zz TOP

< Class of 2004

YEAR

2004

INDUCTED BY

Keith Richards

Performers

The rough and gruff Texan band had a reverence for their roots, but never took themselves too seriously.

ZZ Top charmed millions with their party anthems and brash music videos. Their mammoth tours solidified a nationwide following and featured everything from Texas-shaped stages to live rattlesnakes.

Billy Gibbons

Frank Beard

Dusty Hill

Keith Richards Inducts ZZ Top

ZZ Top acceptance speech

"La Grange" and "Tush"

Members of ZZ Top Induct Freddie King

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Tom Vickers

After thirty-five years as the world’s longest-running band with no personnel changes, ZZ Top is instantly recognizable, by both sight and sound.

ZZ Top’s beards and blues-based Texas rock have made the band a cultural icon. Their likenesses have appeared in The New Yorker– a cartoon depicting a long-bearded police officer, captioned “ZZ Cop” – and in an episode of The Simpsons in which Bart spies three Hasidim and yells, “Hey, look. It’s ZZ Top. You guys rock!”