There are only five dates in Germany for ZZ Top who last toured here five years ago, and one of them is in Bonn. Mud puddles are on the ground, but the sun is out down by the Rhine at Kunst!Rasen as the once self-styled ‘Little ole band from Texas’ takes the stage.
Why is Billy Gibbons (now 74) still on the road? His answer to that one, given in a ‘Classic Rock’ interview last year is simple and comes from an exchange he had with Keith Richards: “He (Keith) said, ‘Man, if we’re lucky enough, we’d like to follow the words of Muddy Waters: Do it till you die.’ Of course, Muddy Waters was lucky enough to do just that. He played right up to the end. So we should be lucky, I think.” recalled Gibbons. ZZ Top’s bassist Dusty Hill passed away in 2021 after feeling unwell during pre-tour preparations. At any rate, it seems like Gibbons (and drummer Frank Beard) lives for making music and can’t imagine a life not doing so.
That’s all to our advantage tonight. Along with Elwood Francis, who went from being Top’s guitar tech to being the ‘new long beard on the block’ replacing Hill, and Frank Beard (75) on drums, Gibbons is doing what he clearly loves to do – play bluesy guitar riffs without a lot of showy background or musical gimmickry.
Well, yes, although the trio saunter onstage as if going for a pleasant stroll, Francis does so whilst wielding a huge 17-string ‘Fender’ guitar. It was a ‘joke’ purchase for Francis from Billy Gibbons for which the bassist recalls “The joke is on me now, because I have to play that bootleg piece of sh*t!”. The famous ZZ prop plush-covered guitars come out later for a short work-out too, but otherwise, everything is kept visually simple. The big video screen backstage capable of delivering huge colour videos never moves away from the simple black and white announcement ‘Live in Concert – ZZ Top’. It’s a far cry visually from the times of that jaw-dropping ‘Eliminator’ car and the twirling guitars that graced many an MTV music video in days gone by.
The sound is also stripped bare. No extra musicians. None of the synthesizers that characterized Topp’s sound for a while when they were at their commercial peak. Gibbons has become, or better said, has further entrenched himself in, the persona of a blues-rock guitar God. Not that it’s all been plain sailing. The last ZZ Top studio album was 2012’s ‘Futura’ but time won’t cut Gibbons any slack. Last year saw a non-ZZ Top show planned for E-Werk moved to a smaller venue. The same man, with the same guitar, commands an audience of 6,500 tonight at Kunstrasen – that ZZ Top name on the posters makes a difference still.
So the hits HAVE to be played tonight. The evening kicks off at 8 pm sharp with the ‘Eliminator’ classic ‘Under Pressure’. The show proper ends with ‘Eliminator’ hit singles‘ Sharp Dressed Man’ and ‘Legs’, backed by an enthusiastic sing-along and audience applause from the audience. But the hits seem to be played as short as possible, dare I say it – as if to be got out of the way. What Gibbons really wants to do, it seems to me anyway, is just break loose with some bluesy guitar riffs that are not strait-jacketed to a three-minute pop single.
The band disappear from the stage after barely an hour of playing those hits and the encore seems much more to Gibbon’s liking. Oldies from the ZZ Top catalogue, before Eliminator (1983) and ‘Afterburner’ (1985). ‘Brown Sugar’ (not the Stones classic I hasten to add) from 1971, has the space for those riffs and clearly Billy Gibbons is enjoying it. ‘Tube Snake Boogie’ from 1981’s ‘El Loco’ has similar room to breathe and it’s a pleasure to hear those blues riffs on the early evening Kunstrasen air. Most poignantly, the concert finishes almost where the band really started, with ‘La Grange’ which was the band’s very first top forty hit from when ZZ Top were really just Tres Hombres enjoying playing their own brand of Texas blues-rock.
A wave goodbye and they’re gone. ‘Did you have fun tonight?’ Gibbons asked a few minutes earlier. A unanimous “Yeah!!!” came back from the crowd. Now that same crowd is looking at their watches. It’s 9:15 pm. No fears about missing the last train/bus home. ZZ Top got through their 16-song set in a little over an hour. It was great to hear those hits, but I would love to have heard Billy Gibbons stretch out with some bluesy guitar offerings for another half hour.
There were no rumblings of discontent over the early finish that I could discern. Perhaps because we had two excellent support acts to enjoy beforehand. Danny Bryant was originally set to begin the evening but had to pull out. It was good to see that there was already a good-sized crowd in the concertground in time for Danny’s replacements, Baum’s Bluesbenders, shortly before 6 pm. Okay, so if you come from the Bonn area you can see Bill and co regularly. It’s not every day though that they get to play on a big stage like this one, although they richly deserve it. Francis Holzapfel posted a picture of the crowd from his drumkit the day after the show with the remark “I love my job!”. We love seeing you and the band too Francis. It was good to see Jan Laacks in the band but I would have loved to see Jan, one of my all-time favourite guitarists, with a six-string instead of a Fender bass. Bill and Uwe Placke on blues-harp and vocals were impeccable as always and I’m sure the Bluesbenders made some new fans.
Between Bill and Billy we had an excellent rock set by Sloper. You might have caught them previously when they played a Rockpalast gig at the Harmonie in 2020. Not surprisingly for a band created by two drummers -Mario Goossens (Triggerfinger) and Cesar Zuiderwijk (Golden Earring) – Sloper have a hard-hitting sound and also some excellent 70’s style guitar riffs from Fabio Canini. They also have an excellent new vocalist and frontman since the 2020 show in Jan Bas. An enjoyable set then, even if they were competing with Germany’s Euro quarter-final against Spain for audience attention.
