How Important were Dusty Hill & Frank Beard?

By this point I'm sure ya'll realize that I started this thread for contention sake only and that I love ZZ Top.

 

Have Mercy....

 

Big thumbs up on both of these quotes! Very well stated!

(And I love the line "... I tend to focus on Frank a lot which is kind of difficult with one of the greatest guitar tones of all time tugging at your soul" Kudos!!!)

TONE - TASTE - TENACITY

 

Fair enough, at least you gave them a listen. For my money, Rhythmeen, XXX, Mescalero and La Futura all represent why I love ZZ Top so much. There's way too much good stuff on those releases for me to dismiss them. I agree that the compression on La Futura was unfortunate. Since I mostly listen to music in my car anyway, it's not as big a deal to me. (If I'm fortunate to have a high-level sound system and a music listening room in the future, I know a lot of the stuff I've bought over the past decade or so will bother me a lot more.)

 

To begin with I should say that ZZ Top are and have always been my favourite band, they made me seriously interested in music and inspired me to be a muscian myself (which is now how I male a living) so they are very important to me and they almost feel like familymembers at this point. But I think the question raised is an interesting one and something I have thought about now and then, as I have learned more and more about the band and their history. Now, one problem is that it is quite hard to get to know very much about the inner workings of ZZ Top, they are a tight knit organization and have always kept the lid on things.

Band members can be important for a bands sound in several different ways, most importantly as songwriters, as studio musicians or/and as live musicians. The songwriting part is very hard to know anything about, I have never read anything substantial about that process. It can be safely assumed that Billy is the main songwriter, but also that at least in the early days a lot of material originated from jamming ("Tush" famously came about during a soundcheck). As fas as the studio goes again it is very hush hush, outsiders have never been let in on their sessions. During the 70s Dusty and Frank obviously had a great deal to do with how things came out, with their playing and sound, but one should also know that once they had laid down their basic tracks they were out of the studio (exception being stuff like Dusty's vocals) and either were not allowed to have a say, or, more probable, didn't care about the final outcome . This of course changed in the 80s, when as we know they were replaced by machines, and I personally question how much they have been on record since then. Live of course they each are a third of the sound (well most of the time anyway), and in the 70s they were a very energetic combo where their playing styles greatly effected how it came out. They have always sounded quite different live to the records. From the 80s onward I think their live playing has deteriorated quite dramatically, but that is right across all members.

One thing to remember is also that from the start Dusty and Frank were on a salary, and how long it stayed that way I don't know, but all through the 70s at least. The band organization at that point was very much split between "management" (Billy G., Bill Ham, etc.) and "labour" (Dusty, Frank, etc.), as it was sometimes referred to (humorously or not). They did however split songwriting three ways no matter what though.

I wouldn't say they all agreed on any of this. First of all Dusty and Frank never had the same say. Eliminator for example was made by Billy G. by himself togheter with first Linden Hudson during pre-production and the Terry Manning during actual recording (Dusty and Frank were involved in the writing of some of the songs though). The story is sometimes told that they had no idea what was going on. I'm not sure what the second "change" you refer to is (Rhythmeen?), but I get the sense that D and F have been less and less involved in the band ever since.

I have to disgree with this, at least if we are talking about early albums. Frank plays some very unique drum patterns on those records that I don't hear elsewhere with other bands of the era. It is not that it is so complicated that no-one else could have done, it is just that no-one else did and it was important to how many of those songs sound. Except for the very first album Dusty pretty much sticks to pumping out root notes, and I would say most bass players could have managed that actually. He does have a very cool tone (and a massive attack) which is important to the sound (find the quad version of Tres Hombres that is out there to hear his bass isolated). Anyway, I would say it's the other way around.

You must have not heard Tres Hombres, Fandango! or especially Tejas and Degüello, how anyone could describe that drumming as straight and dull is beyond my comprehension. I had a ZZ Top cover band for a while, and the drummer is a highly technical player, he has a long musical education behind him and he is into Jazz and Fusion. He had great difficulty nailing several songs and I remember there was a fill in "La Grange" that he could never figure out. I have many other drummer friends that like and are impressed by the drumming on the early ZZ albums.

