Bill Ham

Biography

Although world sees ZZ Top like a trio, everyone from the band — like the members themselves — attended to see the group like a quartet with supervisor/maker Bill Ham sharing equal billing. Inside a business filled with eccentrics, oddballs, and control freaks, Ham could very well be the granddaddy of these all, managing and guiding ZZ’s profession using the tact of the wrecking ball as well as the grip of the boa constrictor. Given birth to simply south of Dallas, Ham’s early forays in to the music business arrived like a Pat Boone-type crooner who documented an individual for the Dot label before switching to record distribution at Houston-based H.W. Daily’s. Once the ambitious Ham overheard a Billy Gibbons (who was simply then using the Shifting Sidewalks) in a Tx club, he noticed star power within the youthful guitarist and provided his services like a supervisor. Determined to create a group around Gibbons, Ham and Billy hammered aside until they discovered a ZZ Best lineup which was suitable for globe domination. Ham spent another many years shrewdly building the band’s status, cutting costs whenever you can and using his fast-talking regular to protected ZZ best billing. It had been Ham who created the group’s albums, Ham who in some way regained ownership from the group’s experts when they remaining London Information, Ham who hatched the theory for the popular World Wide Tx Tour that included live pets on-stage, and it had been Ham who methodically oversaw the band’s whole presence — both general public and personal — passing guidelines of conduct just like the one that mentioned the bandmembers weren’t permitted to go to night clubs within their off period, lest they be observed by the general public and damage their mystique. In the past due ’70s, along with ZZ’s placement in the rock and roll community protected, Ham branched out and caused other artists such as for example Kinky Friedman and Stage Empty, but his state to fame continues to be because the guiding power behind ZZ Top’s four-decade achievement.

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