Billy Gibbons Reveals the Secret of ZZ Top's 40 Years Together

Spinner ^ | 6/11/09 | Steve Baltin

[Sax]

Don’t do that! The TEXAS HOME WRECKER!

[BerryDingle]

Lord take me downtown, I'm just lookin for some Tush.

Watched them in a video once, years later while I was in Japan, I realized ZZ Top had mimicked the hand signals those guys use after they pack people in the passenger trains.

[Costumed Vigilante]

They've got legs.

[Revolting cat!]

Neil Sedaka have been together more than 40 years,so there!

[DainBramage]

Ah How How how....

[therut]

Pearl Necklace. Just sayin...... Slip inside my sleepin bag. Just sayin......

[kickonly88]

‘And since we’re talkin’ trash about 80’s rock, I have to brag again that Robin Zander *KISSED* me back when Cheap Trick was a Garage Band! Wa-Hoo! *SMOOCH*’

I remember seeing Cheap Trick at the Electric Ballroom in Milwaukee just before they released their first album.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I walked into a bar in Madison WI in the fall of 1974 and there was a band that had the gimmick of playing the keyboards when the keyboards were on someone’s back. It was Cheap Trick. I thought they sucked then and never felt any different even after they became famous. Just sayin’.

[Signolife]

The Reverend Billy Gibbons is awesome, indeed. He has always had such a distinctive sound, maybe because he often uses a coin as a pick. Several years ago I happened to see one of his guitars hanging on the wall of the Rum Boogie Cafe on Beale Street in Memphis. That was a treat. ZZ’s old stuff is the best by far. It doesn’t get any better than Tres Hombres.

[pissant]

I like Tejas just as much.

She used to drive a beatup pickup,
down around San Anton......

[Tainan]

There it is...

[Signolife]

Yep, that’s a good one too....”itchin for that wonderful feel of drivin in an automobile”...(Arrested for drivin’ while blind)

[marine86297]

ZZ Top Bump

[Dust in the Wind]

IIRC I saw them once in Denver, maybe ‘74. It's all so muddled about those years...there were rattle snakes and a coyote on the stage with them.

Great Band

[Mariner]

Gibbons is TOP NOTCH, no doubt.

Still, ZZ Top, like Led Zeppelin...sucks live.

Both Gibbons and Page always needed a second guitar.

Some truly great one's need a second lie the above...and some don't.

[hoppity]

He was supposedly Jimi Hendrix’s favorite.

[pissant]

ZZ Top sucks live? You are sorely misguided.

[BansheeBill]

Steve Miller was memorable, too. First concert with ‘laser beams’ and lots of cutting edge ‘ee-lec-tronics.’ I can only imagine what paying customers expect these days, LOL!

The "Fly Like An Eagle" 30th anniversary CD, came with a DVD with an interview with Miller, and most of recent San Francisco concert by him and the band. He spoke about those laser shows. They used a water cooled laser that was set up behind the amps and had a constant fountain of water flowing over it, to keep it cool. They were very high powered lasers and put on spectacular show. They put mirrors all over the stadiums for the lasers to bounce off of. He had a great photo of them in action. They were totally unregulated at the time, and you will never see the likes of those types of lasers at an outdoor show anymore. I worked at a Jethro Tull show (I think) at Colt Park in Hatford CT in 1976 where a similar laser display was part of the show. It was a cloudy night and lasers shooting up through the clouds GREATLY concerned commercial airline pilots coming in to Hartford Airport. Shortly after that concert, they stopped using lasers at those shows.
Miller also had a funny story about a freon hose used for fog effects breaking loose during a concert and spraying him until his guitar was nearly "frozen" before they got it turned off.

[Daniel II]

Best little whorehouse in Texas! :)

[period end of story]

The sweet smell of success.