when was zz top eliminator tour

Eliminator Tour

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The Eliminator Tour was a concert tour by American rock band ZZ Top . Presented by Schlitz Beer , the tour took place in the North America and Europe . The set list featured material from the band's past studio albums.

• 1 Itinerary
• 2 Personnel
• 4 Tour dates
• 5 References

The tour followed the March 1983 release of the band's album Eliminator and began on May 12, 1983 in Jackson, Mississippi .

Quiet Riot was the opening act in June 1983 and was booed in Kansas City. Jon Bon Jovi opened in St. Louis in June of 1983 perhaps due to the unfavorable response in Kansas City earlier that same month.

Sammy Hagar was the opening act in July and August, one of the highlights was being joined on stage by Brad Delp from the band Boston at the Worcester Centrum show (they performed Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love"). Quiet Riot again joined the tour for the Canadian leg in September.

• Billy Gibbons - Guitar , vocals
• Dusty Hill - Bass , vocals
• Frank Beard - Drums , percussion
• " Got Me Under Pressure "
• "I Got the Six"
• "Waitin' for the Bus"
• " Sharp Dressed Man "
• "Ten Foot Pole"
• " TV Dinners "
• "Manic Mechanic"
• "A Fool for Your Stockings"
• " Dust My Broom "
• " Pearl Necklace "
• " Cheap Sunglasses "
• " Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers "
• "Just Got Paid"
• "Arrested for Driving While Blind"
• "Party on the Patio"
• " Tube Snake Boogie "
• " Jailhouse Rock "
• " La Grange "
• Pages with broken file links
• ZZ Top concert tours
• 1983 concert tours
• Pages with script errors

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Sex, cars and videotape: how ZZ Top’s Eliminator conquered the world

ZZ Top were a boogie-blues band barely known outside the US – until they recorded Eliminator, slammed into fifth gear and took over the world

Memphis in the early spring of 1982 was hot, sticky and humid, same as any other year. However, change was most definitely in the air for three Texan gentlemen who had assembled in the city, however briefly, to lay down the basic tracks for what would be their eighth album. 

Up till then, Billy Gibbons , Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, collectively ZZ Top , had made music together that was as true to an American tradition as pumpkin pie; music steeped in the electric blues pioneered by the likes of Jimmy Reed, Howlin’ Wolf , Muddy Waters and the two Kings: BB and Albert. Yet at that precise moment, ZZ Top found themselves at a crossroads in their career. And as their leader, Gibbons at least had determined that they plough a new path.

It was Gibbons who formed the band in his home town of Houston, backed up by his dutiful manager-producer, the entrepreneurial, enigmatic Bill Ham. The first line-up of ZZ lasted just long enough to cut a single in 1969, a modest chugger titled Salt Lick , and secure Gibbons and Ham a deal with London Records. After which bassist Hill and drummer Beard, already bar-band veterans, were brought on board. 

The trio’s third album, 1973’s Tres Hombres , was their breakthrough, with a string of short, sharp and soulful records following that all together made them the biggest cult band in the States. This first chapter reached its apex with 1976’s Tejas and the ensuing Worldwide Texas Tour . A 19-month-long, 96-date trawl across the US, it found them performing on a giant stage made in the shape of the Lone Star State and bedecked with such native wildlife as cacti, longhorn cattle and a pair of glowering black vultures.

Burnt out from this epic undertaking, the band broke off for a two-year hiatus, during which Gibbons roamed around Europe, Hill visited Mexico and Beard had an extended sojourn in Jamaica. The fact that ZZ Top meant diddly overseas allowed the three of them to travel in complete anonymity. Although when they returned to Texas they had secured their future indelible identity, with Gibbons and Hill having both grown out their beards.

Their 1979 comeback album, Deguello , stuck fast to formula and sold a million. But Gibbons had picked up a prototype Fairlight sampler/synthesiser on his travels and began using it to experiment with new sounds. The next album was 1981’s El Loco , upon which the band’s staple classic rock diet was supplemented by such unhinged left-field oddities as Groovy Little Hippie Pad and Party On The Patio , both mangled out of Gibbons’s new toy.

“Without question there’s some crazy, interesting-sounding stuff on that record,” Gibbons says today, from his perch on ZZ’s tour bus as it winds its way around the European festival circuit. “The intrigue of these new-found contraptions was by then just starting to catch on, but we didn’t have a teacher or guide, we didn’t even have an instruction manual. I was just pushing buttons and found something that sounded kind of trashy.”

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“But we’d always done that kind of thing,” insists Hill, the cadence of his Texan drawl a beat quicker that Gibbons’s mellifluous burr. “Very early on, I walked into the studio one time and found Billy on the floor, pumping the pedals of an organ with his hands, just shadowing a bass part of mine. That was a very primitive version of what we went on to do.”

El Loco , though, proved to be too jarring for ZZ’s heartland audience and sold less than half as much as its predecessor. Hauling their unloved album around Europe later that same year, Gibbons happened into a club late one night and was struck by the spectacle of a throng of people dancing to the Rolling Stones ’ elastic-limbed funk-a-thon Emotional Rescue . Gibbons’s elders by a half a decade and more, the Stones had just then recast themselves as fresh, vibrant, even sonic explorers, as his own band had got stuck in a rut of their own making.

“To me Billy is a true genius,” offers Terry Manning, who engineered ZZ’s records from Tres Hombres to 1990’s Recycler . “And not only musically, but also as a human being, if there is such a definition. He’s extremely philosophical, a deep thinker and musically very aware. He started to analyse why ZZ didn’t get played in dance clubs, and concluded that they were not up to the required rhythmic capabilities. 

"He asked me what we could do. I started going to clubs and studying beats. The market had changed quite a bit from blues-based rock’n roll. So I came up with some ideas we could implement to make a very different album.”

The eventual first fruit of their labours was Eliminator , which became by far ZZ Top’s most successful and also controversial album. In total, it sounded the work of an altogether new band, but then again timeless. Eliminator was such a significant departure that it incited blues purists to accuse the band of an act of near-heresy. 

Yet it has endured to such an extent that, 33 years on, it supplied more than a third of the tracks on Live Greatest Hits From Around The World , the band’s then live album. “But then if we didn’t play those songs we’d likely get strung up by our heels,” Frank Beard notes sanguinely. And if on the surface it appeared an entirely cohesive musical statement, there lurks a more convoluted, contentious truth behind the story of its making which continues to keep secrets and ferment bad blood.

In the respective tales of Gibbons, Hill and Beard, Eliminator was forged during months of close-knit jam sessions, the band bolt-holed first in Texas and then at their preferred studio in Memphis. Certainly, work started at Gibbons’s house on South Padre Island, a fingertip of land jutting into the ocean from off the Texan Gulf Coast. It was to there at the start of ’82 that Manning shipped a portable recording studio.

From there, the action moved to Beard’s new house on the outskirts of Houston. According to the drummer, for the next several weeks Gibbons and Hill would arrive at his home for one pm and they would then go down in his basement studio to drill the raw materials into shape. 

“We knew the direction we were going in so weren’t flying blind,” Beard says. “The three of us would bash around till we got tired, sometimes by five pm, others we’d go on to midnight. Billy would set a sheet of paper in the middle of the floor and write out lyrics on the hoof.”

Also party to these gatherings was an associate of the band and Beard’s house guest, Linden Hudson, a former DJ, an aspiring songwriter and a sound engineer. Hudson had built Beard’s studio in lieu of paying him rent, and previously had done uncredited pre-production work on El Loco . He stepped into the same role again now, working in particular with Gibbons.

“Linden was quite an influential, inspirational figure,” Gibbons admits. “He was right there with us when some of the material was developed and brought forward some production techniques that were then valuable. I still treasure the moments that he and I spent together. There was quite a bit of time that the two of us sat behind a mixing console discussing new ways to go about making popular music.”

Nevertheless, when the following year Eliminator appeared, Hudson’s contribution was once more not credited. On this occasion, though, he took legal action, claiming to have been closely involved in both the creation of sounds and songwriting for the album. 

