Gimme All Your Lovin’: The Blues, Boogie, and Beard of ZZ Top’s Billy F. Gibbons

Author:Christopher McCittrick

Now in their 55th year, ZZ Top have managed a rare feat not just of such longevity but remaining widely recognizable despite a backstory has always been a touch vague. Christopher McKittrick (whose previous work includes books on Tom Petty and The Rolling Stones) takes on the task of trying untangle fact from fiction, in a book that has Billy Gibbons as it’s center piece, but is also de facto the story of ZZ Top.

No-one could accuse McKittrick of skimping on the research. It’s a book packed with details of tour dates, concert yields, videos shot and albums recorded. Unfortunately, without the active involvement of any of the band, family those directly connected to the band, the actual insight achieved is slight. Which is not to say it wasn’t an entertaining read, as McKittrick does his best to throw as much light as he can on Gibbons and Top, but by the end I wasn’t a great deal wiser about what Gibbons was really like, leaving the more unsavory aspects of the bands career to take center stage.

A great deal of Top and it’s history / mythology was shaped by Bill Ham, Top’s manager until 2006. From day 1 Ham imposed a number of strict rules that were designed to maximise Top’s mystique and their draw as a live act. Interviews were rare, publicity shots scare. Top were rarely seen even on album covers. The band toured relentlessly, and even as their audience became national then global, Ham refused almost all TV work, live albums or concert recordings, interviews were strictly rationed and answers frequently opaque and occasionally contradictory.

As a consequence, there’s very little in the way or archive material (recorded or written) for a writer to build a picture from. When Top did speak to the press – and it was mostly Gibbons that did so – it was commonplace to be what could kindly described as creative in their story telling. In a pre internet era with press that was often highly localized, there was no one to apply the scrutiny McKittrick applies 30 or 40 years later. So did Gibbons paint and write songs with Jimi Hendrix, or go to art school in Los Angeles? For all of McKittrick’s attempts at a time line, it proves hard to say one way or the other.

Artistic license applied to the band’s history is one thing. Outright fibs are another and McKittrick highlights several, from Ham’s early edict of no overdubs – which didn’t even last past the recording of the first album – to the copyright infringement cases they faced over “La Grange” and “Thunderbird”. Whilst legally victorious, Ham’s approach was morally dubious.

The no overdubs edict was still in force in 1983 when Gibbons and Top adopted a whole new sound. McKittrick doesn’t mince his words “Obviously, any listener could tell you that the album’s musician credits— simply listed as Billy Gibbons on guitar and vocals, Dusty Hill on bass and vocals, and Frank Beard on drums— are absurdly wrong based on all the extra instrumentation heard on the album ….. For one, there is no mention of synthesizers anywhere in the credits despite their unmistakable presence”. And no mention either of Linden Hudson, who is now acknowledged to have been the principal collaborator on the album with Gibbons, to the point where there are widespread doubts as to whether Hill and Beard actually played on the album at all.

McKittrick does his best to balance the book out with detailed assessments of tours, recordings and videos. But the inevitable problem is that tour dates and grosses, recording locations and unnecessarily detailed descriptions of Tops videos (they are all on YouTube Chris ….) don’t tell us anything much about Billy G.

McKittrick does draw out Gibbon’s willingness to experiment with new sounds, a desire to try and remain in touch with new music, his love of cars, the wacky humour and the way in which Top became a huge MTV hit despite being in most other respects an anachronism. His research into Gibbon’s upbringing suggests his family helped him gain a substantial musical education, something that Gibbon’s chose to play down in his quest to come across as a poor ol’ dude from Texas. He’s also able to add a little depth and colour to the making of “Little Ol’ Band From Texas” documentary that can currently be found on Netflix that turned out to be Dusty Hill’s last band project with Top.

Unfortunately Gibbons the man remains something of an enigma. ZZ Top engineer and producer Joe Hardy is quoted as saying “Here’s one thing I can tell you that is absolutely true and that he will approve if I say this: He will lie about anything. Our saying is that he would rather climb a tree to tell a lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth.” McCittrick shook the tree a little, but Bill G isn’t coming down any time soon.

Length of Read:Medium

Might appeal to people who enjoyed…

The Netflix documentary “That Little Ol’ Band from Texas”

One thing you’ve learned

ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin”, “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” videos were directed by Tim Newman, Randy Newman’s cousin.

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