Craig Allen’s ZZ Top Fun Facts: “Legs”

It's a "Free Ticket Weekend" here at New Jersey 101.5!

Keep listening to win tickets to see ZZ Top at the PNC Bank Arts Center on September 1st!

Now..a little bit about the band you are going to see!

"The Little Old Band From Texas" formed in Houston in 1969...

Its Billy Gibbons on vocals and guitar, Dusty Hill on vocals and bass, and Frank Beard handles drums.

The band had a string of lower-charting hits through the 1970s...including "La Grange" (#41/1974), Tush" (#20/1975), and "Arrested For Driving While Blind" (#91/1977).

ZZ Top took some time off from 1977 through 1979...only to come roaring back...to hit their stride in the "Big Decade!"

"Legs" would be ZZ Top's first top-10 record, landing at #8 in the summer of 1984!

In 1985, Billy Gibbons said that he was inspired to write the song...by a chance sighting! He was driving through a heavy downpour in Los Angeles, when he saw a pretty girl along the side of the road. "Well I'd better pull over, or at least turn around and offer her a ride," Gibbons thinks to himself.

By the time that he gets turned around, the girl is gone.

Her legs were the first thing that he noticed. Her hair (getting wet) was second.

Gibbons realizes: "She was not going to get wet. She had legs, and she knew how to use them."

The rest is rock and roll history.

Feminist groups criticized ZZ Top for the song, saying that the hit objectified women.

For years, ZZ Top had been (and is still) singing playful, and sexually-charged, lyrics. I mentioned the 1975 hit "Tush" at the top of today's "Fun Facts." They were criticized then, as well...

The video (above) was very popular, with heavy MTV airplay!

Like the videos for "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Sharp Dressed Man," the "Legs" video features Gibbons' 1933 Hot Rod.

The difference this time is, the main character in the video isn't the car...its a girl...with legs.

The same three Playboy models are featured...but this time, instead of sweeping a guy off his feet and into the hot rod...they rescue a girl who needs some confidence boosting. They give her a makeover...and teach her how to get what she wants from a guy...

The guys from ZZ Top are once again in the video...and the image of their fuzzy guitars rotating became a classic early-MTV image (I wouldn't be surprised to see one of those  promos, featuring the spinning guitars, show up on the newly-christened "MTV Classic" channel).

Gibbon's name for his hot rod? "Eliminator."

"Legs" is on the "Eliminator" album...the first ZZ Top album to feature synthesizers. It is widely believed that the synthesizers, along with the MTV airplay, led to an excess of 10 million copies of the album flying off record store shelves.

"She's got legs...and she knows how to use them."

The opening lines of this hit song...tell the whole story.

Enjoy...and stay close to win ZZ Top concert tickets from New Jersey 101.5!