A Conversation with ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons – HuffPost 6.20.14
Mike Ragogna: Billy, in addition to ZZ Top’s tour, there’s a new double disc retrospective CD at Warners being released as well as your Live At Montreux concert at Eagle Rock. Considering your over forty years together are being presented yet contrasted with these two releases, what have you observed to be the biggest changes between the ZZ Top of 1969 and now?
Billy F. Gibbons: We have a much better way of getting to the gigs. Back then it was a van with all the gear stuffed inside and now we go by motor coach and our gear is transported in a semi. The crowds now are a bit bigger… We once played a gig attended by exactly one paying customer but we gave him the full show; bought him a Coke at the end to show our appreciation. Did we mention the food? We’ve come a long way from hash and Big Red Soda but always reserve the right to go back.
MR: Your Live At Montreux 2013 DVD and Blu-ray presents ZZ Top features material from the very early days. Do those songs still have the same impact on you and the guys as they did when you first began performing?
BFG: Absolutely, yes. The prism of time has a way of turning coal into diamonds. We loved those early songs then and still do now. You know… We’re the same three guys–wait for it–playing the same three chords.
MR: Do you have a couple of favorite moments from the Live At Montreux 2013 performances? You’ve played Montreux before, but other than its having been recorded for a release, in your opinion, was there something particularly magical or different about this concert that separates it from prior Montreux performances?
BFG: It was definitely special. We wanted to do something to honor the memory of Claude Nobs who founded the festival and had been our friend for many years. He died quite unexpectedly earlier in that year so we knew we had to do something very special. Since he was a jazz aficionado, we thought we’d jazz things up a big and, to that end, flew in two jazz cats from Austin–Mike Flanigin on B-3 and Van Wilkes on second guitar. Yes, in Claude’s honor, ZZ Top was a five piece groove unit for part of the set.
MR: Does the band have any favorites from the catalog that you still can’t wait to get to in the set list?
BFG: We have an inclusionary policy. If we recorded it or sort of know it we’re game to play it. We perform songs from “ZZ Top’s First Album” quite regularly and do some stuff we’ve never recorded like Willie Brown’s “Future Blues.” That song dates from 1930 and, as you know, Willie Brown is named checked by none other than Robert Johnson in “Crossroads.” He recorded it for Paramount Records, the label that Jack White has been highlighting of late. And we also do some new stuff.. quite a few off our most recent album, La Futura, the title of which may very well have been inspired by that selfsame Willie Brown, don’tcha know?
MR: At the time, how surprising was the huge success of “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man” as both audio and videos hits to the band?
BFG: We approached the video revolution very gingerly. The band figured to just kind of stay in the background and keep the focus on the pretty girls and that little red car. Seems like everybody didn’t mind we were bystanders in our own videos and the rest, as they say, is history.
MR: In the eighties–the age of videos breaking or significantly supporting recording artists–ZZ Top created some of the most fun and outrageous clips in rotation. Your videos maintained a video theme for the group, as if each video were an episode of a series. How did the scripts come together and was there a point when ZZ Top was writing songs with the videos in mind?
BFG: We worked with our renegade director, Tim Newman, Randy’s cousin, as it happened. Tim is very inventive and intuitive. Although we didn’t write songs with video actually in mind, yet we do tend to think and, perhaps, create, with a subliminal cinematic sense.
MR: What are your thoughts about some of your other trademark songs like “Tush” and “La Grange”?
BFG: They’re great. “La Grange” put us on the map in terms of Top 40 radio and we just love to do that “haw, haw, haw” part. “Tush” was written in about as long as it takes to perform. It just jumped up during a searingly sweltering soundcheck and it’s been part of the set ever since. The subject matter in both songs seems to retain a certain universal appeal.
MR: “Degüello”, with “I’m Bad I’m Nationwide,” “I Thank You,” “Cheap Sunglasses,” and more is considered one of the band’s best albums and personally, I don’t think there’s a weak moment. Might this have been the album that changed everything up as far as ZZ Top’s approach to creating projects?
BFG: The entirety of the “Degüello” recordings, and certainly the mixing, unfolded in Memphis and that soulful setting kind of changed the way we thought about recording and the mystery of the process. Great records made in Memphis goes back for decades and when ZZ hit town, the skill set was in place when we jumped in. “I Thank You,” being a Sam and Dave song that was a Stax Records hit is just that–a thank you to Memphis and the vibe it imbues.
MR: Beautiful. So the band is coming up on 45 years of working together with its original lineup. What’s the musical and personal partnership like with you, Dusty and Frank after all these years?
BFG: It’s intact and ready to go for another 45. We three have a really fine time getting out there playing. We maintain a constant reunion of that early era if you like, so one can think of the last 3 decades as keeping one foot in them blues! On occasion, arriving at a venue early, the game is racing radio controlled cars over the parking lot. Yes, remaining eighteen is our mental immaturity and there ain’t nothin’ wrong with that… Rock on…!
MR: What do you think the state of bluesrock is in these days? Do you think there are any acts out there that might represent some of the best of the field?
BFG: There’ a host of great acts out and about. Like what Black Joe Louis & the Honeybears are doing in Austin and how the Black Keys are putting it down from their current Nashville base. There are lots more… What about Serbian blues chanteuse Ana Popovic? The girl can play. As far as pure singers are concerned, we’re big Shemekia Copeland fans.
MR: Traditional question…what advice do you have for new artists?
BFG: Get out there and play! We don’t know of any other way, especially, if you don’t have pin-up looks.
MR: Any plans or projects in the works for the band or individually in the immediate future?
BFG: We’re thinking about our next album…already have some songs rattling around. The big news for us is a string of dates coming up in a few months with Jeff Beck. That is going to be a tour when we wish we could be in the audience.