In large part Hudson was supported by ZZ’s stage manager of 15 years, David Blayney, who in his 1994 biography of the band, Sharp-Dressed Men, wrote that “[Hudson] floated the notion that the ideal dance music had 124bpm [and then] he and Gibbons conceived, wrote and recorded what amounted to a rough draft of the album before the band had ever set foot in the studio.” Hudson’s case was settled in 1986, with the band paying out $600,000 to him after he was adjudged to own the copyright on one of Eliminator ’s 11 songs, Thug .

“The whole thing was a particular disappointment to me,” Beard reasons now. “Basically, Linden was kind of a house-sitter for me. He looked after my home when we were out on tour. What happened with him was a real drag. But you have to move on.”

ZZ, minus Hudson, moved in the short term to Memphis where they stayed at a grand old hotel, the Peabody, ideally suited to a band of such quirks. Back in 1940, a former circus performer and animal trainer, a fellow splendidly named Bellman Edwards Pembroke, had coached five American ducks to parade each day through the hotel’s ornate lobby and onto the base of its decorative fountain. 

More than 40 years on, Pembroke was still serving as the Peabody Duck-Master and his latest raft of avian charges continued to perform twice daily. “A lot of musicians used to hang there too,” says Beard. “There was also a piano in the lobby and I walked in one night to find Jerry Lee Lewis sat at it and playing.”

Work on the basic tracks began in Studio A at Ardent Studios with Bill Ham as producer. Housed in a nondescript red-brick store building a mile from downtown and the blues clubs on Beale Street, Ardent had played host to, among others, Led Zeppelin , Joe Cocker, Leon Russell and local boys Big Star and had been ZZ’s base of operations for every album since Tres Hombres . Gibbons claims the band kept by and large to a “golden routine”, bunkering down to each day from 9am till 9pm.

“Ardent was such a remarkable place and a great gentlemen’s club,” he continues. “Terry Manning’s name appeared on our records, but they were really the work of the house consortium of Terry, Joe Hardy, John Hampton and even the owner, Mr John Fry, rest his soul. Anybody can twist a knob, but it takes real talent to know where the sweet spot is. And when you get such a team of operators who know how to lay hands on the faders and ride gain, that’s when the magic happens.

“By then we had made the city our second home. There’s a thread of music sounds that have always been part of the Memphis scene, and that was a big inspiration that kept us on track. But Memphis is also a great trouble-in-waiting town, and of course we made the most of that, too. We would go gambling and carousing about at a dog track across the Mississippi River in West Memphis, Arkansas. Or else there were a couple of all-night, after-hours joints that were highly illegal, but where the dice games and good music would start to unfold.”

These nocturnal forrays would soon become imprinted on the album. Stuck for a title and lyrics to go with a taut blues backing track that the band had put down, Gibbons found himself in an East Memphis bar one night when “a young lady walked in wearing a painter’s white jumpsuit. As she strolled past I saw that she had the words ‘TV Dinners’ emblazoned on the back of the suit. I don’t know to this day why that was such a stimulus, but there the title of the song was. 

"I went right on back to the Peabody, holed up in my room and scribbled out the words that night. Who’d have thought a rock’n’roll song would be about food?” On another occasion Gibbons dashed at 3am from an after-hours club to Ardent to cut, in a single take, two weeping guitar solos for Eliminator ’s centrepiece ballad I Need You Tonight .

Other tracks had longer-reaching influences. The prompt for the stomping I Got The Six , for example, dated back to Gibbons being in London in 1977 and during punk’s high summer. There was another based around a simple, nagging, Stones-like riff that was even titled as such on the original master tape. It would eventually be called Gimme All Your Lovin’ . And there was an insistent, near-pop tune that had risen up from continued prodding of Gibbons’s keyboard synth. “

We found out we could make it sound like a flat tyre going down a muddy road,” says Beard. Gibbons wrote lyrics for the song after the night the band had observed a stranded woman motorist flag down another vehicle on the freeway and he’d commented: “She’s got legs and she knows how to use ’em.”

“We’re a laugh riot alright,” Hill notes sardonically. “It seems funny now, but the few who did get to hear Legs when we were recording were kind of shocked. To put it bluntly, we got a little shit for abandoning our basic sound.”

Eliminator certainly unveiled a slicker, more polished ZZ, but the process of burnishing and enhancing their rough tracks mostly happened once both Hill and Beard had left Memphis and later still away from the confines of Ardent. Among each other, Gibbons, Ham and Manning jokingly referred to each as The Triumvirate. And it was this cabal that for the past decade had governed how ZZ’s records would ultimately end up being. 

Or, as Gibbons puts it: “[On Eliminator ] Frank and Dusty assigned me to the task of threading it all together. A sense of importance was placed on timing and tuning. And we spent a lot of productive hours making the most of keeping that record on a good tempo.”

“For many years the three of us were incredibly close,” says Manning. “The other two guys in the band played their roles before Eliminator , but in general they would just come, do their parts and go. Billy, Bill and I were involved in most of the production and engineering-type things. Working with Billy was always a pleasure, and especially when we got to be just one on one, the two of us going crazy back and forth, trying out sounds and different instruments. 

"Bill Ham was an amazing guy, too. I would say he leaned a little more to an executive producer role. He wasn’t totally conversant on all things musical theory or technical, but he knew what he liked when he heard it.

“A lot of that record ended up being done in my home studio in Memphis. It was a full twenty-four-track with a big desk and everything, but literally in my attic. For ninety-nine per cent of the time it was only me there, nobody else. Bill came over one time, and Billy, too, but just to add a little guitar piece.”

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After close on a year’s recording and then fine-tuning, Eliminator (a term for winning a drag race), was released on March 23, 1983. Suitably revved-up and high-octane, it was also appropriately wrapped in a cover depicting a racing-red 1933 Ford coupe with a Corvette engine that had been custom-built for Gibbons out in California. Using the car as a prop for the band had allowed the guitarist to write off the cost of it against tax. It also took a lead role in the medium through which Eliminator would explode as a genuine phenomenon.

On August 1, 1981, just one month after El Loco had emerged and been released, a new, 24-hour TV music channel launched in the US. At a stroke, MTV changed the rules of engagement for the music business, placing as much of an emphasis on high-concept videos and image as on songs. 

That year of 1983 alone, the channel was the medium through which Madonna was first introduced and Michael Jackson’s Thriller shot into global consciousness. At Bill Ham’s behest, ZZ Top also exploited this fast-developing opportunity to the full. Perceived up to that point as hoary old rockers, with their beards and dark glasses Gibbons and Hill especially could now be made to appear not just ageless but also as otherworldly beings.

Ham commissioned a young TV commercials director, Tim Newman, to shoot three videos for Eliminator ’s signature singles: Gimme All Your Lovin’ , a stuttering blues, Sharp Dressed Man and Legs . Shot at a windswept gas station in the small LA County town of Littlerock, the Gimme All Your Lovin’ promo would go on to win Newman an MTV Video Award and established the key elements of an unfolding campaign – Gibbons’s car, the golden ‘ZZ’ keychain on its starter key, the band in the guise of comic observers, and the so-called Eliminator girls, principally dancer and model Daniele Arnaud and Jeana Tomasino, a Playboy Playmate.

“Tim was a great director,” says Gibbons. “By which I mean to say he told us we weren’t much to look at and so we’d need some pretty girls in the mix to sweeten up the story. He brought along a picture book of models to our first meeting. I said to him: ‘Well, slow down here and let’s take this page by page.’

“When luck is on your side things just seem to happen at appropriate times,” Gibbons continues. “Like the headless guitars we used in that video. The guy who does our guitars to this day, Mr John Bolin, told us we’d need something different for television. John had a lumberjack’s saw, so Dusty and I took our perfectly good instruments over to him and he cut the tops off them. Somehow, all of those elements seemed to end up making perfect sense.”

Coinciding with the Gimme All Your Lovin ’ video debuting on MTV, ZZ Top opened their Eliminator tour in Lake Charles, Louisiana on 7 May. It would stretch out for nine months and cover the US and Europe. It also set the band the painstaking challenge of replicating their multi-layered new sound on stage. 

