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."

Ranking Every ZZ Top Album

From the first album to 'La Futura,' we check out the Little 'ol Band From Texas' studio records.

Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso

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