Speaker 1: Hey, this is James Buckley up in North Louisiana. When
I have a raging fever for eighties and nineties nostalgia
that I can't even cure with more cow bell, I
turned to the experts, Jason Coffin and d Graves on
the Shirley You Can't Be Serious Podcast?
Speaker 2: All right, D, Let's do the soundcheck real quick.
Speaker 3: All right, Hello everybody, Welcome back to Shirley you Can't
Be Serious Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome back to Shirley Can't Be a
Serious podcast? Is that your lack range voice?
Speaker 3: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Shirley you Can't
Be Serious Podcast.
Speaker 2: We're here to.
Speaker 3: Talk some z Z top and we promise you if
we blow your mind, we will not let it go
to our head.
Speaker 4: Oh man, We're gonna be talking about beards and babes
and cars and double entendres and great.
Speaker 3: Songs, lawsuits and writers without credit and some vicious guitars
and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 4: This is some really cool stuff we're gonna be discussing
on this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I've been kind of looking forward to this.
Speaker 4: This is an album that I didn't own, you know,
kind of a zz Top Greatest Hits kind of guy.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, you told me when we were like prepping
for this, you were like, this is going to be
kind of similar to our Police episode where you were
just kind of barely familiar with synchronicity and had to
dive in. And then we were comparing that to Journeys Frontiers,
and at the beginning of the idea to do that,
you were like, it's going to be Journey.
Speaker 2: I have no question, it's gonna be Journey.
Speaker 3: But by the end you're like, it's the Police because
you went, Wow, these guys have so much to offer
than I really realized.
Speaker 2: Very similar situation, I think.
Speaker 3: So I'm really anxious to see how that plays out
with zz top Eliminator versus our competitor, which we will
do next week, which is Rebel Yell by Billy Idol.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I had MTV growing up.
Speaker 4: We've talked about this, how I grew up in Tulsa, Glooma,
where Tulsa was one of the pilot programs for MTV,
So we had our MTV before New York City had MTV.
Speaker 2: You were on the right side of the road.
Speaker 4: I was on the right side of the road. Yeah,
So they played zz Top every fifteen minutes. Oh yeah,
you know they also played Billy Idol every fifteen minutes.
So this is this is kind of an interesting comperson.
Speaker 3: Early we didn't have it. We're gonna have a good
MTV story with the band. I know, just before this
album it starts getting recorded, so I can't wait to
jump into it before we jump into Eliminator. Track by track,
tell me your top three non Eliminator songs.
Speaker 2: Non Eliminator songs.
Speaker 4: Okay, So for me, after Burner was my favorite Zzy
top album okay, post Eliminator, all right, And I'm actually
kind of curious to see because you're a guitar player.
You are a bit more classic rock I think than
I am in some ways. You like led Zeppelin, some
of the older stuff, doors, that type of thing, and
I'm like, you know, synth rock, right, I'm right, you
know that's my sweet spot.
Speaker 2: So for me, my number three is.
Speaker 4: A song off of after Burner. Okay, one word title.
I don't know that this had a video. Just a
really catchy song. You got a lot of radio play
in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: One word title. I'm not like sleeping bag is it
is two words and huh, sleeping bag just missed. Okay,
all right, I got it. I don't get it. What
is This song is called Stages?
Speaker 3: Okay, you're gonna have to play that one for me.
I can kind of remember that one a little on
the radio. A bit softer sound for them.
Speaker 2: For sure, a bit more poppy, yeah, okay, number three
for you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I don't know that I necessarily have these in
a particular order, but the first one that I've got
to say comes off of the album Trey Sombrace, And
hint number one is it was about a brothel that
is also mentioned in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. And
hint number two is it was an homage to John
Lee Hooker and then John Lee Hooker's writing partner. I
remember seeing the interview in like the late eighties where
they were talking about Lagrange and like, yes, this is
an homage to John Lee Hooker. And like a few
years later, I'm like, somebody's like he's suing them.
Speaker 2: I'm like what really?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it ended up soing they lost it lost,
I know, but yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2: That's that's my hints. You got it, and it's great,
of course, it's Orange.
Speaker 3: The guy who sued them was the publisher for John
Lee Hooker. Her name, His name was Bernard Bestman, and
he said they were infringing on the song Bookie Chilling,
which had come out in like the late forties, and
the problem was they never got a copyright on it.
The court was like this public domain guys. Sorry, wow. Yeah,
So there you go. That's what happened with that one.
All right, what you got number?
Speaker 2: Okay? All right.
Speaker 4: My second favorite non eliminator is easy Toop. Song is
another song off After Burner. Had a funny little video
to it, and this was kind of all the rage
back in the day. We thought tying your shoelaces was
gonna go out of style because this invention.
Speaker 2: I know this one.
Speaker 3: This is a This is a great example of how
they loved me.
Speaker 2: Be kaing. This is be for a Fly.
Speaker 5: Fly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I just love the beat and I mean it's just
for me. This is classic MTV zez the top.
Speaker 3: So my number two is off of Fandango, which came
out in seventy five. It is not the bigger hits
off of that album, okay, but it's one I can't
I feel like it's my friends in high school. Maybe
Laren Shears if he happens to be listening. He was
the one who kind of introduced me to these older
zeezy top songs, and I feel like he's the one
that was like, when I started playing guitar, he's like,
can you figure out how to play the song? And
he introduced me to this. It is a very bluesy
blues sounding song, like your standard slow blues. It sounds
like the music that you hear in sixteen candles whenever
the party is over.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you sent it to me and I listened
to it, I'm like, this sounds like when the Pepperoni
pizza is on the record player.
Speaker 2: What was that called blue Jean blues? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, great, fantastic song. Not the one that people typically
pick off of that one, but I was really happy.
We watched the documentary on them that came out in
twenty nineteen, and it was one that they were playing
again just when they were sitting around in the studio,
and I loved hearing it.
Speaker 4: Okay, number one, My number one song is about a
brothel outside.
Speaker 2: Of Houston exactly exactly, you know, before.
Speaker 4: We get off of Lagrange. Obviously, that's what we're talking
about here. Billy Gibbons did the vocals on this, and
it's hard to imagine the same guy who sings Lagrange
sings legs, right, I mean his voice sounds completely.
Speaker 2: Different, Yeah, very different.
Speaker 4: And he was trying to distort his vocals huh, and
it just wasn't happening for him. And they were recording
in Memphis it was cold, and he's like, hey, hang
on just a minute, I'll be right back. So he
takes off all of his clothes like strips downs to
like his sweatpants or whatever, and he runs around the
block two or three times and he comes back all right, ready, perfect.
Speaker 2: That is perfect.
Speaker 3: My I won't say this number one. Probably the Grange
is my number one, but this is in the top three.
Is also off of fan Dango. This is the one
that is very popular after Fandango, and it starts with
a nice yell. This one isn't sung by Billy. This
one is sung by Dusty.
Speaker 4: Okay, you threw me there because I was gonna go
with Tush.
Speaker 2: That's it?
Speaker 3: Oh really yeah, that one's sung by Dusty Hill himself.
