Then the videos came along, and now we’ve recaptured the 16-year-old girls. You know, our audience grew up with us until the videos, and they were beginning to get a little long in the tooth.
As Dusty Hill told Creem, “The videos have given us a younger audience. These videos made them heroes to New Wave misfits, winning them a new female fandom. 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 reveled in the humor and ridiculousness of it all, busting their synchronized dance moves and spinning their white-fur guitars. Against all odds, the weird beards turned out to be the old-school rockers who best adapted to the Eighties music-video revolution. (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. ZZ Top had a long career before MTV even existed. As Billy Gibbons said, shrugging, “Dusty and I don’t fit too well with Giorgio Armani.”
And they did it without cleaning up their look: beards, hats, cheap sunglasses. The little ol’ band from Tejas, the most proudly unfashionable rockers around, became MTV’s unlikeliest superstars ever. 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. He was a beer drinker, hell-raiser, sharp-dressed broom duster, and bassist in the same trio for more than 50 years.
The world is mourning today for the late, great Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, who died Tuesday.
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