ZZ TOP: FROM THE TEXAS UNDERBELLY

In years past, most Texas musicians have been forced to leave the land of the Lone Star in order to “make it,” but that may now be changing. If any one event signalled the change, it was ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q. Held at the University of Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, ZZT was top-billed over Santana, Joe Cocker and Bad Company — and it proved to be the rock show of 1974 in Texas.

ZZ Top likes to call itself “a little ole band from Texas.” As manager Bill Hamm observed, “ZZ Top’s music comes from the seedy, raw underbelly of Texas. It’s driving down dust roads at 100 mph, beer in hand, looking for the ever-elusive good-time type of music.”

Whatever it is, the Top have helped jg focus widespread attention on Texas rock and roll. Dusty Hill (bass), Frank S Beard (drums) and Billy Gibbons (guitz ar) are the Texas equivalent of Grand Funk, only funkier. During their tour with the Stones, fan mags repeatedly ran stories with headlines like “ZZ Top Blows Stones Off State.” Yankees dig ’em, too — when the Top headlined in Boston, they blew the roof off for 25,000 fans.

It was not always so. ZZ Top’s roots lie in the early psychedelic era of the 60s, when Dusty Hill played bass with his guitarist brother Rock and drummer “Little Richard” Harris in a band called the American Blues. They were one of a great phalanx of early Texas acid rock bands who enjoyed regional success doing their version of the latest psycheI delic ooze. After “Little Richard” split for New York, Dusty moved from Dallas to Houston, where he met Gibbons and Beard.

Their emergence on the national scene was marked by some confusion, and some people even believed they were British. Dusty feels that is because they were on London Records, and points to the fact that early albums had definite Texas titles like Rio Grande Mud. And to this day, they are more popular in the South, which is why they spend so much time working in the North. :

“It’s hard for me to say whether people strongly identify with us as a "Yew know, fellers, I think that there might be the purdiest little ol' marquee I ever seen."

Texas band or not,” Dusty says. “I’d hope they do, though. Our roots are there, and we try to remember that; hell, I had two ancestors die at the Alamo. But the thing you gotta remember about Texas is that there’s not too many people there to see you, so if you really want to make it, you gotta go to places like L.A. and New York.”

That’s why ZZ Top doesn’t identify more strongly with the clique-ish music scene in Austin."

“Willie [Nelson] an’ them?” Gibbons says. “We think they’re great. And stayin’ up North for a long time sure makes you appreciate them a lot rtiore, I’ll tell you that. We like to listen to that music, but that’s not what we play, and we don’t play Austin any more often than anywhere else.” ,

But ZZ Top still won the Buddy Awards Poll, conducted annually by the Dallas-based music magazine Buddy — and that means they definitely do have the seal of approval among Texas rock fans.

ZZ Top’s First Annual Texas Size Rompin’ Stompin’ Barndance and Bar B.Q. was attended by more than 80,000 people who were jammed into the vast UT stadium for some 13 hours. The Texas sun shone down with its usual ferocity. No one was allowed to bring refreshments into the stadium. The refreshment stands, which sold out quiCk-

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ly, began to resemble the food riot scenes from Soy lent Green. The caterer's ran out so fast that very few people got even a glimpse of a spare rib. “I told them,” Ham explained, “ ‘There are gonna be a lot of people there.’ They’re used to' catering for football crowds and were expecting maybe 20,000 or 30,000 people.”

Music began in mid-afternoon With Bad Company. They were joined for the encore by Jimmy Page in the day’s big surprise, and afterwards, I spoke with Jimmy backstage over bottles of Lone Star Beer.

During a Slade concert in Dallas last year, Led Zeppelin sat in the balcony pelting Noddy Holder and friends with vegetables. Slade being one of my fave raves, I asked Jimmy about the incident. He affirmed that he had taken part in the mischief.

“Slade is a terrible band,” he explained. “I’ve never seen anyone use so much equipment just to be loud. Noddy Holder has a good voice, but the music ruins it. I thought the funniest part of the show was when he yelled, ‘I wanna see everybody take your boots off!’ And this boot flies out of the audience

and bounces off his head.”

It was midnight by the time ZZ Top came on. Inert O.D. cases were sprawled everywhere, and Sangria wine bottles flashed in the moonlight. The stage was decorated with bales of hay. A rhinestone-encrusted set of massive jteer horns was tied to the top of Billy Gibbons’ equally massive Rio Grande amplifier. A tall, dark-skinned man wearing a cowboy hat walked onstage, his eyes gleaming.

“Good evening, everyone!” he exclaimed. “And now, in the fine Texas tradition. ..” with a bow and a wave of his hat “.. .ZZ Top!”

The entire stadium erupted into a Texas-size roar as Billy and Dusty hopped one-legged beside each other onto the stage singing, “Get high, everybody, get high!” Billy had on a magnificent sequined cowboy suit with the State of Texas outlined on the back. The Top had arrived, no doubt about it.

; Or, as Billy proclaimed at the hotel party afterwards, “I think now people know what we Texans mean when we sing ‘Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers’.”