Interview: ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons

Billy Gibbons celebrated his 75th birthday this past December. And while most of his contemporaries who’ve hit the three-quarter century mark are kicking back and enjoying retirement, the ZZ Top founding member is racing through 2025 with plenty planned. The year opened with Gibbons flying solo with help from his band, The BFG’s, a band whose current line-up is rounded out by Hammond B-3 organ maestro Mike Flanigin and Chris “Whipper” Layton, one-half of the Texas rhythm section Double Trouble best-known for holding the bottom down for the late Stevie Ray Vaughan. 

With his solo jaunt behind him, Gibbons has returned to his full-time job leading ZZ Top, the band he founded back in 1969, fresh off of playing with Houston psychedelic rockers The Moving Sidewalks. And while ZZ Top’s debut, the appropriately named “ZZ Top’s First Album” dropped in 1971, the self-described “Little Ol’ Band from Texas” became a model of longevity, with Gibbons leading a trio rounded out by bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard until 2021, when Hill passed away at the age of 72. For Gibbons, the death of his longtime friend and bandmate came as a shock. 

“We of course miss the Dust,” Gibbons said in a mid-January interview. “He was feeling out of sorts and we had a show planned. He said while he wanted to do this gig, he said he was really out of sorts. That was kind of the telling tale. I didn’t think much about it that night. I said, ‘Hey man, we’ve got a two-week break. Go home and you’ve got to go see the physician. Check yourself out. I hear you, if you’re not 100 percent, let’s get to the bottom of it.’ That was that and the poor guy I think was plain and simple worn out.”

Luckily enough, Hill’s running buddy and guitar tech Elwood Francis was able to step into his late friend’s role, something for which Gibbons was grateful. 

“The funny thing is that Elwood had judiciously kept the lid on the fact that him and Dusty were two peas in a pod,” Gibbons explained. “Elwood was teaching Dusty bass figures and they were trading off stuff. Our willing stand-in, Mr. Elwood Francis, is now holding down the bottom of the top.”

A big factor in ZZ Top’s longevity has been the band’s willingness to simultaneously cling to their blues roots while infusing a disparate twist into the creative process. The first time came at the dawn of the ‘80s, when the band started experimenting with synthesizers, a move that started with 1981’s “El Loco” and exploded with the 1983 follow-up “Eliminator.” As Gibbons recalled, a swing through England at the time really planted the seeds for that pivot that made them fixtures on the then-emerging MTV. 

“London set the stage initially when we became pals with the cutting-edge band, Depeche Mode,” Gibbons recalled. “On returning stateside, we were confronted somewhat unexpectedly by sequencers, synths, and all the allied gear in the town where rock and roll, blues, rockabilly and everything else worth listening do finds its origin: Memphis, Tennessee.  The staff at Ardent studio were always standing at the forefront of the "what's happening" scene and offered to join in with the experiment of the "science project gone wrong" and liked what we heard.  We just engaged the weird gear on hand and made it work for us.”

And while ZZ Top eventually returned to a more guitar-driven sound, experimentation was never completely off the table. The band’s most recent studio outing, 2012’s “La Futura,” which was released on Rick Rubin’s American Recordings imprint, found the trio working with Houstonians and hip-hop artists DJ DMD with Lil’ Keke and Fat Pat. For Gibbons, throwing in those creative curveballs is par for the ZZ Top course.

“We just go for it and ZZ fans dig it,” Gibbons said.

Currently, the Texas trio are shifting into touring mode, hitting a good portion of the United States and Canada, while managing to squeeze in a brief run down to Australia and New Zealand. Fans can expect a set list that covers the breadth of the ZZ Top canon.

“[Our show is] just going to be three guys bashing it out loud and proud,” Gibbons said. “In other words, that ZZ thing with songs dating back to the start of the band as well as the ones everyone always wants to hear along with some random surprises — especially random to us three….gotta shout out those lines!”

There is also a new song that could move into the mix, “Livin’ It Up Down In Texas,” a collaboration with long-time friend Billy Bob Thornton for the latter’s current Paramount series “Landman.” Also joining in are Thornton co-star and country artist Mark Collie.

“Billy Bob called me up and said [creator] Taylor [Sheridan] wants some music,” Gibbons said. “Billy Bob said he had an idea that maybe he and I should do something. He wanted it to be the BFG thing and I asked if he had any ideas. He said to give me a minute and he’d send me a text. All I got was a text of a picture of an oil well engulfed in flames. He said, ‘Let’s write it to sound like this.’ It’s called ‘Livin’ It Up Down Texas.’”

And while there are rumors that Francis had recorded some songs with the late Dusty Hill, Gibbons is cryptic as to whether that might lead to some newer ZZ Top studio material.

“We, too, would relish owning an accurate and definitive answer,” he said. “All we know is the dials continue turning in the studio, and… even out down the asphalt with a big, bad batch of our brand of sonic sauces.  Always something brewing from our collective mindset.”