Speaker 6: Oh okay, yeah, there we go, so Tush of course, yep,
there you gown.
Speaker 4: I've got a list of zezy Top songs that are
double entendres here in just a minute.
Speaker 2: It's gonna have fun going through that list. Yeah, okay,
very good.
Speaker 4: So Eliminador was released March twenty third, nineteen eighty three.
We have just I mean a few months ago pasted
its fortieth anniversary. Yeah, this album sold ten million copies
in the US alone. To me, this is like the
second act of zz Top.
Speaker 3: I divide the history of zz top into basically three categories.
You have the pre z where the guys are playing
in their various bands.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: Then you have the pre beards right, which is you know,
seventies through basically right up to the eighties, and then
you have Eliminator and beyond. Because this leveled them up,
changed the game. I mean, this was a huge, huge
album for them.
Speaker 4: You know, it's interesting to me when you look at
the elements that make an artist successful, especially in the
MTV years, This was more complicated recipe than.
Speaker 2: Like Madonna and Wham. Right.
Speaker 4: So Madonna was good looks, good hooks.
Speaker 2: And like to wear lingerie.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, I mean every I mean she appealed to
us sexually, right, and we were rocking and rolling with her.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 4: Okay, but then you have other people, I mean, you know,
Samantha Fox is kind of in that category. I would
say that Wham is good looks and good hooks, right yeah,
But this is more than that. It's it's guitars, it's
the beard, it's the babes, it's cars, it's videos.
Speaker 2: It was a bit of a more complex formula to.
Speaker 4: Reach the success on MTV that they had, but still amazing.
Speaker 3: It was iconography at its best, like, let's pick things
that can be logos that can define who we are, trademarks.
Speaker 4: I mean the beard, the beard is what did it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean all of those things you mentioned,
the girls, the beard, the car, the spinning guitars. I
mean yeah, it's all there.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. And the songs were great yep.
Speaker 3: And it's what is great is that in this particular
album they have done a very nice favor for us
forty years in advance and said, Okay, the first song
on the album is also going to be our first video,
is also going to be our first single, and so
we can jump into it right now.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 4: So the first song off of Eliminator is a song
called Gimme All Your Loving. This song is so good,
like a boomerang. I need to repeat every time I
listen to it.
Speaker 2: Because what you've got is oh so sweet.
Speaker 4: Okay, if I'm just just a raking my ZZ Top songs,
including Eliminador.
Speaker 2: This is number one. This is my favorite ZZ Top song.
It's a great song. You can't I mean, I can't
deny you that.
Speaker 3: It's fantastic, that beat coming in, that little the Shuffley beat,
that it's got a lover.
Speaker 2: I got a story for you about the beat.
Speaker 4: So Lyndon Hudson, who we're gonna be talking about here,
probably more later. Yeah, he's a sound engineer guy, kind
of a friend of the band, and one of the
things that he started to notice he would DJ at
these events. He said, anytime you would play a ZZY
Top song, people would stop dancing. And that really offended
Billy Gibbons. He's like, what the heck? He's like, I
was really proud of these songs. They're not danceable songs.
So Lyndon Hudson says, well, started listening to all the
hit songs on the radio, and all the dancing songs
are about one hundred and twenty one hundred and twenty
four beats per minute. Yes, and so he's like, we
got to have more songs that they have. One hundred
and twenty beats per minute. Guys, yep, boom, here you go,
give me all you eleven.
Speaker 3: And it's very precise because what they did on this
album is a little bit shocking given their history, right,
But basically they came back, like they took a three
year hiatus.
Speaker 2: They came back.
Speaker 3: They had Diguelo that came out in seventy nine and
I Looko that came out in eighty one, right after
they had been on this hiatus. But they were looking
for something different. Specifically, Billy was looking for something different,
and the other guys were just like, man, I'm exhausted.
Let's us just relax. And so they took out the
dusty parts and the Frank parts except for a few
little bits, and they kind of put in some drum
machines and made it a little more crisp.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, So I've got a great story for this. Lyndon
Hudson's over at Frank Beard's house. Frank lived on a
golf course, so he's always over there. They were playing
golf all the time.
Speaker 3: Right, he's got his own studio. Like, by the way,
this album was recorded in three different studios. One of
them was Frank's studio, one of them was the Ardent
studio where they had recorded most of their other stuff,
and then their engineer's home studio.
Speaker 2: He would take things home and work on it there. Sure, sure,
So Linden's over at Frank's house. Ding dong.
Speaker 4: They go open the front door. It's Billy Gibbons and
Frank says, hey, how's it coming. You know, how's the
album coming. Billy says it's done in the press, headed
to the street. Frank's like, let's hear it. So he
pops it in. First song, of course, is give Me
All Your Love, and three seconds in Frank perks up.
Speaker 2: He's like, who is this drummer?
Speaker 4: Lyndon said he left the room. Aha, He's like, I
don't need this drama in my life.
Speaker 2: I'm out here. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Billy was in charge of this band and he would
just do whatever. And really Bill Ham is kind of
Bill Ham and Billy Gibbons, and the kind of behind
the scenes agreement was Dusty, Billy and Frank would have
this three way share of zz Top.
Speaker 2: But Billy called the.
Speaker 3: Shots, right, and bill Ham called the shots that Billy called.
Speaker 2: That's it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And by the way, okay, so real quick, bill Ham,
he was about twelve years older than the rest of
these guys. These guys are all born Dusty, Frank and
Billy all born in nineteen forty nine. Okay, yeah, same
year as my dad. And it's funny because we were
talking and like the only guy who doesn't have a beard,
his name is Beard, right, and then the other two
guys you put their names together and it's hill Billy
band out of Texas. It's perfect, right. But bill Ham
is like the fourth member of the band. He was
the manager of the band. He was their Colonel Parker,
he was their p T.
Speaker 2: Barnum.
Speaker 3: He was the guy who blew them up right after
these guys like in the nineties, he became big in
country music. And he's the guy that was also really
responsible for Clint Black just a tragic store that goes
along with that right there in the early nineties. His
wife is just I mean, she's like shopping, go into
her car and this X con comes up, pushes her
in the car, kidnaps her. Then quote unquote uses martial
arts to karate chop her neck and kills her what yep,
and dumps her body out in a field and escapes
And they don't find him for like five weeks, and
finally somebody sees the car. There is a high speed pursuit.
He ends up wrecking her car, but ultimately he is caught,
he is convicted, and he is executed for her murder.
Speaker 4: Wow. Wow, Well, let's talk about the video for a second.
Speaker 2: Okays love it.
Speaker 4: So this is the first video where we get the
nineteen thirty three Ford Coup, the Eliminator.
Speaker 2: Car, the Eliminator Car. Yeah, and it is sweet.
Speaker 4: I mean I've always known it as the ZZ top car.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's the It's on the cover of
the album, right, And this is actually a car that
Billy had been working on for years. He actually got
together with a guy in nineteen seventy six that was
an auto guy. His name was Don Thielen. They put
a Corvette style engine in there and it's I mean,
it can run like the wind and it becomes a
defining icon of the band.
