← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
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Janda
97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes. Here's your host, Janda it took original thinking to make one of the best selling albums of an entire decade. And that's just what ZZ Top did, although they had some help with coming up with the sound, completely bypassing the notion that nothing new could be done with rock and roll, the trio released Eliminator in 1983, an album that blended their of Texas boogie woogie blues rock with synth sounds and drum machines, and the result was absolutely killer. The songs were brought to visual life with videos on MTV in which a whole new generation of fans dug into this little old band from Texas. The matching outfits on the bearded guitarists and bass player spinning their instruments around like hands on a clock made for unforgettable videos that featured a souped up 1933 candy apple red Ford coupe called the Eliminator. The car the album was named, named after it, was the perfect symbol for this new style of music. Classic blues rock meets new wave synth classic car meets the MTV generation. It was a collision of worlds that created major hits, including four top 40 bangers from that album. But there's an unsung hero in the ZZ Top story. Let's dig into it and how Sharp Dressed man perfectly sums up the 80s mindset in this episode of the behind the Song podcast. If you like it, give it a thumbs up and hit. Subscribe. Let us know in the comments. First, a little backstory about the band ZZ top performed in 1969 in Houston, Texas. Guitarist Billy Gibbons, the late bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard, all Texas natives who'd played the Dallas Fort Worth Houston circuit with previous bands, quickly gelled as a trio after a legendary jam session that Gibbons has said went on for three hours but felt like 15 minutes. Even though they were all around 20 years old at the time, this wasn't their first go around with being in bands. Gibbons was a member of the Moving Sidewalks who opened for Jimi Hendrix, and both Hill and Beard were previously members of, among other bands, a psychedelic blues rock group called American Blues, which was headed up by Dusty Hill's older brother Rocky, himself a great Texas blues guitarist. ZZ Top named themselves after two blues B.B. king and ZZ Hill, selecting the word top to stand in for King when the two names were combined, their early albums, starting with their debut ZZ Top's first album in 1971, were pretty straight ahead boogie woogie. Blues rockers think songs like Lagrange from their 1973 Tres Hombres album and Tush from 1975's Fandango. The band's live shows in the mid-70s were downright legendary. On their worldwide Texas tour, the band really doubled down on their Texas roots by including live animals from the Lone Star State on stage. We're talking buffalo, cattle, buzzards and rattlesnakes, complete with wranglers who would call the buzzards back to them after flying around the arenas over the crowd, the escaped a few times. Gibbons recalled one incident at Three Rivers Stadium where the Pittsburgh Pirates played at the time. The buffalo got loose and tore through the field before he was herded back, and there were complaints at the next day's Pirates game because the buffalo had left divots on their ball field in its rampage. It was a weird time with different rules. Can you imagine standing there watching a band absolutely rock the house from the stage, positioned in between live Buffalo after this crazy tour, the band took a hiatus while drummer Frank Beard took time to get a handle on his drug addiction, which had grown to epic proportions. In the documentary ZZ Top, that Little Old Band From Texas, Beard says that he spent his first big paycheck, $72,000 on drugs and that he hawked his first drum set. One of his biggest regrets. He went to rehab and channeled his offstage interests into playing golf, a much healthier pastime. Dusty Hill took off to Mexico, and Billy Gibbons headed for Europe when ZZ Top got back to making music together after this downtime, they had a clean and sober drummer and a new look for the band, with Hill and Gibbons now sporting the matching long beards and outfits that became their trademark. When Billy Gibbons traveled around Europe during the band's time off after the worldwide Texas tour, he found himself becoming interested in British electronic bands like Depeche Mode. The tempo the drum machines used in that kind of music sparked an idea. What if that kind of syncopation was paired up with the blues rock sound that ZZ Top did so well? You can hear the beginnings of this influence on ZZ Top's 1981 El Loco album, with producer Lyndon Hudson playing some of the synth sounds and electronic elements that really took off on eliminator. Gibbons told MusicRadar.com in a 2013 interview that this was a really interesting turning point. We had befriended somebody who had become an influential associate, a guy named Lyndon Hudson. He was a gifted songwriter and had production skills that were leading the pack. Hudson is uncredited on any ZZ Top album, but he was a key part to say the least. In fact, according to the longtime ZZ Top roadie David Blaney in his book Sharp Dressed Men, Lyndon Hudson co wrote much of the material on ZZ Topps Eliminator. But who was Lyndon Hudson? Hudson's relationship with Gibbons actually goes back to the early 70s, from his days as a DJ at KLOL in Houston. When Gibbons would come by the studio, he went on to become an engineer and producer known to embrace