ZZ Top Bassist Dusty Hill, Dead at 72

Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, 1976. Photo by Helge Øverås, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Dusty Hill, the long-time bassists and vocalist for legendary band ZZ Top, died in his sleep at the age of 72.

Rolling Stone:

ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill, who played with the Texas blues-rock trio for over 50 years, died Tuesday at age 72. His rep confirmed the musician’s death, but said a cause of death was currently unknown.

“We are saddened by the news today that our Compadre, Dusty Hill, has passed away in his sleep at home in Houston, Texas,” surviving members Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard said in a statement. “We, along with legions of ZZ Top fans around the world, will miss your steadfast presence, your good nature, and enduring commitment to providing that monumental bottom to the ‘Top’. We will forever be connected to that ‘Blues Shuffle in C.’ You will be missed greatly, amigo.”

John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival tweeted a remembrance of his own: “We are devastated to hear about Dusty’s passing. We were so blessed to share the stage with the great Dusty and ZZ Top many times, and if that wasn’t rock & roll heaven, I don’t know what is. The show we did together just last week would be his last. So heartbreaking.”

Hill wasn’t ZZ Top’s original bass player, but he joined shortly before they cut their debut LP, ZZ Top’s First Album, in 1971, and remained a pivotal part of the group through their most recent albums and tours. Throughout all that time, the lineup stayed just Hill, Gibbons, and Beard, making them one of the most stable acts in rock history.

“It’s a cliché and sounds so simplistic, but it’s down to the three of us genuinely enjoying playing together,” Hill explained to Classic Rock in 2010. “We still love it, and we still get a kick out of being onstage. We also have enough in common to maintain a bond between us but sufficient differences to keep our individuality. And after all this time, we all know what winds up the others and what makes them the people they are.”

Hill grew up in Dallas, Texas, and began playing bass when he was 13. “Most bass players are guitar players first,” he told writer Gary Graff in 2016. “I wasn’t. I was a singer and I came home from school and there was a bass guitar there, and I played a bar that night. It wasn’t very good, but I kind of learned how to play on stage and whatnot, and embarrassment is a great motivator.”

He joined ZZ Top shortly after they signed a deal with London Records. Early records ZZ Top’s First Album and Rio Grande Mud failed to generate much traction, but they finally connected in 1973 with Tres Hombres thanks to the hit single “La Grange.” That same year, they opened up for the Rolling Stones in Hawaii. “People would look at us onstage, drop their jaws, and moan,” Hill told Rolling Stone in 1974. “In the end, though, we’d just blow them away and they’d scream for us to come back. We’d feel kind of funny with the Stones watching us from behind, waiting for us to finish.”

The follow-up albums weren’t as successful and the band took a three-year break following the release of 1976’s Tejas, during which Hill took a job at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. “I just wanted to feel normal,” Hill said in 2019. “I did not want other people to think that I thought I was full of myself, but the main thing is that I didn’t want to start feeling full of myself. So I did it to ground myself.”

During the downtime, Hill and Gibbons grew long beards. And when they remerged in 1979 with Degüello, they scored a massive hit with “Cheap Sunglasses.” But it was 1983’s Eliminator that turned ZZ Top into MTV superstars. Singles “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” and “Legs” were inescapable and remain classic rock radio staples to this day. And even though their success began to fizzle out in the Nineties, the band never stopped touring and always maintained a huge following. They were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004 by Keith Richards.

Our own John McCumber recently wrote a story about his own experiences with Tres Hombres:

My mind was quickly doing the calculus as these interrelated events were happening in real time. I was still holding back the Arsenal traffic while confused cross-river drivers had to be encouraged to continue across the bridge. They knew this was not the usual situation. The limo was slowly creeping its way closer to my position, but it was going to be a near-run thing. Who was going to grab the stupid kid on the traffic signal island first? The military police or ZZ Top in a limo?

Just as the cops rolled up to the crunch of cars stopped at the island. I looked over my shoulder to see the limo right behind me. Dusty opened the rear door and called out to me in a perfect deadpan, “Well, John, I think it’s high time you to stop playing in traffic and get in.” Billy whooped again as he floored the Lincoln and we raced over the remaining bridge into Iowa while the MPs were stuck behind the traffic jam I had caused. I switched back to the driver’s seat once we were safe in a different state and I drove the team to the auditorium for their sound check with five minutes to spare…