ZZ Top's music stands alone in classic rock, but the music isn't the only unique thing
about this band. There are plenty of interesting details about ZZ Top you probably don't know.
Here's the untold truth of the notorious bearded bandmates.
Let's be honest — when you think of ZZ Top, the first thing that comes to mind is the
mid-torso-length beards these guys have been rocking since before many of us were born.
Whether you can name a ZZ Top song or not, you still know the beards. Could you imagine
ever seeing vocalist and guitarist Billy Gibbons or bassist Dusty Hill with a clean-shaven
face or even a manageable scruff? Well, there was a time when that fresh-faced style was
still their preferred look.
Contrary to what you may expect, the band spent their first decade together without
their iconic facial hair. Gibbons and Hill had a tendency to wear comparatively short
beards. But one day, they both arrived at a meeting after having been on an extended
vacation. Hill and Gibbons had forgotten to shave, and their beards had become pretty
impressive. This was an entirely uncoordinated move, one that reportedly caused each of them
not to recognize the other at first glance. Once the two bandmates realized they'd both
independently grown some seriously distinctive facial hair, the beards were there to stay.
It should be noted that the only member of the band who didn't rock a massive beard after
that day was the one person whose name should've all but demanded it: drummer Frank Beard.
Once ZZ Top's beards were hanging to their chests, they weren't going anywhere no matter
what. Not only have they stayed, but Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill seem to have thrown
their razors away for good. They outright refuse to cut their facial hair, and they've
gotten plenty of high-dollar offers to do so.
As Gibbons explained in an interview with Brave Words, razor manufacturer Gillette had
once called the duo with a massive proposition. The company wanted Gibbons and Hill to be
in one of their commercials. It would've been a big promotion for the company, having a
group of international bearded superstars shilling their products, but Gillette isn't
about growing one's beard long. It's about shaving it off. They offered the bearded pair
$1 million to scrape off the scruff in front of a camera, but these chest-long beards were
worth more than money to the band. They refused.
"It's just money. It's made up."
The name ZZ Top seems to hold a bit of mystery. In an interview Billy Gibbons did with KLRU,
they talk about the myths flying around as of 2008. Gibbons' favorite is the rumor that
says they're named after the Zig Zag and Top brand cigarette rolling papers.
Gibbons has set the record straight quite a few times now, beginning in a book he published.
The actual story, as Ultimate Classic Rock describes, was actually quite simple. The
band was sitting around their old apartment hang out, when Gibbons looked up at the posters.
Z.Z. Hill and B.B. King stood out as some of his favorite bands, so he mixed the two
together but realized how much Z.Z. King sounded like B.B. King. To switch things up, and since
B.B. King was at the top of the genre, "Top" became their stand in for B.B. King.
Throughout the band's first five albums, they'd been recording, touring, and playing shows
nonstop. When the Worldwide Texas Tour began, things got even more stressful. They blew
through nearly 100 shows in a year and a half, according to St. Mary’s University. The
band was getting burned out, and it really didn't help that the band had a road manager
who was so good at his job. He was strict when it came to schedules and kept everything
moving as it should, but with the high volume of work the guys in ZZ Top were expected to
do, they could only take so much.
When drummer Frank Beard spoke with the Boston Globe in 1980, he told the publication that
they were the type of wild guys who did what they wanted whenever they wanted, but for
the past six years, they'd been herded this way and that by their management. It was taxing.
So they stopped recording in 1977 and stopped touring shortly after. They returned in 1979
with the release of their sixth album, "Degüello," but they didn't come back the same.
When the band returned from their hiatus, the world looked at them differently. They
were still the band from Texas, just not the same "little ol' band from Texas" that they
were often referred to as. They still had their beards, they still had their style,
but they also had a new way of conveying their bluesy rock-style music into something more
suitable for the soon-to-emerge MTV. They were truly rock stars now.
The most recent lineup for ZZ Top includes Billy Gibbons on guitar and vocals, Dusty
Hill on bass and vocals, and Frank Beard wailing away on the drums, but this wasn't how it
started out. Gibbons was the only original member of the band ZZ Top that grew out of
the remnants of his former band, Moving Sidewalks. The Sidewalks were dismantled when two of
the bandmates were drafted into the Army in 1969. The only member left besides Gibbons
was drummer Dan Mitchell. The two weren't finished with music, so they got together
with a bassist and produced the first single, "Salt Lick," with the B-side "Millers Farm,"
for the group that had now become known as ZZ Top.
The band quickly added Billy Ethridge and switched out Mitchell for Frank Beard, and
within the year they were offered a record contract, but Ethridge split. Beard then conscripted
the help of his bassist from a former band, bringing Dusty Hill into the mix. From that
point on, the band's lineup was set.
ZZ Top maintained the same lineup from 1970 all the way until Dusty Hill's death in 2021.