Speaker 2: Hey, I'm gonna put it up there and say this
is the most iconic eighties video car. This Trump's the
White Jaguars from the White Snake videos. This is the
video cars. So it was a magical car, Yeah for sure.
Speaker 4: You know what else, But every time you pull over,
babes freaking magically appear out of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You have the Eliminator trilogy of give Me all your
loving sharp dressed man and legs, all featuring this car,
all featuring three super hot babes doing magical things, and
the band I loved how you. I was like, they're
just kind of these mystical figures in the background, and
You're like, yeah, they're the fairy Godfathers, and I was like.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly what they are. There, you go, that's fantastic.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about these three women for a second. Because
you have Gina Keo, who if you ever watched Real
Housewives of Orange County, she calls herself the OG of
the OC.
Speaker 7: Right, She's like the first.
Speaker 4: Housewife, okay, which I never watched that show, But her
maiden name was Thomasino, So Gina Tomasino. She was actually
Miss November nineteen eighty in Playboy magazine.
Speaker 2: Then you have a girl named Danielle Arnand and she
is French. She's French. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then you have this other girl who never got
her name, They never paid.
Speaker 2: Her, never even showed up to pick up a check, vanished.
Speaker 1: Weird.
Speaker 4: She magically got into a car and drove away.
Speaker 2: Here's the interesting thing.
Speaker 4: So these videos are all directed by Tim Newman.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so Tim Newman is the cousin of several famous people.
Randy Newman should immediately jump out.
Speaker 4: Randy Newman, the guy who sings I Love La.
Speaker 3: Yes, and Tim Newman what directed that video? He directed
the idea of La video. We've also talked about Randy's brother,
Tim's other cousin, David, who is a composed because he
was the composer for Bill and Ted's excellent adventure The
whole family and their father like composed the twentieth century Fox.
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no, no, no, all of that stuff.
Oh that's great.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so he had directed the I Love La video.
Bill Ham sees this video and he's like, I love
what you've done here.
Speaker 2: I want you to meet my band zz top uh huh.
Speaker 4: And you know what he told him, You have to
have these three things. The car, gotta have babes, gotta
have rock and roll.
Speaker 2: And he did it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the recipe right there. The idea he got
was the rest is up to you. He kept the
appearance of the three ugly bearded.
Speaker 2: Men to a minimum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's just make these guys magical, mystical, like wizards
out here. Put the sunglasses on, cover up their heads,
you know, make them as it's cartoonish as possible.
Speaker 2: It's really cool, right, he literally.
Speaker 3: Said to them when he got there. He's like, I
have these three beautiful women to offset you three ugly guys.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: This song reached number thirty seven on the Hot one hundred.
Speaker 2: Insane. What's insane? How does it only get up to
number thirty seven? Even in eighty three? It doesn't make
any sense. It doesn't make any sense. Okay, are we
done with this one? Yes? She ready to move on
to track number two.
Speaker 4: Track number two is called got Me under Pressure.
Speaker 2: She lacks cocaine. I dig this one, man, that's great.
I love it another. You got two big songs right
out of the box. Yeah, I've got a great story
about the creation of this song. Let me hear it.
Speaker 4: So Billy Gibbons and Lyndon Hudson are sitting around one
day and they start to write a song. So they
write it, play it, produce it, complete it, send it
into Bill Hammon say hey, we've got this track done
one included on the album. So Bill comes in the
next day. The band is there and he's like, all right, guys,
play the song for me.
Speaker 2: I want to hear it.
Speaker 4: Pressure and Dusty and Frank are looking at each other
like what are you talking about?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 2: He's like, you know the song, Pressure, play it? This
is like, I don't think we know that song. Bill.
The song was.
Speaker 4: Totally written, finished, demoed out, and they hadn't even heard it.
And that's just the way it went over there, you know, Yeah, there.
Speaker 5: Got Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think there were some hard feelings about that. Yeah,
well okay, got to lead into something you don't want
to talk about it yet.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I'm just thinking about I mean, so it's
weird to think about because these guys, they, I mean,
they all three start in Texas, right. You know, You've
got you've got two guys up in Dallas, Dusty and
and you've got another guy down in Houston, Billy, and
they're ultimately on a.
Speaker 2: Crash course towards each other. The thing is that they.
Speaker 3: All go through their various bands together. So you've got
Dusty and his brother Rocky, who get together ultimately with
Frank and they have this kind of early Beatles, look
like they've got the suits and they're playing that style
of music. They've even got a female lead singer who's
from England, which Dusty was like, if you've got a
female lead singer from England, you're going to book wherever
you want to in Dallas.
Speaker 4: Texas, Lady Wilde and the Warlocks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So ultimately Frank gets his girlfriend pregnant. They've got
to get married.
Speaker 3: He realizes, hey, I'm not gonna make it here in Dallas,
so I'm going to go try to go down to Houston.
He leaves with his wife and kid, goes down to Houston,
and that's where he meets Billy for the first time. Right,
and he's seen Billy play. Now, Billy has had all
kinds of success at this point. He's had a band
that he called the Moving Sidewalks. So he loses a
couple of members of his band to the draft.
Speaker 2: They go to Vietnam.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is I mean, they're going they're like
sky marketing up. They've played with the doors, they've played
with the animals, and then they do a multi set
tour with the Jimmy Hendrix Experience. Right, that's right, And
he said, Billy said, the very first show that they did,
they were told, hey, you got to have a show
that's forty minutes. He's like, well, for us to get
a show that's forty minutes long, we're going to have
to play Purple Hayes and Foxy Lady.
Speaker 2: And I don't know why no one else.
Speaker 3: In the room went, you can't play these songs of
the band you're opening, Are you crazy? And so nobody's
told him that they had just finished Foxy Lady. He
goes into the intro of Purple Hayes. He looks over
at the side and he sees Jimmy Hendrix with his
arms crossed, staring at him. And he gets done with
the song and he comes over and to Jimmy Hendrix,
and Jimmy Hendrix smiles at him.
Speaker 2: He says, I like you, you've got nerve.
Speaker 3: So he loses a couple of those guys, decides to
be a three piece band like the Jimmy Hendrix Experience,
and then he starts losing those guys. One of them
goes to audition for the Morgan Mindy Show. I'm sorry,
I just say Morkan Mindy more con Mindy show. What
And the other one just kind of falls out right.
He's just like, hey, I'm not interested in doing this.
So he's like, I don't want to be a solo act.
But as it turns out, that's right when Frank Beard
has made his way down there, and frank Beard basically
pesters him to death until he finally goes into the
studio and when they play together, these are Billy's words.
He's like, it didn't take me thirty minutes. It didn't
take me thirty seconds. I knew instantly that this guy
has the chops that I want to play with. And
then of course Frank is the one that says, hey,
I got a bass player that'll round us out. They
bring Dusty down and they play.
Speaker 2: For three freaking hours straight without a break. Yeah, first
time to play together. They play Shuffle and see for
three hours and it just keeps on going and going
and going going. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So knowing that is their beginning, it's really disheartening to hear.
Now Billy is just saying, you know what, I'm not
really interested in their input anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm just gonna do all of this myself.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's a bummer. It is a bummer.
