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Music Preview: ZZ Top pulls out its three chords again for 'XXX'
Friday, October 01, 1999 By Ed Masley, Post-Gazette Pop Music Critic
I suppose it was only a matter of time before the band that gave you "Legs" and "Tush" would name an album "XXX."
But the title of the latest ZZ Top release is actually in keeping with another band tradition -- the double entendre.
Yes, they want you thinking sex, as reinforced by cuts like "36-22-36."
But it's also the symbol for 30, as in 30 years of ZZ Top.
"It was pretty funny," guitarist Billy Gibbons drawls. "My drummer had a calculator the other day and I thought he had some new way of drawing in beats or something and he said no, it's true, we've done this band longer than school, longer than anything else we've ever done. But we're still diggin' it. That's the secret, for us anyway."
The other key to the band's incredible staying power, he says, is "no real secret" at all.
And he's right.
"We've kept it so simple," he says. "I made a joke -- well, not a joke, just a statement of fact. We only know three chords. It doesn't really get too complicated. But within that framework, it still allows for a lot of gratifying experimentation. As Keith Richards so eloquently stated, 'Man, if Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley and all of the great originators manage to make years and years of interesting sounds from three chords, I guess it's just a game of figuring out new ways to arrange 'em. And we've attempted to keep it on that track."
In fact, the band's new single, "Fearless Boogie," as Gibbons is pleased to announce, is only two chords.
All his favorite ZZ Top songs -- "Fearless Boogie" chief among them -- have been simple, Gibbon figures.
"I would say it started with maybe the blues track off the first album, 'La Grange' off 'Tres Hombres,' 'Heard it on the X,' even right up to today with 'Fearless Boogie.' I guess when we get down to the one-chord anthem, it'll be 'Ode to Simplicity' or something."
However many chords they use, it's always safe to count on ZZ Top to sound like ZZ Top, from the raunchier early stuff to the synthesizer-heavy MTV hits.
As Gibbons says, "We can try to play country. We can try to play the calendar and it all sounds like ZZ Top."
There's talk, he says, of doing a "Fearless Boogie" video with Tim Newman, the guy behind the videos for "Gimme All Your Lovin'," "Legs" and "Sharp Dressed Man."
"Tim's got the touch, he's got the feel, he's just waitin' for us to dial up the pretty girls and drive in a new automobile," says Gibbons, "which is not a bad combo when you think about it."
For now, the band is out on tour with Lynyrd Skynyrd. And as Gibbons says, "It's turning out to be quite a good night for concert-goers."
The ZZ set, he says, will span the band's three decades, including a couple of numbers off the first album, "ZZ Top's First Album."
Gibbons is happy to know that the old stuff is holding up fine.
He knows because they came across the original masters to the first one recently while doing touchups on "Fearless Boogie."
"We were at the same recording studio we've been working at forever, it seems like, and they had some original masters of the first album and we sat back and we were diggin' on the first record. It was pretty cool. We had to rediscover all the songs we had to go relearn."
Back then, the Texas trio didn't even have the beards.
Those happened later, accidentally, when they took a break from touring toward the end of the '70s.
"We took some time to learn some different things," he says, "and although we were in communication, it was only by telephone for a long, long time -- probably oh, six months to a year and when we finally reconvened, you can actually see the first inkling of the beardedness in the photograph of the 'Deguello' release, which was 1979. We stumbled into the recording studio and found these long beards. Two of us [Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill, but not Frank Beard, the drummer] had gotten too lazy to shave."
With 20 years of beardedness behind, Gibbons says they're not sure what they look like under there.
Then he laughs and says, "In fact, that might be our next single, 'Good, Bad, and possibly Ugly.' "
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With: Lynyrd Skynyrd.