ZZ Top: Billy Gibbons (guitar, vocals); Dusty Hill (bass, synthesizers, vocals); Frank Beard (drums, percussion).

ELIMINATOR, with its churning guitars and synthesizer hooks, was on the album charts for over a year, and had hits with "Sharp Dressed Man," "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Legs." The album and its accompanying videos were ubiquitous in 1983, on television ZZ Top was seen on MTV, "St. Elsewhere," even on the Tonight show.

1983 was the year Z.Z. Top went from being everyone's favourite bar-room boogie band to international superstars. Graced with mind-boggling and incredibly photogenic beards, a very neat trilogy of sexy videos and a collective ear for a quite distinct and highly stylized, if somewhat grizzled blues/pop, the sudden enormity of their success seems in retrospect like no real surprise. MTV had never quite seen the like and the attention given to the excellent 'Gimme All Your Lovin'' single was quickly repeated for both 'Sharp-Dressed Man' and the quite irreverent 'Legs'. It still sounds fresh, innovative and fun today. in the wake of many imitators.

What the critics say...

Rolling Stone (11/89) - Voted #39 in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Albums Of The Eighties" survey.