The solution proved to be a compact eight-track tape recorder built specifically for the purpose and also operated by Terry Manning. “I called it the Tap-A-Top-22, that being ZZ backwards,” Manning says. “It was a tough process, because the band didn’t really play natively in the way Eliminator had turned out. They would come up with a set-list, and I would go through and get sounds and beats to fit the songs taken from the actual four-track master tapes. I edited them as required, for instance if they wanted to extend a particular song live.

“On the tour, I actually cued the band live with those things. One of my eight tracks was a stage cue where I would have a mic and yell out: ‘Bridge!’ which the band would hear in the stage monitors only. There were also lighting and stage automation cues. It was quite a thing to pull off – and I’m not sure that it always worked.”

Though by the start of the next year, the success or otherwise of ZZ’s live shows had long-since become almost incidental to their own outsize characters, blown up by blanket exposure on MTV. Their third video, Legs , sealed the ascent of the self-styled ‘little ol’ band from Texas’ towards becoming a household name. 

In this clip, 21-year-old Wendy Frazier is seen transformed from mousy shoe-shop assistant to defiant sex kitten, and Gibbons and Hill tout sheepskin-coated guitars fitted with motors that enabled them to be spun through 360 degrees. “First time I tried it, of course, I knocked the shit out of myself upside the head,” Dusty Hill remembers.

“There was one very special moment that occurred in the UK not long after Eliminator came out,” Gibbons relates. “The BBC screened a marathon music video night, and Gimme All Your Lovin’ , Sharp Dressed Man and Legs were broadcast in rapid succession just as the pubs were being let out. Right there, the entire country discovered this band of renegade misfits. We went on and had a runaway success.”

“When Legs popped, everything went kind of fast and furious,” says Hill. “As Billy likes to say, some people put on a false beard as a disguise, but we couldn’t do that. Frank pretty much stopped hanging with me, because I would draw crowds wherever I went. But you can either enjoy a thing like that or let it eat you up. We decided to enjoy it. And it was a hell of a ride.”

To date, Eliminator has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Further, it had a near-instantaneous and profound effect on how rock records would be made to sound through the 80s and beyond and using newly available technology. Even the Rolling Stones appeared to have sat up and taken notice, since by that November, 1983, they had fashioned an up-tempo, high-gloss hit album of their own, Undercover . But Terry Manning, for one, believes Eliminator also had a counter impact.

“Of course, it’s always great to be associated with something that turns into a worldwide hit, and it did influence what came later in music – some for the good but some for the worst,” he suggests. “Unfortunately it may have helped contribute to the downfall of rock’n’roll, because of how other people started using machines and things.”

Two years later, ZZ Top followed up Eliminator with a virtual re-run, Afterburner , but have ever since gradually pedalled back towards their original roots, as was evidenced by 2012’s La Futura , a typically bare-boned Rick Rubin production. It is Eliminator , though, that was the bed-rock of the band’s well-received Pyramid Stage set at Glastonbury, and will go on being for just so long as they continue to hit the road.

Whenever their itinerary takes them next to Cleveland, Ohio, Gibbons will, as is his custom, drop in at the city’s Rock And Roll Hall of Fame museum where his 1933 Ford Coupe is now on permanent exhibit. And when he speaks of that impending pilgrimage, Gibbons might also be summing up the staying power of the album from which the car took its name. “If we happen to be in the neighbourhood I’ll go by, crank it up and take it out for a spin,” he says. “It’s still a hot-rod, that’s for sure.”

This feature originally appeared in Classic Rock 227, in July 2016.

Paul Rees been a professional writer and journalist for more than 20 years. He was Editor-in-Chief of the music magazines Q and Kerrang! for a total of 13 years and during that period interviewed everyone from Sir Paul McCartney, Madonna and Bruce Springsteen to Noel Gallagher, Adele and Take That. His work has also been published in the Sunday Times, the Telegraph, the Independent, the Evening Standard, the Sunday Express, Classic Rock, Outdoor Fitness, When Saturday Comes and a range of international periodicals. 

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Most Popular

ZZ Top Afterburner World Tour includes dates in America, Europe, Australia, Japan and New Zealand. ZZ Plays few first shows with "eliminator setlist, but those shows includes "Can't Stop Rockin' from the Afterburner album. In december -85 starts Afterburner Tour with stageshow ,which includes lazer shows, "egyptian head" (from Sleeping Bag single album cover) on the stage, fuzzy guitars etc. Really cool and setlist includes new songs. Specially -85 gigs includes lot of Afterburner stuff. Delirious, Planet Of Women etc. Also "Stages" was there for a while. Frank's drum kit where higher than before and Billy And Dusty plays custom made Dean Explorel style guitars and Explorel guitars with different neck.  But yeah this tour was really awesome and there are lot of recordings.

Festival at Ostend Airport - Ostend, Belgium - 08/15/1985

• Gimme All Your Lovin'
• Got Me Under Pressure
• I Got The Six
• Waitin' For The Bus
• Jesus Just Left Chicago
• Sharp Dressed Man
• Ten Foot Pole
• Manic Mechanic
• I Heard It On The X
• I Need You Tonight
• Pearl Necklace
• Cheap Sunglasses
• Tube Snake Boogie
• Jailhouse Rock
• Can't Stop Rockin'

Castle Donington Raceway, - Derbyshire, United Kindom - 08/17/1985

Notes: This is "Rockin' The Castle" Bootleg.  I think keyboard is used during " TV Dinners " and " Legs ".  Sounds  really cool!

RDS Arena - Dublin, Ireland - 08/18/1985

Setlist coming soon, when i transfer old casette tape.

Montreal Forum - Montreal, Quebec, Canada - 12/01/1985

Notes:  Techno intro before "Planet Of Women". This intro was used later that tour usually before "Sharp Dressed Man" with 10 second countdown.  Really cool show, laser lighting used during few songs.

• Sleeping Bag
• Heard It On The X
• Arrested For Driving While Blind
• Party On The Patio
• Planet Of Women

Dane County Coliseum - Madison, Wisconsin - 02/05/1086

• Arrested For driving While Blind

  Civic Center Arena - St. Paul, Minnesota - 02/07/1986

Notes: ZZ plays 3 shows at Civic Center (february 6-8th).  If you have february 6th or 8th show, please let me know.

Hilton Coliseum - Ames, Iowa - 02/14/1986

• Part On The Patio

Civic Arena - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania - 04/10/1986

Civic arena - pittsburgh, pennsylvania - 04/11/1986, joe louis arena - detroit, michigan - 04/18/1986.

Market Square Arena, Indianapolis, Indiana - 04/30/1986

Notes: Video recording is incomplete, but audio recording is the full show.

• Sleeping Bag (Start in the Middle)

"Mountain Aire '86 Festival" -  Calavaras County Fairgrounds, Angels Camp, California  -  07/20/1986

Isstadion - stockholm, sweden - 09/13/1986, scandinavium - gothenburg, sweden - 09/14/1986, icehall - helsinki, finland - 09/16/1986.

Notes: This recording is on an Tape record . I haven't digitized it yet.  Super Rare recording.

Eisstadion - Mannheim, West Germany - 09/22/1986

Eissporthalle - frankfurt, germany - 09/23/1986.

Notes:  This show includes very rare live performance of "Delirious".  Last concert recording, which I have heard of this song was at Montreal december 1985.  This recording is on an Vinyl record. (Afterburnin´ Frankfurt Bootleg)  I haven't digitized it yet.

Palais Omnisports de Paris-Bercy - Paris, France - 09/29/1986

Les arenes - nîmes, france - 10/05/1986, rijnhal, arnhem, holland - 10/13/1986, deutschlanderhalle, berlin, west germany - 10/25/1986.

