ZZ Top - Eliminator

Eliminator is the eighth studio album by American blues rock band ZZ Top, originally released in March 1983 via Warner Bros. Records.

The band is composed of bassist and lead vocalist Dusty Hill, guitarist and lead vocalist Billy F. Gibbons (the band's leader, main lyricist and musical arranger), and drummer Frank Beard. One of just a few major label recording groups to have held the same line-up for more than 45 years, ZZ Top has been praised by critics and fellow musicians alike for their technical mastery.

Eliminator was the hands-down party album of the ‘80s, pleasing hard-core boogie freaks and New Wave ironists alike with its bluesy vamping, tawdry lyrics and chic, trashy videos. You practically had to be in a coma not to have found some opportunity to dance to "Legs," "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Gimme All Your Lovin'" in 1983.

ZZ Top had enjoyed million-selling albums in the ‘70s, but Eliminator outsold all the band's previous releases. Most amazing of all, the album suddenly made the Texas trio with two of the longest beards in Christendom the hippest and hottest thing in rock & roll.

Many of the songs were written backstage during the Deguello tour with the band determined to keep that dressing-room ambience alive when it went in to record. Eliminator was cut at Ardent Recording, in Memphis, a city whose musical heritage rubbed off on ZZ Top.

A trip to England prior to the sessions yielded its own influences, with the band taking in synth pop and the intense fashion consciousness of its "new romantic" practitioners. The modern technology inspired the band members to have a go at synths themselves, while the cool threads they had seen on the streets of London inspired them to write "Sharp Dressed Man".

The synthesizers the band began noodling around on at Ardent happened to be primitive analogue models, with lots of wires and dials and no presets. But it worked: The synthesizers - layered organically amid guitars, bass and drums - contributed to Eliminator's dense, bluesy feel.

Often lyrics were inspired by real-life situations. "Legs”, for instance, came about one rainy day on the way to the studio. "There was a young lady dodging the raindrops, and being obliging Southerners, we spun the car around," says Gibbons. "No sooner had we turned around to pick her up - boom! - she'd vanished. And we said, 'That girl's got legs, and she knows how to use them.'"

"TV Dinners”, was inspired by seeing those very words stencilled on the back of a woman's jumpsuit on the dance floor of a funky nightclub on the east side of Memphis.

The album used music videos as successful promotional tools — the videos receiving regular rotation on MTV. A customized 1930s Ford coupe, depicted on the album cover, could be seen in the videos.

As Eliminator gathered steam, Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill's flowing, belt-length beards became a visual symbol of ZZ Top. At one point, the Gillette company actually offered to pay them to shave off their beards on national television. "Our reply was 'Can't do it, simply because underneath 'em is too ugly,'" says Gibbons.

This is a cracking album from that “That Little Ol' Band from Texas”.

This album is a 2020 limited edition reissue on yellow coloured vinyl with a printed inner sleeve, pressed in Europe via Warner Records.