ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill is older, wise(cracke)r
ZZ Top – the high-octane band famous for rock classics praising the female form (“Legs,” “Tush”) – no longer makes frequent appearances on the charts like it did in the ’70s and ’80s.
But Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard continue to tour relentlessly despite all now being eligible for Medicare. ZZ Top will perform Sunday afternoon at Charlotte Motor Speedway to tee up NASCAR’s Coca-Cola 600 race; then it hits the road hard this summer, with shows including a date at the Biltmore Estate in Asheville on Aug. 16.
And Hill, at least, continues to be a quote machine, if not a hit machine.
Here are some of the best lines from our conversation last month with Hill, who celebrated his 66th birthday on Tuesday.
On his lengthy beard
▪ “I grew this thing because I was so good-looking it was causing problems.”
▪ “I only trim it to keep it out of the guitar strings.”
▪ “People used to always ask: ‘Do you sleep with your beards under or outside the sheets?’ I’d go, ‘How would I know? I’m asleep!’”
On foreign affairs
“We used to play Berlin when the wall was up. I’d walk over to the other side just to take a look, then I started getting paranoid and thinking they’d want to keep me. Then I thought, ‘Why would they want a bass player?’”
On his chosen profession
“I play for a living. I mean, what a term. Play. It says it all right there.”
On being a rebel
“Record companies aren’t what they used to be. We never paid attention to them anyway. They tried to tell us what to do, but we just never did it. They’d send guys to the studio, but we wouldn’t let them in.”
On longevity
“People ask how we’ve stayed together so long. I say separate tour buses. We got separate tour buses early on, when we probably couldn’t afford them. That way we were always glad to see each other when we got to the next city.”
On social media
“I tried to be on Facebook for a while and it just upset my wife too much. It’s a wonderful thing, but there’s people that just are gonna knock anything. And, how do I put this? A lot of offers that maybe you don’t want to run by the wife.”
On parenting
“My daughter thought she might want to be a keyboard player. So I took her to a blues club – a real one – and showed her a working musician, that this is what they do. She went to law school.”
ZZ Top at the Coca-Cola 600
WHO: Billy Gibbons (guitar), Dusty Hill (bass) and Frank Beard (drums).
WHAT: ZZ Top will perform a 45-minute set.
WHEN: Sunday afternoon, a few hours before the NASCAR race.
WHERE: In the infield of Charlotte Motor Speedway, 5555 Concord Parkway S., Concord.
COST: Free for all Coca-Cola 600 ticket holders. Weekend passes start at $99.
DETAILS: 800-455-3267; www.charlottemotorspeedway.com.
This story was originally published May 19, 2015 at 10:13 AM with the headline "ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill is older, wise(cracke)r."