new sounds that were starting to permeate the musical landscape by the early 80s. Vocal harmonizers, synths, drum machines and so on. A self proclaimed gizmo guy like Gibbons himself. When Beard bought a house overlooking a golf course in 1979 as a way of staying off drugs, Hudson moved in and designed the home studio in that house. Most of the early songwriting and demo tapes for Eliminator was done between Hudson and Gibbons in that home studio after Hudson researched musical trends and shared that most hit songs had a tempo of around 124 beats a minute, which was faster than ZZ Top's usual tempo and was a huge consideration for the faster pace of the songs on Eliminator. If the goal was to create blues songs you could dance to, mission accomplished. But when it was time to record Eliminator, the band traveled to Memphis to Ardent studios without Hudson. Hill and Beard provided their parts and left to return to Texas with Gibbons staying on with their engineer Terry Manning and their manager, producer Bill Hamm, to finish the tracks. Jimmy Jameson, who would go on to be the lead vocalist for Survivor, supplied vocal harmonies for many songs on the album. But what was really surprising to Hill and Beard upon hearing the finished product, was that most of their drum and bass parts had been replaced by electronics, keyboard synthesizers or drum machines. It changed the way the band played live too, playing along to tracks by necessity, although that didn't become known to the public for years. Left out of the limelight entirely was Lyndon Hudson. He moved out of Beard's house after the Eliminator album was released and cut ties, and later sued the band for a million dollars for the Eliminator song Thug, which Hudson claimed he wrote. In fact, he held the copyright for it from 1982, a year before Eliminator was released. A judge years later awarded $600,000 in a favorable decision for Hudson. It's possible that this total shutout was at the urging of the band's manager, Bill Hamm, who maintained that the album was solely written by ZZ Top. Hamm was famously suspicious of any outsiders making their way into the group, and he would go out of his way to make sure that the mystique around ZZ Top was impenetrable, easier to manage if it's tightly controlled. He would even go so far as to forbid the band to go out on the town if doing so would stray from the storyline of that mystique. ZZ Top was always a three piece and that's the way it was gonna stay. In an interview with Cream magazine, Lyndon Hudson reflected about it all, generously saying that the Eliminator album was perfect. That's the part I'm so deeply proud of. In that same interview, he recalls running into Gibbons in a Houston music store years after the Eliminator album came out, and Gibbons hugging him and telling him that I hope you got some of that money. Eliminator is a diamond platinum release and it's sold over 20 million copies worldwide. It is by far the most successful ZZ Top album ever released and it was one of the biggest albums period from the 80s decade. And in that the lyrics of one of the biggest hits of the album really make perfect sense when you consider the me decade. In Sharp Dressed Man, Gibbons sings, Clean shirt, new shoes I don't know where I'm going to Silk suit, black tie I don't need a reason why they come running just as fast as they can because every girl crazy bout a sharp dressed man Gold watch, diamond ring I ain't missing not a single thing Cufflinks, stick pin when I step out I'm gonna do you in they come running just as fast as they can Cause every girl crazy about a sharp dressed man Top coat, top hat but I don't worry cause my wallet's fat Black shades, white gloves looking sharp, looking for love they come running just as fast as they can Cause every girl crazy bout a sharp dressed man like everything else about this album, the song Sharp Dressed man slid into the mindset of popular culture at the time like a car hitting an open road, doing the unlikely job of turning teenage boys into blues rock fans played by bearded Texans. Everybody but Frank Beard, that is, who was the only one without a long flowing beard in the group. Slick cars, stacks of cash, good looking outfits, girl magnets. All subjects that chimed equally with the blues that the band had as their musical backbone and went hand in hand with the general vibe of the 80s, especially when backed by that danceable drum machine tempo, it gave a vibrant new life to a style of music that goes back centuries. Party anthems played on furry spinning guitars. It was perfect as Lyndon Hudson so graciously said. ZZ Top were inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame in 2004 by Keith Richards. Dusty Hill passed away in July of 2021 and longtime guitar tech Elwood Francis took his place as bassist for the band. Their legacy as a worldwide concern continues, and I think it can be summed up by what Gibbons recalled in his interview with the Rock hall when they were inducted. He said, you put three funky cords with three funky guys and three pretty girls in a nice shiny red car, man, it was just automatic. So what other band has made such an impact, not just with their music but with their overall aesthetic as a brand? Something to think about. Until next time. I'm Janda and this has been behind the song. If you like this episode, give it a like and subscribe to the channel. And check it out on TikTok too. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. You can find me on the air at 97.1 FM the Drive in Chicago and at wdrv.com on the way. Much more classic rock and roll.