Speaker 4: Here's the interesting thing to me. You have these guys
who start making these awesome music videos and it's an
introduction to a whole new generation of which I was
one of those people and so were you. But they
also introduced synthesizers into their music, which was abomination to
a lot of early fans. When they took their hiatus,
he went to Europe and he went and listened to
punk shows, disco shows, started tasting different types of music,
and he listened to this band warming up called Devo Wow,
and he's like, Wow, these guys have these really cool
synths and they're still making great hooks, great energy, you know,
great shows. And then to kind of further stamp it
on them, he went and saw a band called depeche Mode.
Same thing happened there. He was blown away that this
band could take this crowd and energize them and without guitars,
they had no guitars, they had no drums, And he
went backstage and met the guys. This is like nineteen
eighty two, introduced himself and they're like, you're.
Speaker 2: In zz Top.
Speaker 4: What are you doing at one of our shows. He's like, man,
I'm just blown away by what you guys can do
from the stage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Devo depeche Mode zz Top. Yeah. He also liked
MD really. Yeah.
Speaker 3: We just finished covered them a month or so ago, right,
And their deal was we're not going to use guitars, right,
and then they made that change for Violator they had
the guitars, and I guess it's just kind of like
a nice crossover that Billy's like, Hey, let's bring in
some sense. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And you know who was playing the sense, Lyndon Hudson.
You got it?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Lynn Hudson credited on this album anywhere, not initially.
We'll get into that. We'll get into that in a minute,
all right.
Speaker 4: Song number three on the album is a song called
Sharp Dressed.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 3: Okay, guys, what I want you to do is play
a song that is killer guitar and drums and bass
for a solid twenty seconds with no words.
Speaker 2: Just sounds runs freaking amazing.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I love it, man.
Speaker 2: This is a killer song to me.
Speaker 3: This is the definitive zz top sound. This song starts.
I'm like that, there's no more iconic this is Zezy
Top than that first riff.
Speaker 2: Girl crazy about it?
Speaker 4: Sh I mean, we're sitting here glowing about this song.
This only reached number fifty six on the Hot one hundred.
Speaker 2: It's insane. What is going on here? Is my mind?
Speaker 4: This is the second single, another video directed by our
man Tim Newman. Yep, you've got the three babes, you
got the car.
Speaker 3: So did we get the new babe by this time?
The other one you can checked out after give me
all your loving So we got a new babe. But
it's not Kimberly Herron yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's still not Kimberly Heron. But there is a different, third,
different third babe. Yeah, now listen to this.
Speaker 4: Billy Gibbons got the idea for the name of this
song from the movie The Amateur, which came out in
nineteen eighty one, which I've never seen. I don't even
really know anything about it. During the credits, somebody was
credited in the role of sharp Eyed Man.
Speaker 2: Sharp Eyed Man.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, by the way, so there's no way that
this is the fifty sixth best song in America at
the time. That it peaked out on the Hot one hundred.
But that week was the same week that Every Breath
You Take topped out.
Speaker 2: At number one.
Speaker 4: And I remember during our police episode we talked about
how that might be the greatest top ten ever in
the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: I do remember that that was an incredible top ten.
I mean, I don't know how there's another thirty before
you get up to the top, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Billy Gibbons called this song a successful marriage of a
techno beat with bar band blues.
Speaker 3: So Lynnon Hudson was very involved in the early stages
of this song.
Speaker 2: And you just asked me a question a minute ago.
Did he get any writing credit on this right now?
Speaker 3: Basically what Billy said is, don't worry man, I'll take
care of you, right.
Speaker 2: That was kind of the idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And my guess is is that when Bill Hamm
heard that the other guys weren't really involved with under pressure,
that he started like doing a stronghold just as an
example of the way the Bill Hamm was number one.
He didn't ever let them do TV, he didn't ever
let them do interviews, he didn't ever let them play
on anybody else's stuff, and they're like, hey, you know,
shouldn't we do this and get more publicity, And he's like,
the less people know, the better, And to be honest,
for guys like you and me, these are guys we
could totally hang out with, right. Sure, these are good
old Texas.
Speaker 2: Boys, Texas boys.
Speaker 3: For most of the rest of the country, they might
be a little frightening, right Sure. It's a different kind
of language that they speak down in Texas. We're right
across the Red River from when we know that language.
Speaker 2: We do know that language. Yeah.
Speaker 3: That had actually worked out very well for them. They
were only doing shows in Texas, and at some point
they get offered to do this Memphis Blues festival. This
was like the Hollywood Bowl of Memphis, right like this,
and it's just blues musicians, and so they get called
out to go do this. This is after their first album.
This is after zz top first album. What a great
title that.
Speaker 2: Is for your first album, hey, right?
Speaker 3: And so anyway, they the promoter had called them up said, hey,
love your sound. We would love you guys to come out.
He apparently had not looked at the back of the album, right,
which had their watercolor drawn faces, which were much lighter
complexion than everyone else playing at this blues festival, right yeah,
And so whenever they showed up, he was like.
Speaker 2: You gets, you're white.
Speaker 3: You guys are going to shock the crap out of
the audience. I don't want you to mess up the show.
We're going to stick you at the very end, and
that way, hopefully people will have gotten tired and gone
home and it will be fine. I don't know what
kind of experience this promoter has, but the guys at
the end are always the ones that everybody are waiting for. Right,
that's the end of the headliner of the show plays last, right, right.
So of course when they get up to play, nobody
had left. Everybody is still there. There is a bit
of a gasp, and the crowd is the Yeah, bearded
rednecks come out. Yeah, partially bearded rednecks at this point
cowboy hats.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But once they kick it in a gear and they
start playing, not only did the crowd go nuts, but
the musicians started to come out and cheer them on.
So it was a great show for them. But bill
Ham said, we are not letting you out in public,
and that was one of the results. Another thing that
he said was, we are not going to double track
any instruments on this album.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 3: They go up to Tyler, Texas to record with this
guy named Robin Hood. Bryant's Robin has got this three
piece band. He has been told by Bill Hamm, we
want this to be.
Speaker 2: A huge sound.
Speaker 3: This has got to be a very very big sound.
And he's like, for three instruments, right, yes, And he's
like okay, And so he puts microphones everywhere. He puts
microphones in the hallway, he puts microphones right next to
the amps. He's trying to get any sound that he
could from any place that he can, but he cannot
find this big sound. And so he starts talking to
Billy and he's like, hey, I have done some double tracking,
and all you gotta do is like you play it once,
play it pretty simple, and then just detune it just
to smidge and then it fills it out. It gives
kind of a twelve string flow. And Billy's like, oh no,
we're not allowed to do that. He's like, you're not
allowed He goes yeah, Bill said no double tracking. We're
not allowed to double track, right, And so Robinhood thinks
about it for a second, He's like, okay, I tell
you what, buddy, When I throw you the ball, you
catch it. And so it's about one or so and
they haven't found the sound. Bill's getting frustrated, and Robin says,
you know, Bill, Billy was telling me he can't play
until he's gotten some of the barbecue over there at
the county tavern. Billy's like, sees what it's going on.
