WHOPPING & BOPPING WITH ZZ TOP

I. OUR STORY SO FAR

It is quite late—so late that its starting to be early—and in the labyrinthine belly of a Sheraton Hotel in Knoxville, Tennesee, four men sit around an enormous board room table talking softly and laughing a lot. In the middle of the table, where sales charts and quarterly reports ought to be, rises a mountain range of Burger Kings best: three shopping bags worth of Whoppers and fries. Are we whopping?" asks a smiling, hirsute face. Three of the men are ZZ Top and the fourth is me. Its the first time in my life that Ive had scotch with my Whopper con queso. Arent you hungry?

Frank Beard —beardless, Ëœathletic, hopelessly addicted to golf (these guys are weird) and boss of the largest drum kit in the known world—cocks his head and looks across the table at me with mock impatience. Okay, Jeff. We got together in 70. Weve been together 13 years." Dusty Hill—proud possessor of a V.V.S.O.P. buckle length beard, mighty bass man and Master of the Texas Zen quip—winces. Ive been together all my life, Frank." This happens fast, in far less time than it takes to read even if you dont read with your fingers. I start to laugh but Im always at least one joke behind. I take a bite of burger and a drink of scotch. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

u play guitar, Dusty plays bass, Frank plays golf. — Billy W

II. A BRIEF ASIDE

Look, I may as well be frank. Impartiality just aint shit in rock n roll so theres no point in my trying to disguise the fact that I think these three guys are champs. There have been some positive undesirables and scurvy dogs whove made diverting—even real fine—records over the last three or four decades, but scumbags and twerps can not, as a rule, build 13 year careers with legions of bedrock fans and an expanding minor league as well. ZZs purely Texan riff rock— simple, infectious, meaty and leavened throughout with blues wit—is a staple at barbeques on my ranch and these particular tres hombres are the most engaging mix of smart and funny that Ive ever met in the line of duty. Absolute princes, even if they do eat out of bags too often.

III. PATRIOTIC FERVOR

The third Z, guitarist and globetrotter Billy Gibbons also sports a Rip Van Winkle maxi-beard along with tortoise shell glasses that make him look serious even when contemplating a Whopper. Dont be misled. He interrupts some speculation about the demographics of that nights show (age & sex, actually) grinning and shaking his head. I LOVE America...right in the middle of ËœTV Dinner somebody threw a pair of panties onstage."

FRANK: He likes to make soup out of them.

BILLY: Close inspection did not render a decision on recent usage.

DUSTY: There were a lot of articles of womens underwear and hosiery up there.

BILLY: Thats why I was saying I love America. Dusty saw it. A young girl down front got up on some guys shoulders and...whipped top. Totally bare. And the guy down below—who was not with her— was just grooving along and he checked out what was going on up there and he kind of snuck his hand up there and then got right back boogieing. Didnt miss a beat. It was so hot and close in there that she never put it back on...And there was another girl in white with a very skimpy top—I mean one string held it together—it didnt stay on too long, either.

IV. THE PERPETUAL TOUR

The show that night had really impressed me, too. Knoxville Civic Coliseum was sold out, full of happy, dancing kids (all wearing cheap sunglasses) who got crazy from first note to last. Nearly half of them seemed to be young women.

DUSTY: We definitely notice that too.

BILLY: Whats great about being in a band thats been together 13 years is that you get loyal fans over the years, a lot of familiar faces—and lately thereve been some young kids, too. Tonight there were some tykes, and if you look right at them, theyre on fire.

You got an immediate and consistent and genuine response all through the show. Ive never heard an audience sing when asked like those folks did on Tube Snake Boogie. " Rod Stewart could beg and not get near that volume.

BILLY: It hurts your throat to sing like Rod.

DUSTY: Makes your hair grow funny, too.

I was amazed at how visually interesting you make your show.

FRANK: A tasty usage of everything we have...nothing is overused because the music is first.

DUSTY: We want to visually highlight what we do. The effects, the lights, the laser, whatever—its all to highlight the song. Thats what a live show is.

Right now youre at the very beginning of...

DUSTY: This is the first day of the rest of my life.

Be sure to have a nice one, pardner. I mean, how long are you out on the road for?

DUSTY: This is the perpetual tour. You dont ask where the end is.

Well, what are your lives like when youre not doing this?

BILLY: I play guitar, Dusty plays bass,Frank plays golf.

FRANK: Were always doing this anyway. If were not on the road, were getting ready. Its fine with us—its what we do.

BILLY: Im into girls, myself.

DUSTY: Im glad you straightened that out, Billy. Everybodys been asking about that.

