Despite living in the Norwegian capital, for the most part I had to leave Oslo to attend the biggest Metal shows in the 80’s. The concerts took place in two different arenas on opposite sides of Oslo …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE …READ MORE
Releasing his second solo album in three years sees ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons in the middle of a creative streak. Mick Burgess caught up with the bearded Texan for the low down on Big Bad Blues and got an expert lesson in the Blues to boot. Your new solo album The Big Bad Blues, is out very soon. How do you feel ahead of its release? You said it! It’s all about the ‘feeling’. I got to work with some great players so our idea of digging into the Blues is time well spent. The Blues tradition is appreciated and savored. Why did you decide to do another solo album rather than a ZZ Top studio album? John Burk at Concord Records cornered me in their parking lot late one night and made the case for a follow up to Perfectamundo, proposing a Blues-skewed set. That was it! At the same time, a new ZZ Top album continued percolating righteously. A two-for-two punch for sure! This comes three years after your debut solo album, Perfectamundo. You’d done no solo albums in 45 years until then and now we have a second in three years. Are you on something of a creative surge at the moment? That’s it! We’re having such a great time writing, recording and touring that it’s kind of morphed into a ride on the ongoing “party train”. One project begets another and another… after that, most of our works are amplified, literally and figuratively. Whereas Perfectamundo saw you heading into new territory with its Afro-Cuban vibe, The Big Bad Blues is you very much on home turf. Did you always intend to return to your roots with your next record or did it just turn out this way naturally? There’s rarely been a long-range plan of …READ MORE
Most of nowadays’ pop and rock acts rely to a great extent on the looks of the band members to sell records and acquire fame. In a rather obscure way, would I argue that looks also play a part in the rise of ZZ Top during the ’70s and ’80s. The long beards (with drummer Frank Beard being the only one who does not sport a full-size one), the sunglasses, and the hot rod and Harley image has been a big part of the marketing and advertising strategy during the band’s possible peak of popularity with albums like “Eliminator” and hits like “Gimme All Your Lovin’”, “Legs” and “Tush”. Still I’d never call the Top a commercial band. Although they definitely hung on to the trend of moving from a blues-based approach during the ’70s to including more electronic and “pop-ish” elements during the ’80s before returning to a more simplistic approach in the ’90s, they have throughout their entire career had a distinct sound centered around the song writing of main guitarist/singer Billy F. Gibbons, and the three-piece format consisting of him, bassist/singer Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard. This lineup has remained stable for decades now, impressive indeed. Maybe it’s the fact that neither Gibbons nor Hill can say that they can’t stand the look of each other’s faces (as they cannot see the faces because of the beards and sunglasses), or eventually that they usually slip free of charges when (“CNN reports that a member of the rock group ZZ TOP was spotted stealing a Mercedes from Sharon Stone’s villa in LA. He had a long beard and huge sunglasses”) as there are always two suspects. This also foes for things like the thrashing of hotel rooms, sexual assaults of female fans, robbing of tour managers and …READ MORE