Once you reach the top, there’s two routes open from the craggy pinnacle of success: down or out.

It was some three years ago that Z.Z. Top—that li'l ol' blues-boogie trio from down Texas way—scaled the very peak of the rock heap, in their inimitable Texan style. After mounting one of the largest, most profitable and bizarre tours ever, they pulled off the perfect encore—disappearing from sight.

Why did Z.Z. Top become Z.Z. Stop? On the surface, there are no easy answers.

Starting out thi&decade as a hardworking regional phenomenon, Z.Z. literally played their way to becoming one of America’s largest record and concert ticket selling acts. Their Fandango LP of 1975 spent over a year and a half on the Billboard charts.The band’s “Worldwide Texas Tour” brought a little bit of big Texas to the masses with such co-stars on stage as a rattlesnake, a longhorn steer, and a buffalo, sold over a million tickets and grossed in excess of $10 million, no small sum this side or the other of the Mason-Dixon line. Even such a reliably stuffy source as Newsweek touted Z.Z.’s rather remarkable achievements: they outdrew Elvis in Nashville, broke Led Zep’s New Orleans attendance record, and “reportedly sold more records (that) summer than the Rolling Stones at the height of their celebrated national tour” (no less while on London Records, the label the Stones fled for good reason).

“It was never in the books for us to do what we did,” admitted ace Z.Z. guitarist Billy Gibbons recently. “But it happened because we’re a working team. That’s what we’re cornin’ back to say: we’re the guys that mean it; we didn’t break up when we had it.

“It’s like we’re cornin’ back to...well, we’re not cornin’ back to work because we have to work. It’s because we want to go back to work and continue sayin’ what we’ve been sayin’ all along.

“It’s gonna be a little easier this time,” continued Gibbons. “The critics don’t like to swallo\y words, and they’ve had their share of flashing on Z.Z. and what have you. But despite all that, it’s our bounden duty in a sense. It just legitimizes all we’re doing to come back and play music. ”

But the three years from 1976to ’79 were long and crowded ones in the music World. 1 can’t recall any national sobs of sorrow when Z.Z. quietly slipped away, and in light of the many musical changes these last few years have seen, does anyone really care if they’re back?

“By all indications,” said Gibbons, “there seems to be somewhat of a Z.Z. audience left out there, at least on the basis of advance ticket sales for the tour and album sales for the first week.” Since then, his contention has been borne out. The first sixteen dates ot .their tour were either sold out or less than 150 seats shy of that goal at a time when the concert business is so bust that an act like Peter Frampton can’t draw enough listeners to sell out of his living room . Bet the “face” would love to get his hands on the cool $1.3 million those dates have grossed for Z.Z. so far. In addition, the album has been getting heavy airplay and shooting up the sales charts,

"I originally set out for a one week cruise... but I didn’t make It home for three years. —Frank Beard"

Typically, Z.Z. can’t do anything without a touch of bigger and better Texan style to it, including this interview. While Frank and Dusty chatted from their manager’s office in Houston. Billy spoke from the mobile phone in his car as he cruised that city’s notorious freeways (a feat in and of itself) on the way to join them. Fans, of Texan literature will be reminded of Vernon Dalhart from Larry McMurtry’s Terms Of Endearment, an engagingly wacky sort who lived and did business from the wheel of his phone-equipped Cadillac, which he parked each night for sleep atop a Houston parking garage.

Even their quiet disappearance has the stamp of Texan bigness. On the business level, for a band to fade away for three years when they’ve finally reached the top is utter madness. In the world of music marketing, such a decision would be enough to give Clive Davis a cardiac arrest.

But they didn’t go without leaving the pump primed. Over the Christmas-New Year’s holiday of 1977-78, Z.Z. reemerged briefly for a short tour of Texas which included a New Year’s bash in Fort Worth that might qualify for the Guinness Book—that is, if they’re looking for record breaking junkets.

