ZZ Top announces death of band member Dusty Hill

TYLER, Texas (KETK) – ZZ Top announced one of their members passed away in his sleep Wednesday.

Dusty Hill, the bassist and secondary lead vocalist of the band, died in his Houston home at age 72.

“We, along with legions of ZZ Top fans around the world, will miss your steadfast presence, your good nature and enduring commitment to providing that monumental bottom to the ‘Top’,” the band said in a Facebook post. “We will forever be connected to that “Blues Shuffle in C.”

ZZ TOP “ELIMINATOR ALBUM” ORIGINAL REHEARSAL TAPES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QZ8WUTaS18

This video contains music tracks & visually explains them:
Hear original writer/demo tapes of 4 songs that were on the final Eliminator album.

In this video: the first cut (Under Pressure) is just Billy Gibbons & Linden Hudson playing, but the 2nd 3rd & 4th songs: “Dirty Dog”, “I Got The Six”, “Legs” actually have Dusty & Frank playing on them as a test (not so on the final Eliminator release).

On the final album only Billy played (except for a bit of vocal work by Dusty) The final release used synth bass & digitally generated drums instead of Frank & Dusty. It’s true, the final Eliminator album release is almost completely a Billy Gibbons solo album.

ZZ Top tried hard to keep it a secret. Many releases by famous bands use digital drums for several reasons. As for ZZ Top, they had been on the road for 10 years as of the making of Eliminator and they were fried, getting them together was hard. And, digital drum machines are always available to be your slave any time, plus they’re neat and punchy.

Listen closely to famous songs and you’ll notice that many album releases use digital drums: Billy Idol, Paul McCartney, The Cars, Devo, Hall & Oates, (ZZ TOP, of course), Prince, Steve Winwood, Fleetwood Mac,Tom Petty, The Eagles, etc. The list is huge. Get over it, it’s a fact. (to continue):

In the early 80’s ZZ Top had just signed with Warner Brothers (the big time), leaving their previous label. Billy Gibbons desperately needed a great album to release so as to meet expectations of his new record label. He needed a drummer at his whim, night or day, constantly (thus the drum machine, Linden Hudson was handy too, and Linden could program synthesizers, run multi-track tape recorders, operate compressors and limiters, do EQ, etc.).

(A sub-note: ZZ Top discographies say that Warner Brothers was their label back to 1970, but Warner Brothers acquired the ZZ Top albums of the 70’s after the fact, so, at the time of the 70’s London Records was their label).

The audio tapes contained here are rare, never heard before until more than 30 years after Eliminator was released. These tapes are the absolute Genesis of the ZZ Top Eliminator album project. Audio recording is magic, you can listen to a point in time from the past (in stereo).

Linden Hudson spent a lot of time working on these tracks and didn’t even know he was working on an album at the time. Little did Linden know what misery he would receive as reward for his work.

CLASSICBANDS DOT COM said: “According to former roadie David Blayney in his book SHARP DRESSED MEN: sound engineer Linden Hudson co-wrote much of the material on the ZZ Top ELIMINATOR album.”
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The ZZ Top ELIMINATOR album was a multi-platinum album. By now it’s sold more than 20 million copies (10 million the USA alone) and was nominated for a grammy. Linden Hudson never received credit for his co-writing and pre-producing, nor did the band opt to share royalties with Linden. Linden and Billy Gibbons produced these demo tapes.
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LICKLIBRARY DOT COM (2013 Billy Gibbons interview) ZZ TOP’S BILLY GIBBONS FINALLY ADMITTED: “the Eliminator sessions in 1983 were guided largely by another one of our associates, Linden Hudson, a gifted engineer, during the development of those compositions.” (end quote) (Gibbons admits this after 30 years, but remember, Gibbons offers Linden no apology or reparations for lack of credit/royalties)
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MUSICRADAR DOT COM (2013 interview with ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons broke 30 years of silence about Linden Hudson introducing synthesizers into ZZ Top’s sound.) Gibbons said: “This was a really interesting turning point. We had befriended somebody who would become an influential associate, a guy named Linden Hudson. He was a gifted songwriter and had production skills that were leading the pack at times. He brought some elements to the forefront that helped reshape what ZZ Top were doing, starting in the studio and eventually to the live stage. Linden had no fear and was eager to experiment in ways that would frighten most bands. But we followed suit, and the synthesizers started to show up on record.” (once again, there was no apology from ZZ Top or Billy Gibbons).
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TEXAS MONTHLY MAGAZINE (Dec 1996, By Joe Nick Patoski): “Linden Hudson floated the notion that the ideal dance music had 124 beats per minute; then he and Gibbons conceived, wrote, and recorded what amounted to a rough draft of an album before the band had set foot inside Ardent Studios.”
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The final rebuild of Eliminator was at Ardent Studios (Memphis) . The original writer/demo tapes that you hear on this video were recorded in Frank Beard’s house by Linden Hudson, these tapes were never intended to be final master tapes as Frank’s home studio was a practice facility...

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