Review: ZZ Top at Langley Park

ZZ Top at Langley Park
w/ George Thorogood & The Destroyers, Dallas Frasca
Thursday, May 1, 2025

ZZ Top remarkably stayed a tight trio for 51 years before Dusty Hill’s sad passing in 2021, and now drummer Frank Beard’s health problems have forced him to sit out this Australian tour. That leaves the king of style, the man with the golden tone, the right Reverend Billy F. Gibbons, as the sole remaining OG ZZ, a man whose presence is as unique and authentic as ever.

Joining Gibbons for this tour was Hill’s former bass tech Elwood Francis—all fright wig silver hair and a bass with so many strings it would make Cheap Trick’s Rick Neilsen think twice about picking it up—and Beard’s long-term drum tech John Douglas. Promoting from within: we approve.

First though, we had Melbourne‘s Dallas Frasca, as feisty and gritty a singer and guitarist as her hair is pink. We‘d have preferred a real drummer than the basic drum backing track, this being a rock’n’roll show and all, but Frasca took no prisoners on originals Anything Left To Wonder, River Queen, and Let It Rain, which are good enough that she shouldn’t have needed to finish with a superfluous Led Zeppelin montage. Regardless, the crowd was considerably warmed up.

George Thorogood—like Gibbons, 75 years young—is a born entertainer, a carny barker who talks up his show and has the goods to back up his schtick. How sweet it is, indeed.

Original Destroyers Jeff Simon and Billy Blough (original enough, he joined in 1976, three years after the band formed and over a year before their first album) are the tightest, most telepathic rhythm section you’re likely to hear, while additional guitarist Jim Suhler and sax player Buddy Leach hold their own in esteemed company.

Thorogood and ZZ did more than just about anyone else to bring the blues into the mainstream in the early 1980s, even though both strayed from their purist beginnings in order to do so. Thorogood’s ability to cover blues classics in his and The Destroyer’s style was showcased with stomping renditions of Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love, John Lee Hooker’s One Bourbon, One Scotch and One Beer, and Hank Williams’ Move It On Over. Continuing the drinking theme, he did a shot before a raucous Gear Jammer, and I Drink Alone was almost as huge a classic as show highlight Bad To The Bone, while Get A Haircut And Get A Real Job struck a chord with the rebels in the crowd. “I see you like the intellectual lyrics!” he jibed.

Thorogood threw a “Thursday night rock party hootenanny” to be remembered, so it’s a shame security insisted on forcing dancing revellers back into their seats throughout the show, restricting the rock’n’roll good times like crowd nazis in 1984 in Kevin Bacon’s movie Footloose.

When ZZ Top took the stage, Gibbons and Francis were resplendent in glittery rhinestone-festooned nudie suits and choreographed grooves, not to mention matching guitars when Francis gives his multi-stringed Frankenstein to his roadie. Their set is a tasty balance of their biggest and best, heavy on the 70s blues classics and the 80s synth-augmented smashes, mostly from breakthrough album Eliminator, with a couple of extras sprinkled in for good measure.

Gibbons is the walking embodiment of louche humour and effortless cool, but he’s happy to let the music do most of the talking, and to be fair, every note he plays is unique, unmistakable, and always sounds amazing, ever since his formative time tripping in Texan psych outfit The Moving Sidewalks.

Jesus Just Left Chicago, Gimme All Your Lovin, I’m Bad I’m Nationwide, more recent underground hit, I Gotsta Get Paid, Just Got Paid, and—complete with white, furry guitars (though these did not revolve, sadly)—Legs were all highlights.

They returned for an encore sporting different suits, purple with leafy motifs and a thousand or so more diamantes each, playing guitars with video screens in them, and went right back to their first album for Brown Sugar (no relation), then El Loco cult fave Tube Snake Boogie, and an awesome cherry on the cake in La Grange.

Crowd chatter seemed pretty unanimous that Thorogood’s party blues were favoured, but from where we stood, both headliners hit a home run, their very different styles showcasing much of what we love about modern blues.

SHANE PINNEGAR

Photos by Stu McKay