(MENAFN- Arab Times) Settling in to watch 'ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band From Texas', you may
have a burning question that applies to almost no other rock documentary, and
that is: Who, exactly, are these guys? The ones behind the beards?
If you're old enough, of course,
you probably know that ZZ Top started out, in 1969, as a trio of
wild-and-woolly cowboy rockers who played their own brand of dirty amped-up
tin-shack blues. When their first hit, the lascivious redneck boogie 'La
Grange', was released in 1973, there had arguably never been a sonic blast that
raw, rough, and nasty on the rock charts (though 'Whole Lotta Love' and the
opening riff of 'Spirit in the Sky' paved the way for it). ZZ Top didn't sound
like a 'popular' band. They sounded like the kind of band you hear in a scuzzy
Texas roadhouse, or maybe on a backwoods campus.
That said, the vast majority of
rock fans probably don't know ZZ Top from their '70s shit-kicker Texas-chainsaw-blues-rock
phase. They know them from the early-'80s videos that made them international
icons: the badass blues brothers in their shades and matching foot-long
hillbilly fuzzbeards, twirling their padded guitars in unison, looking over
sexy scenarios that they always stood magically outside of. They presided over
those videos, with their vintage cars and glinting keychains, as the
unlikeliest of demigods. The videos shrouded their identities and made them
larger-than-life.
That image of ZZ Top was so stylized
that early on in 'That Little Ol' Band From Texas', Billy Bob Thornton says
that when you went to a ZZ Top concert, it was kind of like seeing Bugs Bunny
on stage. Joshua Homme, of Queens of the Stone Age, talks about the grand
mystery of it all: Who were they? I know the feeling. In the early '90s, I
spotted the two bearded members of ZZ Top having dinner at a New York
restaurant, and unlike any other celebrity sighting I've had, this one felt
almost like a visitation. It was hard to imagine that they even ate food.
History
In 'ZZ Top: That Little Ol' Band
From Texas', Billy F. Gibbons and Dusty Hill come out from behind the beards –
sort of (but not really). They sit down for interviews in which they recall the
band's history, and along with the drummer Frank Beard (yes, the handsome one
who doesn't have a beard), they're droll, companionable diarists of their own
unlikely journey. They've stayed together for half a century, avoiding the ego
wars that tear apart most bands, and they still seem grateful for the fact that
that they can sit around and play the music they love and call it a living.
That sly Dixie modesty is part of what came across in 'Gimme All Your Lovin'',
'Legs', and 'Sharp Dressed Man', the fabled videos from their 1983 album 'Eliminator'
that were made when they were in their early thirties (though they already
seemed like ageless old men).
The movie has good stories about
how they discovered their sound. When Gibbons, Hill, and Beard first played
together, they jammed on the elemental blues-rock riff of 'Shuffle in C' for
three straight hours without a break; by the end, they knew they had something.
During the recording of their first album, their manager, Bill Ham, insisted
that they use no overdubs, so the producer, Robin Hood Brians, chased Ham away
for 90 minutes by sending him across the county line to fetch some barbecue.
Brians had an overdub technique that involved making the guitar strings
slightly out of tune on the second layer, to create a breadth of sound. And
that was it. It didn't come off like overdubs; it was still just guitar, bass,
and drums. But now it sounded…big.
The
breaks came gradually, like when the Rolling Stones invited ZZ Top to open for
them for three shows in Hawaii. But when they kicked ass during those shows and
weren't mentioned in the reviews, it was a wake-up call. The press didn't get
them. Ham brought in a master publicist, Howard Bloom, and it was he, after
getting to know the band, who figured out that they were from a 'foreign
country' – Texas – with its own history, its own founding father, its own
rules. In 1975, they put together the Worldwide Texas Tour, which branded them
with the mystique of Texas. They performed on a 75-foot stage in the shape of
Texas, with livestock on stage. They were making Texas do for them what Jersey
did for Springsteen.
The
tour was a monster success, and afterwards they took a break that was supposed
to last a few months, but lasted several years.
Gibbons,
who gives off a vibe of relishing tall tales, tells what sounds like a whopper
about how he and Dusty Hill both, completely independently, stopped shaving out
of laziness. I would guess that the beards took a lot more planning than that.
But when they first performed with them, it gave them an aura that was totally
new. Gibbons' body language was different: more commanding. They'd become
Southern rockers who presented themselves as carny American showbiz biker
devils.
'That Little Ol' Band From Texas'
reveals little of who Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill are offstage. Do they have
wives? (RTRS)
By Owen Gleiberman
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