Thursday, June 5, 1997By MIKE ROSS --
How can ZZ Top ever top itself now?
They keep pumping out albums, but most fans seem happily resigned that the Texas trio has already done its best work: songs like Tush, Legs, La Grange - bloozy, swampy three-chord rockers all on the subject of sex.
They don't come much better.
The band's already done the ridiculously expensive, over-the-top stage shows - moving sidewalks, driving cars on stage, massive lighting effects and squads of fabulous babes.
Promising a return to a "straight-ahead rock show," ZZ Top plays the Coliseum Saturday night, supporting its new Rhythmeen album. But what fans really care about are those old hits, the ones that have echoed across life's great bush party for well over a decade.
The laurels keep pouring in. The band was recently honored by Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who declared May 15, 1997 "ZZ Top Day." In 1986, Texas actually passed a law making the band "Official Texas Heroes." According to bassist Dusty Hill, there have been only four since the Alamo: retired football player Earl Campbell, plus Dusty Hill, Frank Beard and Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ Top.
"And along with that comes the responsibility, of course, that we feel already, to represent the state," Hill says during a phone interview.
"Now what that entails changes through the years. As Texans, should we raise hell or should we be polite? Or both? It's what people expect of you that you gotta kind of read around."
And what more can they do? Hill has one idea that'll top 'em all - be the house band on the space shuttle.
"We've been trying to get on it for years," he says. "We've sent them a lot of letters and they write us back. We're, uh, fairly tight with the people at NASA. It's right down from Houston, you know. We're serious about this. I want to play up there.
"We're a three-piece, so right away that cuts down on the weight. Somebody's got to entertain those people up there, especially up at the space station. It's got to be boring. How many times can you walk outside and tweak on the machine? So I figure a live album. Maybe we could do some standards, Fly Me to the Moon ...."
Hill figures it would bring back the excitement of the old days, when millions of people were glued to their TVs watching the moon landing or the Apollo 13 saga. Lord knows, the space shuttle - the cable TV repair truck of the space age - needs a little glamor.
Says Hill, "Wouldn't it be more entertaining to flash on and go, `OK, we're going to open the show tonight with La Grange and now, watch this guitar: It's weightless! Wow! And so are the beards!' I have all kinds of visions of things here, but so far no dice."
There are still adventures to be had on Earth. For the first time, ZZ Top recently toured where no Texas trio has gone before: South Africa, where, during a week's vacation, Hill was almost run down by a jealous rhino. ("We got between a male and a female, and the male took offence to our presence, so he charged. I understand - I would've charged, too.")
And in Russia and the Associated-Whatever-They-Call Themselves-Now countries, ZZ Top found fans they never knew existed.
"We got some strange looks in Red Square," says Hill, but most of the shows were sold out.
"Latvia, Estonia, I didn't even know exactly where that was, to be honest, and I forget about the impact MTV and that kind of thing has had. Even before the curtain came down, if you want to call it that, they still watched the videos. We've been selling records there for a while. You try to be cool about it. I made the foo-pah (sic) the first time I walked into a press conference. And I said `Czechoslovakia,' and it's now the `Czech Republic.' They're very firm about that. I'm glad I didn't do it on stage or something. But it was a very pleasant surprise.
"On the other hand, it's good to get back to North America because I'm just more used to the way things work. Ordering room service is a lot easier, believe me."
Try that on the space shuttle.
