Obituaries

I said, Lord, take me downtown

Posted on by brucehhackett

Back in 1970, the two most popular brands of rolling papers were Zig-Zag and Top. When a gritty little blues band out of Texas named ZZ Top released their debut album, stoners assumed the name was a winking reference to those two brands.

Billy Gibbons, the group’s superb guitarist and de facto leader, chuckles when he hears this and replies, “No, I’m afraid not. We had a bunch of posters of great blues players in our apartment back then, people like B.B. King and Arzell Hill, who went by Z.Z. Hill, and we thought we’d combine them into ZZ King, but that was too similar to B.B. King’s name, so we figured, ‘The king is at the top,” so we went with ZZ Top. That’s the true story.”

Hmmm. Well, okay. I can live with that, although I think the first version makes for a more enticing tale. In either case, ZZ Top is certainly a better name than Gibbons’ first band, The Moving Sidewalks. Ultimately, what matters in this group’s story is the music and the remarkable long-term chemistry between the three guys who comprised ZZ Top for all these years. They’ve set a record (51 years) for the rock band with the most years without a change in the band’s lineup.

Dusty Hill, circa 1975

Sadly, though, that has come to an end with the death last week of Dusty Hill, the extraordinary bass player behind ZZ Top’s unique sound. He had suffered from bursitis, a hip replacement and even an accidental gunshot wound in the past, but still, his passing at age 72 was unexpected.

Fans will be pleased to hear that ZZ Top plans to continue touring with Elwood Francis, the band’s long-time guitar tech, on bass. According to Gibbons, “Dusty emphatically grabbed my arm a little while back and said, ‘Give Elwood the bottom end, and take it to the Top.’ That’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

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Note: There’s a Spotify playlist at the end of this post that I’ve compiled of ZZ Top’s most noteworthy tunes, if you care to listen along while reading!

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Time for a disclaimer: I’ve never bought a ZZ Top album, and frankly, after listening intently to much of their catalog over the past week, I’m not sure why. Their music — hard-driving, blues-based, boogie rock — is right up my alley. Of course, I knew their radio hits, but I just wasn’t sufficiently motivated to take the time to get to know their albums more fully. My mistake. As of this writing, I have become more of a fan, and I have developed a respect for their work and their achievements in the music business.

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Hill and eventual ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard were both from Dallas, becoming bandmates in a local group called American Blues, which also included Hill’s guitarist brother Rocky. In 1968, Dusty Hill and Beard wanted to broaden their horizons to do more than just straight blues, so they relocated to Houston, where the scene offered more musical options.

Dusty Hill, Billy Gibbons, Frank Beard in 1975

Houston-born Gibbons had built some notoriety there as a hot lead guitarist, singer and songwriter with his band, The Moving Sidewalks, and they even got the chance to be the warmup act for his idol, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, once in Houston. “We had the audacity to play ‘Foxy Lady’ and ‘Purple Haze’ in our set, and when we looked offstage, he was standing there, watching and grinning. Afterwards he said, ‘I dig you guys. You’ve got guts.'”

The drummer for The Moving Sidewalks wasn’t working out, so Beard made his move and became the new drummer. The band released a single and was poised to sign a deal with London Records, the American affiliate of British-based Decca Records, but their bass player wouldn’t sign. He was ousted and replaced by Hill at Beard’s recommendation, and the deal with London was inked just as they changed their name to ZZ Top.

Their debut album in 1971 was appropriately titled “ZZ Top’s First Album” because “we wanted everyone to know there would be more,” noted Gibbons. Based on its chart performance, it should’ve also been their last — it went absolutely nowhere, missing the Top 200 album chart and yielding no singles. But when I listened to it last week, I was impressed by the way they took their blues influences and merged them with rock elements to create their own approach. As Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys said last week, “They were a blues band with their own sound, and that’s hard to do.” The tracks weren’t polished, nor was Gibbons’ gruff voice, but there’s solid blues rock there, especially “Brown Sugar” (no relation to the Rolling Stones tune), “Neighbor, Neighbor” and “Backdoor Love Affair.”

Their 1972 follow-up LP, “Rio Grande Mud,” at least reached #104 and spawned the single “Francine,” though it stalled at #69. Gibbons continued to hone his blues-rock songwriting, adding dashes of suggestive humor, innuendo and some taboo subjects here and there into the lyrics just for grins.

By 1973, he came up with a tune that still gets classic rock radio airplay nearly 50 years later: “La Grange,” which uses an infectious riff you may have heard in other blues tunes (“Refried Boogie” by Canned Heat, for example). It’s a tale about a notorious brothel called the Chicken Shack, which became “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas” on stage and screen in the ’80s. The album it came from, “Tres Hombres,” recorded in Memphis, peaked at #8, putting ZZ Top on the map in a big way.