Some fifty-odd members of the rock press corps and top FM radio programmers were flown first class, with a guest of course, to the Dallas-Fort Worth area for a weekend of wining, dining and rock ’n’ roll that none who were there will ever forget. Ensconsed in Dallas’ premier hotel—The Fairmont— Z.Z.’s guests were driven to Fort Worth in a mile long fleet of police-escorted limos for a pre-concert dinner at perhaps America’s best Mexican restaurant (Joe T. Garcia’s). After watching the show from onstage, they joined Z.Z. at a post-concert party at the Coliseum, then back to Dallas by limo fleet for more revelry. Even if you went on the trip hating Z.Z. Top, in the end their Texan hospitality left you stunned, as well as quite hungover.

when one considers the cost of such a bash, it comes to enough cash to get Clive’s heart beating again. .

Yet, when one asks the band about their exit from the spotlight, it seems more an accident of fate then a well-plartned respite. Frank Beard said he took off time “because I wanted to. We’d been playin’ real steady for years, so it was a well-deserved break

“We’d planned for it to be even longer,” added Dusty. “But we didn’t take the time off because we were exhausted physically or mentally, though we also didn’t want to get to the point where we had to do that. There really wasn’t a whole lot of thinking that went into it.”

"To us, Deguello means ‘We’ve had enough. Now let’s go for the throat.’ -Billy Gibbons"

But they obviously didn’t want to get to the point where they began hating each other?

“It was never that regimented, ” said Billy. “We all had arrived at an allegiance to each other,, not only as musicians, but as a working group. It wasn’t ’Well, I’m, sick of seein’ ya, see ya in two years.’

“Actually, it just started out when Dusty headed south as Frank took off for the Caribbean. Those two guys had planned those trips before we got off our last big tour, and that...”

“.. .got the ball rolling,” finished Frank.

“So they kinda got the ball rollirig,” continued Billy, “and I don’t think any of us ever consciously said: ‘Well, when are you cornin’ back’ or ‘What’s the deal?* It was just ‘We’re going!’ and it’s worked out.

“There were really no areas of real complaint, because we’d travelled first class for the duration of that last tour. But after a while, it gets to be a little too much for even the seasoned veteran. ”

“But when we took off from the road and travelling, ” said Dusty, “I travelled. ”

“It’s funny,” added Billy, “I don’t think any of us realized that after all the travelling we’d done we’d start travelling,..”

“Though you take it at your own pace at least,” interjected Dusty.

“There’s definitely a marked difference,” explained Billy, “from an eight o’clock wake-up call sayin’ you gotta make your plane and an eight o’clock wake-up call sayin’, ‘Well, you can leave today, or tomorrow...’ ”

“We all just travelled on our own,” said Dusty. “We went our separate ways...”

“Thank God!!” chimed Billy.

“...And we came back strong, rested, and ready to get back together and play,” observed Frank.

As for the adventures of Z.Z. on vacation, it takes a bit of prying to get it out, but it’s well worth the effort.

“I stayed pretty close to Texas,” said Dusty. “I headed for Mexico, where I travelled all over.”

“I originally set out for a one week cruise of the Caribbean,” related Frank, “but I didn’t make it home for three years. I got to live out different fantasies I had. In backward places, I didn’t shave, and lived just like a hermit. In San Juan I dressed and acted like an international playboy. It was great! I went where I wanted and did as I pleased!”

“The vacation was a great time for personal understanding and doing what you need to do,” said Billy. “I’m looking forward to returning to Europe—I spent some time on the outskirts of Paris, in fact. Z.Z. Top may make it to Europe this time. We’ve never played there before.

“It was an interesting two years. I went to Madagascar for a while and a really weird thing happened one night. I was walking down an alley with a friend when all of a sudden these two guys in front of us were jumped and got their throats slit open. I wanted to help but my friend told me if I wanted to get out alive,) should ignore it and walk away.

“I went to Trinidad after thht, where things were a little calmer. I saw Bob Marley and the Waiters play down there an$ got to meet Marley after the show. Marley told me he’d be glad to trade a few reggae licks for some country and western. Strange thing is, I don’t play country and western. Even stranger, Frank was there, but we didn’t run into each other.”

