Early zz top cracked#
Early zz top series#

The band reunited in 1979 to release “Degüello,” their first album to go platinum, and the first time Gibbon and Hill grew out their beards. “Now, a couple of times, a couple of people did ask me, and I just lied, and I said: ‘No! Do you think I’d be sitting here?’” “I had a short beard, regular length, and if you take off the hat and shades and wear work clothes and put ‘Joe’ on my work shirt, people are not expecting to see you,” he said in a 2019 interview. Hill returned to Dallas, where he worked at the airport and tried to avoid being identified by fans. In 1976, after a string of hit albums and nearly seven years of constant touring, the band took a three-year hiatus. “La Grange,” their big hit on “Tres Hombres,” was about a bordello. Many of their early songs leaned heavily on sexual innuendo, though sometimes they set the innuendo aside completely. That same year they opened for the Rolling Stones in Hawaii.

Early zz top cracked#

The band’s humor was evident from the start: They named their first album “ZZ Top’s First Album.” Real success came in 1973 with their third release, “Tres Hombres,” which cracked the Billboard top 10. They played their first show together in February 1970. In 1969, Dusty was living in Houston and working with the blues singer Lightnin’ Hopkins when Beard, a friend from high school, suggested that he audition for an open spot in a trio, called ZZ Top, recently founded by Gibbons. “I started playing that night by putting my finger on the fret, and when the time came to change, my brother would hit me on the shoulder,” he said in a 2012 interview. One day Dusty came home to find a bass on his bed that night, he joined Rocky onstage at a Dallas beer joint.

He started his musical career singing and playing cello, but he switched instruments at 13, when his brother, Rocky, who played guitar, said his band needed a bassist. Joseph Michael Hill was born in Dallas on May 19th, 1949. That means you’ve filled in everything and it’s right for the song, and you’re not standing out where you don’t need to be.” “I hate that in a way, but I love that in a way. “Sometimes you don’t even notice the bass,” he said in a 2016 interview. And he gladly accepted his supporting role for his bandmate’s masterful lead guitar playing. Hill rarely gave interviews, preferring to let Gibbons speak for the band. Though in public Hill and Gibbons were often mistaken as twins, their musical styles differed – Gibbons a showy virtuoso, Hill a grinding, precise musical mechanic. (Despite his name, Beard, the drummer, sported just a mustache.) Their stage sets might include crushed cars and even livestock. The band paired their grungy sound and innuendo-filled lyrics with a knowing, sometimes comic stage act – Hill and Gibbons, in matching sunglasses and Stetson hats, would swing their hips in unison, spinning their instruments on mounts attached to their belts.

Early zz top series#

But the band really took off in the 1980s, when Gibbons, the lead singer and guitarist, and Hill grew their signature 20-inch beards and the band released a series of albums that added New Wave synthesizers – often played by Hill – to their hard-driving guitars, producing MTV-friendly hits like “Legs” and “Sharp-Dressed Man.” Starting in the early 1970s, ZZ Top racked up dozens of hit records and packed hundreds of arenas a year with their powerful blend of boogie, Southern rock and blues. They did not provide a cause or say when he died. His bandmates Frank Beard and Billy Gibbons announced the death on Wednesday through Facebook and Instagram. Dusty Hill, the quiet, bearded bass player who made up one third of ZZ Top, among the bestselling rock bands of the 1980s, has died at his home in Houston.