He catches the ball. He's like, yeah, man, I can't
play the Blues until I give me some barbecue. So
Bill Ham's like, okay, I'll go pick it up for
you guys.
Speaker 2: Where is it?
Speaker 3: He tells him where it is, he leaves to go
get it. What he doesn't tell him is that it
is a cross county line twenty five miles back when
the speed limit was fifty five miles an hour, right,
And so he's so. Then Robin Hood says to Billy, Okay,
we got about an hour and twenty minutes to make
this happen. Play something simple. Pick brown Sugar, right. You
listen to the first nearly two minutes of Brown Sugar,
and it's this very quiet guitar and singing sound, and
then all of a sudden it's full, like it's such
a contrast, such a great song. But he does the thing,
plays it, detunes it a little bit, you know, just
pull on the strings a little bit and gets them
just tiny bit out of tune. He plays it again.
He puts it at forty five degrees from one speaker
to the other. Bill Ham comes back in. He's like,
you didn't tell me. It was all the way across.
Speaker 2: The county guys barbecue, a long way from here.
Speaker 3: And Billy says, Bill, I think we got the sound.
He pushes play is the overdub, and Bill goes, that's it. Oh, yes,
kind yeah, we want you know, we.
Speaker 4: Haven't even really talked about how zz top got their name, right,
And so in the early days they had all these
posters of blues artists that they collected, and so you
had BB King, you had zz Hill. So they said, well,
we'll just merge those two and we'll become zz King.
Yeah that just sounds really close to BB King, but
you know the King is at the top.
Speaker 2: So they're like, there we go, zz Top. That's it.
Genius right. Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, I can't tell you how many times
I have drawn the interlocking Z's while board.
Speaker 2: High school classes.
Speaker 4: Hey, speaking of board. Yeah, the zz top wave.
Speaker 2: Right that they show in this video.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the reason why they came up with that is
they took like twenty takes. They're like, okay, guys, wave
with the camera, wave with the camera, wave with the camera,
Like that sucks, We'll come back to you, guys. And
then like so they kind of choreographed it as that
kind of lean in cool way.
Speaker 3: Right, Getting back to the long point that I was making.
Whenever Bill Ham I think gets the idea that Lennon
Hudson is heavily involved in these songs, I think he
probably puts his foot down and says, we are not
going to add another artist credit, right, So on this
album you don't see his name. You've got several songs
that he's heavily involved with, not only writing but also
producing and playing on them, and he gets no credit,
and he keeps waiting for something to happen, and eventually
he gives up and he sues them. Yeah, and he
breaks ties with Billy, moves out of his house. I mean,
they were freaking living together. I don't remember what he
was asking for, but what he ultimately got was six
hundred thousand dollars, which sounds like a lot, except that
this is a huge album, so it seems like it
should be more. And then you have to think his
attorney's got a third of that. That acts it down
four hundred thousand, and then his publisher got half of
what he got, and so that knocks it down to
two hundred thousand. So was it worth severing ties with
zz top for two hundred thousand dollars?
Speaker 4: Well, I guess it would be if he got no
credit on the next album as well.
Speaker 2: You know, right, it's a bummer of a thing. It
is a bummer everything.
Speaker 3: Their first their first charting song. This is just to
just to say how this goes. Their first charting song
was a song named Francine. Yeah she's only thirteen. Yeah
that's a little creepy, right, Yeah. Well, the guys who
actually wrote that song for them didn't get credit until
the two thousands, like Franccene would have been about fifty five.
Speaker 2: They ultimately got credit for the software. Wow, yeah, all right,
were done with sharp dress man. I guess we got
to move on, all right.
Speaker 4: Next song on the album, song number four. This song
is called I Need You Tonight.
Speaker 7: Losy Ballady Sweet Goodness.
Speaker 4: I still I'm all in four tracks and I love
this song.
Speaker 3: It is almost slow danceable at the high school gym.
Speaker 2: It's it's make outable. Oh, it's definitely make outable.
Speaker 3: Like to me, this is this is like you're you're
at the pool hall and the wee hours of.
Speaker 2: The morning, three o'clock there.
Speaker 3: And the girl that's still around that is not she
hadn't gone home yet.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating grinders.
So time to say hello, there you go.
Speaker 6: Yes, this is kind of that oozing, that bluesy sexuality.
Speaker 2: You know, for sure love it. I love this story.
Speaker 4: So when they were first starting out, they played at
a show in Alvin, Texas. It's one of those deals
where they're hoping for a sellout, be happy if it's
half full. Curtain goes up. One guy in the crowd
run and not only that, he's looking around.
Speaker 2: Like that's it.
Speaker 4: Just me, good night, everybody, I'm out of here.
Speaker 6: And there and they said from the stage, They're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
stay put.
Speaker 4: We'll play a whole set for you, just for you,
just for you, man.
Speaker 2: Just stay.
Speaker 6: So they kind of gilted the guy into sticking around.
And then like halfway through they took a break. They
went down, talked to him, bought him a coke, and
he said, that guy still comes around. He still comes
his easytop show.
Speaker 2: He don't know his name. He won't tell him his name.
Asked the dude his.
Speaker 3: Name, yeah, and he and he just says, hey, remember me,
I'm that guy, And they're like.
Speaker 2: Of course, we remember you. The guy is the best
story we have.
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 4: In nineteen eighty four, I don't know if you know
this or not. Nineteen eighty four, Billy and Dusty were
offered one million dollars by Gillette to shave I.
Speaker 3: Do remember that, Yeah, yeah, I remember when it had happened,
and I remember that they said no, and I remember
thinking at the time, oh my gosh, I can't believe that.
And now it's in retrospect, I'm like, of course, not, no,
they're making way more than a million dollars.
Speaker 2: Well, and here's the other thing.
Speaker 4: When you look at pictures of say, Billy Gibbons in
nineteen seventy three, and you look at him now, it
looks like two different individuals.
Speaker 3: Dude, when they got together, he looked like the guy
that you'd bring your computer to to get fixed. I
mean he had or maybe at that point, since it's
long enough ago, he looked like your sophomore year geography teacher,
like I mean, receding hairline, no beard, Harry Potter, round glasses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just looked like a nerd.
Speaker 4: And now that beard gives him that cool the glasses
and their face is hidden.
Speaker 2: Don't really know what they look like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, their trademark can't shave the beard.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: And here's another thing that happened in nineteen eighty four.
Dusty who would keep a Darren your pistol in his boot,
dropped it and shot himself in the abdomen. What shot
himself in the abdomen, drove himself to the hospital and
passed out just after walking into the camr. Wow, obviously
he recovered, you know, God rest his soul. He passed
away just about two and a half years ago. I
guess he did ju live twenty one right. Yeah, so
the beards, Yeah, the beards came about, like we said,
after they had their three year hiatus. That hiatus happened
after their worldwide Texas tour, right, which is a thing
of renown. This is where the rest of the country
was introduced to Texas, and they did it their own way.
