THE MOJO INTERVIEW

Through 50 years of taboo-busting, hat revamps and beard-growth, the “Dali of the Delta” has kept faith with the blues. Has his mojo never flagged? “Plug in, turn it up – that’s always been the reward,” says Billy Gibbons.

BARELY 10 MINUTES AFTER HE PICKS UP the phone on a recent afternoon, singer-guitarist Billy F. Gibbons answers the day’s big question without even being asked. “They’re in the studio today!” he exclaims in his deep, sandpaper drawl. ‘They’ are his ZZ Top bandmates of the last half-century: bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard. While Gibbons is on the line from his pandemic refuge in one of Las Vegas’s oldest residential neighbourhoods – a house he and his wife Gilligan have dubbed Rancho G – the rhythm section is in Houston hammering at new material for ZZ Top’s first album in a decade.

“The high card I was able to pull was writing songs,” Gibbons says of his lockdown year, which began with the cancellation of his venerable group’s 2020 tour, then veered into sessions for a new, ferociously good solo album, Hardware, made at a studio in the California desert with ex-Guns N’Roses drummer Matt Sorum and guitarist Austin Hanks. “In the lowest of lows, we hit the highest of highs,” Gibbons declares of Hardware’s twin-guitar sizzle and detours into surf rock and psychedelia. “And as I was creating music for that project, I was sending song ideas to Texas. As much as Frank and Dusty want to hang in front of the TV and on the golf course, I’ve been keeping them in the studio.” The guitarist’s gritty burst of laughter is not the last as he rolls through his life in blues over the next two hours.

Gibbons, who’s added his middle initial – for Frederick, his father’s name – to his professional handle, was born on December 16, 1949 in Houston into remarkable circumstances. The son of a pianist and conductor for films, he attended his first blues gigs as a child, courtesy of his family’s black housekeeper. In 1967, Gibbons’ teenage combo, The Moving Sidewalks, scored a regional hit with their debut single, 99th Floor. But turning-point encounters with The 13th Floor Elevators and The Jimi Hendrix Experience ultimately led Gibbons to launch an early line-up of ZZ Top in 1969. When Beard and Hill joined in 1970, Gibbons’ template was permanently in place: “blues rock with a power trio rock expressiveness,” as he puts it.

His addition of synthesizers and pop-sharpened writing to 1983’s Eliminator and ’85’s Afterburner paid multi-platinum dividends; the band’s drily comic finesse in the MTV-breakthrough videos for Gimme All Your Lovin’ and Sharp Dressed Man, starring Gibbons and Hill’s mondo-Gold Rush beards, didn’t hurt. But Gibbons insists that ZZ Top have never strayed from their original, primal thrust. “We’re interpreters of the blues,” he says. “But we were fortunate to get chummy with the inventors. And they told us, on more than one occasion, ‘It’s not about heartache and sorrow. It runs the whole gamut.’”

You were born in a blues city and state. But your father was in a very different show business.

Growing up, it was a constant travelling between Texas and California. Getting to see how