GUITARS, VICE AND RELIGION: ZZ TOP'S BIGGEST HAW-HAW-HAWs
No one had badder guitar tone than ZZ Top on Tres Hombres and Fandango. Oiled, fuzz burned, thick and twangy, with all these elements often in the same song, Billy Gibbon's geetar trademarked getting tight tales of varmints and worn hookers. Subsequently, Gibbons took on the sobriquet of the Reverend Billy G. in guitar mags, a man of lowdown culture and vice singing early on Rio Grande Mud, the band's second LP, about getting head from Brownie, or being hungover after dealing with the whiskey'n Mama.
The thought of damnation could have weighed on him slightly because by Tres Hombres bets were hedged, gospel religion rinsing away some of the sin. One was to follow Jesus cross-country before cans of dinner, Texas beer. Then the Reverend got down on bended knee after escaping death in a rolling steel cage tossed out of the back of a pickup truck. The master was God, so upon wasting out to La Grange and going down slow with Precious and Grace, the band sang about heaven, come seven eleven.
Naturally, as a kid, I didn't care about any of ZZ Top's relationship with the Lord. The sung messages from those parts were for enduring, the music fine almost everytime on the way to the next installment of Cap'n Billy's dirty Whizz-Bang. Thirty three years later it makes more sense to me, like my dad getting interested in attending church after a diagnosis of cancer at age fifty.
The Tops had asked if you'd heard about heaven at the end of Tres Hombres. A year later, at the beginning of Fandango, they were inquiring whether you'd heard the word about the homeless man's fortified wine, Thunderbird. Dusty Hill's "Jailhouse Rock" was maniacal, but after about a minute of Gibbons coveting his neighbor's wife in "Back Door Love Affair," the wheels fell off for the rest of the side. The "Long Distance Boogie" medley wasn't about rock 'n' roll revival as much as it was repeating the technique Top learned at auctions.
The second side, on the other hand, was as close to perfect as boogie rock got. Getting sightless at the Balinese room in Galveston, the virtues of a "puta," another Mexican whore, who spreads her wings for you and "Tush," since happily slaughtered by everybody who plays or has played rock and roll in bars.
After one more great album, Tejas, ZZ Top would sacrifice their faces to sunglasses and twirling their old man beards (except for drummer Frank).
On the back of the of the new deluxe remastered edition of Hombres you can see teeth and genuine smiles. On the CMT channel about a year or so ago, all that was on display were good clothes and the smirks of royalty. The iron grip on image hasn't relaxed for decades. Billy Gibbons now sounds like a Texas politician, claiming in the biography for "Chrome, Smoke & Barbecue," the ZZ Top box set, that the band's apex predator get-blasted-and-act-irresponsible song, "Arrested for Driving While Blind" is "certainly one of earliest expressions of encouraging the selection of a designated driver." What a dry sense of humor.
The bonus cuts on the new deluxe editions of these two albums are live and will come as a surprise to witnesses of MTV Top or the Milli Vanilli'd performance the band phoned in at the Super Bowl a few years back.
In the mid-70's, ZZ Top live was lashed together with bailing wire, alternately astoundingly in the pocket or on the verge of blowing apart because the trio had trouble hearing each other over the combined trio din. "Tush" sounds like a slog over a sand dune; "La Grange" erupts when Gibbons crushes the sound system with a barrage of stage hog licks.
ZZ Top hauled turkey vultures, rattlesnakes and a steer as props into the Philly Spectrum on The Worldwide Texas Tour of 1976 and while the rockin' blues were just edged out by opener Blue Oyster Cult's built to military specification collimated laser, it was leagues better than anything cash money will buy now.
No one had badder guitar tone than ZZ Top on Tres Hombres and Fandango. Oiled, fuzz burned, thick and twangy, with all these elements often in the same song, Billy Gibbon's geetar trademarked getting tight tales of varmints and worn hookers. Subsequently, Gibbons took on the sobriquet of the Reverend Billy G. in guitar mags, a man of lowdown culture and vice singing early on Rio Grande Mud, the band's second LP, about getting head from Brownie, or being hungover after dealing with the whiskey'n Mama.
The thought of damnation could have weighed on him slightly because by Tres Hombres bets were hedged, gospel religion rinsing away some of the sin. One was to follow Jesus cross-country before cans of dinner, Texas beer. Then the Reverend got down on bended knee after escaping death in a rolling steel cage tossed out of the back of a pickup truck. The master was God, so upon wasting out to La Grange and going down slow with Precious and Grace, the band sang about heaven, come seven eleven.
Naturally, as a kid, I didn't care about any of ZZ Top's relationship with the Lord. The sung messages from those parts were for enduring, the music fine almost everytime on the way to the next installment of Cap'n Billy's dirty Whizz-Bang. Thirty three years later it makes more sense to me, like my dad getting interested in attending church after a diagnosis of cancer at age fifty.
The Tops had asked if you'd heard about heaven at the end of Tres Hombres. A year later, at the beginning of Fandango, they were inquiring whether you'd heard the word about the homeless man's fortified wine, Thunderbird. Dusty Hill's "Jailhouse Rock" was maniacal, but after about a minute of Gibbons coveting his neighbor's wife in "Back Door Love Affair," the wheels fell off for the rest of the side. The "Long Distance Boogie" medley wasn't about rock 'n' roll revival as much as it was repeating the technique Top learned at auctions.
The second side, on the other hand, was as close to perfect as boogie rock got. Getting sightless at the Balinese room in Galveston, the virtues of a "puta," another Mexican whore, who spreads her wings for you and "Tush," since happily slaughtered by everybody who plays or has played rock and roll in bars.
After one more great album, Tejas, ZZ Top would sacrifice their faces to sunglasses and twirling their old man beards (except for drummer Frank).
On the back of the of the new deluxe remastered edition of Hombres you can see teeth and genuine smiles. On the CMT channel about a year or so ago, all that was on display were good clothes and the smirks of royalty. The iron grip on image hasn't relaxed for decades. Billy Gibbons now sounds like a Texas politician, claiming in the biography for "Chrome, Smoke & Barbecue," the ZZ Top box set, that the band's apex predator get-blasted-and-act-irresponsible song, "Arrested for Driving While Blind" is "certainly one of earliest expressions of encouraging the selection of a designated driver." What a dry sense of humor.
The bonus cuts on the new deluxe editions of these two albums are live and will come as a surprise to witnesses of MTV Top or the Milli Vanilli'd performance the band phoned in at the Super Bowl a few years back.
In the mid-70's, ZZ Top live was lashed together with bailing wire, alternately astoundingly in the pocket or on the verge of blowing apart because the trio had trouble hearing each other over the combined trio din. "Tush" sounds like a slog over a sand dune; "La Grange" erupts when Gibbons crushes the sound system with a barrage of stage hog licks.
ZZ Top hauled turkey vultures, rattlesnakes and a steer as props into the Philly Spectrum on The Worldwide Texas Tour of 1976 and while the rockin' blues were just edged out by opener Blue Oyster Cult's built to military specification collimated laser, it was leagues better than anything cash money will buy now.
posted by George Smith at 11:24 AM
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