They went and got an entire animal show. I mean
they had buffalo and longhorn and buzzards, rattlesnakes. So they
finished with this huge I mean a year and a
half long tour after they've been doing multiple albums and
they take this big break. Like you said, Billy went
and toured Europe. Frank went into rehab. Like he said,
at some point during that tour, I got a check
for seventy two thousand dollars and that was the first
really big check I ever got, and I spent every
single penny of it on drugs, LSD, heroin, cocaine, and
you name it. He was doing it, yep. And at
some point he was like, I would like to live
like normal people, where I can just watch TV at
night and then go to bed and I'd be okay.
So he checked himself into a rehab during that time,
and then this is I love this. Dusty Hill whose
given name is Joe went to work in an airport. Yeah,
maybe had a name tag that.
Speaker 8: Said Joe, and he said it was fantastic because nobody
recognized me. I was just another guy working stiff like
all these other guys, and I would go to the
bar with them at night and we'd just hang out
out and drink beers and it just felt so normal
and nice. And he said, and on the rare occasion
that somebody would recognize me and come up and say something,
I'd be like, do you really think i'd be here
right now if I was that guy?
Speaker 2: Of course I'm not him. That's that's a crazy story, man.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when they ultimately get back together from all.
Speaker 3: Of that, all of them have been letting their beards
grow for three years, well, Dusty and Billy for three years, yes, yeah,
so they both got pretty well the wizard beard by
that point.
Speaker 2: Now, Frank had only been letting his grow for a
little while.
Speaker 3: By the way, did you notice I did not shave
for this particular episode. You see you see it's it's
still all pretty much around my face.
Speaker 2: I see it.
Speaker 3: That's about how long Frank's beard was. And he was like, well,
I'm not going to be the guy with the little beard,
so I'm just gonna shave it off. Yeah, I got
the name, I don't need the beard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I heard Billy said, we still wrestle with whether
we put.
Speaker 2: The beard under the sheets or over the sheet. Okay,
moving on to the next song.
Speaker 4: This song is called I Got the six.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Now, if you're familiar with Tush, yeah, and you know
that Dusty is the one singing on Tush.
Speaker 2: You know Dusty is the one singing on this one.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he is singing I Got the six, Give me
your nine.
Speaker 5: Give me.
Speaker 2: So, I've got my list of sexual annual windows songs.
You ready for this? This is easy top. They're known
for this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, obviously this is I've got the six, You give
me your nine.
Speaker 2: H huh.
Speaker 4: I believe we're talking about what they call sixty nine.
Speaker 3: By the way, that is what Francine reached. That was
their first chart The first song in the charts was Francine.
Speaker 2: It reached sixty nine. Dude, excellent. All right. So they
have a song called Pearl Necklace.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, we cannot say any more about what that means.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying that's it's a song called Pearl Necklace.
Speaker 2: Yes, Okay.
Speaker 4: They've got a song called Tube Snake Boogie. Yeah, They've
got a song They'll crow Fly, which if you look
at the lyrics. It says, well, it feels so right
when you squeeze it tight, when you reach the end.
Speaker 2: Do it over again.
Speaker 4: Okay, then you've got of course, you got tush just
looking for some You've got a song called gun Love.
She'll shoot you full of love till your love bone
aches you love bone.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then of course I mean give me all
your loving says if I blow my top, will you
let it go to your head?
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a venue window there. They were poets with
the sexual euphemism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, were right, absolutely, slip inside my sleeping bag.
Speaker 3: So he'll singing on this one. He typically sings back up.
Most songs he sings back up, but sometimes he sings lead,
and sometimes they'll have a back and forth between them.
Speaker 2: Did you know that?
Speaker 3: Then this particular album, you've got some other vocal harmonies
by a guy named Jimmy Shannison.
Speaker 4: The guy from Survivor, WHOA.
Speaker 2: It was only with Cobra at this time.
Speaker 3: He had not made it to Survivor yet, but yes,
he was the lead singer for Cobra and Survivor, and
they called him up and said, hey, you do some
backend vocals.
Speaker 4: Jimmy Jamison the guy who replaced the dude who sang
on I the Tiger.
Speaker 2: The guy who sang the bay Watch team.
Speaker 4: That's it, that's right in the Burning Heart. Okay, hit
stop on your tape player, kick it out, flip it
over side to. We're starting off with the biggie. This
is a big one songs called legs.
Speaker 3: This is zzy top song about women empowerment. Yeah right,
she's got legs and she knows how to use it.
Speaker 6: So this was inspired by a true story. Yeah, Billy
Gibbons drive down the road.
Speaker 4: No, this is it starts raining a little bit girl
tries to flag him down by showing some leg gets
a little further pastor He's like.
Speaker 2: You know what, I really should go help that woman.
Speaker 4: Turns around, goes back, can't find her. The mystery woman vanished,
but he said to himself, the girl had legs, she.
Speaker 2: Knew how to use them. It's great. Right.
Speaker 3: This is the last in the Eliminator Give Me All
Your Love and trilogy.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: This is the third video directed by Tim Newman, and
this is the one where the three Very God playmates,
if you will, hey come in.
Speaker 2: They instead of rescuing a guy or taking a guy
on a little car trip.
Speaker 3: Hey Rescu, Yeah, yeah, I love this video. I almost
her up with this because I'm like, all these bullet's
picking on her, and there's some people out there that
do the right thing.
Speaker 4: Okay, So I've got some names for you on this one.
Speaker 2: Okay. So the actress who is the young woman who
works at the shoe store there everybody's picking on. Her
name is Wendy Frasier. She turned twenty one during the shoot.
Twenty one years old. Wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that just just put that in perspective. That means
she's sixty one this year.
Speaker 2: My gosh.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: She had starred in another video directed by Tim Newman,
by the world famous artist Baxter Robertson and his world
famous song called silver.
Speaker 2: Strand uh ringing a bell not ranging a bell. So
he thought, well, crap, since that didn't really do anything,
I'll grab her.
Speaker 4: We'll try this thing again. We'll do something different with her.
And he ended up dating that girl. And he's like, hey,
what could I say? You spend time with people you
started to date it. Yeah, we've got Gina Tomasino or
Gina Keo, who was in the oc oc.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we mentioned that she was playmate of nineteen eighty.
She was November of Night Tote November.
Speaker 3: Sorry, hey, you're still in November.
Speaker 4: We are November nineteen eighty, that's forty three years ago.
Then you've got Danielle arnand we talked about her.
Speaker 2: She was the girl from France.
Speaker 4: Yes, then you have the beautiful Kimberly Harron.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 4: She was Miss March nineteen eighty one in Playland vazine.
She was also the Blue Club ghost from Ghostbusters.
Speaker 3: You can't say family friendly radio.
Speaker 2: Sorry? Sorry?
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: Then I sent you a text the other day she
was in Romance in the Stone, and I said, Dee,
do you remember when this girl was in Romance in
the Stone and you could really place her. She is
the beautiful woman who is starring in Joan Wilder's novel
that's kind of like this imaginary character the very beginning
of Romance.
Speaker 2: In the Stone.
Speaker 3: Yes, I remember the barely hanging on white shirt exactly.
Speaker 4: She takes revenge on the man who shot her dog
and stole her bible. This song reached number eight on
the Hot one hundred. Yeah, okay, now listen to this.
