55 Years Ago: ZZ Top's Classic Lineup Plays Their First Show

ZZ Top's Feb. 10, 1970, appearance outside of Houston provided a rather inauspicious beginning.

Billy Gibbons had just added the final pieces – Dusty Hill and Frank Beard – to what would become the group's longest-running lineup when Al Caldwell, a radio personality at KLVI in Beaumont, booked their first gig together at a tiny Knights of Columbus Hall.

"There was one person in the audience," Gibbons has joked, "so we bought him a Coke and finished the rest of the show." A series of similarly forgettable concerts would follow while ZZ Top, started by Gibbons in late 1969, coalesced around Beard and Hill.

READ MORE: Top 10 ZZ Top Songs

In fact, ZZ Top couldn't have been further away from fuzzy-guitar-spinning stardom in the photo above, taken a few months later during a May 1970 appearance at the Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School prom. They were identified as "Zee Zee Top," something Gibbons more recently chalked up to a "yearbook club error" after the picture made another round on the internet.

"There’s not a day that goes by where somebody doesn’t say, ‘Hey, I saw this funny picture of you guys. When was that?" Gibbons told Texas Monthly.

Only One Member of ZZ Top Had a Beard

Back in 1970, the only one with a beard was Hill – and it was a fraction of the iconic modern-day length he later sported alongside Gibbons. As their facial hair grew, so did ZZ Top's legend. But it took a while.

ZZ Top's First Album followed in 1971 then sank like a rock, and 1972's Rio Grande Mud didn't fare much better. Finally, ZZ Top reached the Billboard Top 10 in 1973 with the breakthrough Tres Hombres. And it all started at a tucked-away spot, in front of a largely empty room on old U.S. 90 in Beaumont, Texas.

"I had to borrow a bass for that gig. I didn't actually own one," Hill later told the Houston Chronicle. "It was the Knights of Columbus Hall and though I didn't meet any knights or royalty, there were a lot of cool people who came out to hear us play. And so it began."