• Gimme All Your Lovin` 
• Manic Mechanic 
• Cheap Sunglasses 
• Sharp Dressed Man 
• Can`t Stop Rocking
• Velcro Fly 
• La Grange 

Notes :   This is a bootleg LP/CD  "Top Guns".  This is shorter than a normal show. They skip "Wait/Jesus, Ten Foot Pole, etc". First I think that there may be something missing from this recording. But when listening show, Billy talks very little between the songs and there´s no any "cutting" between songs.   it sounded like they were in a little hurry. 

Osaka Jo-Hall - Osaka, Japan - 02/19/1987

Note: This recording is released two different bootlegs "Live In The Usa & "Una Hermosa Noche". Sounds like soundboard recording. Really nice.

Olympic Park - Melbourne, Australia - 02/25/1987

Notes : Rare recording from Australia!  

Interviews & TV Appearances 1985-1987

• "Sleeping Bag" - Japan TV
• "Stages"- Rock TV Japan
• "Stages" - Japan TV (filmed at Lousiana swamp) 1986
• "Sharp Dressed Man" & "Tush" - NBC Studios, Los Angeles, CA (Tonight Show with Johnny Carson) 05/16/1986"
• Can't Stop Rockin'" - Noel Edwards Show 1986
• MTV Promo, MTV Liberty crusie promo 1986
• Interview England TV 1986 & "Stages" live.
• "Can´t Stop Rockin´" - The Tube 1987

Eliminator by ZZ Top

Album Reviews 1983 Albums , 2013 Reviews , Album Reviews by Ric Albano , American Artists , Texas Artists , ZZ Top 1

Buy Eliminator

The trio consists of guitarist and vocalist Billy Gibbons , bassist and vocalist Dusty Hill , and drummer Frank Beard . Formed in Houston in 1969, the group was signed to London Records in 1970 and released their debut album in 1971. Although centered around blues-rock, ZZ Top had experimented with several styles and lyrical motifs through their initial seven studio albums. Following the success of 1979’s Degüello , the band embarked on a 1980 tour of Europe and gained some exposure to the electronic new wave/pop of the day. This experience heavily influenced much of the sonic qualities and song themes for Eliminator , as many of the songs were written backstage on that tour. The band then chose Memphis as the recording location because of the city’s musical tradition.

Sound engineer Linden Hudson researched popular song tempos, and suggested that 120 beats per minute was the most popular tempo in rock music, so most of the recorded Eliminator album was recorded at that tempo. This has since become know as “the people’s tempo”. Although this sort of sound manipulation may not go over well with all old-school blues and rock purists or blues-rock purists, the album does not contain one filler song, as each individual track works well as a stand-alone song. In fact, one can claim that the whole is much less than the sum of this album’s parts

Beard’s simple rock drum beat sets the pace for the riff-driven “Gimme All Your Lovin'” (which in turn sets the pace for the album). Accented by a few guitar overdubs and pad synths, this opener contains one of the more famous leads by Gibbons and reached the Top 40 on the U.S. charts. “Got Me Under Pressure” follows and has become the most controversial song, not due to lyrical content, but due to allegations by Hudson that it was written and recorded by himself and Gibbons in one afternoon without the involvement or knowledge of the other two band members. Although the band members disputed much of his compositional accounts, Linden says he created the bass on a synthesizer, the drums on a drum machine, and helped Gibbons write the lyrics while Gibbons performed the guitars and vocals.

“Sharp Dressed Man” is the most catchy of the hit songs and utilizes a more traditional rock arrangement with some strange vocal effects being the only really synthesized parts. While on tour in England to support the album Degüello , the band members were impressed with the cool threads and overall sense of fashion. The song reached the Top Ten on the mainstream rock charts and has remained one of the band’s most famous songs.

The best song on the album is “I Need You Tonight”, led by Gibbons’s really soulful and bluesy guitar with an effect-laden edge. Hill uses a real bass guitar (not a synth bass arpeggio) and the song contains some great melodies during the choruses, adding a splash of sweetness to this extended piece with an almost dark feel. The persistent reaching of Gibbons’ guitar, especially during the long instrumental sections, makes it a highlight of the album and even as the song ends, it feels like the bluesy guitar is reluctant to quit. The short but potent “I Got the Six” completes the first side as a full-fledged, good time party anthem.

The early part of the album’s second side is the best demonstration of the “synthesizer meets soul” sound which the group was aiming for on Eliminator . On “Legs” the synths are most prominent along with a consistent beat and very few chord changes. With a decent melody, clear hook, and some bluesy lead guitar licks, “Legs” was inspired by a real-life situation when the group spotted a young lady and spun the car around for a second look. But when she vanished Gibbons said, “That girl’s got legs, and she knows how to use them.” “Thug” is the most unabashed eighties-style, synth-heavy song, almost sounding experimental. “TV Dinners” contains organ-like synths good lead by Gibbons. Written late in the recording process, the song’s title was inspired by a woman in a Memphis nightclub, where the group went during a break in recording.

“Dirty Dog” is the best pure dance song on the second side, with a constant, rhythmic synth by Hill and the thump-thump-thump of the kick drum by Beard. This is the song where the attempted meshing fully came together. “If I Could Only Flag Her Down” contains much of the same boogie feel from ZZ Top days of past. The closer “Bad Girl” is sung by Hill who uses a Little Richard-type, frantic voice in this almost live sounding, old time rocker.

Following Eliminator ′s release, the band embarked on a worldwide tour which was extremely successful, breaking many records. ZZ Top’s next album, 1985’s Afterburner was another commercial success and utilized much of the same “synthesizer meets soul” formula. In fact, the band embraced this sound so strongly in the 1980s that they re-mastered their first six albums with 80s style echo and drum machines, much unlike their original album sound, in a 1987 box set called Six Pack .

Part of Classic Rock Review’s celebration of 1983 albums.

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How ZZ Top Conquered MTV With the ‘Eliminator’ Trilogy

By Rob Sheffield

Rob Sheffield

The world is mourning today for the late, great Dusty Hill of ZZ Top , who died Tuesday . He was a beer drinker, hell-raiser, sharp-dressed broom duster, and bassist in the same trio for more than 50 years. But Dusty was more than just a legendary bluesman — he and ZZ Top helped define music videos in the early Eighties, conquering MTV with their Eliminator Trilogy. The little ol’ band from Tejas, the most proudly unfashionable rockers around, became MTV’s unlikeliest superstars ever. And they did it without cleaning up their look: beards, hats, cheap sunglasses. As Billy Gibbons said, shrugging , “Dusty and I don’t fit too well with Giorgio Armani.”

ZZ Top had a long career before MTV even existed. (The channel turns 40 this Sunday.) But they changed everything about their story with their synth-y reinvention on Eliminator and the classic video trilogy of “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs,” made with director Tim Newman. Against all odds, the weird beards turned out to be the old-school rockers who best adapted to the Eighties music-video revolution. ZZ Top reveled in the humor and ridiculousness of it all, busting their synchronized dance moves and spinning their white-fur guitars. These guys always got the joke, at a time when other bands were still just nervously lip-syncing in front of brick walls.

ZZ Top embraced the playful gender burlesque of MTV, way ahead of their peers. They were out here in the parking lots of Strip Mall America, tossing the keys to the shy girl who works at Yolanda’s Shoe Salon, rooting for the underdog. The villains in these videos are sexist men — the party girl in “Sharp Dressed Man” gets groped by her sleazy date, until she pours champagne on his crotch. The leering bullies in the “Legs” burger joint get their asses kicked by an alliance of babes and bikers, while ZZ Top cheer them on.

These videos made them heroes to New Wave misfits, winning them a new female fandom. As Dusty Hill told Creem , “The videos have given us a younger audience. 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!” To appreciate this quote, keep in mind that in the Eighties, no American male rock bands were willing to admit having teenage-girl fans, at least not without treating those girls as a sexualized punch line. ZZ Top were far ahead of their time.