V. THE HOWARD HUGHES OF BLUES

Hotel TV was kind enough to flash Solid Gold in the critical window of time twixt sound check and showtime, so we had a few useful points of comparison with ZZs jalapeno existentialism.

DUSTY: I love Barry Manilow.

BILLY: The singer with Men At Work radiates a very likeable kind of weirdness.

DUSTY: Off the wall charismatic.

BILLY: I wonder what we look like?

DUSTY: Can you say shit" in CREEM?

BILLY: I mean, we appeared on MTV looking like Howard Hughes.

DUSTY: The Howard Hughes of blues!

BILLY: Frank got us Fila jogging suits and Im thinking.. .nice Italian cut sports clothes and Beach Boys guitars...

DUSTY: ...and this kind of head on top of it.

BILLY: The guy in Men At Work would have no trouble fitting into ZZ Top. He can sit in anytime he wants.

So you get to see MTV in Houston?

DUSTY: Sure. We got electricity and everything.

FRANK: First time I saw it, it was late at night and Debbie and I were in bed. We saw a band come on and play a song and then another band and then another band and we thought it was a new show wed never seen before. We must have stayed up five hours thinking, Jesus, this is a long show. When is it gonna be over? We figured we had to stay up because we never got to see anything like that.

VI. MENAGE A TROIS

Through giggles and cooling fries I try to find out how ZZ stopped at three. DUSTY: Frank and I played together before, mostly trio. And Billy had a couple of groups of different sizes [including the infamous Moving Sidewalks], but he played trio as well.

But did they see Cream or Jimi Hendrix in their heads?

FRANK: We saw splitting the money three ways. When youre talking $20, its a big difference.

DUSTY: Frank met Billy first and then brought me into the picture...

FRANK: Ive already apologized for that.

DUSTY: ...and when we jammed it felt as comfortable then as it ought to be. So it was never really discussed. It just filled the bill for us...musically...emotionally... spiritually...

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Zz's Global Guide To Grits

Fine dining is often elusive on the road and it is written that too many Whoppers turneth an hombre malo. So ZZ Top takes Careful note of their fave cantinas, some of which they reveal here for the first time ever—for the delectation of CREEM gourmets around the planet.

MEMPHIS, TN

Dyers Hamburgers—The only deepfried hamburger patty with the bun that gets shiny on the top from the grease in the air. You have a choice: onions or pickles. Thats it—they try to keep it simple."

Paynes Barbeque—unanimous raves.

Rendezvous—Some of the best ribs in the South—in the alley across from the Peabody Hotel."

HOUSTON, TX

Avalon Drugstore—One of the best hamburgers in Houston."

Leos Mexican Restaurant—The best. Thats where the food foldout in Tres Hombres was photographed."

TUCSON, AZ

Lil Abners Steakhouse—An old rodeo arena, and now they serve steaks cooked outside over mesquite. Been going for years and hopefully itll always be there. Great spot."

PARIS, FRANCE

Train Blue—At an old train station—they stop at nothing."

The Studio—Best Tex-Mex food outside of Leos: imported Tecate and lime, beef enchiladas, cheese enchiladas, rice, beans, hot sauce, mmm..."

ST. TROPEZ, FRANCE

Hey, the cinnamon-orange crepes at that place two blocks down from the Byblos Hotel. Bar none!"

Good taste and discrimination is a hallmark of all ZZs pleasures.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47

FRANK: None of us like organs. We dont like rhythm guitar players and were not from the Southeast, so we dont need a second drummer. Years later, when we wrote a couple of tunes that needed horns, we just picked it up ourselves. If weve needed another instrument, weve figured a way for one of us to do it. Some people think youre limiting yourself but, in a way, youve got a lot more freedom. Youre not constantly bumping into each other musically.

VII.ELIMINATOR

Eliminator, like El Loco and Deguello before it, is made up of relentlessly hot songs that sound simple at first but reveal themselves over time as smart or depraved or hysterical (sometimes all the above) testimonials to ZZs, uh, quirky world view and Houstonian humor. When I had trouble framing the appropriate question Dusty laughed and finally said, Come on, Jeff. You just want to ask: ZZ, how can you be so fucking funny?" The answer, like everything else, is hard work.

In rock n roll, the rough framework is set from the start and is pretty much immutable—for three pieces or eight pieces, rock n roll es siempre rock n roll. But within the framework ZZ Top works—dare I say it—very subtle differentiations continually. Every track on the last three LPs works as an instrumental—in most cases the last half of each cut is purely instrumental. All this puts me in mind of Booker T. & the M.G.s which, for me, is the highest sort of praise.