I can't wait to go through this top eight with you.
This is July twenty first, nineteen eighty four. This is
an all star Shirley Top Top eight right here.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I'm excited. Okay. So number eight is Legs.
Speaker 4: Number seven is Almost Paradised by Mike Reno and Ann
Wilson from the.
Speaker 2: Footloose soundtrack.
Speaker 4: Number six, no joke is Deeff Dave's favorite song from
nineteen eighty four, which nobody else cares about. It's called
State of Shock Michael Jackson and Mick Jagger. For those
of you don't remember.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's a long yep, I remember it, but wow.
Right then you've got Jumped for My Love by the
Pointer sisters. I remember that one to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Number four is Eyes Without a Face by Billy Idol.
Oh all right, we'll be covering that one next week.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Number three is Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr. Huh.
Number two is Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen. Wow, okay.
And number one is wind Dove's Cry by Prince nineteen
eighty four. Man, dude, who power? What a lineup? Seriously?
Speaker 4: Okay, I can't leave Legs without talking about the furry
rotating guitars.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that idea actually came from Billy's earlier band, the
movie Sidewalks, whose name is Don Summers. He was the
bass player and it was his idea to have spinning guitars.
Speaker 2: Idea is it's hooked.
Speaker 3: To your belt buckle and you've got a rotating electric
conduit there. Yeah, that's how you still get powered to
the guitar and are able to spin it in full three.
Speaker 4: Sixty once again magical on the music video, it is
eye catching and super cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the next song on the album is a song
called Thug.
Speaker 3: I can remember as I'm driving down the road listening
to this song. This was not one that was kind
of in my rotation when I had this CD way
back when, right, But I heard this one and I
texted you and I said, thug song Miami Vice would
play for a villain from Texas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could see it. Yeah, absolutely, you know, the
beginning of this kind of reminds me of the song
one night in Bangkok. He just added those keyboards. I
think it's.
Speaker 3: Very synthy, right, And this was the one that was
written by Lennon Hudson, and I mean he.
Speaker 2: Did it all basically, it was his song.
Speaker 3: It was his song and he didn't get any credit
for it.
Speaker 4: Billy Gibbons is like, hey, like that song, how can
I steal it from you?
Speaker 2: For ever?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you're Billy Gibbons, this song isn't worth not
giving somebody credit for it, Like, it's not. I mean,
it's not a game changer, right. I don't think there's
a skipper on this entire album, but if there was, this.
Speaker 2: Would be one. I totally agree this is the one. Yeah, okay,
next song. That being said, let's jump for the next one.
Speaker 4: So the next song on the album is called TV Dinners.
Speaker 3: So this has got another little synth part in it,
but it's much more guitar passed. It's much more like
their older stuff. But it really to me reminds me
of Our Loves and Jeopardy by the Great Kilnband is
very which and that immediately makes me go to weird
ol and I lost on Jeopardy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can totally see that.
Speaker 4: In fact, I was texting with Doug Gray, friends of
the show, and I was asking him what he thought
about Eliminator, you.
Speaker 2: Know what song stood out to him?
Speaker 4: And he's like, TV Dinners is the greatest weird al
song not sung by weird out.
Speaker 3: It is perfect And this is the last one they
had a video for, but they didn't have Tim Newman
direct this one.
Speaker 7: Totally out of place.
Speaker 4: It's a complete shift in the style of videos.
Speaker 3: Absolute departure. They use claymation in this thing. It's it's
kind of a weird like almost like.
Speaker 4: Goolies second Goblin. Yeah, who's reaching his arm out from
under the foil part of.
Speaker 2: The TV Dinner.
Speaker 3: So we've talked about how these videos are so important
for MTV. I mean, like the style that Tim Newman
brought was an entirely different style for MTV at that point.
I mean, this is eighty three. This is a year
and a few months after MTV makes its debut, right,
But we haven't talked about how the band first decided
to do videos.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell me.
Speaker 3: So there it's six months before they start recording for
Eliminator and Frank calls up Dusty and he's like, hey man,
this is this really good music show on TV right now.
You should check it out. It's like the it's like
the last channel, Like it's all the way at the end.
I don't know what's going on, but they've got a
good music show going on.
Speaker 2: You should check it out.
Speaker 3: It's been really cool, uh huh. And so then Dusty
starts watching. He's like, this is pretty good, and he
calls Billy and he's like, hey, you should check out
this TV show. It's all music stuff. It's really pretty cool.
You should check it out. And so he starts watching.
He watches for three hours, which is a good eight
hours after Frank started watching, and then calls them both.
He's like, how long is this music show going to
go on?
Speaker 2: This is the longest thing I've ever seen. And that,
of course was their introduction to MTV twenty four hours
a day.
Speaker 4: Man, he could watch that until about nineteen ninety five,
and then you could have turned it off because there's
nothing worth it after that. Right, great story, great song,
This video though terrible. I mean the song's good, but
I think there's another song that I would have released
as a four single other than this one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's I like the song, and I
would I listened to the song.
Speaker 2: It's a head bobber.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is surprising to me that it's a single,
but it's it's still a good one, still a good one.
Speaker 2: Moving on, next song. Next song is called dirty Dog.
I think what you meant was the next song. It's
called Darter Got Home.
Speaker 4: So this is the song I would have released instead
of TV Dinners. I think this is a great song.
It's that one twenty beats per minute. It's peppy, it's danceable,
it's fun.
Speaker 2: Guitar's great, catchy. I like it. I like a lot
of guitars. I haven't tked guitars yet.
Speaker 3: I can't believe we're halfway or more through the second
side of the album and I haven't talked guitars yet. Okay,
so for this one, he plays different guitars, right, sure,
for this one he did not use his Pearly Gates guitar,
but his Pearly Gates guitar is his most famous guitar.
And you said, you know the story on this, And
I said, so, you know what the girlfriend in the car?
Speaker 2: And you were like, no, I don't know about the girlfriend.
Speaker 3: So in nineteen sixty seven, he had a thirty six
Packard car. Yeah, thirty six, that's I mean, it's an
over thirty year old car, and it's a hunk of junk,
but it's runs well right right, And he's got this
girlfriend and she has this opportunity to go audition for
a movie. Condy Hollywood, No, a real movie, a movie movie. Yeah,
but she's got no way to get out there, and Billy,
being the guy that he is, he says, why don't
you take my car? So he lets her drive this
thirty six packard all the way out from Texas to California.
She calls him up and she says, I got the part,
and I think it's because of the car.
Speaker 2: And he's like what.
Speaker 3: She's like, I just think I feel like there's like
a divine connection with this car, and I just I
think that's what it is. And he's like, well, I
guess we should call that car Pearly Gates love it
and she's she's like, yeah, that's great, I love that.
A little while later, she calls him up and she says, hey,
I sold that car. He's like, you do what. It's okay, though,
I'm going to send you the money. She sends him
the money she got from the car, two hundred fifty dollars.
As it turns out, there's a farmer in Houston that
had something he wanted that had just been sitting under
the bed.
Speaker 2: Yes, so the guy was a former musician.