The Eliminator Trilogy was a classic combo of beards, babes, and cars. But as film scholar and babe-culture exegete Abbey Bender has pointed out , “The ZZ Top babes are the feminine mirror image of the band itself.” There’s always a trio of them. The video vixens are superhero feminist avengers, storming into any scene and instantly taking charge. ZZ Top are the Greek chorus, giving a collective thumbs-up. It would have been easier, and more conformist, to make videos where the vixens hook up with the boys in the band. But ZZ Top had a different story to tell. They understood video was drag, just as their beards and shades were drag, so they slid into MTV without losing any of their Tube Snake Boogie Realness.

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It began with “Gimme All Your Lovin’” in the summer of 1983, a time when music videos were exploding so fast, each week brought a new revolution. ZZ Top appear as guardian angels to help a hard-luck kid escape his mean old boss at the gas station: the red Eliminator car appears, and out step three foxy ladies who kidnap him for a spin. “Sharp Dressed Man” was twice as great, proving once and for all that ZZ Top were rock’s funniest comedy trio. They slide the ZZ Top keychain to the humble parking valet at a fancy club; the Eliminator girls take him under their wing, dress him up, and bring him back to the club as a star.

But “Legs” was the masterpiece. Like Rocky III or The Return of the King , it was the peak of the trilogy, with ZZ Top coming to the rescue of a plain Jane stranded at the mall, somewhere in the Valley, where she gets bullied by her bosses and customers. ZZ Top to the rescue! The Eliminator babes take the poor girl shopping. (The funniest trying-on-outfits montage of the pre– Crazy Rich Asians era?) The ladies bring her back to confront her bullies. ZZ Top applaud our heroine in her attack on the patriarchy, as she tweaks the nose of one jerk (actually the choreographer). But despite all the lingerie onscreen, they don’t sexualize her — all they want is for her to ride off into the sunset with the boy of her dreams.

Wendy Frazier, who played the heroine, had her 21st birthday on the set; the ZZ Top guys gave her a signed teddy bear . The video vixens have said they got paid well and treated well. One snagged a role in Ghostbusters; another ended up on Real Housewives of Orange County . As Frazier recalled, she was “given the ZZ Top keychain and transformed into a long-legged Tinker Bell.”

For much of their Seventies audience, ZZ Top seemed like a reaction against the phoniness of glam rock. “This is our big chance,” Dusty Hill boasted to Rolling Stone’ s Chet Flippo in 1976. “We’re gonna play so well that they’ll forget glitter ever happened.”

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But unbeknownst to their fans, ZZ Top had glitter roots, from their early days as glam poseurs. “We used to be in this band called the American Blues,” Hill said. “And we thought it would be kinda neat if everybody dyed their hair blue. It didn’t work; in fact all it ever got us was into fights. Man, I still shudder whenever I hear someone say, ‘Hey, music man’ — that’s how we always used to get called out.”

In other words, this was a band that knew what it was like to get hassled and beaten up for striking a pose. That might help explain why they had no fear about jumping into the anything-goes spectacle of music videos, or why they sided with the misfits. A 1983 profile in NME revealed the intriguing detail that Dusty Hill decorated his wardrobe case with two photos of Elvis Presley and one photo of Klaus Nomi. The late German performance artist was an obscure cult figure in his lifetime, best known for his 1979 SNL performance with David Bowie. (Sadly, Nomi became one of music’s first AIDS deaths.)

ZZ Top were always into culture clash. Dusty Hill whipped up “Tush” in 10 minutes at a soundcheck in Florence, Alabama, but it’s a landmark of Yiddish blues poetry. “‘Tush,’ as in ‘that’s a nice tush on that girl,’ that’s definitely the same as the Yiddish word,” Hill told Spin in 1986. “I don’t know how we got it in Dallas. All it could have took was one guy moving down from New York.”

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So it makes sense their music also played around with gender clichés. Their smash 1986 synth-pop ballad “Rough Boy” sure sounds like a song about gay-bar cruising, with a video to match. Who was this rough boy? Gibbons explained, “He’s this fictitious character who was the only way that ZZ Top was going to get to play another ballad. The way he came up was, ‘How would a ZZ Top fan allow such a beautiful, lush bed of sound into their realm?’ The pretty music had to have a rough boy in it. He’s there.”

Everybody remembers the Eliminator girls, but don’t sleep on the little-remembered “TV Dinners,” which we all loved almost as much at the time. Instead of a vixen-mobile, the star of “TV Dinners” was a green goblin who terrorizes a video-game dude by hiding in his frozen food. The claymation goblin was intentionally cheap and crummy-looking — a typical ZZ Top power move. The band kept the streak going with their sequel Afterburne r , with the high-tech “Velcro Fly” and “Sleeping Bag.” (Very comparable to Rush’s synth experiments on Hold Your Fire and Presto . ) But with their Eighties MTV makeover, ZZ Top defined music video at its best — just one of the amazing feats of their ever-amazing career.

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‘Eliminator’: How ZZ Top’s Eighth Album Destroyed The Competition

Taking the world by storm, the ‘Eliminator’ album enhanced ZZ Top’s badass boogie with some cutting-edge technology and MTV-friendly videos.

As they entered the 80s, ZZ Top had already enjoyed nearly a decade of sustained success, with each of their albums from 1973’s Tres Hombres on cracking the US Top 30. Yet, as they began work on their eighth album, Eliminator , the hirsute Texan trio were concerned their trademark blues-rock sound was becoming a touch too formulaic.

Listen to ‘Eliminator’ here .

The problem: “we needed to be played in dance clubs”.

The band had started to address the situation on 1981’s El Loco album , which featured frontman Billy Gibbons’ new toy – a prototype Fairlight sampler/synthesiser. The instrument appeared on a couple of atypically leftfield tracks, Groovy Little Hippie Pad and Party On The Patio, yet while Gibbons enjoyed the experimentation (“Without question, there’s some crazy, interesting-sounding stuff on that record,” he told Classic Rock ), ZZ Top’s fanbase weren’t sure at first. While it hit the US Top 20 and went gold, El Loco sold less than half the copies than its predecessor, Degüello , had moved.

For Gibbons, the feeling his band were getting stuck in a rut was compounded when ZZ Top toured Europe in support of El Loco . Visiting a nightclub on the continent, the singer/guitarist watched a large throng of young music fans dancing to The Rolling Stones’ funky Emotional Rescue, and it struck him that, if the Stones could successfully reimagine themselves for the new decade, then his band’s badass boogie could also be credibly overhauled.

The solution: “I came up with some ideas to make a very different album”

“To me, Billy is a true genius,” long-term ZZ Top engineer Terry Manning said in a 2021 interview in Classic Rock . “And not only musically, but also as a human being, if there is such a definition. He’s extremely philosophical, a deep thinker and musically very aware. He started to analyse why ZZ Top didn’t get played in dance clubs and concluded they were not up to the required rhythmic capabilities.

“He asked me what we could do,” Manning added. “I started going to clubs and studying beats. The market had changed quite a bit from blues-based rock’n’roll. So I came up with some ideas we could implement to make a very different album.”

The new sound: “We knew the direction we were going in, so we weren’t flying blind”

Broadly, Gibbons wanted Eliminator to incorporate the then fashionable new wave/synth-rock ethic but without sacrificing the band’s trademark sound. However, while ideas about upping the tempo of songs and adding layers of synths and drum machines were explored during pre-production for the album, most of the Eliminator songs still derived from the band’s tried and trusted methodology: lengthy jam sessions in Gibbons’ and drummer Frank Beard’s houses, where the spontaneity often sparked off a rush of creativity.

“We knew the direction we were going in, so we weren’t flying blind,” Beard later told Classic Rock . “The three of us would bash around till we got tired, sometimes by 5pm, others we’d go on to midnight. Billy would set a sheet of paper in the middle of the floor and write out lyrics on the hoof.”

The songs: “She’s got legs and she knows how to use ’em”

For the Eliminator sessions proper, ZZ Top moved to their studio of choice – Ardent, in Memphis – which had famously hot-housed classic titles from the likes of Led Zeppelin , Joe Cocker, Leon Russell and local cult heroes Big Star. The venerable complex had also sired every ZZ Top album since 1973’s Tres Hombres , and the band felt right at home there. “Ardent was such a remarkable place and a great gentlemen’s club,” Billy Gibbons told Classic Rock . “Terry Manning’s name appeared on our records, but they were really the work of the house consortium of Terry, Joe Hardy, John Hampton and the owner, Mr John Fry, rest his soul.”

