HOT BLUE'S AND RIGHTEOUS
In 1973, ZZ Top recorded a John Lee Hooker-flavoured boogie for what would become their groundbreaking third album, Tres Hombres. Driven by a rhythm that could piledrive through concrete walls, La Grange has since been described by the band’s guitarist and leader Billy Gibbons as “a defining moment”. It could scarcely have come along at a better time. The blues in Texas was just ticking over. The old guard were dragging themselves around the same old venues, and the Lone Star State’s brightest hope, Johnny Winter, had moved north to find his audience. So, a pre-beards and pro-nudie suit ZZ Top – Billy G, bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard – were left to mind the store.
As Gibbons intoned those Hooker-esque ‘How, how, how, how’s on La Grange, there was no doubt that the Little Ol’ Band From Texas were open for business. Tres Hombres put Texas blues on the map – and defined the Lone Star State’s sound to the rest of the world in the process. Everything the band had done so far had been leading up to that album’s release.
“Dusty and I played with the American Blues in Dallas, Billy played with the Moving Sidewalks outta Houston,” Beard says of the Top’s origins. “Course, we knew of each other, and came the time that I needed a job I went to Houston in a Volkswagen with a set of drums and said: ‘Hey, hire me!’ So that’s how I met Billy.”
Hill takes up the story: “I moved to Houston not knowing Frank was down there. I was playing in some club, and Frank just accidentally walked in. He said: ‘You gotta come play with this guy’ [Gibbons], and I said okay.”
“I later apologised for that!” Beard says with a laugh.
Things started to happen for ZZ Top when Texan music impresario Bill Ham happened upon the band and offered his services as their manager. He would go on to produce their albums.
“He wandered by the rehearsal hall, and there was quite a clatter going on,” Gibbons recalls. “He kinda liked what he heard, and handed us each a cigar and said: ‘Boys, I’m gonna make you stars!’”
“The first night we played at The Warehouse, the roof blew off!”
Billy Gibbons
“It didn’t hurt that he had John Mayall as a house guest at the time either,” Beard says. “Kinda impressed us.” Ham said all the right things, claiming he could get the band a deal with London Records.
“The Rolling Stones had