Well, in that case there are several of their albums where the name should be changed or removed...

 

The only reason I said Dusty was more important than Frank is that Dusty sings on a few songs. Honestly, I love ZZ Top, but find neither Hill nor Beard to be fantastic players, but the beauty is the music doesn't call for that.

 

Ah, ok you're right in that regard of course. I think it is a bit of a shame that Dusty was used so irregularly on vocals. I wonder if this too has to do with band politics or if he at times were just not interested or involved. Not that I would have wanted him to sing much more songs, a couple per record is enough, but there are many records where he takes no lead at all and those records suffer for it. I also lve when they share vocals, as on "Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers", "Herard It On the X", "It's Only Love" (and a few more on Tejas), I wish they would have done that more, (they do it on other songs live, and Dusty do songs on his own that he didn't sing on album, just to balance things out a bit).

 

Dusty lays down a very distinct and heavy bass foundation. Watch some videos, he's got this unique quick attack on the strings. Sorta slap a hybrid slap / pluck technique. The whole theater shook when I recently attend a show.

 

My kitchen table has just one, in the middle.

 

Frank was a badass in his younger days, not so much the past few yrs. his playing on the first few zz albums was fantastic.

 

Yes, and you could swap out anyone in AC/DC, the Ramones, Motorhead, the Stooges and it would be essentially the same band. If it's not flashy technical music the players are interchangeable.


That's a joke, son.

 

Pretty damned important. 2/3 of a band that during its' prime ( in other words, up through Deguello) was innovative and did some great albums. They were no less important to the band than the other 1/3.
It seems that more recently all 3 of them could be replaced by digital gear.............

 

I saw ZZ Top back when they were beardless, but I just can't imagine them without Frank.


Cat

 

Nothing wrong with throwing out some hypotheticals. Such is what makes a discussion board (music or otherwise) tick. I'd venture everyone that has posted in this thread is a fan of ZZ Top. Just something to banter about with.

People get so indignant about certain things. It's not like discussing the band is somehow going to inherently change the nature of what it is or how great (or not great) a person thinks they are.

BTW The current ZZ Top is not the "original" lineup. It is, however, the one everyone knows. There is a difference no matter what.

 

Agree on this. Like I said in my post above, ZZ feel like familymembers to me, they have been with me from the start, they're my ground zero musically, everything else is in reference to them. Just like with family I can trust them to always be there for me, and just like with family I can be very critical of them. But no matter how much I "argue" with them I know I will always love them unconditionally. I never understood fanboys who just go along with everything their "idols" do and say without a critical thought (the latter not directed at posters in this thread, just a general reflection).

This another reason why they were never equal partners from the start, the corporation "ZZ Top" was already established.

 

I know they rode that train about 2 albums too long, but "Rhythmeen" is a killer album; they didn't die after "Recycler."

 

And that is one nasty album. Doesn't get the acclaim it deserves IMHO.

 

Very important

 

Ok, I'll continue then with my picture has a moustache one liner.....

Such good responses.

But the rainbow has a beard....

 

They were impotant until the day they died.

Wait a minute. Why are we talking about them in the past tense again?

 

They were important in the development of the band's early sound, in putting across BG's ideas live in the synth years, in bringing the band back to a more organic approach in recent years and in being part of a damn fine live band.

You want to know how important they are, then listen to Billy's solo album. It's good, but it ain't ZZ Top.

Philip

 

I don't know much about ZZ Top (although I saw them live in 1973 warming up for the Stones), but one way to tell if the other guys make a difference is, if Gibbons made a solo album, how did it sound? The same? Did people like it? Did it sell? Maybe he never did a solo album.

 

He released one last year called Perfectamundo. It's got a lot of Latin influence to a lot of the songs. In some ways it sounds like ZZ Top, but in many ways it doesn't. I personally didn't care for it much.

 

No Frank, no beards. Wait . . .

 

I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude or anything but: How important is the rhythm section in a band, let a lone a power trio? Are you serious?