Tag Archives: ZZ Top

Music Video of the Day: Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top (1983, directed by Tim Newman)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

“Sharp-dressed depends on who you are. If you’re on a motorcycle, really sharp leather is great. If you’re a punk rocker, you can get sharp that way. You can be sharp or not sharp in any mode. It’s all in your head. If you feel sharp, you be sharp.”

— Dusty Hill, bassist, ZZ Top

The video for Sharp Dressed Man picks where the video for Gimme All Your Lovin’ left off.  The three girls are still driving the Eliminator, the ghosts of ZZ Top are still giving away the keys to the car, and Peter Tramm is still stuck in a job where he gets no respect.  In Gimme All Your Lovin’, Tramm was a gas station attendant.  In this video, he’s working as a valet at an exclusive club and not even Truman Capote is willing to give him any respect.  Luckily, the ghosts of ZZ Top have not forgotten about Tramm and, after one ride in the Eliminator, Tramm is ready to hit the dance floor and win the love of the young woman (played by Galyn Gorg) who earlier looked back at him while being dragged into the club by her boorish boyfriend.  By the end of the video, even Truman Capote is getting down!

Sharp Dressed Man remains one of ZZ Top’s signature songs and this video is still among their best-remembered.  It’s not surprising that the video was an MTV hit because, for many members of the then-young network’s audience, it was the ultimate in wish-fulfillment.  No matter who you were or who was treating you with disrespect, there was always a chance that ZZ Top might appear and toss you the keys to Billy Gibbons’s car.

Like Gimme All Your Lovin’, this video was directed by Randy Newman’s brother, Tim.  Tim Newman would return to direct the next installment in the adventures of the Eliminator and the ZZ Top Girls, Legs.  Anyone want to guess what tomorrow’s music video of the day is going to be?

Enjoy!

Music Video of the Day: Gimme All Your Lovin’ by ZZ Top (1983, directed by Tim Newman)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Judging from this video, the early 80s were a mystical time when the ghosts of ZZ Top haunted the desert and improved the lives of random people.  That was the plot of three of ZZ Top’s best-known videos, the first one of which was for Gimme All Your Lovin’.

This video follows a gas station attendant (played by Peter Tramm) as he not only gets to go on an adventure with the “ZZ Girls” but also gets to drive the ZZ car, a red, 1933 Ford coupe known as “The Eliminator.”  At the end of the video, he wakes up to discover that it was all a dream.  Or was it?

Though ZZ Top had been performing since 1969 and had a dedicated fan base of Southern rock enthusiasts, the video for Gimme All Your Lovin’ was largely responsible for introducing them to the MTV generation.  It also introduced some of the best-known parts of the ZZ Top mythology.  In particular, the famous ZZ Top hand gesture started with this video.  It wasn’t planned ahead-of-time.  Instead, the members of the band had done several shots in which they watched the Eliminator drive by them and they came up with the gesture out of pure boredom.

The Eliminator belonged to Billy Gibbons and, by putting it in the video and on the cover of the band’s latest album (which was also named after the car), Gibbons was able to write off, as a business expense, all the money that he had previously spent buying and restoring the car.  Gibbons may have simply been trying to get out of debt but the car went on to become the best-known symbol of the band.

This video was directed by Tim Newman, who was the brother of Randy Newman.  Newman would also direct the two sequels to Gimme All Your Lovin’, Sharp-Dressed Man and Legs.

Enjoy!

27 Days of Old School: #16 “Gimme All Your Lovin'” (by ZZ Top)

Posted on by Arleigh

 

Givme-all-your-loving

“Gimme all your lovin’
All your hugs and kisses too,
Gimme all your lovin’
Don’t let up until we’re through.”

I didn’t know what blues and blues rock was when I first heard it on the radio and then watched it on MTV. I did know that they had a real unique sound that was very much like rock, but also had a sort of country vibe to it.

One of the first bands of blues rock that I really ended up being a fan of was ZZ Top and it was mainly due to their three videos for three singles off of their Eliminator album. The first one that I saw was for the track “Gimme All Your Lovin’“.

The video itself was just very cool. It had everything a young boy was curious about. Cars, girls and rock and roll. Well, mostly it was the girls and the video to this song introduced the “Three ZZ Girls”.

It was much, much later in high school that I went back to listening to ZZ Top and their songs and realize that they were pretty much singing about sex, sex and more sex to the tune of Texas boogie blues. I ended up loving the band even more then.