My friend Tracie, an Albuquerque native who went to college in Dallas, remembers first seeing and hearing ZZ Top at a free concert on the quad her first week on campus. “ZZ Top will always have a special place in my heart! At that concert, the Texas folk knew who they were, but this ‘little girl from the small mining town in the west’ never heard of them! I knew instantly that if this band was typical of Texas rock, I was gonna love college!” My friend Carl, a native Texan, recalled, “They were a wild-times, rowdy, fun, crank-it-up party band. We memorized every note, every word of tracks like ‘Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers’ until the grooves on the vinyl were gone!”

Hot on its heels in 1975 came “Fandango!,’ a half-live, half-studio release that went Top Ten and included “Tush,” featuring another indelible riff that reached #20 on the singles charts. By this point, the three-piece band was touring virtually non-stop, at first warming up for acts like The Allman Brothers or Lynyrd Skynyrd but usually as the headliner. Whereas their earlier shows didn’t offer much visually, ZZ Top mounted a mammoth, 300-date tour from mid-1976 to mid-1977 they called the Worldwide Texas Tour, where they used elaborate staging and costumes designed to showcase their Texas roots.

That tour made them one of the nation’s top draws during that period, but it also took its toll. Frank Beard had developed a serious alcohol and drug problem that required rehabilitation, so instead of finding a replacement, the band chose to go on hiatus for a couple of years. For us, there was no other drummer but Frank,” said Hill. “We were tired and needed a break, and we were willing to wait for him to get better.”

Their return to active recording and touring in 1979 was marked by several changes. Gibbons had been paying attention to technological developments and the New Wave music trends, both of which showed up on their albums “Deguello” and “El Loco,” and singles like “Cheap Sunglasses” and the double-entendre classic “Pearl Necklace.” The group made their first appearances in England and the European continent, and time spent in the studio with the British band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark introduced them to how drum machines and synthesizers could became prominent tools in the ZZ Top arsenal. Some of their original fans were none too pleased by this development, but for every old fan they lost, they gained three new ones.

Coincidentally, both Gibbons and Hill, independently and without each other’s knowledge, had grown chest-length beards which, when combined with sunglasses worn more or less permanently, gave them a cartoonish appearance that became part of ZZ Top’s new self-deprecating sense of humor.

The timing of all this was perfect, as Music Television, soon known far and wide as MTV, made its debut and changed the face of pop music. Bands became overnight sensations based just as much (or more) on what their video looked like than what their music sounded like. ZZ Top enlisted videographer Tim Newman, who was keen on shooting “mini-movies” instead of standard concert video. Because Gibbons, Hill and Beard felt they didn’t exactly have matinee movie star looks, they agreed it would be fun to appear only as background observers, watching the gorgeous women and high-octane cars on music videos like “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs.” Said Gibbons, “We knew we weren’t prima donna rock stars, so why not be the guys watching from the background, rooting for the underdog and the misfit?”

How ironic that a trio of unfashionable Texas rockers would end up as superstars in the very fashion-conscious MTV era. “We found it all kind of silly, but it was a fun time,” said Beard. And profitable as hell, too — sales of their 1983 LP “Eliminator” topped 15 million and put them in the Top Ten in the US, UK, Australia and several other European countries. The ZZ Top gravy train continued throughout the ’80s, with 1985’s “Afterburner” and 1990’s “Recycler” also achieving huge chart rankings and sales numbers, thanks in large part to MTV exposure for “Rough Boy,” “Doubleback” and “My Head’s in Mississippi.”

1994’s “Antenna” and its hit single “Pincushion” turned out to be ZZ Top’s last fling with superstardom. After that, the band still made a few LPs and toured periodically, but MTV stopped running music videos and their following dwindled. Through it all, the band was like a sturdy three-legged stool — all three legs were of equal importance to the band’s continued lifespan.

Hill, who started playing bass at age 12 because his older brother insisted on it, said he learned a lot about the instrument and what it could do by listening to virtuosos like Cream’s Jack Bruce and jazz greats like Stanley Clarke and Charles Mingus. “I used to try to come up with all these complex bass lines, kind of showing off, I guess,” he said in a 2014 interview. “But it didn’t take me long to figure out I needed to play to the song. Sometimes you shouldn’t even notice the bass, and I hate that in a way, but I also love that in a way. To not be noticed is a compliment. It means you’ve filled in everything just right for the song, and you’re not standing out where you don’t need to be.”

Gibbons, Hill, Beard (without a beard)

That kind of unassuming, humble approach to their fame has served the group well. “We’re the same three guys playing the same three chords,” said Gibbons in the highly watchable 2019 documentary film, “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas.” If you have even a passing interest in this group, I recommend you check it out. It’s on Amazon now.

