![]() ![]() Nearly 50 years later, what happened with the Zombies is now more myth than scandal, hazy details further lost to history, with many of its principal players gone or forgotten. ![]() As the British Invasion spurred rock's cultural explosion in the '60s, there simply weren't yet enough of these upstart bands touring North America to meet the demand. It was in this climate that Delta Promotions took this exploitation to a new extreme, figuring out a way to tour and sell “the Zombies” and other bands without those bands or their fans even realizing. Over the course of their existence, the Drifters have had somewhere around 60 members. In the doo-wop era, if a member of a popular group pushed back against a manager or label boss, they were simply sent packing, with a new, more compliant candidate brought in to replace them. In the history of the American popular music, artists have often been seen as interchangeable by the industry that promotes and distributes them. 3 on the Billboard chart and the Zombies were suddenly in demand. label, Date Records, decided to release the track “Time of the Season” as a last-ditch effort the song went to No. Almost two years after their breakup, after little fanfare and two failed singles, the band’s U.S. Nobody even saw fit to correct the unintentionally misspelled “Odessey” on the record’s cover, viewed in hindsight as typical psychedelic-era wordplay. The Zombies quietly disbanded when Odessey and Oracle failed to make the charts. The real Zombies would have never worn cowboy hats. ![]() Cruz and Chris Page are scrawled over them. I inform White that the two young men wearing cowboy hats are Dusty Hill and Frank Beard from the legendary Texas blues-rock band ZZ Top, although the names D. There are only four guys pictured despite the fact that the Zombies were a five-piece. Watch ZZ Top perform “Brown Sugar” and “La Grange” live at Gruene Hall (from the film That Little Ol’ Band From Texas) below.I pull up another grainy photo from 1969 on my laptop: a traditional black and white press photo for the Original "Zombies" (in conspicuous scare quotes), autographed. It’s a calling that has us grinning from start to finish.” If that’s the direction, I gotta take it.'”Īsked about the band’s plans to put out new music beyond Raw, Gibbons said making new music “would be an interesting excursion into the unknown-particularly with Elwood holding down the bottom end.” He continued, “We’ve got the makings of a band that is partially the tried-and-true longstanding experience with something so fresh, and kind of uncharted territory that’s being broken. It was, ‘Hey Elwood, grab the guitar.’ He said, ‘Okay, listen, I’m the hired gun. Elwood grabbed Dusty’s hat and placed it on the microphone and made sure that there was a point of relation through the whole night. “To Elwood’s credit, he made certain that Dusty was in an ethereal sense still present during the experience. “The emotions were running high,” he said. Gibbons described the emotional tone of the band’s first shows without Dusty. We’re crazy characters, almost cartoon-like, but at the bottom of it, we’re all very dedicated and serious on the musical level.”įrancis has already performed live with ZZ Top. It’s kind of an interesting twist, but the balance remains. He’s been a solid standby for over three decades.’ He is adding to five decades of a rather serious side of making loud sounds. He said, ‘Listen, if I’m late getting back to the gig, make sure that Elwood, our guitar technician, wraps his hands around my guitar.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ He said, ‘Look, he’s more than a family member. When he was feeling a bit out of sorts, he requested going to see his physician. “Not only was he a great performer and a great friend, he had a thread of wisdom. Asked about the transition, Gibbons said it was Dusty who recommended Francis for the position. The band also has plans to work on new music with Elwood Francis, who served as the outfit’s guitar tech for over 30 years, on bass. Due to be released on July 8th, the album will feature a mix of classic tunes and lesser-heard songs like “Certified Blues” and “Brown Sugar”, both from the band’s 1971 debut, ZZ Top’s First Album. The band will first release a new live album, Raw, which was recorded with Dusty during the making of the band’s 2019 documentary, That Little Ol’ Band From Texas, at Gruene Hall-the longest running live music venue and dance hall in Texas. Gibbons announced in an interview with Ultimate Classic Rock. ZZ Top has plans to put out new music with the band’s longtime guitar technician Elwood Francis filling in for the late Dusty Hill, who passed away in 2021, guitarist Billy F. ![]()
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