Memphis – and its colourful locals – also provided inspiration for several of Eliminator ’s best songs. On one occasion, the music Gibbons heard in an after-hours club moved him to hare across to Ardent at 3am to add much of the guitar filigree – including two aching solos – to the album’s centrepiece ballad, I Need You Tonight.

On a separate night out, Gibbons recalled holing up in an East Memphis bar where “a young lady walked in, wearing a painter’s white jumpsuit. As she strolled past, I saw she had the words ‘TV Dinners’ emblazoned on the back of the suit. I don’t know to this day why that was such a stimulus, but there the title of the song was.” Again determined to capture an idea the moment it arrived, Gibbons went back to his room at Memphis’ Peabody Hotel and wrote the lyrics to TV Dinners in one night.

Elsewhere, ZZ Top’s past experiences galvanised new material. The time Gibbons spent in London at the height of punk, in 1977, catalysed the high-octane stomp of I Got The Six, while further experiments with his Fairlight synth provoked a brilliantly unlikely musical motif. “We found out we could make it sound like a flat tyre going down a muddy road,” Frank Beard remembered. This new sound would characterise one of Eliminator ’s biggest hits, written after the band had spotted a female driver stranded on the road, seeking help from passersby. “She’s got legs and she knows how to use ’em,” Billy Gibbons noted, and one of the best ZZ Top songs of all time was born.

The recording: “Two of us going crazy back and forth, trying out sounds and different instruments”

Giving Legs a run for its money was Eliminator’s breakout single, Gimme All Your Lovin’. Though it was based on a simple yet irresistible Stones-esque guitar riff, the song fell into place when Gibbons and co deployed more of the new electronica at their disposal in the 80s – in this case, the perfect beat of a drum machine.

During an interview with The Guardian ’s Michael Hall, the ZZ Top frontman recalled experiencing a revelation when he began playing with this new piece of kit: “The crack in the code was the fact that the drum machine introduced for the first time to the listening ear close-to-perfect time, which had been the aspiration of musicians since the invention of the metronome.”

Indeed, while Eliminator was still very much the work of the Lone Star State’s most badass boogie merchants, it came with a notably more commercial sheen. The polish came from the integration of the band’s traditional analogue sound with the new digital technology – much of which was fine-honed during the album’s latter stages.

“Frank and Dusty [Hill, bassist] assigned me to the task of threading it all together,” Gibbons told Classic Rock . “A sense of importance was placed on timing and tuning. And we spent a lot of productive hours making the most of keeping that record on a good tempo.”

Noting how close he had become with Gibbons and the band’s then manager and producer, Bill Ham, engineer Terry Manning added, “The other two guys in the band played their roles before Eliminator , but in general they would just come, do their parts and go. Billy, Bill and I were involved in most of the production and engineering type things. Working with Billy was always a pleasure, and especially when we got to be just one on one, the two of us going crazy back and forth, trying out sounds and different instruments.”

The release: “We went on and had runaway success”

Released on 23 March 1983, Eliminator had become a painstaking project, its recording and fine-tuning taking the best part of a year. However, when the record finally arrived – appropriately housed in a sleeve depicting Gibbons’ custom-built 1933 red Ford Coupe – it wasn’t just roadworthy, it quickly outstripped most of the competition.

The quality of the album gave ZZ Top a head-start, but the timing of its release also played into their hands. Since the 24-hour music channel MTV had launched in 1981, the landscape had shifted. The new video medium was already starting to turn artists as diverse as Madonna , Michael Jackson, Prince and Def Leppard into global stars, and it was about to do the same for that little ol’ band from Texas.

Thanks to director Tim Newman’s brilliant videos for Eliminator ’s signature hits, Gimme All Your Lovin’, Legs and the stuttering, bluesy Sharp Dressed Man, ZZ Top were quickly slotted into heavy rotation on MTV. The Gimme All Your Lovin’ clip introduced all the key elements of the promo campaign surrounding Eliminator – Gibbons’ car and the golden “ZZ” keychain on its starter key; the band playing the role of comic observers while the Eliminator girls, dancer and model Danièle Arnaud and Playboy pin-up Jeana Tomasino, took centre stage.

The aftermath: “We went on and had a runaway success”

Coinciding with the Gimme All Your Lovin’ video debuting on MTV, ZZ Top’s Eliminator world tour opened in Lake Charles, Louisiana, on 7 May 1983. By the time it wound down, nine months later, the band had a truly global profile: the Gimme All Your Lovin’ promo clip had won an MTV Video award, and Eliminator had become a fixture on the UK and US charts, on its way to racking up worldwide sales of over 20 million copies. ZZ Top were now a household name.

“There was one very special moment that occurred in the UK not long after Eliminator came out,” Billy Gibbons told Classic Rock in 2021. “The BBC screened a marathon music video night, Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp Dressed Man and Legs were broadcast in rapid succession just as the pubs were being let out. Right there, the entire country discovered this band of renegade misfits. We went on and had a runaway success.”

Find out which ‘Eliminator’ tracks raced into the best ZZ Top songs .

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Deep Dive: ZZ Top, ELIMINATOR

By 1982, ZZ Top was ready for change. They'd gotten experimental with 1981 release, El Loco , to a muted response. It only sold about half as many copies as the band's previous full-length, Deguello .

Where many groups would turn tail and return to their signature sound to get things back on track, ZZ Top rolled the dice and leaned into their newfound love of high-end studio technology. It was during a European tour when guitarist Billy Gibbons found himself in a nightclub with a packed dance-floor moving to the sounds of the Rolling Stones' 1980 single, "Emotional Rescue." That's when the light bulb went off.

"He's extremely philosophical, a deep thinker and musically very aware. He started to analyze why ZZ didn't get played in dance clubs, and concluded that they were not up to the required rhythmic capabilities," explained the band's long-time engineer, Terry Manning, years later. "He asked me what we could do. I started going to clubs and studying beats. The market had changed quite a bit from blues-based rock 'n' roll. So I came up with some ideas we could implement to make a very different album."

In a case of timing really being everything, ZZ Top released Eliminator on March 23, 1983, which is when fledgling cable channel MTV was exploding onto pop culture. The album's mix of dirty blues riffs and dance-floor-friendly drum machine rhythms was just the ticket. Using Gibbons' own custom red 1933 Ford coupe with a Corvette engine from the album cover as the centerpiece of the music videos, the clips went on to become synonymous with the fledgling network.

Blasting out of the gate with lead single "Gimme All Your Lovin,'" ZZ Top's first Eliminator single crashed the top 40 to peak at #37 for the week of May 21, 1983. But those countless spins on MTV helped sear the band's new image of hi-tech hot-rods, headless guitars and turbo-charged blues-rocker onto public consciousness.

"Tim was a great director," Gibbons said of Tim Newman, who handled the band's video's for "Gimme All Your Lovin,'" "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs." "By which I mean to say he told us we weren't much to look at, and so we'd need some pretty girls in the mix to sweeten up the story. He brought along a picture book of models to our first meeting. I said to him: 'Well, slow down here, and let's take this page by page.'"

"Sharp Dressed Man" served as the second track in the Eliminator video trilogy. While the song stalled at #56 on the Hot 100, the video was a massive hit, propelling it to #8 on the Mainstream Rock Songs chart. "Legs" completed the visual trilogy, with the track cruising up the charts to peak at #8 on the Hot 100 for the week of July 21, 1983. It's also the video where the band debuted the legendary spinning fuzzy guitars.

"When Legs popped, everything went kind of fast and furious," revealed bass player Dusty Hill. "As Billy likes to say, some people put on a false beard as a disguise, but we couldn't do that. Frank pretty much stopped hanging with me, because I would draw crowds wherever I went. But you can either enjoy a thing like that or let it eat you up. We decided to enjoy it. And it was a hell of a ride."

