ZZ Top was a little band that was trying 50 years ago when “Tush” was released and turned the Texas trio into the little band that not only could, but did. And this was even before its signature look of sunglasses and very long beards (save, of course, from drummer Frank Beard).
The first single from 1975’s half studio/half live set Fandango! gave ZZ Top its first bona fide hit single, reaching No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 — a high point until “Legs” nine years later — and pushing Fandango! into the Top 10 and gold status. That success allowed ZZ Top to move to stadium headliner status for its subsequent Worldwide Texas Tour, accompanied onstage by livestock, reptiles and other critters from the Lone Star State.
Nearly four years on from the death of bass guitar player Fred “Dusty” Hill, who sang it, “Tush” remains a staple of ZZ Top’s repertoire. And guitarist Billy F. Gibbons remembers its creation — on May 23, 1974 at the Lauderdale Coliseum in Florence, Alabama — like it happened last week, or even yesterday.
“We were fans of all the great music that came out of the Gulf Coast — Houston, San Antoni, all the way over to Louisiana. And one of our favorite artists was none other than Roy Head, who had a big hit in the ’60s with ‘Treat Her Right.’” The song is one that Gibbons’ side band, the BFGs, recorded in 2015. “Just about all our record collecting buddies assuredly added that piece of wax into their collections.
“And on the flip side of ‘Treat Her Right’ was an instrumental that Roy Head’s band had developed called ‘Tush Hog,’ which was kind of a trendy term being bandied around about in Texas meaning rich, kind of top of the line, luxurious maybe.
“We were playing a show in Alabama, in the heat of the summer. We had come into a rodeo arena with a dirt floor and no air conditioning. We had an afternoon opportunity to blow it out a little bit and we hit this one lick, and the lighting director came rushing forward and said, ‘Don’t change a thing!’
“I looked at Dusty and said, ‘Here’s the title: “Tush.”’
“He said, ‘Oh, I get it. We’re gonna follow in that Gulf Coast Texas scene.
“I said, ‘Yes, let’s pick it up,’ and I think within three minutes we had it. Somebody said, ‘Gee whiz, it’s kind of a simple shuffle following the old tried-and-true 12-bar blues changes,’ but I said, ‘Well, keep in mind that’s where things started off’ — and still are. I like that phrase ‘One foot in the blues’ — we’ll stretch out in many different directions, but we’ll always have a sliver of familiarity.
As usual, Gibbons was playing Pearly Gates, his sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul that he purchased from a Texas rancher for $250 in 1968, just as ZZ Top were getting underway.
“I still have it by the way,” he tells Guitar Player of his most famous electric guitar. “It’s never too far away. We seem to lean on it as heavily as we can from session to session. No matter what we’re playing, it’s always, ‘Ah, sounds good. Now play it on Pearly.’”
As Gibbons tells Guitar player, “Tush” showed promise right away. “It was hit and quit it — three minutes of just raw energy. We had the luxury of being able to play it live, which allowed us to shake off some of the cobwebs and smooth out the rough spots. By the time we got it to the studio it was a one-take ‘room full of noise,’ which was really cool.”
Released as a single in July 1975, “Tush” would outperform the group’s 1973 single “La Grange,” which reached number 41 on the charts.
“Did we know it was a hit? No, but we weren’t surprised that it became one, ‘cause we liked it and we had seen that audiences did, too.”
“Tush,” in fact, remains part of ZZ Top’s set, with Hill’s vocals on tape while the band — including his replacement, Elwood Francis — perform live.
The golden anniversary of “Tush” and Fandango! arrive as Gibbons is in the midst of plenty of music-making. He and his side band, the BFGs — now a trio with keyboardist Mike “The Drifter” Flanigin and drummer Chris “Whipper” Layton from Double Trouble and Arc Angels — have just released “Livin’ It Up Down in Texas,” a song it recorded especially for the series finale of the Paramount+ series Landman. The BFGs have started a month-long U.S. tour, and both the group and ZZ Top have been in the studio working on new music — ZZ’s first since 2012 and the BFGs’ since 2021.
“I suspect that 2025 may reveal something new on both fronts,” predicts Gibbons, who will be hitting the road with ZZ Top again starting in late March.
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