Crazy Backwards Alphabet from s/t album, 1986: Sarayushka ('La Grange' in Russian)
"In memory of Frank Beard. I went over to listen to CBA in a session, and they talked me into sitting on on this Russian version of La Grange. Swedish drummer Michael Maksymenko sang it, but he didn't have a "feel" for shuffles and asked me if I'd give it a go. They ran down the sections and we did one take, as I recall. I'd never played anything by ZZ Top before. It was a fun afternoon. Frank Beard held the groove down incredibly well. R.I.P."
ZZ Top was in Helsinki to play a concert, Billy Gibbons decided to have some fun “busking” playing on the street! No one seems to notice who's jamming
One commentator notes that the Finns are notoriously quiet and polite and wouldn’t dare to speak to him, it’s his business and would consider interrupting him rude!
I have been talking guitars a lot lately and a couple of things occurred to me after the extraordinary story about Rory Gallagher's beloved Strat and its loss and rediscovery! One is my friend and guitarist mentioned that Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top used '7's strings on his electric guitar and to anyone not in the know, guitar strings come in widths and gauges that inevitably some develop a preference for. I always use 10s on my acoustic guitars and similar on my electrics but 7s are LIGHT! Then I discovered he uses a dime for a plectrum!
My Harmony H162 (1957)
That's a metal coin! On REAL thin strings! Plectrums are usually made of general plastic and earlier ones may have been made of tortoise shell and even compressed felt for something like an Autoharp! I heard in response to this from my daughter's most excellent singer songwriting other half that Brian May ( apart from making and designing his own guitar from the earliest moments on) uses a threepenny bit! This again to those not in the know is an extraordinary little coin with its usual portcullis design has an edge that might best be described as CHUNKY!
If you listen to ZZ Top play live I believe you can tell that Billy uses a coin as they are easier or prone to raise harmonics on hitting the guitar string just so!
My Gibson 'Kalamazoo' 1936 KG11(headstock)
The other day however I found this wonderful clip of Keith Richards expounding his unique (sic?) approach to playing in open G. You simply take the top string off and play with five! Watch out for this on film and video. Now I used to play a lot in open tunings and used an open E for the longest time even on my first guitar a 12 sting but enjoyed drop D the next step and DADGAD or open G is common too. I have also been fascinated but those of us using open tunings and to masters like Martin Carthy who I have heard uses HIS OWN tuning! Now you have to really know your chops and how it fits with other players to come up with your own tuning so this is as yet a step too far!
My Gibson 'Kalamazoo' 1936 KG11
Here's Keith in LIFE magazine:
Keith Richards: The beauty, the majesty of the five-string open G tuning for an electric guitar is that you've only got three notes--the other two are repetitions of each other an octave apart. It's tuned GDGBD. Certain strings run through the whole song, so you get a drone going all the time, and because it's electric they reverberate. Only three notes, but because of these different octaves, it fills the whole gap between bass and top notes with sound. It gives you this beautiful resonance and ring. I found working with open tunings that there's a million places you don't need to put your fingers. The notes are there already. You can leave certain strings wide open. It's finding the spaces in between that makes open tuning work. And if you're working the right chord, you can hear this other chord going on behind it, which actually you're not playing. It's there. It defies logic. And it's just lying there saying, "F*ck me." And it's a matter of the same old cliche in that respect. It's what you leave out that counts. Let it go so that one note harmonizes off the other. And so even though you've now changed your fingers to another position, that note is still ringing. And you can even let it hang there. It's called the drone note. Or at least that's what I call it. The sitar works on similar lines--sympathetic ringing, or what they call the sympathetic strings. Logically it shouldn't work, but when you play it, and that note keeps ringing even though you've now changed to another chord, you realize that that is the root note of the whole thing you're trying to do. It's the drone.
I just got fascinated by relearning the guitar. It really invigorated me. It was like a different instrument in a way, and literally too. I had to have the five-string guitars made for me. I've never wanted to play like anybody else, except when I was first starting, when I wanted to be Scotty Moore or Chuck Berry. After that, I wanted to find out what the guitar or the piano could teach me.
The five-string took me back to the tribesmen of West Africa. They had a very similar instrument, sort of a five-string, kind of like a banjo, but they would use the same drone, a thing to set up other voices and drums over the top. Always underneath it was this underlying one note that went through it. And you listen to some of that meticulous Mozart stuff and Vivaldi and you realise that they knew that too. They knew when to leave one note just hanging up there where it illegally belongs and let it dangle in the wind and turn a dead body into a living beauty - Life
ZZ Top live on Howard Stern playing La Grange (see if you can hear whether you think Billy is using a metal coin here as he makes the notes hit that harmonic ring from a kind of pinch stroke with the plectrum hand
Dusty Hill, bassist and supporting singer of ZZ Top for more than half a century, died today, while sleeping at his home in Houston (Texas), as confirmed in a statement by the other two members of the band, Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard. Hill was 72 years old. "We, along with legions of ZZ Top fans around the world, will miss his steadfast presence, good nature and enduring commitment," they wrote.
The group Hill founded in 1969 has not clarified whether his death is related to a recent health problem. On July 23, ZZ Top posted on its Facebook wall that the bassist was leaving the tour to "fix a hip problem." And they added: "We hope his speedy recovery and have him back soon." But Hill never rejoined live entertainment, he was replaced by Elwood Francis, a regular contributor to the ensemble.
