Year 12, Day 324 - 11/19/20 - Movie #3,696
BEFORE: This film is going to wrap up November, with Billy Bob Thornton carrying over from "Dead Man", and you can probably guess what Christmas film I'll be watching when I come back in December. I had a bit of a dilemma here, because suddenly at the end of the year, with only a few slots left, came a sudden influx of films, including "Mr. North", which is now postponed, and also "A Million Little Pieces", another film with Billy Bob Thornton that looks somewhat interesting. Then I found a third Christmas movie that could easily get tacked on to the end, after the second Christmas movie. So something had to give, and it came down to either THIS rock documentary, or "A Million Little Pieces".
Neither one fit thematically, but this one gets the edge because it's a music doc that didn't link to any of the other music docs on the list (at least not according to the IMDB, there's always uncredited archive footage, usually of the Beatles or the Stones) and I can probably link to "A Million Little Pieces" some other way. This film HAD to go between two Billy Bob Thornton films in order to be included, so there you go. PLUS I can't really say that I've covered the music documentary category from "A to Z" unless there's a Z in there somewhere, right? Oh, and ZZ Top was my favorite band for a number of years, let's say from 1983 to 1996. More on that later.
THE PLOT: The story of how three oddball teenage bluesmen became one of the biggest, most beloved bands on the planet.
AFTER: Well, I was right, there were some notable musicians appearing in archive footage, and that would have been enough to link this film to my earlier chain of rockumentaries, but there was no way to know that without watching the film, was there? This could have been the link between "Sound City" and "Muscle Shoals", two very different docs about famous sound studios. But that's neither here nor there - how the heck was I supposed to know that ZZ Top once opened up for Jimi Hendrix or went to play in Hawaii with the Rolling Stones? Oh, right, I'm a fan, but I never heard those stories from the early days of the band before.
Maybe I should have known - every single U.S. band that came up in the 1960's or 1970's traces its roots back to Elvis Presley, and every single British band that came up in the 1960's traces its roots back to the Beatles. (Unless it's a U.S. band inspired by the Beatles, or a British band inspired by Elvis.). Ah, but ZZ Top really has the roots of its sound in the old blues style, so that means we have to go back to Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf - and this explains the connection to the Stones, Hendrix and (more tangentially) Led Zeppelin and Cream, they all covered or ripped off the old blues progressions. Have you noticed there are very few documentaries made about Led Zeppelin? That's because they can't really do a deep dive into the creation of their hit songs without pointing out that they blatantly STOLE everything from blues records, just changing the names of the songs and failing to credit the songwriters. For all the popularity of Zeppelin, there's just no original work there to take pride in. But I digress.
This documentary instead gets more concerned with the three burning questions on everyone's minds - which are 1) "What's up with the beards?", 2) "Are the beards real?" and 3) Why doesn't the drummer, whose last name is Beard, have a beard?" Well, all of these questions have an answer, and it's basically the same answer. The band famously went out on its first tour as a headlining act, on the "Texas Worldwide Tour" that lasted from 1976 to 1977, criss-crossing the whole U.S. from one end to the other. The tour famously included a Texas-shaped stage with a live buffalo, live steer, live rattlesnakes and a few buzzards that were really looking forward to the drummer dying from exhaustion so they could eat him. It was some weird mix of rock music and a live touring zoo that has yet to be replicated - and when it was over, the band members needed a break, which started as a 90-day break and then lasted over two years. When the band got back together, they found that they had all neglected to shave during the break, and decided to roll with it, except that the drummer's beard was nowhere near as long as the beards of the other two, so he promptly shaved it off to not look like a poser. End of mystery - except keeping the beards going forward added a sense of mystery, with a long beard and some (cheap) sunglasses, the two guitarists became characters of a sort, no longer looking like themselves (and after you've seen their pre-beard faces, you may agree that this was an improvement.)
But it's HOW these three different men spent their two-year break, and the money they earned from that worldwide tour, that is the most edifying. Guitarist Billy Gibbons went walk-about, hanging out in Europe with punks in 1976, traveling to India and seeking the advice of mystics, and so on, Bassist Dusty Hill took a job at a Texas airport as a baggage handler named "Joe", taking advantage of the anonymity granted him by growing a beard, plus being a bass player. And drummer Frank Beard went to Jamaica and spent all that tour money on drugs. There's something brutally honest about that, like a street beggar who holds up a sign that says, "Who am I kidding, I need a beer!" The guy liked heroin, what more is there to say?
