Has there ever been a more unlikely trio of video gods than this Texas trio that had a few minor blues-rock staples on classic rock radio before they exploded? God, I fucking loved the eighties. Singer/lead songwriter/fucking brilliant guitarist Billy Gibbons saw which way the wind was blowing, so this smart motherfucker with the long-ass beard bought himself a sequencer and drum machine and synths and just … wrote a bunch of catchy songs over the top of them and called it an album. Eliminator (1983 – good lord, was this the best year for music in all of the eighties?) gave us four hit singles, four heavy-rotation videos, one restored 1933 red Ford Coupe, and a group of scantily clad ladies who populated Top’s posse or something. What a great time to be alive.
Gibbons pulled a masterful trick here to keep his band relevant; he included all the elements and visual hooks that one needed to be successful in the early part of the decade. What made ZZ Top stand out even more was Gibbons’ guitar riffs and precise, thick, boogie-laced leads: You can bet no other band on MTV at this time had an organic, old-school guitar sound like this.
The album still holds up even without the videos: “Got Me Under Pressure,” “Legs,” “Gimmie All Your Loving,” “TV Dinners,” and my favorite: “Sharp Dressed Man.” Seriously, turn up “Sharp Dressed Man” as loud as you can stand it in the car – the fuzzy, static-like artificial background sounds pulsing and alive, and Gibbons’ guitar, always meaty, positively sweats with thickness here. Legend has it that he played his leads using a quarter instead of a pick, and it sounds like it. The grit gets under your teeth, and the squawks and stings sound like knife edges. For eighties songs, that was really something, and the guitar breaks seem to go on forever – we had a certified, reborn guitar hero on our hands and then the video faded out and Spandau Ballet or some fucking thing followed it.
Naturally, ZZ Top milked it for all it was worth, following up Eliminator with the improbable Afterburner (1985 – featuring the Ford Coupe in fucking space on the cover like they were turning into Boston, never a good sign), which was even more of a commercial success but kind of sucked. More hits here including “Velcro Fly,” with a video choreographed by fucking Paula Abdul to show you which way the winds were blowing. “Rough Boy” is another one of my most-hated “lake songs” – good lord, I just remembered it, and it makes me want to bash my head against a window – I really should examine this in therapy. ZZ Top made another album in the synth world to make it an even trilogy and then switched back to what they did best when the water finally ran out of the jug: loud blues-based rock that sounded like pure Texas barbecue.
So what to make of ZZ Top in the eighties? For pure novelty, their resurgence at the level of top ten hits and videos couldn’t possibly have been predicted or topped in its melding of old- and new-school stylings. The guys who sang “Tush” were video-age darlings? As a young boy I was thrilled by each video’s miniature story, the iconic beards, the waves to the camera, the magical car (best displayed in the video for “Gimmie All Your Loving,” which seems to exist in some sort of “Twilight Zone” universe where the mechanic’s dream is real or predictive), how the bullies in “Legs” get what’s coming to them, and the models – who sparked a dim sexual awakening.
What a world a band could create in just three to four minutes! The worlds in MTV videos were better than real life – with beautiful people, glitz, intrigue, and mysteries to solve. They had the escapist appeal of our favorite movies, and you got a cool song (sometimes) to go with it. You wanted to hang out with Billy Gibbons (and the other two guys, I guess), go for a ride in the car, maybe have him show you a few licks. It’s all standard stuff, but looking out the windows as we did, wondering what kind of adventures awaited (or didn’t await) us was part of the longing that seems to still define us. You can find its very serious roots in these not-so-serious mini-masterpieces from ZZ Top.
Finally, Gibbons knew which side his bread was buttered on. Gotta get yours. Is there anything more eighties than this lyrical couplet from “Sharp Dressed Man”?
“Top coat, top hat
I don’t worry cause my wallet’s fat”
He was above it all, one of those mysterious, endlessly cool dudes who just had that thing. His voice was all backroom dealings, cigarettes, and whisky. He was mocking us in a way, maybe, or mocking the medium, laughing at how easy all this was, and you better believe he had no problem cashing his checks. But he wasn’t self-hating or shaming us for liking it. And there was never any talk of the band selling out – could be that bad-ass guitar solos transcend any of those simplistic views. With his shaggy and dusty countenance, he stood apart naturally anyway, but Gibbons and ZZ Top provided us with a riddle about learning how to be a part of something, honoring it, but still doing your best and not getting consumed. Moderation, balance, distance, stoicism – that’s it, there’s the life lesson I’m still working on.
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