As for Dusty: “I tried sduba diving in the Cayman Islands—I almost ran out of air about 80 feet down. I was so busy looking at the coral that I forgot about the air gauge. I was on a boat in the Pacific when Billy called to tell me that we signedja new contract with Warner Brothers. So I went home and we all started recording again. By then we were all ready to play with each other'again—not that we ever weren’t.”

But the break had its additional good consequences. As the band globe-trotted, their manager Bill Ham worked up a new deal for them with Warner Brothers Records, amidst intense industry politicking for the band. In addition, he achieved for them yet another feat that topped the Rolling Stones—wrestling away the band’s catalog from London, their former label.

To set off the new deal and new age of Z.Z. Top, the band has given us Deguello, which is Spanish for “no quarter” or “put them to the sword.” “To us,” explained Billy, “the term Deguello means 'We’ve had enough. Now let’s go for the throat.’ The phrase comes from the Alamo, where 180 patriots were surrounded by 5,000 Mexican troops. Santa Aria, the Mexican commander, issued the order to surrender or die, but the, patriots just shot back into his soldiers’ eyes. Santa Ana was so-furious that he issued the order ‘Deguello,’ which meant leave no man, woman, or child alive.

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Z.Z. TOP

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“Since we’d been away from recording for so long, we thought we should come back with something everyone could get back against the wall with. We wanted to come in loud and clear. Of course we mean it in a musical sense, not a violent one.”

“We really wanted horns on this album, but we didn’t think our manager and producer, Bill Ham, would go for it,” said Dusty. “So we secretly taught ourselves how to play saxophones. Then we went into the studio, laid down the horn tracks and brought the results to Bill. He loved it!”

To reproduce “The Lone Wolf Horns” onstage creates a problem, since all six hands onstage are busy enough as it is. But leave it to Z.Z. to find a way. While a film rolls behind them of the three playing their parts, Dusty plays a foot-pedal operated mellotron programmed with the guys honking away, giving them the edge of introducing the horn parts without using just tapes.

With a rock revival underway, Z.Z. feel it’s a fortuitous time to re-emerge with their three-part blues rock, a raw, gutsy style that owes as much to simple rock ’n’ roll roots as heavy metal. “What we’re finding,” said Billy, “is that the timing has been just right.

“There’s definitely a return to the good ole days, though 1 don’t think it’s anything...well, it’s not a trend that Z.Z. Top joined because we saw a return to the blues thing and a return to just good ol’ rock ’n’ roll in the past few months. We’ve been doing this all along, but it’s definitely the thing that people are responding to these days.”

Or, as Frank said, “I didn’t sit around and do a marketing study of trends. This is just what we want to play. None of us consciously said: ‘Let’s get back to rock ’n’ roll.’ Of course, we never really got away from it.”

Now that they’re back on the road, Z.Z. insist that their time away wasn’t just a vacation.

“We took a lot of time off, but it wasn’t like we weren’t working,” said Billy. “We’ve all been involved in our separate projects— visual arts kinds of things [Gibbons was in fact a graphic arts student before he played guitar with the Moving Sidewalks, a Houston psychedelic outfit who so impressed Jimi Hendrix when they opened for him that on the Tonight Show, Jimi referred to Gibbons as one of America’s most promising young players]. That’s where our interests Tie as artists and musicians right now, and I’m sure that in a year or so you’ll see us branching out in those areas. But for right now, you’ll be hearin’ music.”

Maybe some “art” along the lines of the “Worldwide Texas Tour”?

“I don’t think that ever approached the realm of art,” laughed Billy. “Maybe some places it may have—driving past a school where the kids suddenly see a buffalo for the first time.”

As for the' immediate future, “We’re going on another of those never-ending tours,” said Frank.

“Contrary to what some say,” said Billy, “we’re still young men and can still dance and play our instruments.”

“We’ve just decided,” concluded Frank, “to drop the bucket in the well, and see how she splashes.”