'Sharp Dressed Man' Remakes ZZ Top as Kings of Cool

ZZ Top unlocked a potent, common reality with their 1983 smash “Sharp Dressed Man”: Sharpness is not a one-size-fits-all aesthetic, however a state of being.

This got here as a revelation for threesome, who till then had carved out a profitable profession taking part in southern-fried blues-rock however had been regarded as patently unhip by the essential institution. ZZ Top struck gold a decade earlier with the Top 10 Tres Hombres, however their fortunes had begun to slide as the ’70s bled into the ’80s.

They returned from a two-year hiatus with 1979’s platinum-selling Deguello, however the synthesized sounds of 1981’s El Loco alienated followers and offered half as a lot as its predecessor. In hindsight, El Loco opened a door via which ZZ Top would boldly cost on their subsequent file, 1983’s Eliminator.

“Without question, there’s some crazy, interesting-sounding stuff” on El Loco, Billy Gibbons instructed Classic Rock in 2021. “The intrigue of these newfound contraptions was by then just starting to catch on, but we didn’t have a teacher or guide. We didn’t even have an instruction manual. I was just pushing buttons and [finding] something that sounded kind of trashy.”

ZZ Top wanted to adapt to the altering sounds of rock music, the place club-ready new wave had outdated their raunchy blues-rock formulation. Gibbons “asked me what we could do,” recalled ZZ Top’s longtime engineer Terry Manning. “I started going to clubs and studying beats. The market had changed quite a bit from blues-based rock ‘n’ roll. So I came up with some ideas we could implement to make a very different album.”

The end result was Eliminator, an 11-song tour de drive of Texas-sized hooks, uber-slick manufacturing and ass-shaking beats that had been optimized for the dance ground, with many tempos uniformly within the 125bpm ballpark. ZZ Top’s raunchy barroom boogie was nonetheless intact, however it was filtered via a futuristic new-wave prism that would go toe-to-toe with the dominant pop forces of the day.

The LP did not simply maintain its personal; it vanquished the competitors.

Watch ZZ Top’s ‘Sharp Dressed Man’ Video

Spurred by a trio of singles — “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” — with related movies directed by Tim Newman, Eliminator offered a staggering 10 million copies within the United States and endeared ZZ Top to a brand new, fresh-faced viewers.

“Gimme All Your Lovin'” includes a lowly gasoline station attendant who will get taken for a experience within the iconic Eliminator coupe by a trio of bombshell girls (together with mannequin and actor Daniele Arnaud and former Playboy Playmate Jeana Tomasino). In the “Sharp Dressed Man” video, he ditches his gas-station duds for swanky formal put on — a visible metaphor for ZZ Top’s unlikely reinvention as kings of cool.

“Tim was a great director,” Gibbons instructed Classic Rock. “By which I mean to say he told us we weren’t much to look at, and so we’d need some pretty girls in the mix to sweeten up the story. He brought along a picture book of models to our first meeting. I said to him: ‘Well, slow down here and let’s take this page by page.'”

It did not matter that Gibbons, fellow bearded bassist Dusty Hill and mustachioed drummer Frank Beard lacked supermodel beauty. With their movies in fixed MTV rotation, they grew to become avatars of swagger. “Sharp-dressed depends on who you are,” Hill instructed Spin in 1985. “If you’re on a motorcycle, really sharp leather is great. If you’re a punk rocker, you can get sharp that way. You can be sharp or not sharp in any mode. It’s all in your head. If you feel sharp, you be sharp.”

Released as a single in July 1988, “Sharp Dressed Man” peaked at No. 8 on Billboard‘s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart and have become one of ZZ Top’s signature songs. It appeared within the first Guitar Hero online game, served as the theme tune for the Duck Dynasty actuality present and landed at No. 43 on Guitar World‘s 2009 listing of the 50 biggest guitar solos.

“That song and the whole album really embrace the simplicity of blues and techno music with the complex challenge of how to blend them together,” Gibbons instructed Guitar World. “The track just has a really raucous delivery, which is a good ignition point on stage, sitting on the tailgate out in the middle of nowhere, sipping a cold one, or wherever you may be. It just does something to you.”