They emerged from the Texas psychedelic scene, took 13 truckfuls of live animals on an 18-month-long tour, and dominated MTV playing paranormal, bearded cupids. With ZZ Top headlining the Hollywood Bowl next month, it’s a good time to reflect on just how iconically oddball the band really is. 

The film is full of cartoon references, not least because ZZ Top’s image has evolved so beautifully into caricature. Those trademark beards, hats, and sunglasses are rendered as actual cartoons too: The band plays themselves in the animated sitcom King of the Hill, and in The Simpsons, Bart thinks he spies ZZ Top in New York City but it’s really a trio of Hasidic Jews. The band is so recognizable as a visual motif that just their appearance is a punchline—in an episode of Two and a Half Men they materialize as a marijuana-induced hallucination.   

ZZ Top’s willingness to embrace the left-of-field began long before ZZ Top’s conception. Bassist Dusty Hill (who passed away in 2021) and drummer Frank Beard founded a psychedelic rock band in 1966 called American Blues, which took the burgeoning hippie aesthetic further than most. “People started getting long hair, which was dangerous in Texas at the time,” explains Hill in That Little Ol’ Band from Texas. His response was blue hair dye. “Not only do I have long hair in Texas in the ’60s; I’ve got long blue hair. I think people thought I was nuts.”   

After American Blues broke up in 1969, Hill and Beard toured the US as part of the “fake Zombies,” a bizarre ruse in which four Texans pretended to be the then-defunct British psychedelic band. But they soon met guitarist Billy Gibbons, a fellow devotee of the pioneering psych-rock outfit The 13th Floor Elevators, who was making a name for himself in the Houston scene as a white-hot guitarist. His band Moving Sidewalks opened for Hendrix and had a song all over Texan radio, but when two of its members were drafted in the Vietnam War, Gibbons began looking for his next thing. Fate delivered fellow oddballs Hill and Beard and thus was born the thunderous three piece that would ignite stages for the next 50 years.  

It helped that the three men shared a penchant for overcommitting to the bit. “One giant piece of craziness” was how Beard later described the band’s 1976 tour that involved over a dozen trucks, live buffalo, long-horned steer, vultures, rattlesnakes, live trees, veterinarians, animal trainers, and a 75-foot-wide stage in the shape of Texas. They even lugged around piles of Texan dirt. Industry folk kept telling them the band “wasn’t big enough,” to justify this rock-rodeo fever dream, but did that stop them? Nope. (Although the “worldwide” tour was limited to North America thanks to animal quarantine issues.) 

Years of being dismissed by East Coast critics, who thought Texan culture “unsophisticated,” meant the band identified as the underdog. This view, along with their propensity for absurdity, found true expression in 1983. Their videos for an embryonic MTV saw them portrayed as supernatural backwoodsmen materializing at gas stations and diners—along with a trio of fierce Playboy models—to help downtrodden youngsters with their love lives. Gibbons and Hill would spin their fluffy, fur-covered guitars in unison while the newly saved couple rode off into the sunset. The videos made them unlikely popstars, and suddenly middle-aged guys with giant beards were one of the biggest bands on the airwaves. 

And yet, amid all this charming eccentricity, the real reason to fall in love with ZZ Top again is those indelible songs. Try listening to the hip-grinding groove of 1983’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’” without strutting around the kitchen. The danceability was deliberate—Gibbons watched kids shimmy to The Rolling Stones and wanted the same vibe, which ZZ Top achieved by adding synthesizers and drum machines and cranking the tempos up to the “biological sweet spot” of 120 bpm. The result was Eliminator, one of the most danceable heavy rock albums (or heaviest dance albums) of the 1980s. 

Then there’s that unparalleled live show. Yes, there’s the synchronized side-step and the duckwalking in tandem, but beyond that is the thrill of seeing and hearing deep technical proficiency (read: shredding) housed in a full-body sonic experience refined by a lifetime of onstage connection.  

Which brings us to the addition of long-time guitar tech Elwood Francis, Hill’s own pick for his replacement after his death. Is the band still weird? Francis shredding on a neon-yellow 17-string bass guitar with a neck like a card table put that particular doubt to rest. The beard and dark glasses are there, the strut and swagger are there, and there’s also a maniacal crop of silver hair spraying straight up like a possessed dish brush.  

ZZ Top may be cultural icons but, luckily, they’re not cartoon characters or drug-fueled illusions, and we can still see them in the flesh, delivering amphitheater-shaking versions of “Sharp Dressed Man,” “La Grange,” and “TV Dinners.” In a year when real life is getting more surreal by the minute, maybe what we all need is to grab our dancing shoes (or our studded leather jackets) and have a good, weird ol’ time.