How I Wrote…
“La Grange”
Billy Gibbons reveals how a warm-up jam became ZZ Top’s breakthrough hit.
B Y J O E B O S S O
“IT WAS AN important song in terms of our career, and in many ways it was the perfect introduction of ZZ Top to the world,” Billy Gibbons says of “La Grange.” The romping, gutbucket boogie-blues vamp was the band’s first single to make a dent in the Billboard Hot 100 (reaching Number 41), and it propelled their third album, 1973’s Tres Hombres, into the Top 10.
“The genesis and, of course, the heart of the song was that boogie backbeat, which everybody and their brother has learned how to play,” Gibbons says. “Who would have thought that something so simple and severely compressed structure-wise would lead us on such a grand journey? From that cornerstone backbeat, our little song seemed to resonate and catch on with the masses, which has allowed us to chase it for going on five decades now.”