FRANK: The songs are written that way. We write lyrics last. We dont really write music, we play music and refine it, jam it into shape. And then we sit down to work on the lyrics like, What are we gonna write about?"

BILLY: We have a book of titles.. .and then there was Tush." That came together in 10 minutes at a Florence, Alabama sound check.

DUSTY: We tape a lot of sound checks for ideas and that song just came out and it changes very little from there to the record. But on the other hand weve had one riff for maybe 10 years and we just cant make the right song out of it.

That really fits with my sense of your control. You guys have a very highly developed conception of what you do.

BILLY: Touring is the secret—were constantly working.

There followed some giddy disagreement over which Eliminator lyrics came before or after the music. The urgent glandular anthem I Got the Six" and the ominous Sharp Dressed Man" probably came from the top secret book. (Special Fashion Note: With the obvious exception of boots and sunglasses, the Top likes to go shopping for clothes at Barneys, 7th Ave. and 17th St., New York City.) In You Got Me Under Pressure," they rhyme whips & chains/cocaine/Great Danes and I couldnt restrain my curiosity.

Thats a pretty serious rhyme scheme. FRANK (laughing): Were talking about the Empress!

When the giggling subsided I suggested that the beautiful slow blues I Need You Tonight" reminded me of the neglected British genius Peter Green. Billy smiled, A great favorite of all of us. Those were the great Mayall days: Clapton to Green to Mick Taylor." A few reminiscences led us to studio sound, about which Sr. Gibbons has a bit to say.

Our engineers have always had some new ideas or other. Theyll put Frank in booth A and theyll put Dusty across the street and run some telephone wire—crazy kinds of situations to work under all in the name of new technology and getting a better sound. This time we showed up four days early and they had no plan, they had no attack force in gear for ZZ. We wound up setting all the instruments in one room where we were in eye contact with each other all the time. And it was the first time that we were all in there together, grooving to the cues. A nod of the head is good enough—its what weve done for 13 years onstage. And theyve always tried to figure out a way to mess it up."

VIII.WHO DO YOU LOVE?

BILLY: I love it all...well, thats pretty general. I saw Solid Gold too, and I do not love Barry Manilow. So I dont love it all, I love most of it. Oh, Julio Iglesias doesnt knock me out either.

DUSTY: Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and all that. And then, of course, the Beatles, Cream, Hendrix...it runs to a list that you could probably mimeograph and run around to most groups, depending onwhen they came in or out.

FRANK: The bands that have always appealed to me are the players—the bands that get up and play and dont strut, going back to the Allman Brothers before everybody started dying. Little Feat was another and the Band has always been one of my favorites, cause they looked like they were sitting up in a garage somewhere and they just played with each other. They didnt rely on anything other than the music and watching them was a treat. The show was watching a virtuoso play. So Ive always been partial to the bands that put the music first. Hendrix put on a great show, but I always got the feeling that the music came first to him and not the tongue wiggling and knee falling.

BILLY: I meant to tell you guys: Ive worked up a knee fall for the show and Ive got a tongue wiggle being shipped in as soon as they can build a case for it.

IX.WIT & WISDOM

Standing by the buffet table in the dressing room after the Knoxville show, Billy, Dusty and 1 are talking excitedly about rare Elvis tapes (They had the good taste to be playing my favorite at the moment—a 1955 Houston gig) when a sweet young blonde— filmy white top, lacy white stockings, very short black mini: a lot of leg and not a lot of skirt—implores Billy to autograph her backstage pass. Youre my hero," she fumbles, clearly serious. He obliges graciously and then its time to run for the limos while I muse about what makes ZZ so wonderful, what makes heroes out of bearded border boogie bandits. Got to be BLUES WIT which informs their entire presentation, undercutting the onerous preposterousness of Metal. Wimps like Judas Priest never betray for half a second that what they do is funny, much less fun. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, ZZs heavily seasoned rock n roll continues to tear right along—in person and on record—and the people tear right along with them. Me too.

X. LAST CALL AT THE LINGERIE COUNTER

Dusty sleepily suggests we end the interview on an up note—E flat, C sharp, any of those." We settle on the theme from / Married Joan, a mid-50s Jim Backus/Joan Davis sitcom, and for no reason (the best reason of all) the four of us remember most of the words. At the elevators hysterics overtake us trying to imagine what might have been thrown up on stage to Elvis when he was young and deserved such offerings. FRANK: But remember the size of those... bloomers?

Billy could make great soup of them. DUSTY: Stew!

Hot sauce? Why not... W?