“My first reaction was ‘shit’ and then ‘ouch’,” Hill said. In 1984, he was accidentally shot in the abdomen when his girlfriend pulled off his boot, causing his Derringer pistol to fall out and discharge itself. Hill had suffered several health problems. In 2004 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Keith Richards. In 2003 the four-CD set Chrome, Smoke & BBQ presented a comprehensive survey of the band’s history from its earliest days. ZZ Top scored further platinum-selling albums with Recycler (1990) and Antenna (1994, the first under a new $35m deal with RCA), though subsequent releases saw their sales falling away. They signed with London Records in 1970, and released ZZ Top’s First Album (1971) and Rio Grande Mud (1972), to little fanfare. In 1968 Dusty and Beard moved to Houston, where they joined Gibbons, who had been in the Dallas-based psychedelic band the Moving Sidewalks, and replaced existing members of his newly-formed ZZ Top. The Hill brothers then joined Beard in a succession of Dallas groups including the Warlocks, the Cellar Dwellers and American Blues. Dusty found himself onstage in a Dallas bar, working out how to play bass as he went along. When Rocky formed a band called the Starliners, he needed a bass player and recruited Dusty, who had been learning to play the cello at the local Woodrow Wilson high school. His mother was a talented singer and a devotee of blues artists such as Bessie Smith, while his older brother Rocky was a guitar player and blues fan. Photograph: Chris Delmas/AFP/Getty Imagesĭusty was born Joseph Hill in Dallas, Texas, and grew up in the Lakewood district. Hill, left, with Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard. Afterburner (1985) was another multiplatinum smash, and gave them one of their most successful singles with Sleeping Bag, which reached No 8 in the US. Gibbons’s red 1933 Ford hot-rod became a video star in its own right.īy now Hill and Gibbons had adopted the chest-length beards, stetsons and sunglasses that gave ZZ Top a new cartoon-like image, with Beard confining himself to a moustache. It also found ZZ Top embracing the latest digital recording and video technology, generating a streak of sleek chartbusting hits including Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp Dressed Man and Legs, whose videos became heavy-rotation staples on MTV. (Asked why it didn’t follow the ZZ Top tradition of Spanish-language titles, Gibbons deadpanned that its real name was El Iminator). El Loco (1981) reached the US Top 20, but they hit the real big time with Eliminator (1983), which charted all over the world and has sold 10 million copies in the US alone. Degüello (1979) went Top 30 and brought them two of their best-known hits with I Thank You and Cheap Sunglasses. When they reassembled in 1979, their manager Bill Ham had secured them a new record deal with Warner Bros, which would result in new levels of success. “We tried to bring it over to Europe but we had a problem with the quarantine on the animals.”Īfter this, the group, who had been gigging and recording solidly for seven years, took a two-year break, during which Hill spent some time working at Dallas/Fort Worth airport. “It took a full day to set things up and a full day to take them down, so we only actually played one day in three,” Hill recollected. This came after their Worldwide Texas tour, an extraordinary multimedia event that featured a stage in the shape of Texas with Texan wildlife including steers, buzzards and snakes. Their next album, Fandango! (1975), reached the US Top 10 and gave them a Top 20 single with Tush, but the follow-up, Tejas (1976), was less well received, despite a Top 20 chart placing.
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