Linden, You missed a question a few pages back... Do you have any recall about the songs Pearl Necklace and Party On the Patio, from El Loco? Always loved those two songs. I see that Leila and Tube Snake Boogie were the singles released from El Loco. God, how could they choose those over Pearl Necklace?
Well, I only worked on one song on El Loco (Hippie Pad) and didn't hear the others before release. Dave Blayney told me what Pearl Necklace means, I didn't even know, the lady next door asked me one day last month "Hey Linden, what does Pearl Necklace mean?" I couldnt tell her "uh, huh?" Ill comment on the other question: The problem is that truly the public will actually know their favorite song after a couple weeks of airplay, but the choice is made ahead of time by a guess and that might be a bad guess. That's my opinion.
Hey Linden. I just wanted to say hello and also wanted to thank you for some really fascinating stories so far. I'm a longtime fan of the band since 1973 or so and I had to stop at page 6 of this thread for now as I have to be up early for work tomorrow and should have been in bed an hour ago. Thank you for taking the time for us. Cheers....!
My only comment is in response to "this video confirms that Dusty was playing keys on the song": I would just ask "are you sure? I doubt it. Maybe he was acting like it". Remember when you listen to them live "there are only 3 of them, what is it they want you to believe??" They started doing tape supplement onstage for the El Loco tour. I know that because I made the supplemental tape (I never signed an NDA, really? Yes). I was 4 songs I mixed for a supplement tape. I don't remember much about it because it was just another afternoon for me, but one of the songs was "ten foot pole" (voice off tape, etc). Another of the songs had maracas. At one concert (Germany I believe) a roadie started the wrong song and the band started playing a different song so suddenly there was a crazy jumble of confusion and they had to stop and apologize (I wasnt there, but I read about it, it sounds perfectly believable to me). Im not trying to be mean to my ex friends by commenting. But I did believe at the time that Billy was walking into an unknown part of the woods and going deeper and deeper into the unknown. I respect their drive (I think), because they have a hard job. Three guys, onstage, tons of sound. When will the world say "enough". Lots of people talk about this, more and more all the time. Sometimes I wondered if there was any pressure from the record labels for them to do this supplementing in order to sound more like their records. Or was it just Gibbons pushing the envelope. If it was up to Gibbons to honestly comment and explain, you can forget about it, it'll never happen. I was up to my neck in discussing and talking with Gibbons as we began tinkering to build beginnings for Eliminator (I was just one of Santas helpers), and he was totally wanting a bigger sound and more fullness and some high tech. Once he said something to the effect "we'll do this and we'll figure it out later". I get it, I know he was trying to reach for the sky, it felt manic. Look, they're still here playing concerts decades later, hard to believe.
Did the band ever consider making life simpler by taking on a few hired guns to supplement the live sound? Those players usually get scale anyway; not like that would have broke the bank. Or were they too caught up in preserving the image of a threesome? Great thread BTW, thanks Linden
I always remind people, I wasn't with them after 1983 which is kinda when they began to expand the band (in the album sense). In a way Billy was creating "Fantasy ZZ" in their records. I will just guess: knowing Ham and knowing Billy there would be no sidemen, another mouth to feed. Yes, preserving the image of the threesome, fewer souls to deal with, fewer album credits to give to deserving people, saving money. Only my gut feelings there.
MY ENCOUNTER WITH A BIG ROCK STAR (SUPERSTAR) See the photo here: (1) Facebook After my music career I had a TV/Film soundman job that actually paid the bills and I worked with and met stars and even Superstars.
Let me add: example: When the Dust died, they kept touring and put a roadie in Dusty's place. Some people thought "huh?" or "wow". But to me it was typical Billy Gibbons. And I would venture they're using Elwood, I would doubt if he got a raise (Im dead serious). Im not saying Elwood isn't good or whatever, and he did save the tour. I don't know how good Elwood is. ZZ boys needed this tour for income (for the crew too). So Elwood is a hero (underappreciated Im sure). I have mixed feelings, and Gibbons is Gibbons. "Use somebody, don't pay if you don't have to, it's a privilege to be onstage with me" could be his slogan. But then I'm (me, Linden Hudson) damaged goods so Im sorry for my prejudice. No matter what, its a success story to a degree. (But the story of Elwood reminds me of my storie, "being there" if you feel me.
