Dusty Hill death anniversary

5 years back from today on July 28, 2021, Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard put out a short Facebook post that a lot of classic rock fans still remember reading in real time. Their bandmate of over fifty years, ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill, had died in his sleep at his home in Houston. He was 72. Today Dusty Hill death anniversary

Hill was born Joe Michael Hill in Dallas back in 1949, and honestly, by his teenage years he was already deep into the Texas music scene, playing bass in local bands before eventually linking up with drummer Frank Beard in a group called American Blues. The 2 of them went looking for a guitarist and found Billy Gibbons, who at the time was playing in a Dallas psychedelic outfit that had once opened for Jimi Hendrix. That’s genuinely how ZZ Top came together, almost by accident, in Houston in 1969.

What they built after that turned into one of the longest-running unchanged lineups in rock history. 50-plus years, same three guys, no lineup shuffles, no dramatic breakups, just three Texans who apparently liked being in a band together more than most people manage to like anything for that long. Their breakout single, “La Grange,” dropped in 1973, and from there the hits kept coming: “Tush,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs,” “Gimme All Your Lovin’. “If you were watching MTV in the early ’80s, you already know exactly which videos those were, the ones with the spinning guitars and the fuzzy dice and, of course, those two beards.

Funny enough, Hill wasn’t even the one who talked much in interviews; that job usually fell to Gibbons, but musically he was every bit the backbone of the band, literally providing what the group itself once called “that monumental bottom” underneath every song they ever recorded. He played on every single ZZ Top album except their very first single, a streak that ran from 1971 all the way to 2012’s “La Futura.” The band got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in 2004, a fairly obvious honor at that point. Keep reading about this celebrity on alazizcp.com

His final years were not easy on him physically. Hill went through hip replacement surgery and a shoulder injury, and just about a week before he died, hip problems forced him to skip a ZZ Top show for what the band said was the first time in over fifty years. Guitar tech Elwood Francis filled in on bass for that gig. Nobody watching probably realized it would end up being one of Hill’s last moments connected to the band on stage, even from a distance.

Tributes rolled in fast once the news broke. Flea from Red Hot Chili Peppers called him a true rocker who “laid it down deep and real. ” Kiss guitarist Paul Stanley remembered him simply as a gentleman, going all the way back to the days their bands used to open for each other. Even Texas governor Greg Abbott weighed in, calling Hill’s death the loss of “a remarkable Texan.”

5 years on, that beard, those sunglasses, and the low end rumbling under “Sharp Dressed Man” are still exactly what comes to mind whenever someone brings up ZZ Top, which honestly feels like precisely the kind of legacy Hill would’ve been fine with.

Thanks for reading.