Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Imagesĭusty was born Joseph Hill in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in the Lakewood district. Hill, left, with Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard. Afterburner (1985) was another multiplatinum smash, and gave them one of their most successful singles with Sleeping Bag, which reached No 8 in the US. Gibbons’s red 1933 Ford hot-rod became a video star in its own right.īy now Hill and Gibbons had adopted the chest-length beards, stetsons and sunglasses that gave ZZ Top a new cartoon-like image, with Beard confining himself to a moustache. It also found ZZ Top embracing the latest digital recording and video technology, generating a streak of sleek chartbusting hits including Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp Dressed Man and Legs, whose videos became heavy-rotation staples on MTV. (Asked why it didn’t follow the ZZ Top tradition of Spanish-language titles, Gibbons deadpanned that its real name was El Iminator). ![]() El Loco (1981) reached the US Top 20, but they hit the real big time with Eliminator (1983), which charted all over the world and has sold 10 million copies in the US alone. Degüello (1979) went Top 30 and brought them two of their best-known hits with I Thank You and Cheap Sunglasses. When they reassembled in 1979, their manager Bill Ham had secured them a new record deal with Warner Bros, which would result in new levels of success. “We tried to bring it over to Europe but we had a problem with the quarantine on the animals.”Īfter this, the group, who had been gigging and recording solidly for seven years, took a two-year break, during which Hill spent some time working at Dallas/Fort Worth airport. “It took a full day to set things up and a full day to take them down, so we only actually played one day in three,” Hill recollected. This came after their Worldwide Texas tour, an extraordinary multimedia event that featured a stage in the shape of Texas with Texan wildlife including steers, buzzards and snakes. ![]() Their next album, Fandango! (1975), reached the US Top 10 and gave them a Top 20 single with Tush, but the follow-up, Tejas (1976), was less well received, despite a Top 20 chart placing.
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