Eliminator was the change--and hit--that ZZ Top was looking for, peaking at #9 on the Billboard 200 for the week of November 11,1983. The #1 album in America that week: The Police's Synchronicity .

Watch the three iconic videos from Eliminator -- SHARP DRESSED MAN , GIMME ALL YOUR LOVIN' and LEGS -- now upgraded to HD to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the instantly classic album.

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Is ‘Eliminator’ ZZ Top’s Best Album? Our Writers Answer Five Big Questions

To celebrate the 35th anniversary of Eliminator , the daringly innovative album that made ZZ Top household names, we gave five writers all our hugs and kisses and then asked them to answer five big questions about its place in rock history. Here's what they said.

Eliminator is ZZ Top’s best-selling album, having sold more than 10 million copies to date. But is it their best album? Why or why not, and if not what is?

Michael Gallucci : Tres Hombres has a slight edge over Eliminator , mainly because I think it's a better representation of what ZZ Top are all about. I love the way Eliminator took over radio in 1983, but some of it sounds a bit dated now.

Nick DeRiso : It’s a great album, and it’s a fun album, but it’s not their best album. Deguello , though it's brilliant from start to finish, can’t even top Tres Hombres , which will always be ZZ Top’s most complete studio effort. One of that 1973 project's deep cuts said it best: "Hot, Blues and Righteous." By the way, if you want a preview of these oh-so-‘80s sounds, head over to "Manic Mechanic” from Deguello . It’s all there.

Matthew Wilkening : It's a very close three-way race -- I couldn't say this if Tres Hombres or Deguello were playing right now -- but yes, it's the best. I could be biased; this was my introduction to the band. But after listening to all three endlessly, this is the one I reach for most. The singles deserve every rave they get, and the second side doesn't get nearly the credit it deserves. "TV Dinners" and "Thug" explore the band's weird side in a wonderful way, and the final three songs find them leaning into a supercharged and more aggressive version of their '70s sound. Plus, Billy Gibbons' lead guitar playing just shines throughout the whole record -- getting nearly as much time in the spotlight as his vocals.

Michael Christopher : Some will point to Tres Hombres or Degüello , but it all depends on how you like your ZZ Top served: straight-up Texas boogie rock or bluesy with an extra side of synth. It’s sort of like Van Halen pre and post- 1984 . I think it’s their best -- not just how completely out of left field it was sonically, but because it worked so incredibly well. Even today it sounds so fresh for the most part.

Eduardo Rivadavia : No way. I'd rank Tres Hombres , Rio Grande Mud and maybe even Deguello higher than Eliminator , in the grand scheme of ZZ Top's career discography. However, Eliminator has to be one of the most remarkable feats of re-branding in the classic rock era. While most '70s bands were killed off by MTV because they were either too old or too ugly, ZZ Top turned both of those liabilities into assets, making music videos that mined their image and especially those long beards for comic relief.

What’s the best song on Eliminator  -- and why?

Gallucci: "Gimme All Your Lovin'." It was the first introduction to Eliminator as both its first single and opening track. And it was a perfect showcase for their shiny new upgrade.

DeRiso: "Gimme All Your Lovin’” helped shape the hair-band musical aesthetic, "Sharp Dressed Man” defines the Eliminator sound and “Legs” set the template for cheesy teen-fantasy videos. Unfortunately, after decades of heavy rotation both on radio and (especially back then) MTV, those songs have become so ubiquitous that they’ve lost some of their punch for me. The far-lesser-spun "Got Me Under Pressure,” on the other hand, has started to feel like a lost classic.

Wilkening: Can the guitar solo in "I Got the Six" count? It's got it's own chorus and everything! If not, then the effortlessly and endlessly cool "Sharp Dressed Man" gets the nod.

Christopher: It’s hard to find a song more quintessential for the time period that still holds up as “Sharp Dressed Man.” Lyrically, it epitomized the day with a focus on style first, substance later – if at all. “ Top coat, top hat, and I don't worry 'cause my wallet's fat ” is so perfectly 80s. Musically, it’s catchy as hell, from the first note you just want to strut into the night like old-school professional wrestler Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin, who also happened to use the track as his entrance music when it was released as a single in the summer of 1983.

Rivadavia: I can't settle on just one, but I can narrow it down to the first three. I love the urgent pace and quirky lyrics of "Got Me Under Pressure." No song epitomizes ZZ Top's commercial rebirth for the '80s better than "Sharp Dressed Man." And there's simply no song cooler than "Gimme All Your Lovin'." There's that instantly recognizable opening drum beat, Billy's growling guitar tone, and his lick at 0:26 just kicks the song into another gear. Brilliant stuff.

If you had to cut one song, which would it be and why?

Gallucci: "If I Could Only Flag Her Down." The album loses some steam by the end, and as Eliminator 's second-to-last song, this comes off as a throwback and afterthought after the rest of the LP's forward-thinking momentum.

DeRiso: How many signature albums finish with a thud, a throwaway song that feels tacked on? One of them, unfortunately, is Eliminator , which ends with a by-the-numbers, entirely forgettable slice of boogie-rock called "Bad Girl.” On a project simply bursting at the seams with next-gen ideas – there wasn’t even a word for it back then: space-age pop-metal? New Wave blues? This track feels boringly retrograde.

If a child's life is at stake or something, "If I Could Only Flag Her Down," but only because it sounds like it belongs on a different excellent ZZ Top record.

Christopher: “Thug” ambles aimlessly and is one of the only songs on the record that sounded dated before Eliminator even hit the shelves.

Rivadavia: I'm tempted to chop "I Got the Six," because it's totally overshadowed by Dusty Hill's other Eliminator lead vocal on "Bad Girl," but I'm going to go with "Thug," instead, because it's one of the few tracks where the electronics really get in the way, for me, and that lonely bass slapping is only cool the first time you hear it.

What do you say to the "keyboards ruined ZZ Top" believers?

Gallucci: ZZ Top needed something to make them interesting by the early '80s. Their take on boogie blues was lost in another era; the keyboards injected their music with an electricity that was missing from most of their recent albums.

DeRiso: I guess you had to be there.

Wilkening: I'd hope they were talking about later albums, at least. And okay, they got stuck in a digital rut for a little while there, but some really awesome songs came out of their post- Eliminator exploration. "Sleeping Bag" is amazing, half of Afterburner is great and I wouldn't want to live in a world without "Pincushion," "Fuzzbox Voodoo" or "My Head's in Mississippi."

Christopher: They’ve got it backward. Keyboards saved ZZ Top. The trio was already experiencing a decline in popularity, on the charts at least, at the dawn of the '80s. Introducing keyboards made them relevant and managed that elusive second act. Blues-rock purists will forever deride the move as embracing a passing trend, but putting keyboards at the forefront not only widened the ZZ Top fan base, it showed their dexterity as musicians. There are still plenty of nasty guitar licks on Eliminator , though you had to dig a bit deeper into side two to find them.

Rivadavia: I say the electronic drums were even more damaging -- if not so much on Eliminator , then certainly on those early albums reissued on CD with re-recorded drums. That's gotta be one of the biggest travesties in the annals of classic-rock reissue programs. As for the keyboards, I guess they definitely marred subsequent albums, to one degree or another (crappy songwriting was equally to blame), but I hardly notice them on Eliminator , which I heard at such a young age, I hadn't developed my (snob) ears yet.

How successful do you think the album would have been without MTV?

Gallucci: Not nearly as successful, but I think it still would have been one of the band's bestselling albums. Eliminator sounds like a leap of faith, and I think more open-minded fans, and plenty of new ones, would have been on board either way. But there's no denying the impact of those around-the-clock videos. It's really hard to separate them from the music now.

DeRiso: Certainly, ZZ Top’s knack for distinctive imagery -- the furry guitars, the Space Shuttle hooptie car, the beards (seriously, nobody on MTV had beards back then) – helped sell this canny update of their Texas blues-rock sound to the masses. But the truth is, these songs hold up quite well without all of those bells and whistles. It may have been a slower ride to the top, but I like to think ZZ Top would have made it there anyway.