Eventually the band came back together, the drummer went to rehab, and they started making new music to follow-up their early hits "Tush" and "La Grange" with a more studio-based sound that suddenly started to sell albums - their 1979 "Deguello" album went platinum thanks to songs like "Cheap Sunglasses" and their cover of the old Sam & Dave hit "I Thank You", and they slowly found themselves moving a bit away from the blues and closer to mainstream rock and roll. Then of course, when MTV became a thing, they were perfectly positioned after getting out of their old contract and moving to Warner Bros., whose goal was to conquer the world through three-minute music videos. Who can forget the triple threat of the music videos for "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs", which all featured the band acting as mystical, ghost-like advisers helping the downtrodden normal American slaves transcend their slavish, work-a-day lives through the combination of a hot car and scantily-clad women? And don't forget those fuzzy guitars that they could somehow spin on their belt buckles. If ever a band was in the right place at the right time, it was ZZ Top - the first year of MTV was like Elvis shaking his hips on the Ed Sullivan show mixed with the Beatles appearing in "A Hard Day's Night", mixed with Miley Cyrus swinging nekkid on a giant wrecking ball.
I was right there with them, I'd stay up late to watch "Friday Night Videos" (my parents didn't have cable, so no MTV) to see if "Sharp Dressed Man" would beat out Def Leppard's "Photograph" for video of the week, and there was nothing more meaningful in my life at the time. I HAD to buy the "Eliminator" album, because these guys were just too cool for school, and I'd put on the headphones way too loud and mock-drum along with every track. Plus I new every second of their videos, and just when to pause them, if you know what I mean. I bought myself a shiny "ZZ" keychain and dreamed of the day that the band would pull up to my job in a 1933 Ford hot rod filled with three lingerie-wearing women who would whisk me away and rock my world. But, that never happened. Wait, music videos weren't reality? Still, a young teen could dream, right?
It appears that ZZ Top sold me (and millions of others) a bill of goods that they couldn't deliver on. But they're hardly the only ones. If I go out and buy a new suit, new shoes, silk suit, black tie, you're saying that EVERY GIRL will be crazy about me, if I'm a "Sharp Dressed Man"? I guess I didn't read the disclaimer saying that your actual mileage may vary, and perhaps not EVERY girl will be crazy about you, because come on, you're not in the band, are you? And where is this elusive woman who not only has legs, but clearly knows how to use them? (You mean, walking? Or are we talking about something else here?). Damn, but that's really a stupid song at the end of the day - but somehow, for a while, it was the center of my universe.
Later on, while in college, since ZZ Top wasn't putting out new records fast enough for me, I searched record stores for their earlier, some would say more interesting, albums in the popular cassette format. Eventually I got them all, from 1971's cleverly-named "ZZ Top's First Album" to 1981's "El Loco". I even went to see them in concert just once, at Madison Square Garden in NYC, this must have been in June 1994, the "Antenna" tour, when they were still very cool in my eyes - even though there were no live animals on the stage, at least there were "moving sidewalks" (also the name of Billy Gibbons' first band...). I didn't know there were so many rednecks in the NYC area, but they sure came out! I think my first wife "came out" shortly thereafter, and maybe I should partially blame the hot women on stage making out with each other.
Slowly I found myself drifting away from ZZ Top as a fan, though I still cherished those early albums - look, things happened, I got busy and my life shifted around, and I found other bands to listen to and fill the gap. Hey, we'll always have 1983, right? And 1985, 1990 and 1994? Also, it's kind of the band's fault, too, because just before "Antenna", which was an OK album, they left Warner Bros. and signed one of those multi-album, decade-long contracts with RCA for a PILE of money, which they'd get no matter what happened. At that point, what incentive does a band have to, you know, make good music? Sure enough, the "Rhythmeen" album in 1996 totally sucked - go ahead, name one song from that album that's even as good as "Velcro Fly". You can't do it, because there were no good songs, and the first job of a band is to record good songs. Same thing with "XXX" in 1999 - who can even remember the failed songs "Poke Chop Sandwich", "Crucifixx-a-Flat" and "Dreadmonboogaloo", besides me? Nobody. I bought "Mescalero" in 2003 out of respect for their past, but the damage was done, and there was no going back.
