Watch ZZ Top’s First Appearance on Late Night Television

ZZ High had seemingly conquered each proverbial mountain, due to the worldwide success of 1983’s Eliminator album.

However they marked a shocking milestone off of the listing after they carried out on The Tonight Present with Johnny Carson on Could 18, 1986. It was their first look ever on late evening tv taking part in their songs.

Although they have been out selling 1985’s Afterburner album, they did not carry out any of the tracks from that report. As a substitute, they supplied up distinctive horn-driven renditions of “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Tush,” backed by this system’s NBC Orchestra, led by Doc Severinsen. The bandleader bought into the spirit of all of it, as you’ll be able to see within the beneath video of their look.

The charismatic musician performed trumpet and wore a faux beard and sun shades to correctly align himself with ZZ High’s Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill. Even Carson could possibly be noticed having a superb time at his desk, additionally sporting a beard and a ZZ High hat because the epic smoke cleared on the finish of the efficiency.

“I used to be glad to have that distinctive expertise as a ZZ High ‘member,'” Severinsen shared in an electronic mail to writer Christopher McKittrick, many years later. “My intercourse life improved instantly,” he quipped. The Tonight Present legend was already effectively into his 90s on the time he supplied the recollection to McKittrick.

“I simply thought that [television performance] was so wild that I wished to at the very least try to achieve out to his publicist and see, does he even bear in mind this second and may he speak about it? And he simply gave me the briefest quote about it,” McKittrick tells UCR now. “However I’ve to say, in all my years of writing, it is my favourite quote that I’ve ever gotten from somebody when writing a guide. It says all of it, together with his humor.”

Watch ZZ High’s Efficiency on ‘The Tonight Present With Johnny Carson’

It is actually one of many extra distinctive moments that the writer coated in his 2024 guide, Gimme All Your Lovin’: The Blues, Boogie and Beard of Billy F. Gibbons. But it surely’s one he got here to grasp fairly effectively.

Why ZZ High Hadn’t Carried out on Late Night time Tv Earlier than

Some followers will know that ZZ High’s supervisor and producer, Invoice Ham, was legendary for protecting a decent grip on all points of the band — particularly when it got here to the interactions they’d with the media — and the visibility of issues like tv interviews and performances. More often than not, he most popular to say no to inquiries of that kind, in an effort to keep up the mystique of the longer term Texas legends.

READ MORE: Why ZZ High Went Behind Their Producer’s Again to End ‘Afterburner’

“Invoice had this concept that he wished to maintain every part about ZZ High form of a thriller, from how they bought their very distinctive band identify to what the members even seemed like,” McKittrick says. “In the event you take a look at a whole lot of the early albums, we see a whole lot of faraway photos of them, however probably not up shut and private, which is basically ironic. Years later throughout the MTV period, once you could not [miss them] on TV, they have been in every single place.”

“However on the time, Invoice Ham had this concept that, ‘I do not need to have ZZ High on the Midnight Particular and different reveals like that. I would like followers to come back to the live performance, see what they seem like and listen to what they sound like dwell,'” the writer explains. “And it is a technique that actually labored on the time after they have been taking part in sellout live shows. In fact, when MTV got here alongside, instances modified. They wanted to actually get with the instances and grow to be the video stars that everyone knows and love them as from the 80s.”

Nonetheless, the members of ZZ High expressed in later years that they owed a lot of their success to the best way Ham had dealt with their profession. “I really suppose the band would have damaged [up] in three years if Invoice hadn’t been concerned,” drummer Frank Beard stated in 2016.

How Followers Can See Different ZZ High Dwell Performances

The 2021 demise of bassist Dusty Hill and extra not too long ago, Beard, who handed away in August of 2026, naturally despatched music followers looking out, searching for dwell footage they have not seen earlier than of ZZ High.

Admittedly and frustratingly so, there’s not a wealth of official dwell recordings obtainable from the basic period of the band. Essentially the most well-known — and important live performance footage comes from their 1980 efficiency on the German tv program Rockpalast.

Recorded throughout the time they have been out on tour supporting 1979’s Deguello, the Rockpalast look (which is offered on DVD and streaming) bottles 90 minutes of ZZ High at their finest, rolling by well-known staples like “Waitin’ for the Bus,” “Jesus Simply Left Chicago,” “Low cost Sun shades” and “Tush.”

But it surely additionally contains chestnuts like “Valuable and Grace” from Tres Hombres, “Manic Mechanic” from Deguello and an epic model of “A Idiot for Your Stockings” from that very same album.

Watch ZZ High Carry out at Rockpalast in 1980

The 2019 documentary That Little Ol’ Band From Texas ferreted out a wide range of extra performances when it got here to house video, together with 17 minutes of priceless pre-Eliminator live performance footage sourced from the property of Ham, who died in 2016. Moreover, the movie additionally options the three members of ZZ High acting at Gruene Corridor in Texas with out an viewers, a singular and intimate gig that was filmed particularly for the aim of the documentary.

Many of the remainder of the at the moment obtainable dwell performances from ZZ High come courtesy of Dwell From Texas, which was filmed within the Dallas/Fort Price space in 2008 and in addition, a 2013 gig on the annual Montreux Jazz Pageant in Switzerland. Songs from the Gruene Corridor jam have been ultimately launched in audio type on the album RAW: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas.

So you’ve got bought some choices, however boy, we might like to see extra basic stuff emerge from the ZZ High vaults!