZ Top" by Robert Draper (July 1, 1989)
  • "Elimination: The ZZ Top Story" (December 1, 1991)
  • "Sharp-Dressed Men: Zz Top Behind the Scenes from Blues to Boogie to Beards" (May 1, 1994)
  • "ZZ Top: Elimination" (June 1, 1998)
  • "ZZ Top Greatest Hits" (July 1, 1999)
  • "The New Best of Zz Top for Guitar (Easy Tab Deluxe)" (July 1, 1999)
  • "ZZ Top / XXX (Authentic Guitar-Tab)" (March 1, 2000)
  • "ZZ Top - Guitar Anthology" (February 1, 2003)
  • "Essential ZZ Top" (April 2003)
  • "The Very Best of ZZ Top" (April 1, 2003)
  • "The Best of Zz Top: A Step-By-Step Breakdown of the Guitar Styles and Techniques of Billy Gibbons" (September 1, 2003)
  • "Billy F. Gibbons: Rock+Roll Gearhead" (October 15, 2005).

NOTE: Most of these books (plus many others) were located at: Amazon.com. Publishing dates were acquired from Amazon.

Interesting trivia

See also

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