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Here’s a song for a friend soon gone

Posted on by brucehhackett

I should begin this week’s post with this caveat to my readers: If you’re not from Cleveland, or at least from the Midwest, you’re probably going to be scratching your head and wondering, “Who is Michael Stanley?”

Holly Gleason, a Cleveland-based writer, put it succinctly in a piece she wrote in the wake of Stanley’s passing last week: “Like a secret handshake, you can still measure the rock and Midwestern bonafides of people, especially those who grew up in Ohio and surrounding states in the ‘70s and ‘80s, by whether they knew The Michael Stanley Band. In Cleveland, especially, Stanley was an artist who felt every bit as important as Detroit’s Bob Seger, Indiana’s John Mellencamp and even Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen, who also captured working class lives, loves and disappointments with an authenticity as gritty as it was charged.”

The difference between Stanley and those nationally known rock stars was that, despite relentless efforts over many years, he never could get the broader recognition his music so richly deserved. In the big cities and small towns of the Great Lakes area, The Michael Stanley Band — or MSB, as his fans called them — were enormously popular from the mid-’70s through the mid-’80s and beyond, setting attendance records at major venues that still stand decades later.

Stanley was seven years older than I am, so he was 26 and I was 19 when I was first introduced to his music when my friend Mark loaned me his copy of Stanley’s 1974 LP “Friends and Legends.” I had begun hearing his exceptional tune “Let’s Get the Show on the Road” on WMMS-FM, Cleveland’s hugely influential rock radio station, and I wanted to hear more. The following summer, Stanley joined forces with guitarist/singer Jonah Koslen, bassist Dan Pecchio and drummer Tommy Dobeck to form the Michael Stanley Band. I picked up their first album, “You Break It, You Bought It,” and became rather obsessed with it, especially the rockers “I’m Gonna Love You” and “Step the Way” and the ballads “Waste a Little Time on Me” and “Sweet Refrain,” all of which benefitted from the capable hands of producer Bill Szymczyk.

In the summer of ’76, I was eager to see the farewell tour of Loggins and Messina at Blossom Music Center, the wonderful amphitheater nestled into the Cuyahoga Valley between Cleveland and Akron. The bonus for me was my first exposure to MSB in concert, who served as the warm-up act that evening. Loggins and Messina, who knew next to nothing about Stanley and company, must’ve been thoroughly puzzled and impressed by the over-the-top response to MSB’s show by the loud and loyal Northeast Ohio fans in attendance.

I kept waiting for these guys to make a splash on the national charts, both singles and albums, but it didn’t happen, not for 1976’s “Ladies’ Choice” or the 1977 double live album “Stagepass,” recorded at Cleveland’s storied rock venue, The Agora. When Koslen left the band to form his own group Breathless, and then MSB were dropped by Epic Records, I figured, oh well, just another band that didn’t make it. What a shame.

But no. They added guitarist Gary Markasky on lead guitar and keyboardists Bob Pelander and Kevin Raleigh, and signed with Arista Records, run by the mercurial Clive Davis. Stanley’s new songs, plus a few by Raleigh and Pelander, had a punchier “straight-ahead rock” feeling, as Stanley himself would describe them, punched in nicely by producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange. To my ears, “Misery Loves Company” or “Who’s to Blame” from 1978’s “Cabin Fever” should’ve been big hits, or “Last Night” or “Hold Your Fire” from 1979’s “Greatest Hints,” (and let’s not overlook the stunning ballads “Why Should Love Be This Way” and “Beautiful Lies”). Inexplicably, Davis was only lukewarm on these tracks and chose not to promote the LPs sufficiently, ultimately giving up on the group.

Then came EMI America, who signed MSB in 1980 during sessions for “Heartland,” their first brush with Billboard charts fame. “He Can’t Love You,” which included the unmistakable sax playing of The E Street Band’s Clarence Clemons, reached #33 but stalled there, and the album never rose past #86. Other lineup changes came (Michael Gismondi on bass, Danny Powers on lead guitar, Rick Bell on sax), and EMI chose to stick with the band for three more stellar LPs — “North Coast,” “MSB” and “You Can’t Fight Fashion” — but despite constant touring behind huge acts, they never achieved consistent headliner status outside Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and a few other cities like St. Louis.

I was a rock music critic in Cleveland during this period, and I wrote appreciative profiles and glowing concert reviews of MSB. One review even sparked a letter from Stanley himself, thanking me for being supportive! I interviewed him over lunch one time and found him to be incredibly gracious and approachable. Indeed, when I asked our staff photographer to take one photo of Stanley with me for my bulletin board at home, Stanley didn’t hesitate to put his arm around my shoulder. Such a genuinely nice guy.

Once EMI dropped the band, MSB threw in the towel…but that didn’t stop Stanley from writing and performing his music. He played shows regularly throughout Northeast Ohio with former MSB members, with another gang of musician friends he called The Resonators, and as Michael Stanley and Friends. More important, he continued writing really great songs and recording them on independent labels at the rate of nearly one studio album every year from 1995 through 2017, plus a couple of live collections.

