In 2022, ZZ Top guitar tech-turned-bassist Francis Elwood made headlines throughout the guitar press and beyond when he whipped out an almighty 17-string bass guitar with the Texas blues-rock legends.
And although Elwood has since admitted he feels uncomfortable in the role he has occupied since Hill’s passing in 2021, his too-many-stringed bass continues the band’s great tradition of wacky instruments (the spinning fur guitars that starred in the Legs video being their most famous examples).
In an interview with Guitar World, Francis detailed the origin story behind the unlikely extended-range behemoth, which started life as a cheap knockoff of YouTuber Jared Dines’ 18-string Ormsby creation (and is most definitely not a Fender, no matter what that gargantuan headstock logo says).
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“I did it to myself,” Elwood laughs. “I hate playing that fucking bass. I found it late at night while internet surfing on one of those Chinese websites. I couldn’t believe they were making something like that.
“I found this guitar, took a screenshot, and sent it to Billy, saying, ‘We should order one of these, and I’ll play it. It’ll be hilarious.’ And three months later, we fucking got it. It came in all the way from China, and Billy pulls out this big-ass yellow 17-string bass and is like, ‘Okay, we’ll play it for a song, right?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I guess I can do this…’”
Unsurprisingly, the instrument proved somewhat challenging to play, not least because the very first time Francis used it was on stage – to tackle, appropriately enough, ZZ Top classic Got Me Under Pressure.
“Man, the guitar tech barely got the thing ready for the show,” he says. “And we don’t do soundchecks; I didn’t even play the guitar until the first time, so it was a baptism by fire while we were out on stage. I was like, ‘God damn, this thing is hard to play.’
“I was seriously struggling because you don’t always know where you are, and if you look at it from the bottom, it’s a big blank neck; I was having trouble finding the frets to play.”
Once it was all over, Francis breathed a sigh of relief – “Okay, cool. Hope everyone laughed” – thinking he’d never have to play the monstrosity again. Unfortunately for him, that wasn’t the case.
“I thought it was over, but the son of a bitch went viral, and I woke up to all these messages and links to all this fucking bullshit,” he says.
“I was cringing because I knew I was struggling to play that piece of shit. I’m like, ‘Great. Of all the things to happen… Now that I got this reaction, Billy’s never going to let me not play it.’ I was thinking, ‘If I can just get through this… it’s just one song, and I’ll never have to play it again.’ But now I’ve got to play it [every night].”
And it looks like it could stay that way for some time – the 17-string bass has attained such notoriety, it has even surpassed some of ZZ Top’s most iconic guitars in fans’ estimations.
“At this point, more people ask me about the 17-string bass than they do the fuzzy guitar,” Francis laughs. “Now, the 17-string bass is the thing they want to hold!”
Read Guitar World’s full interview with Elwood Francis, where he discusses stepping into Dusty Hill’s shoes, and his teching years with Joe Perry and Steve Vai.