In a different ZZ thread, I mentioned that song in a live context here and here. It was August 1981, the dark ages so to speak, but we knew that the synth bit was being "flown in." I remember during the ride home from the concert, there was a heated discussion about using recorded bits and why didn't they just have a keyboard player onstage (Linden, thanks for explaining above why Billy decided against that). On the other hand, what cojones to do it live back then AND not to bury that song in the middle of the set!
Yeah, I've worked (as a vocalist) with "Flying it in" in the studio. There's another reason for doing it (fairly certain you'll know this Linden, but it sounds like some others don't) - in the days of tape, there was a limit to the number of tracks at your disposal. My band, early on, was doing demos in 8 and 16 track studios. If you want backing vocals: You kept one or two tracks free on the multi-track. You put a rough mix down to stereo tape. You bounced that back to some clean multi-track. You then did the backing vocals on the empty tracks. You then mix them to clean stereo tape. Then you "flew in" the backing vocal mix to the one or two tracks free on the song's multi-track. Once you have to do that, if you've got three choruses that want identical backing vox, it's a no brainer to just sing one chorus and fly it in three times - the lead vocal will give you enough variation (in the kind of stuff we were doing, anyway). I understand that stuff like Queen's Night At The Opera and Day At The Races had to have the backing vox done like that because they ran out of tracks. I doubt they were duplicating chorus backing vox at the time, they always liked to make little differences between each chorus in the arrangement, they might have done though? Also it's possible they had multitrack machines synched together, but I never saw that level of tech myself... The thing that has always made me think Queen did the "fly it in" technique was when they did their first set of remasters, they wanted to improve the backing vocal mix on You're My Best Friend - they always used the mix of the 3 different voices as "tone controls" on the backing vox and apparently they didn't like this one when it was released. But they found they couldn't change it when they unpacked the tapes because all they had was the stereo bounce of the backing vox. By the way I also tried "flying it in" on a 4-track cassette recorder back then - when I was learning home recording - that don't work so good (cassette players, or the ones I had, tend to drift apart in the space of an 8 to 16 bar chorus, had to do it line by line). Funnily enough, now I'm home-recording with digital, I don't do this with backing vocals. I'll do it with bass or keyboard parts. With guitar or vocals I find it's faster to just play and sing the bluddy things ... bass and keyboards, not so much - it's more of a "wow! I played it right!!! quick, copy it everywhere" ANYWAYS, Linden, fascinating reading your stuff in this thread. I'm not surprised by any of it. I've known for years that there was another guy behind Eliminator who worked with Billy G, helping him move to a more commercial approach. I was trying to figure the same sort of stuff out, pretty much at the same time, I guess. I'm in the UK. I had El Loco, I was listening to the same things Billy G was, but the guys in my band couldn't give a monkeys about that stuff, they just wanted to play some tunes and party... (I was gonna say "and get paid" but we never got that successful!) I had always assumed that the "mystery guy" with Billy G was properly recompensed and so on. I'd always assumed that guy was still "part of organisation" or what ever. However, sadly, I'm kinda not surprised that you weren't/aren't, I can see easily how circumstances/personalities can make a thing pan out like it did. My band never got anywhere, but we had plenty of folk "helping us out" that, maybe, would have expected something if we had... I knew, in my mind, that there were a couple of guys who were HUGELY instrumental in what we did... possibly more switched on artistically (from a commercial perspective) than other guys in the band... and I'd have wanted those backroom boys to go with us. But the rest were just there for the party (dropping guitars down the stairs at the get in because they were already out of their heads, etc!). If we'd had any success, made any income, I'm sure there would have been some "issues". For me, as a writer myself, I'd hope I'd never stiff somebody like you got stiffed... I don't like it, but I know it happens, and well... well... the way you're talking, it sounds like you get it too. Doesn't make it right though. It was also fairly obvious (to me) at the time that the drums and bass on Eliminator were kind of "not the same guys as Tejas, Deguello" - I was kind of bemused (along with my sound engineer, one of the guys I wanted to take with me), what Billy G was up to. We liked the album, but it wasn't "ZZ Top as we knew it..." Initially, my sound engineer was much more into it than me, going "this is it, this is how you do it"... I wasn't convinced... And then it went ballistic and I went "ah! I get it after all" I wondered what Frank and Dusty must make of it, why did they put up with it? And so on... But I realised early on that that's me listening to Rio Grande Mud or whatever and regretting I never got to see the lil old band from Texas myself... all I saw was the MEGA successful band on the Afterburner tour, and I could tell that much of it was taped which was a little disappointing at the time. As fans, we tend to forget that where there's popularity and money to be made, it's show BUSINESS. Some bands manage to hide it, manage to make us think it's "rock and roll" even 40/50 years on... but the ZZ Top I've seen (Afterburner, and then a couple more times over the years) are very definitely "show business" ... and what you're revealing to me personally in this thread is that they always were. And that's OK with me. Not happy that I've learnt that the guy who helped Billy G turn it all round all those years ago... got shafted. Still , love and peace, good to hear your stories. Get a book written and published, Linden. I'll buy it if I'm still breathing!