Speaker 4: He had a nineteen fifty nine less Paul and was ranching,
didn't want to didn't really need it anymore, and he
had told some people about it, and this guy called
Billy is like, Hey, this guy's got a nineteen fifty
nine less Paul.
Speaker 2: I think you need to go talk to this guy.
You guys out to see him. Guy says, well, I
don't know. Two hundred and fifty dollars.
Speaker 4: Pays two hundred and fifty dollars for that fifty nine
less Paul that he got from the sale of the car.
Last forward twenty years and he gets an offer by
a Japanese businessman to buy that guitar for five million dollars.
Uh huh, he wants ello. No, it's his sad it's
the Zzy Top.
Speaker 3: Sound is at least the pre beard Z for sure. Yeah,
all of those incredible bluesy sounds that they had for
their first six to seven albums are predominantly that guitar
that prilegates guitar, And to hear him talk about it,
I mean he still kind of revers it, like it's
this divine thing and we're talking about it an.
Speaker 2: Ordained minister here. Billy Gibbons is Reverend Willie.
Speaker 3: All right, and he's got a barbecue sauce too, called
Reverend Willie's Barbecue Sauce.
Speaker 2: But he talks about this guitar.
Speaker 3: And he says, when she was born, it was like
everything came together exactly as it should.
Speaker 2: The wood is perfect, the electronics are perfect. Everything is
set in such a beautiful way, straight out of the box.
Could not be a better guitar. I love it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have to order some of that barbecue sauce man.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: By the way, side note, did you know that Billy
has acted in a TV show called Bones. You know
the show Bones?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So he had a recurring character would show up
once a year or every few years or whatever. But
he's the father of the girl character. The girl character's.
Speaker 2: Name is Angela. Middle names Pearly Gates Montenegro. Oh.
Speaker 3: I love that he is playing a fictionalized version of himself.
Speaker 2: My WiFi shoes that show. I'm gonna ask her about that.
That's cool. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Dusty has also been in a TV show Kink of
the Hill, where Dusty Hill plays the cousin of Think Hill.
Speaker 7: How about that?
Speaker 5: There you go?
Speaker 4: Okay, next song on the album is a song called
if I Could Only Flag Her Down.
Speaker 2: You got some Texas boogie going on in this one.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 2: This is old school's easy top for shore. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Quick side note. I've got nowhere else to put it,
so I'm gonna put it here. William Frederick Gibbons is
the son of Freddie Gibbons, who had the Freddie Gibbons Orchestra,
who worked very closely with his cousin Cedric Gibbons in Hollywood.
Cedric was the art director on over one thousand movies, okay,
including Gaslight, which is a pretty famous movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: He also was the director on the second Tarzan movie,
like Tarzan Meets His Mate or whatever it is. He
was the director of that I Love Jane. His key
claim to fame is this is Billy Gibbons's Uncle's key
claim to fame is he designed the statue for the Oscars.
Speaker 2: You are kidding me. I am here to blow your mind.
Don't let it go to your head. That's an excellent
use of a quotation right there, where to go?
Speaker 4: Thank you man, that's fantastic. You know the only thing
I was going to throw in for you. The Black
Crows were opening for zz Top early in the nineties,
Chris Robinson, who we hope to cover next year.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk about the Black Crows. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Zz Top had an endorsement deal with Miller Lyte and
they had some kind of become a little more corporatized
in their older age. Sure, and Chris Robinson the Black
Crows couldn't keep his mouth shut from the stage about
corporate deals and commercials and that type of thing, and
basically dared zz top to fire him from the stage,
and so they did.
Speaker 3: Wow antagonistic currently guy he is, and they were on
their way up and really achieved some heights in the
early nineties.
Speaker 2: But this easy Top guys said, get on out of here. Yeah,
another tidbit that I have nowhere else to throw in.
Speaker 3: Sure, Billy Gibbons, mom secretary for Lyndon Johnson, stop it.
I mean, probably not when he was president, Probably when
he was down in Texas where they were, but yeah,
down in Houston.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay. Last song on the album.
Speaker 4: This song is called bad Girl.
Speaker 3: So this song starts off and it sounds like they're live, right,
but then once the song goes on, I feel like
it's too polished to be live.
Speaker 6: Is it do you know, Well, I've heard a lot
of albums have these sort of live from the studio
you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So another thing that came about with this change in
tempo and putting the new sounds in and taking out
Dusty and Frank's stuff, they started to have to play
not just a click track, but like a backing music
right track, like they had background music that was playing. Sure,
of course they didn't let anybody know this. They just
pretended like it was all them they're live.
Speaker 4: Well, I heard Billy Gibbons called our buddy Lyndon Hudson,
and Lyndon Hudson is kind of a handyman, kind of
do it all guy, and he's like, man, we got
a problem. We're in Kentucky, we got no backing sound.
And Lyndon Hudson's like, well, have you tried this?
Speaker 2: You tried that?
Speaker 4: And Billy Gibbons's like, could you just fly out here
and fix it for us?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 4: So he flew him out there. Lindon shows up. He's like,
basically it's the equivalent of turning the machine off and
turning it on. Okay, guys, uh, I think you're good
to go now. They're like, well, we know we called
the right guy fix the problem.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 4: So this song reminds me of when we did Girls,
Girls Girls. The last song on the album was Jaelhouse
Rock Live. They needed it to kind of round out
the album, just kind of throw it in there as Piller.
Speaker 2: I like it, but it just feels like Piller.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I will say this, need to say this one
thing we didn't mention Terry Manning this whole show. He
is a guy who's critical to their success. He is
the guy who when they were in Memphis, right after
that big Blues show, they heard, Hey, they're in Memphis.
Led Zeppelin had just gotten finished recording led Zeppelin three.
When Billy Gibbons heard that, he was like, I want
that guy to produce our next album, right, And so
they had already started production with Robin Hood down in Tyler, Texas,
but they basically took all of those recordings up to
Terry Manning. And Terry Manning was the guy who put
together that new sound that they have, and he was
their key producer. He was the one that was recording
them at Ardent Studio and he was the one that
took the tracks home and even in his Home Studio
made this album what it is, and so I don't
want to leave it without giving him some credit. He
is a brilliant guy and it's funny to listen to
him talk because he said when they showed up with
those beards and asked me what I thought, I thought
they look horrible.
Speaker 2: They're going to ruin your career. Boy? Was I wrong? Wow?
Speaker 4: All right, Well, that's gonna do it for Eliminator turning
forty years old this year, and next week we're gonna
match it up with Rebel Yell by Billy Idol.
Speaker 3: Another huge one from nineteen eighty three. Can't wait to
jump into it. That one, just I mean that one
turned forty just a month ago, Yeah, just a few
weeks ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excited to do it.
Speaker 4: Should be a great matchup early MTV, lots of videos.
Speaker 2: Should be fun. Yeah. Thank you guys so much for
joining us.
Speaker 3: Please, if you've got time, hit the review button, give
us some stars, give us a review, tell us what
you think of Eliminator and how it matches up with
Rebel Yell, and we will see you next week.
Speaker 2: Bye, guys,