ZZ Top
Rio Grande Mud

THE REVIEW

Beyond any critical consideration and the various personal tastes, there are three names of actual great success, following, and influence that Southern Rock (which is that particular blend of rock'n'roll, blues, gospel, country, and jazz developed in the seventies in that area of the United States extending more or less from Texas to Florida) has written in the great book of contemporary music: Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and ZZ Top.

The history of both the Georgians Allman and the Floridians Lynyrd is equally fraught with misfortunes, accidents, deaths, serious issues with alcohol and drugs, breakdowns and reunions, brawls, and personnel changes. That of the Texans ZZ Top is not like this at all: always the same three, in love and agreement and more or less healthy from 1969 to today, without a hitch, a certainly better situation but ultimately less fascinating than the other two, in some way constituting one less attraction in their regards. But so be it: without fatal airplane or motorcycle crashes, without coronary bypasses and redone nostrils, the group remains something sensational, a godsend for those who want to hear power, competence, and visceral quality combined with amusing humor and scenic peculiarity.

The career of ZZ Top can be comfortably divided into three phases: the first, up to 1977, sees them dealing with records immediately excellent, though their specific musical personality is still forming. In the second, and we are in the eighties, there is the perfecting of their irresistible and distinctive image made up of very long beards (except for drummer Frank Beard, who is satisfied to have it as a surname and allows himself a maximum of a couple of mustaches), black sunglasses, and sly smiles, as well as extravagant guitars and finally promotional videos and stages full of high-end cars and beautiful girls. Simultaneously the music becomes a bit stiff (too much), with synth drones doubling the guitars and the good Beard forced to follow a metronome.

The resounding and exaggerated success of this phase allows them to face the third and last of them without too many worries, which lasts to this day and in which ZZ Top have also regained on record the genuine groove of true rock (never missed in concerts), thrown away the synthesizers and the excessive pandering but kept sunglasses and beards and even increased the grimaces of harmless and nice womanizers, while from the stage they pour a perfect, sweaty, and instinctive rockblues onto their fans, although studied and prepared in all details, honed by forty years of absolute harmony and profound awareness of the favorite sound to extract from their instruments.

The record in question is the second of their career (1972). The trio is therefore still (almost) unshaven and a... tad anonymous in terms of executive personality, although skill, class, and ideas are already plentiful. Dominating, then as now, is the charisma of singer and guitarist Billy Gibbons, a guy anyway at his time "baptized" directly by Jimi Hendrix, who addressed him after Billy had opened one of his concerts in Texas with his old band Moving Sidewalks, with these words: "Give me the left hand, man... it's the hand closest to the heart!".

The hallmark of Gibbons, common to most of the best composers and musicians in general, is economy. It's what he DOESN'T play that makes excellence. Maybe two notes, but played with all the heart, placed where it's logical and essential for them to be, to drive the piece, to create the atmosphere, are what Billy works and has always worked for. Another of his talents, this indispensable for being considered a top-class guitarist, is his sound: his has always been quality, rich and mobile, sly and abundant, calibrated and attentive to maintain dynamics and musical "fullness". I have never heard a trio that live distributes the sound better in the transition from the sung phases to the solos, when the accompaniment is left to the bass and drums alone: you do not feel any void (also because the three adopt volumes that fold the ears...).

The young Gibbons of these recordings has yet to subject his throat to decades of excesses, therefore the timbre of voice is still relatively clean, without that particular, irresistible, and fascinating hoarseness which constitutes an unmissable attraction for those who love ZZ Top. Among the ten tracks included in this album, I personally identify two absolute gems: the first of them "Just Got Paid" starts with a magnificent riff to evolve into a festival of slide guitar and to show what it means to pluck the four blues notes on a perfect instrument like his beloved Pearly Gates (translatable as Gates of Heaven, so the guitarist has baptized his favorite tool, a vintage Les Paul Standard that evidently transmits heavenly sensations to him) at its best (using a Mexican peso as a pick, Billy's very own quirk...).

The other pearl is the long, slow, hypnotic, dreamy blues "Sure Got Cold After The Rain Fell", crossed by a very lyrical arpeggio, on which voice and lead guitar rest excitingly, all dynamicized by effective stop&go. Both this and the previous song still regularly enter the setlists of their concerts today.

Bassist Dusty Hill reserves, as always, the vocal proscenium on a couple of occasions, his contributions titled "Francine", right at the start, and "Chevrolet". His voice, sharper and cleaner than the guitarist's, provides an effective variant to the repertoire, although it definitely cannot compete with the visceral, almost ancestral emotionality of the great Billy's hoarseness.

In contrast to more or less all other formations devoted to Southern rock, typically teeming with guitarists and drummers and therefore promoting a very layered and nuanced sound, the music of ZZ Top is as economical and essential as possible. The few voices and instruments in play are extremely prominent, there is the possibility and pleasure of listening to them down to the last nuance, the last moment of sound decay and its reverberations, in the end to be as close as possible to the soul and talent of the musicians, the three great musicians who compose this fantastic group.