Maybe he was acting - the video is way too crappy to assess it, as there's only one quick shot of him behind the keys and the camera mostly stayed on Billy out front alone. That said, the synth parts in the song are not complicated at all and I'm sure Dusty would've been capable of playing them. What I actually meant to say was that from the audio bootlegs it sure sounded like no bass guitar and the video confirms that. And as the only bass guitar on the studio version was the slap bass in the instrumental breaks and they made no attempt at Dusty either actually playing or miming that part at all on stage, I deduce that it's Billy slapping again, like he did on "Thug". So anybody who will have seen the show can add 2 and 2 and come to the conclusion that Dusty didn't suddenly slap on "Velcro Fly", even if they didn't have your insider knowledge of seeing Billy do it on "Thug".
A great story from you, good spelling too (of course that would be because English was invented in your country). First let me say (believe it or not) there was a 40 track in 1973. They used a 40 track on some or all "Cars" records. I didn't have that experience but maybe it's good, in the early seventies I mostly had hands on 8 track one inch recorders. When I got my first studio engineer job I was 19 (That's right, Andrus recording in Houston). One day after I had 3 days of training a square dance music producer said to me (as to how to solve something) he said "just fly it in Linden". I didn't know what that was so I sneaked up to the head engineers ofice and asked my boss. He told me and I came back casually and proceeded to do it (and learn on the job) for the producer, although slowly. When I became a DJ at KLOL a about two years later I was on air 5 hours per evening but I had to VO commercials for 3 hours, I learned how to be a good razor blade editor. Chopping was a quick way to transition for a radio spot. And I didn't want to be a secret with ZZ Top, I desperately wanted credit and to be known. And I lost that on a huge scale.
Linden, I just listened to the "Francine" cut by The Children. Very interesting! I know that you knew them, but was Billy friends with them? It sounds to me like they sing one line as follows: If I caught her with Billy G I'd send her back to the penitentiary... Or am I aural hallucinating/misinterpreting?
No, Dusty wasn't an insane bass slapper (like Flea), he was a two finger plunker mostly. Its not a put down, just sayin.
Yes, Billy and the Children knew each other. Billy became familiar with the song "Francine" when he was hired to be a guitar stand in for Kenny Cordray for a few gigs (Kenny was sick or whatever). That was one of their songs that they played. Next thing you know ZZ Top releases it and has their first hit. And you know what happened after that (I do). I happens to his friends. I once interviewed Kenny (on tape, still have it) and he told me all about it. Kenny tried to stay friends with Billy, but it was a strong issue with Kenny for years. He eventually got a little out of it way down the road. RIP Kenny.
I don't know him. If he co-wrote Chevrolet there's something amiss. Are you talking about the Rio Grande Mud song Chevrolet? Its credited to Billy Gibbons.
Linden... I think the subhead to this thread should be the time-worn saying, "Don't meet your heroes." Your Billy G. experiences suck for sure. Best for us rock fans to just enjoy the music and never interact with the stars. And as much as I love the ZZ albums up through Afterburner, ZZ in concert, to me, was mostly too-loud noise and bad singing. I've seen them several times going back to 1976, and there's only so much you can do as a power trio live when, as I've discovered in this thread, the studio albums are created much differently than just playing.
Dear Linden, there is this story that Dusty and Frank toured (with no rights) as The Zombies (the great British band) in the 60s. I know this was before you met them, but did they ever mentioned anything about it to you?
