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The early years of ZZ Top was one long treadmill of playing second-string gigs in second-string towns all across Texas. The routines they developed over years of roadwork – sloping round the stage in shadow formation, whipping the necks of their guitars back together in perfect time, the comical ‘crossed-knee’ manoeuvre in the middle of Sharp Dressed Man – made their live show a visual delight as much as a musical tour de force, and ultimately led to their unlikely success as a video act. On stage, while Beard performed at the back with apparently stoic indifference, Hill and Gibbons fronted the band with a glorious, synchronised choreography that at times verged on the surreal.

#Zz top dusty tv

And later when ZZ Top entered their era of mainstream chart success in the 1980s, it was Hill who added distinctive keyboard parts to hits such as Velcro Fly and TV Dinners, a role that he carried through into their stage performances. Hill was, of course, one third of the incredibly prolific songwriting partnership that the band maintained from the outset. On songs like Beer Drinkers And Hell Raisers the pair would trade alternate vocal lines, or they would harmonise like blues brothers as on their epic version of Sam & Dave’s soul song I Thank You.

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Plus he was a great singer, whose high, raucous shout contrasted perfectly with Gibbons’s low, bluesman’s drawl. With his big, powerful hands and fingers, Hill developed a bass playing style that was thick and full, holding down the bottom end of ZZ Top with a repertoire of free-flowing boogie rhythms and sturdy, heavy-rock riffs.įrom the chunky, martial stomp of Waitin’ For The Bus to the speedy stride of Thunderbird and the frantic bass-bomb finale of I’m Bad, I’m Nationwide, Hill had it all covered. But they were open to experimentation and extending the boundaries of how far that music could travel. They knew the discipline and the conventions of that most traditional of popular music forms. The incredible musical chemistry that the three musicians had discovered on their first meeting together was no small thing. “We will forever be connected to that blues shuffle in C,” he said, more than 50 years later, on hearing the news of his bandmate’s death. According to Gibbons, the song lasted for three uninterrupted hours. The first time the three of them got together, Dusty suggested they play a shuffle in C.

When Rocky left the line-up, Frank and Dusty were on the lookout for a singer/ guitarist at the same time that Gibbons was looking for a new rhythm section for his fledgling project, a Houston-based trio called ZZ Top. Rocky, Dusty and Frank then formed a new band called the American Blues, who released a self-titled debut album in 1968. On the circuit they met a drummer called Frank Beard, who they quickly brought into he band, after which they recorded three locally released singles. In 1964 the teenaged brothers were gigging together in a band called Lady Wilde And The Warlocks, featuring a female singer from Liverpool. When the two of them began playing in bands together, Rocky made it clear to him that Dusty’s role would be as the bass player. When he was eight, Dusty was given a guitar for Christmas, but it was his elder brother, Rocky, who learned to play it. His mother, a gifted singer, worked as a waitress, and one of Dusty’s earliest musical memories was of her bringing home a copy of an Elvis Presley record from the jukebox in the diner where she worked, which he sang along to. Joseph Michael Hill was born in Dallas, Texas in 1949. “We’ll talk about splitting headaches and splitting hairs, but not splitting up,” Gibbons declared. While their commercial fortunes and recorded output declined somewhat in the new millennium, ZZ Top never stopped touring. In 2004 the band were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame by Keith Richards at a ceremony which they closed with a rousing rendition of Tush (their first US Top 20 single, released in 1975) sung with a typically boisterous swagger by Hill.

With the help of a string of strikingly memorable promo videos accompanying the hits Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp Dressed Man and Legs, ZZ Top sealed a unique and indelible image in the popular imagination and earned themselves a rare diamond certification for sales in excess of 10 million copies of Eliminator in the USA alone. The trio’s ambition continued to grow, along with their beards, and with the release of their eighth album, Eliminator, in 1983 they became global stars of the MTV era. From humble beginnings in 1969 in Houston, ZZ Top initially toured their way to greatness in America and, by the time they mounted their Worldwide Texas Tour of 1976, had become one of the biggest stadium acts in the land.