With over 50 years under the trio's belt, ZZ Top has become the longest-running band
in the popular music world with a membership that didn't change.
By the time the band finished their Worldwide Texas Tour, ZZ Top had a serious claim to
rock and roll fame. They were now popular across the country, but the constant work
that came with that fame wasn't always ideal — hence their hiatus.
During their time away from music, in the short stint from 1977 to 1979 that the band
took to rest and relax, bassist Dusty Hill took on a gig that some might see as unexpected.
As Hill later asserted, he and the band needed to take a step back not just from performing
and touring, but from the entire rock and roll life in general. They'd seen too many
musicians try to take on too much in their early years and burn out for good, and ZZ
Top was striving for longevity. So, what did Hill do with his time away? He worked at Dallas-Fort
Worth International Airport. An old friend of his had been working there, and the job
was just what Hill needed. The life-long musician explains that he'd been on the road playing
music since he was a young teenager and he needed to "get grounded" with a relatively
normal job.
Frontman and guitarist of ZZ Top Billy Gibbons has one of those personalities that is larger
than life. He's gritty, filled with rugged Texas charm, well-spoken in a way many might
believe doesn't fit his image, and one of the biggest jokers in the history of rock
and roll. All of these qualities together make him a perfectly distinctive character,
and Fox Broadcasting Company took advantage of that when they cast him in a small role
in the hit TV show "Bones."
Gibbons plays Angela's father on the show, and his character goes unnamed. There's a
reason for this. As show creator Hart Hanson told the Chicago Tribune, Gibbons was playing
a different version of himself. The whole time you watch him on screen, you have a hard
time figuring out if he's meant to be a character or simply Gibbons, and his "character" was
designed that way. Of course, this added sense of mystery has created more questions for
fans. Many wondered if Gibbons was actually Angela actor Michaela Conlin's father here
in the real world. He's not, but even some of his personal friends thought he was, and
in true Gibbons style, he refused to correct them because he thought it was funnier that
way.
"I don't know what that means."
"Well, if you do, you do. If you don't, you don't."
Following a grueling recount during the 2000 election between Democrat and former vice
president Al Gore and former governor of Texas George W. Bush, the Texan native was awarded
the victory, becoming the 43rd president of the United States. Bush attained a second
big win when he was reelected in the 2004 presidential race.
The Presidential ball is usually a black or white tie affair but Bush elected to have
Ted Nugent and none other than ZZ Top headline the affair. Before the thing even kicked off,
Nugent told the press that the concert was, quote, "gonna be mayhem."
Nugent ended up canceling, but ZZ Top showed up. This wasn't their first Bush rodeo. Following
Bush's first presidential victory in 2000, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
ZZ Top played at the campaign's pre-inauguration party in Washington, D.C.
According to Lonestar 92.5, while Bush was still the acting governor of Texas, he declared
a state holiday on May 15th: ZZ Top Day. But the holiday has actually been around a lot
longer than that.
In 1986, as the Sun Sentinel notes, the Texas House of Representatives declared the band
to be "official Texas Heroes" in a unanimous decision. They also declared ZZ Top Day for
the first time, though back then, it was August 27th. The decision put the musicians on a
pedestal alongside state heroes such as Davy Crockett, Sam Houston, and Jim Bowie. Of course,
these declarations took place while ZZ Top was in town to play three shows in Houston,
so there's a good chance this was as much a publicity stunt as it was a serious honor.
ZZ Top frontman Billy Gibbons is a seriously multi-talented individual. Besides both singing
in his low, gravelly voice and shredding like a beast on the guitar, he's also a published
writer. This really isn't a surprise if you ever heard him speak or seen any of the written
responses he's sent into publications. Gibbons has a way with words.
His first and only book, as Forbes describes, seems more like a subtle brag than anything
else. Apparently, Gibbons is as knowledgeable about cars as he is about music equipment,
both of which are equally portrayed subjects in "Billy F Gibbons: Rock + Roll Gearhead"
published in 2005. The book looks at guitar and car designs throughout the '50s and '60s,
linking their progression together. The book has three sections. Cars and guitars make
up two of them, and the third is all autobiographical, written in the entertaining and creative voice
Gibbons uses while speaking at shows or in interviews.
Over the past 20 years or so, ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill has had at least a couple of serious
ailments, and two of them seemed to coincide with European tours. The first and more serious
of them was when the musician was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 2000, causing ZZ Top to
postpone their tour. Then, in 2011, Hill suffered an acoustic neuroma, a benign tumor that grows
in the inner ear and affects hearing. This again led to the cancellation of a European
tour.
During the afternoon of July 28, 2021, the official ZZ Top Facebook page delivered some
heartbreaking news. Dusty Hill, beloved bassist and southern rock phenom, had passed away
in his sleep earlier that morning. The band's message spoke about how much Gibbons and Beard,
along with "legions of ZZ Top fans" would miss him.