Wilkening: We'd still have electricity right? Obviously you'd cut the sales total in half or something crazy like that, but those singles still would have found a permanent home on rock radio.

Christopher: Not even remotely as successful. As part of their synth-makeover, ZZ Top offered themselves up as characters in video clips that became synonymous with the channel. The spinning and furry guitars, long beards, sunglasses and that shiny, magical twin Z’s keychain all remain iconic to this day. Without MTV, the band would’ve been shunned by radio programmers who probably considered them traitors and fad chasers. Instead, the songs they turned into videos were some of the most requested on the dial of the decade.

Rivadavia: Nowhere near as successful, though I'm sure radio airplay would have reached some younger fans and that the altogether stellar songs would have won over enough of the old timers, in spite of the synths, to push the album as far as platinum. You can forget about the (gulp!) diamond-certified sales plateau, though -- no beards were long enough to achieve that without MTV's timely intervention.

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• October 7, 1983 Setlist

ZZ Top Setlist at The Summit, Houston, TX, USA

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• Got Me Under Pressure Play Video
• Gimme All Your Lovin' Play Video
• I Got the Six Play Video
• Sharp Dressed Man Play Video
• Ten Foot Pole Play Video
• I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide Play Video
• Waitin' for the Bus Play Video
• Jesus Just Left Chicago Play Video
• A Fool for Your Stockings Play Video
• Cheap Sunglasses Play Video
• TV Dinners Play Video
• Heard It on the X Play Video
• Pearl Necklace Play Video
• Party on the Patio Play Video
• Manic Mechanic Play Video
• Tube Snake Boogie Play Video
• La Grange ( with Sloppy Drunk Jam ) Play Video
• Tush Play Video

Edits and Comments

6 activities (last edit by ExecutiveChimp , 21 Mar 2020, 16:06 Etc/UTC )

Songs on Albums

• Gimme All Your Lovin'
• Got Me Under Pressure
• I Got the Six
• Sharp Dressed Man
• A Fool for Your Stockings
• Cheap Sunglasses
• I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide
• Manic Mechanic
• Party on the Patio
• Pearl Necklace
• Ten Foot Pole
• Tube Snake Boogie
• Jesus Just Left Chicago
• Waitin' for the Bus
• Heard It on the X

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ZZ Top Gig Timeline

• Oct 05 1983 Frank Erwin Center Austin, TX, USA Add time Add time
• Oct 06 1983 Reunion Arena Dallas, TX, USA Add time Add time
• Oct 07 1983 The Summit This Setlist Houston, TX, USA Add time Add time
• Oct 08 1983 The Summit Houston, TX, USA Add time Add time
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“That Little Ol’ Band From Texas” has been at it for well over a half century, delivering rock, blues and boogie on the road and in the studio to millions of devoted fans. With iconography as distinctive as their sound, ZZ TOP is virtually synonymous with beards, hotrod cars, spinning guitars and that magic keychain, all of which transcend geography and language.

It was in Houston in the waning days of 1969 that ZZ TOP coalesced from the core of two rival bands, Billy Gibbons’ Moving Sidewalks and Frank Beard and Dusty Hill’s American Blues. Their third album, 1973’s Tres Hombres, catapulted them to national attention with the hit “La Grange,” still one of the band’s signature pieces today. Eliminator, their 1983 album was something of a paradigm shift for ZZ TOP. Their roots blues skew was intact but added to the mix were tech-age trappings that soon found a visual outlet with such tracks as “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” on the nascent MTV. It was one of the music industry’s first albums to have been certified Diamond, far beyond Gold and Platinum and a reflection of US domestic sales exceeding 10 million units.

As a touring entity, they’ve been without peer over the past five decades, having performed before millions of fans on four continents and have been the subject of their own Grammy-nominated documentary titled That Little Ol’ Band From Texas. The band’s line-up of the bearded Gibbons and Hill and Beard, who ironically is clean shaven, remained intact for more than 50 years until Dusty’s passing. When Dusty temporarily departed the tour in the summer of 2021, it was a given that Elwood would be the perfect choice to stand in for Dusty until he could return. But Dusty’s return was not to be, and Elwood continues to handle the bass duties for the band now and into the future.

The elements that keep ZZ TOP fresh, enduring and above the transitory fray can be summed up in the three words of the band’s internal mantra: “Tone, Taste and Tenacity.”. As genuine roots musicians, they have few peers. Their influences are both the originators of the form – Muddy Waters, B.B. King, et al – as well as the British blues rockers and Jimi Hendrix who emerged the generation before ZZ’s ascendance.

They have sold hundreds of millions of records over the course of their career, have been officially designated as Heroes of The State of Texas, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (by Keith Richards, no less) and have been referenced in countless cartoons and sitcoms. They are true rock icons and, against all odds, they’re really just doing what they’ve always done. ZZ TOP abides!

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PGA Championship invites 7 LIV players to get top 100 in the world

Patrick Reed reacts to his tee shot on the fourth hole during final round at the Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club Sunday, April 14, 2024, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)

Rory McIlroy, left, of Northern Ireland, and Joaquin Niemann, of Chile, walks off the 18th hole after final round at the Masters golf tournament at Augusta National Golf Club Sunday, April 14, 2024, in Augusta, Ga. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)

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The PGA Championship officially has Tiger Woods in a field released Tuesday that includes invitations to seven players from Saudi-funded LIV Golf, giving the major 99 of the 100 in the world ranking at Valhalla next week.

The PGA of America strives to have the top 100 in the world to maintain its reputation for having the strongest field of the four majors, although it is not part of the criteria. Those hopes ended late Tuesday when Rikuya Hoshino (No. 94) withdrew.

The PGA leans on a catch-all category of “special invitations.” The group of LIV players includes Patrick Reed, whose tie for 12th in the Masters moved him inside the top 100. He is at No. 92, and the invitation keeps alive his streak of playing every major since the 2014 Masters.

The PGA Championship returns to Valhalla in Louisville, Kentucky, for the fourth time on May 16-19. Rory McIlroy won at Valhalla the last time it was there in 2014. The course is best known for Woods winning a playoff over Bob May in 2000 for his third straight major.

Joaquin Niemann, who won the Australian Open in December and has two LIV Golf wins this year, already received an invitation. The surprise was Talor Gooch announcing in an X post on Monday that he had been invited.

It was a sign the PGA of America’s selection committee was looking at LIV results on their own, as Gooch doesn’t play much outside the Saudi league. He won three times on LIV in 2023 and won the season points list.

Other invitations went to Dean Burmester, Lucas Herbert and Adrian Meronk, all of them inside the top 100 in the world. The seventh invitation went to David Puig, the 22-year-old from Spain who is No. 106 in the ranking. Puig has finished in the top 10 in six of his last seven tournaments on the Asian Tour, including two wins.

LIV will be represented by 16 players, down from 18 a year ago.

There might have been one more, except British Open champion Louis Oosthuizen turned down his invitation. Oosthuizen, who is No. 125 in the world, won twice late last year in South Africa in tournaments co-sanctioned by the European tour.

His manager, Carlos Rodriguez, said in a text message that Oosthuizen already had some personal commitments.

The LIV group includes defending champion Brooks Koepka, who goes for a fourth PGA Championship title. He is the only active LIV player to win a major.

Kerry Haigh, the championship director for the PGA of America, has said he would consider deserving players from tours around the world. Invitations were given to Tim Widing of Sweden, who has won consecutive tournaments on the Korn Ferry Tour.

Another invitation went to Kazuma Kobori, a 22-year-old born in Japan who now plays under the New Zealand flag. He has won three times this year in the Webex Players Series on the PGA Tour of Australasia.

The field has 21 club professionals — 20 from the PGA Professional Championship last week, and Michael Block, who qualified by finishing among the top 15 last year at Oak Hill.

The PGA is keeping two spots open in case the winners of the Wells Fargo Championship and the Myrtle Beach Classic are not already eligible. Only four players in the 69-man field at the Wells Fargo Championship have not qualified. The first alternate is Alex Smalley.

AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf