ZZ CAN'T TOP ITSELF
By Deborah Frost
Afterburner
ZZ Top
Warner Bros.

The source of ZZ Top's appeal was never any secret to the beer drinkers and 
hell raisers who worshiped them the instant the band began to boogie fifteen 
years ago. Since then there have been classic stunts (the 1976 tour featuring 
livestock and snakes) and classic licks ("Tush" and "LaGrange"). But it took 
their last (and ninth) album, Eliminator, to turn the li'l' ol' trio from 
Texas into everybody's guilty pleasure.

Their new LP, Afterburner, has enough oomph, wacky rhythms and super guitar to
satisfy at least half of the more than 5 million customers who bought 
Eliminator. But while ZZ's hot rod can make this trip, it doesn't ride really 
well on Afterburner's Autobabn.

Top Top Billy Gibbons has sacrificed the chemistry -- and, tragically, the 
heart -- of the band to technology. The synthesizers and drum machines that 
helped modernize a Cream-vintage power trio and subtly reinforced 
Eliminator's tracks have now apparently replaced bassist Dusty Hill and 
drummer Frank Beard. Gibbons' electronic toys may give him few arguments, 
note-for-note perfection and tremendous flexibility (for example, in 
reshuffling ZZ's traditional beat into radical syncopations like the wild 
intro to "Sleeping Bag"). But this is music that should feel as if it's 
being made by men, not machines.

Afterburner's fake drums sound thin, and the keyboards are just plain tacky.
They frequently overwhelm material that is otherwise rather nice. "Rough Boy"
 (only the second ballad ZZ has ever recorded), swollen with inarticulate 
longing, might be more moving with a stripped-down arrangement. The same goes 
for "Stages," a more upbeat love song that's also a departure from ZZ's 
typically goofy lyrics and raunchy humor. Coming from a single man who's 
played one-night stands since his teens, "Stages, keep on changing/Stages, 
rearranging love" is a knowing assessment of romance on the run. Not only 
would the yucky synthesizers be better off piped into a shopping mall (or 
onto a Journey album), but Gibbons' bluesworn voice is so mechanically 
treated that its emotional impact is deadened.

He doesn't suffer as badly as Dusty Hill, though. One of the highlights of ZZ 
concerts is the way Gibbons and Hill almost finish one another's sentences; 
here Gibbons has kept all of the leads to himself. Hill, a great 
rave-and-shouter in the Little Richard tradition, makes two cameo 
appearances, on "Delirious" and "Can't Stop Rockin'." But he sounds distant 
and dispirited -- as if Randy Bachman had telephoned in his vocals for him.

Amid all this machine-made music, "Velcro Fly" is strikingly alive. Not only 
does Gibbons' manic buzz constantly remind you of why he entered the guitar 
players' pantheon eons ago, but this is the rate cut where you hear something 
like the gut thump of a real bass, while the totally demented instrumental 
break sounds like Prince taking "My Sharona" and bouncing it off the walls. 
The lyrics may be a little too out there (they're in the same gonzo mode as 
"Cheap Sunglasses" and "TV Dinners") to make this a bid for the singles 
charts, however.

The chuggy tempo and high, happy harmonies of "Dipping Low" and "I Got the 
Message" are directly patterned on "Gimme All Your Lovin'" and "Sharp Dressed 
Man." "Can't Stop Rockin'" is an obvious set closer or encore, but it's a 
little too ordinary ("I can't stop rockin' baby, 'til I lose my mind") for a 
band of this stature to include on a studio album now. Less ordinary is "Woke
Up with Wood," perhaps the most incendiary rocker on Afterburner. 
Unfortunately, it's yet another addition to the list of dirty jokes that have
long been the band's stock in trade. ZZ's catalog probably describes as many 
sex acts ("Tube Snake Boogie," "I Got the Six," "Pearl Necklace") as Masters
and Johnson's. But where early songs like "Tush" and "LaGrange" were rites of 
passage, and "Pearl Necklace" might possibly be interpreted as an invitation 
to a shopping spree, "Woke Up with Wood" is just silly. Could it be time for 
ZZ Top to grow up?

Gibbons may have moved into the Eighties with all of the latest gimmicks and
equipment, but his consciousness is stuck in the Dark Ages. "Planet of Women" 
will undoubtedly appeal to boys of all ages, and lines like "Send a 
straitjacket, something in a shade of gray" are good for a few giggles. But 
what's really so funny about a narrator who complains he can't make it with 
every woman he sees and confesses he can't distinguish between a "diamond" 
of a woman and a "hole in the ground"?

The band has other questions to consider. How are they going to perform this 
material? Afterburner uses so many synthesizers they may have to rely even 
more heavily on prerecorded tapes than they did on the Eliminator tour. Maybe 
the plan is to turn into cartoons we'll see only on video and, word has it, 
film. And if Gibbons is so itchy to stretch beyond the trio format and the 
technical limitations of his partners, why doesn't he go solo? Then again, 
Afterburner may simply represent a transitional phase in this gifted 
eccentric's development as well as a tricky period in ZZ Top's continuing 
evolution from bell-bottom-blues band to sharp-dressed pop machine.

Rolling Stone
Dec 5, 1985