With bouts of creative frustration, drug addiction, and chronic pain, ZZ Top have cycled through all the lowest lows of the rock 'n' roll lifestyle.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00With bouts of creative frustration, drug addiction, and chronic pain,
00:03ZZ Top have cycled through all the lowest lows of the rock and roll lifestyle.
00:08Before founding ZZ Top, guitarist Billy Gibbons played in a spacey Houston band
00:12called the Moving Sidewalks. Despite some early promise, including opening for Jimi Hendrix,
00:16the Moving Sidewalks era proved to be difficult and frustrating, as the band released just a
00:20couple of singles and recorded only one album, called Flash. The Moving Sidewalks completed
00:24recording Flash in early 1968, but their label refused to release it. In August of that year,
00:29they were on the docket for the Catacombs Pop Festival in Houston, but they didn't show up and
00:34instead decided to try their luck in Los Angeles. Organist Tom Moore didn't make the trip, though,
00:38and soon after, he was drafted for the Vietnam War. The band was further depleted when bassist
00:43Don Summers was also conscripted. By the time Flash arrived in stores at the end of 1969,
00:48the Moving Sidewalks had split up completely, although they reunited for a few shows in 2013.
00:53By the mid-1970s, ZZ Top was one of the fastest-rising bands in the world.
00:58In 1977, drummer Frank Beard received his first big check for $72,000, which he quickly squandered.
01:04As he admitted in the documentary ZZ Top, that little old band from Texas,
01:08"...I spent it on drugs. Every bit of it."
01:10Beard's first drug of choice was LSD, and then he added in other substances to suit various purposes.
01:15As he explained,
01:16"...the pills thing came about just from the workload, and the heroin thing came about
01:20because I just liked it. I mean, you ever done heroin? It's great. It's a f-----g vacation for
01:25the mind, and I liked it."
01:26Finding himself addicted to heroin and later cocaine,
01:29Beard sought out sobriety via rehab and a 12-step program.
01:32To give him time to recover, ZZ Top took a multi-year break and then reconvened in 1979.
01:37"...have a good time and leave the rest alone."
01:41On one fateful evening, ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill smoked so much marijuana that it led to
01:45a chilling moment of panic and despair. He was in his third-floor hotel room with tour manager
01:50Pablo Gamboa and bass tech Elwood Francis. Francis noticed that their window was outfitted
01:55with a secure metal bar that dropped below the opening. As he recalled in Instagram,
01:59"...after I passed the joint to Dusty on the next round, I got up and jumped out the window.
02:03I can't see that I'd grabbed the rail with my hand as I was passing over it,
02:06and was just hanging there like I would on monkey bars."
02:08At that moment, Gamboa and Hill truly believed that Francis had plunged to his death.
02:12As Francis detailed,
02:14"...they ran over to the window expecting to see me splattered on the sidewalk,
02:17but found me hanging there laughing. They both just remained confused about
02:20what happened while I popped back inside."
02:22That was the last time Hill ever smoked marijuana.
02:25Dusty Hill used to keep a small Derringer-style handgun stowed inside one of his boots.
02:30On December 16, 1984, his girlfriend at the time was helping him remove the boot when the gun fell
02:35out, hit the ground, and sent a bullet upward into his abdomen. As he recalled to Classic
02:39Rock magazine years later,
02:40"...to this day, I don't know how I could do it. But I didn't really feel anything at the time.
02:44All I knew was that I had to get myself to a hospital straight away,
02:47so I got in a car and drove there."
02:49After Hill got himself to the hospital, doctors managed to attend to the wound
02:52before the bullet could affect any organs, and he ultimately made a full recovery.
02:56"...you go somewhere, and one thing will lead to another."
03:00ZZ Top relentlessly toured for most of their history,
03:02only taking significant breaks for emergency situations. In May 2000,
03:06the band pulled out of a European tour after Dusty Hill received a hepatitis C diagnosis.
03:11He eventually recovered, but then in the summer of 2007, another European tour was
03:15canceled when Hill once again became too sick to perform. He had a non-cancerous growth in
03:19his inner ear, which required immediate treatment before it could lead to significant hearing loss.
03:24Then in 2014, Hill injured his hip after falling on the band's tour bus. Less than two years later,
03:29Hill had another fall, this time in the backstage area before a concert.
03:33In 2017, ZZ Top announced an indefinite break from live shows due to what was described as a
03:38tummy ailment affecting Hill.
03:40In 2002, ZZ Top scheduled multiple tour dates for Europe. One show in Paris went on as planned,
03:46but with drum tech John Douglas sitting in for regular drummer Frank Beard.
03:49Just after the band reached Paris, Beard experienced pain that was so severe that
03:53he had to be hospitalized. Doctors diagnosed him with acute appendicitis and decided that
03:57the best course was an emergency appendix removal. Beard later announced in a statement
04:01delivered from his hospital bed,
04:03"...I'll be back in there as soon as the doctors give me the okay."
04:06He would eventually fully recover and rejoin the band on the road.
04:10Decades' worth of performances eventually left Dusty Hill in so much pain that he had to leave
04:14ZZ Top's 50th anniversary tour for medical treatment. In July 2021, he headed home to
04:19Texas, with Elwood Francis filling in for him. Hill's wife, Charlene McCrory, then wrote on
04:23the band's Facebook page,
04:25"...the plan was for another round of physical therapy with a different approach to help his
04:29chronic bursitis. The plan was he would return to the second leg of the tour in September."
04:33But just a week after Hill left the group, he passed away on July 28th at the age of 72.