ZZ Top has tried it both ways.
For 14 years and 8 albums, they played it straight. Sure, they had their quirks (like sharing the stage with live buzzards, sagebrush and a Longhorn steer). But for the most part, Dusty Hill, Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard played simple Texas boogie and cultivated facial hair. They earned a loyal, though not necessarily demographically appealing following.
Then came the Video Age and a new ZZ Top was born. They beefed up their sound with synthesizers and their look with fuzzy guitars, pretty girls and a `33 Ford coupe known as the Eliminator. Providing a welcome comic relief from the pretentious dreck usually found on MTV, ZZ Top suddenly appealed to everyone from amused yuppies to hell-raisin` outlaws. ZZ Top had become America`s Band.
Nineteen-eighty-three`s ”Eliminator” sold almost 6 million copies in the United States and about 4 million more around the globe. It produced five Top-20 singles. And now that their new ”Afterburner” is hot, ”Eliminator” has made its way back onto the charts, and even ZZ Top`s vintage albums are beginning to pick up some steam. Selling every bit as fast are the more than 40 items bearing the ZZ Top logo in the band`s official catalogue.
So guess which style the boys are bringing to their Rosemont Horizon performance Wednesday and Thursday? You betcha. Get ready for plenty of high- tech boogie.
The motif is Egyptian (playing off the line in ”Sleeping Bag,” ”sleep beside the Pharaohs in the shifting sands”). An immense Sphinx serves as a backdrop for the stage where Gibbons and Hill pound out their riffs on mummified guitars (each complete with a built-in Sony Watchman).
There`s also a reproduction of the Eliminator`s dashboard and a state-of- the-art laser show.
”All that`s just for fun, though,” Gibbons has said. ”Basically, you could take away the set and we`re still the same. The audience can still have just as good of a time.”
The 90-minute show draws heavily from ”Afterburner” and ”Eliminator.” And while oldies like ”Tush” and ”LaGrange” occasionally creep into the set, long-time fans shouldn`t get their hopes up.
”In each city there are different favorites,” Hill has said. ”Whatever we do, we`ll come off the stage and somebody will ask how come we didn`t do
`Pearl Necklace.` At the next town, it`s something else we didn`t do that they wanted to hear.”
Long-time fans also may be startled by the addition of what amounts to a fourth member of the band. For the first time, pre-recorded synthesizers will accompany ZZ Top, a move for which the band has no apologies.
”People shouldn`t knock the synthesizer,” Hill said. ”It`s an aid, and it depends on how you use it, just like any other instrument.”
Gibbons concurred. ”I think it`s tricky ground,” he said. ”There`s still a lot of curiosity about them, especially in the hands of ZZ Top. Probably to the relief of our fans, we prefer to make our computers sound like garbage-can lids instead of chimes.”
Nor does the band apologize for the aggressive marketing of its video image.
”TV is what brought us into many new homes,” Gibbons said. ”It`s the beards. We could play in blue jeans or tuxedos and they`d know who we were.” ”The videos have given us a younger audience,” Hill said. ”You know, our audience grew up with us until the videos, and they were beginning to get a little long in the tooth. Then the videos came along, and now we`ve recaptured the 16-year-old girls. The 16-year-old girls!”
Who: ZZ Top.
When: At 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday.
Where: Rosemont Horizon; 559-1212.
How much: $15 (Wednesday sold out).
BEARD RUMOR GETS CLIPPED
It`s a great rumor. So great, in fact, that ZZ Top`s Billy Gibbons has been spreading it at just about every interview he`s given this year.
But no, Gillette Co. did not offer the boys an incredible amount of moolah to shave their beards for a commercial.
”No, no, a thousand times no,” says Charley Conway, a Gillette spokesman who obviously has heard this question before. ”That absolutely is not true. It never has been true.”
Conway suspects that the rumor got started in a Playboy article about a year ago. Gibbons has been only too glad to help it grow.