Notably, this documentary comes to a close right after "Eliminator" in 1983, which cemented the band's iconic status, but there's not even any mention of the follow-up album, "Afterburner", which is at least half as good as "Eliminator", I think everybody can agree with that. "Sleeping Bag" was a hit, and "Rough Boy" was like the greatest ballad ever, but they never wanted to be a ballad-singing band, did they? It's the law of diminishing returns at that point, because "Recyler" was probably only half as good as "Afterburner", but at least it had "Doubleback", which notably appeared (as the band did) in the movie "Back to the Future III".
So we have to face reality here - ZZ Top had some good times, they got to travel around the world, open up for Hendrix and the Stones, but they were essentially a blues cover band that somehow found a way to catch lightning in a bottle for a few years, thanks to MTV, Warner Bros., Ford motor company and some hot music-video babes attracting thousands of over-sexed teen boys. By the same token, The Beatles were a skiffle band who similarly caught lightning in a bottle thanks to Ed Sullivan, Richard Lester, the JFK assassination, George Martin and Paul McCartney attracting thousands of under-sexed teen girls. The difference is, the Beatles had the good sense to break up and do their own thing, but ZZ Top are somehow still together, playing the same blues songs that they did 50 years ago. The body is dead, but the brain just hasn't accepted it yet. The songs from "Eliminator" are like the original "Star Wars: A New Hope", they've worn a groove in my brain so deep that I can listen to them, but I can't HEAR them any more, I'm kind of immune. I had to walk away from them for years just to get them back.
They win the title of longest band without any line-up changes by default, only because they've had the same three guys playing together for 50 years, and though the Stones have been around longer, Brian Jones died, Bill Wyman left and Ronnie Wood came on board. Longer band history, but not the same line-up. But in my book, ZZ Top hasn't produced anything half-GOOD since 1994, and I think that needs to be taken into account. And I say this as a FAN, who just wants their more recent music to be, you know, better. I'm that guy who was driving through Texas two years ago who made my wife pull over just so I could get a photo of the highway sign for La Grange.
A couple notable things - ZZ Top served up a bit of karma on Jimi Hendrix, who famously played two songs from "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in concert, before that album was released, because he knew that a couple of the Beatles were in his audience. ZZ Top opened for Hendrix and somehow had to play "Foxy Lady" and "Purple Haze" to round out their set, when they noticed Hendrix watching from off-stage. Surprisingly, he wasn't upset, he just said, "I like you guys, you got a lot of nerve."
They also relate the story here about how the band first came together, with Dusty Hill in the Dallas-based band The Warlocks with his brother, and Frank Beard playing in another band, then moving over to join the Warlocks. It's hardly a "Ringo-replaces-Pete-Best" moment, but I guess every line-up has to come from somewhere. Then Frank Beard met up with Billy Gibbons after two members of Moving Sidewalks got drafted, and then two more people dropped out of the trio that was left behind, one taking a gig composing music for "Mork & Mindy". Then when Frank says to Billy, "Hey, I know a bassist named Dusty", it's extremely anti-climactic when you compare that to, say, Lennon meeting McCartney at that garden party.
And I'm out - have a happy and a safe Thanksgiving, and I'll meet you back here in about a month to celebrate Christmas. Got to get my annual mix CD put together.
Also starring Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Frank Beard, Josh Homme (last seen in "Sound City"), Terry Manning, Country Winston Marshall, Steve Miller, Howard Bloom, Ralph Fisher, Tim Newman, Dan Auerbach, with archive footage of Elvis Presley (last seen in "Standing in the Shadows of Motown"), Jimi Hendrix (last seen in "Muscle Shoals"), Mick Jagger (ditto), Keith Richards (ditto), B.B. King, Muddy Waters (last seen in "The Last Waltz"), Howlin' Wolf (last seen in "Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and The Band"), Janis Joplin, James Brown (last seen in "The New Guy"), Roky Erickson, Randy Newman, Johnny Carson (last seen in "Echo in the Canyon"), Bill Ham, Mark Goodman, Col. Tom Parker.
RATING: 6 out of 10 beer drinkers and/or hell raisers
