La Grange riff: Billy Gibbons recalls the recording gear
Billy Gibbons recorded the La Grange riff with a 1955 Fender Stratocaster and a 1969 Marshall Super Lead 100. He described the setup to Alan Paul in a Guitar World feature published on 15 February 2008, in which he recalled the sound of the song on Tres Hombres, ZZ Top's 1973 album. In his words, the track is straight guitar into amp: a 1955 Strat with a stop tailpiece through a 1969 Marshall Super Lead 100.
He credited the sound of the La Grange riff to the amplifier. The fuzz in the lead, and at the front and back of the song, he called pure tube distortion. The differences in tone came from pickup settings. The opening part was played on what the band used to call "the mystery setting," from the days before the five-way toggle switch existed, when finding that perfect in-between position on a three-way pickup selector took dedication.
The amp itself had a history. Gibbons said the Marshall was a trusted friend through the first six records, an import brought over by the tech who was working for Jeff Beck at the time. He owned four of them, and they were his main road amps for years, run through cabinets with Celestion Greenback speakers. He said they still keep a distinctive, rich, enjoyable tone. He also warned that the variable power plugs on those amps have a 220-volt setting that does not work very well outside countries with 220-volt supply, and that the band had more than a few nights when a paper clip stood in for a blown fuse.
The La Grange riff has a family tree. Songfacts reports that the music is based on John Lee Hooker's "Boogie Chillen." Bernard Besman, who owned the copyright to "Boogie Chillen," sued ZZ Top in 1992, and after years of litigation a court ruled the song was in the public domain and the band was not liable, according to the page. Gibbons told Rolling Stone, per Songfacts, that the track uses only two chords and that the break coming out of the solo is made of notes that are "straight Robert Johnson."
The Handbook of Texas places the song in the band's story. ZZ Top formed in Houston in 1969 under the direction of manager Bill Ham. The trio is Billy Gibbons on lead guitar, Dusty Hill on bass and Frank Beard on drums. Gibbons was born on December 16, 1949, in Houston, and replaced the original members of his band, Moving Sidewalks, with Hill and Beard from a rival band, American Blues. The group signed with London Records, and ZZ Top's First Album arrived in 1970. The second album, Rio Grande Mud, produced its first hit, "Francine," which reached Number 69 on the Billboard charts.
Tres Hombres followed in 1973. The Handbook says the album combined the trio's love of Texas blues with its reverence for Memphis soul and firmly established what became ZZ Top's trademark sound, and it calls "La Grange" the album's best-known song, heavily influenced by "Boogie Chillen." Songfacts lists the song as charting at Number 41 and says it was ZZ Top's biggest hit at the time. The band became nationally known after Fandango! in 1975, the album that gave the group its first Top 40 single, "Tush."
The title is a place. La Grange is a real town in Fayette County, Texas, and the song is about the Chicken Ranch, which the Handbook of Texas describes as perhaps the oldest continuously running brothel in the nation. The Handbook traces institutionalized prostitution in La Grange back to 1844 and says the Chicken Ranch got its name in the Great Depression, when the madam Miss Jessie began accepting chickens as payment. Edna Milton arrived in 1952, took over, and later bought the ranch from Miss Jessie's heirs for $30,000.
The establishment ran until mid-1973. That year, Houston television reporter Marvin Zindler of KTRK ran a week-long exposé. The attention forced Governor Dolph Briscoe to meet with the head of the Department of Public Safety, the state attorney general and Zindler, and the ranch was officially closed. Songfacts quotes Dusty Hill, in Spin in 1985, saying the place had been open for over 100 years, and reports him saying the song came out maybe three months before the ranch closed.
Customers kept showing up for more than two years looking for the place, the Handbook says. The story went on to become a Broadway musical and a movie, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, and Songfacts dates the film to 1982 and the Broadway play to 1978. Two Houston lawyers bought the building and land, and in 1977 moved part of the building away. The Handbook says the lawyers opened it as a restaurant named the Chicken Ranch, with the building and furniture in their original condition. It opened in September 1977, closed in January 1978, and the building and furniture were auctioned off that June in a foreclosure sale.
For this song the gear list is short and concrete. The guitar was a 1955 Stratocaster with a stop tailpiece, the amplifier was a 1969 Marshall Super Lead 100, and the sound, in his own estimate, came from tube distortion and the position of the pickup selector. That combination, played by a trio from Houston, became the best-known song from the album that established the band's sound.
- Guitar World, ZZ Top: El Loco, Billy Gibbons recording recollections — www.guitarworld.com
- Songfacts, La Grange by ZZ Top — www.songfacts.com
- Handbook of Texas, ZZ Top — www.tshaonline.org
- Handbook of Texas, Chicken Ranch — www.tshaonline.org