WCSX Classic Cuts
ZZ Top: “Sharp Dressed Man”
The Hook: Bassist Dusty Hill still remembers a homeless man who stood next to him during the video shoot.
Album: Eliminator
Year: 1983
Writers: Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard
Stats: Peaked at number-two on Billboard’s Top Rock Tracks chart, but only reached number-56 on the Hot 100.
Background: Some of the most vivid stories the guys in ZZ Top tell about their classic cuts have to do with the string of successful videos they shot during the mid-’80s. When asked about the song “Sharp Dressed Man,” bassist Dusty Hill shared one of those recollections.
ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill shares a memory from the video shoot for “Sharp Dressed Man.” OC:…the wino [laughs]. :29
“’Sharp Dressed Man,’ I have a lot of memories of the video, because it was shot all at night in L.A. in a bank rigged up to look like a night club. And it was like three or four in the morning, take number whatever. I wasn’t in the shot, so I was standing there and this homeless man, who’d obviously been drinking, was standing beside me. I didn’t think anything about it, but he started telling me how they had the shot set up wrong, technically. I mean, everybody in Hollywood is in the movies, even the wino. [Laughs].”