I saw MSB and or Stanley solo seven times in the ’70s and ’80s, often at Blossom as part of sold-out crowds. The electric atmosphere at those gigs reminded me of the rabid crowds at Springsteen shows. More recently, I saw him perform in December 2019 at MGM Northfield Park, and the place was packed with fervent fans who had clearly grown up with MSB’s music, and could (and did) sing along on damn near every song in the set list. It was those people I thought about this past week when the reality of Stanley’s death from lung cancer truly hit me.

As Gleason put it, “Michael Stanley saw us. He knew what we were thinking and feeling, and the reality of how it felt being the great unseen and never-heralded. He took it all in, twisted that truth into three, four, five visceral minutes, and sent our lives into the world with an actual dignity and understanding… He saw us — young, hungry, dreaming of something more, not even sure what it was. He felt our urgency, and he put it in songs.”

I moved away from Cleveland in 1995, first to Atlanta and then Los Angeles, so I wasn’t around much to see him take on a new career as a TV personality, hosting evening talk/entertainment programs for several years. But I was hip to his fine work behind the microphone as the afternoon drive-time DJ on classic rock radio station WNCX in Cleveland, a position he held from 1990 until just a few weeks ago when his failing health would no longer allow it. Whenever I came to town for visits, I always tuned my car radio to his show, which offered excellent classic rock selections interspersed with his soothing, familiar voice. It was like sliding into a pair of comfortable old shoes.

Over the years, I have relished the opportunity to turn on my friends in Atlanta and L.A. and elsewhere to the Michael Stanley Band. Invariably, after I offered up musical perfection on tracks like “Spanish Nights,” “In Between the Lines” and the irresistible “Lover,” they asked me, “Why weren’t these guys bigger stars?” I could only shrug my shoulders and shake my head in resignation.

David Spero, a former WWMS DJ and Stanley’s first manager, and a lifelong friend of Stanley, always felt his songs were his strong suit, and I’m inclined to agree. They’re smartly constructed, with intelligent, thought-provoking lyrics that capture the work ethic and passion for life that his fans have lived by. Said Spero, “I think he’s probably one of our country’s most underappreciated writers in that kind of Bob Seger/Bruce Springsteen style of storytelling.”

Stanley, born and raised in the suburbs of Cleveland and a stalwart resident ever since, said in a 2019 interview, “I had three pretty good, separate careers in music, TV and radio. Did we accomplish everything we wanted to? No. But we accomplished things we never thought of. I’ve been making a living doing something I love. This is what I dreamed about as a teenager, and I ended up doing it.”

That’s what I mean about the unabashed sincerity of the man. In a recent social media post, Jackie, a woman I worked with in public relations, recalled a time she spent the better part of a day in the ’90s driving Stanley around in a golf cart at a promotional event. “I can still remember how kind and cool, how slyly funny and completely down to earth he was that day. It’s nice when people are as you hope they’ll be.”

Michael Belkin, whose father served as manager for Stanley for 40 years, said, “In my entire career, I have never seen another artist as patient and polite as Michael was with fans. Backstage, at pre- and post-show meet & greets, dinners and benefits, I saw him interact with thousands of supporters over the years, and he was consistently pleasant and gracious. Always. Every time.”

The great guitarist Joe Walsh, who played on Stanley’s early solo LPs, had this to say last week: “Michael was the king of Cleveland, and of course, the Michael Stanley Band became a Midwest powerhouse. Michael has always been a master at the craft of songwriting. His songs have a way of getting in your head and became songs you end up singing to yourself over and over from then on. His music will always be part of me.” (In fact, Walsh recorded Stanley’s tune “Rosewood Bitters” on his 1985 album “The Confessor.”)

In 2012, Stanley was asked about his legacy. His reply? ““If you look back at any writer’s body of work, you usually find a common theme or two that they’ve been trying to hone. I realized that mine is: You just never know. This whole idea of never knowing what tomorrow is going to bring and being open to it.”

Indeed, on Stanley’s 2014 album “The Job,” there’s a marvelous tune aptly titled “You Just Never Know”: “You just got to take it, just got to be there, /Just got to hold on ’cause you just never know, /Just got to take the fight into the heart of another night, /And just got to hold on ’cause you just never, just never know…”

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If you’re intrigued by this band you’ve never heard of, or want to immerse yourself in their catalog and commiserate our collective loss with like-minded fans, have I got a playlist for you! It’s roughly chronological, from early solo albums through the nine MSB albums to Stanley’s latter-day LPs, with a few strong covers he recorded along the way. I think you’ll agree that this was a band who coulda-woulda-shoulda been much bigger across the country.