Afterburner (album)

Afterburner
Studio album by ZZ Top
Publication (s)	October 28, 1985
Label (s)	Warner Brothers
Format (s)	CD, LP
Genre (s)	Hard rock
Title (number)	10
running time	37min 2s
occupation	Billy Gibbons : guitar , vocals Dusty Hill : bass , synthesizer , vocals Frank Beard : drums
production	Bill Ham
chronology Eliminator (1983) Afterburner Recycler (1990)
Single releases October 1985 Sleeping bag 1985 Can't Stop Rockin ' 1985 Stages 1986 Rough boy 1986 Delirious 1986 Woke up with Wood 1986 Velcro Fly

Chart positions Explanation of the data

Albums

Afterburner   AT 18th December 01, 1985 (6 weeks)   CH 2 11/10/1985 (18 weeks)   UK 2 11/09/1985 (40 weeks)   US 4th November 16, 1985 (66 weeks)

Singles

Sleeping bag   DE 40 December 2nd, 1985 (13 weeks)   UK 27 October 19, 1985 (8 weeks)   US 8th October 19, 1985 (17 weeks) Stages   UK 43 02/12/1986 (3 weeks)   US 21st 01/18/1986 (12 weeks) Rough boy   CH 38 07/12/1992 (1 week)   UK 23 04/19/1986 (9 weeks)   US 22nd 03/29/1986 (13 weeks) Velcro Fly   DE 68 11/10/1986 (3 weeks)   UK 54 04/10/1986 (4 weeks)   US 35 07/26/1986 (12 weeks)

Afterburner is the ninth studio album by the American blues rock band ZZ Top . The album was released in 1985 and peaked at number 4 on the Billboard 200 . In the US, it received five times platinum in 1999 for five million units sold.

useful information

Given the commercial success of the previous album, Eliminator , the band took more time than usual with songwriting and studio recording because it seemed almost impossible to repeat the success of Eliminator and because they wanted to feel like they were doing their best to have. Compared to the previous album, the band used more synthesizers , played by bassist Dusty Hill :

“We knew that, for us, we were tiptoeing through sacred ground by venturing out into synthesizer stuff. But Dusty's approach was, 'Hell, turn it on and I'll make a mess of it quickly'… I felt the same way: Let's not pretend to be experts or technicians with this thing. Our point is, we probably do better by not knowing enough about it, and consequently our synthesizer work is not the kind of melodic classical thing that people normally would be afraid of. "

“We knew we were walking on thin ice when we use synthesizers. But Dusty's opinion was, 'Damn it, turn it on and I'll make something out of it' ... I also thought: let's not pretend we're experts or technicians in this area. Our strength is that we do better when we know less about it, and the result is that our synthesizer work isn't the kind of melodic or classic that people actually don't like. "

- Billy Gibbons

The use of the synthesizers was not mentioned in the album credits so as not to offend the fans. On the one hand, long-time fans were disappointed by the mixture of Texas blues and synthesizers, on the other hand, the band opened up a new audience, which, like its predecessor Eliminator , helped the album to great commercial success and made ZZ Top one of the most important rock bands of the 1980s.

The piece Rough Boy was created against the background that the band wrote a ballad , but did not want to offend their long-time fans. From the band's point of view, the only way to do this was by combining ballad-like music and lyrics about a "tough guy" a fan can identify with. The play Planet of Women was inspired by the 1958 film In the Talons of Venus with Zsa Zsa Gabor in the lead role. Stages (Eng. "Stages") is about the touring life of the band, the track "Delirious" Gibbons described as "the story of his life". The idea for Velcro Fly resulted from Gibbons fascination with the Velcro (Engl. Velcro ). A music video with a Velcro dance was later created for this song , in which Paula Abdul participated as a dancer. The lyrics to Woke up With Wood are suggestive, about the erect penis in the morning and based on an incident on a ski vacation from Gibbons.

Track list

All songs were written by Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard.

1. Sleeping Bag - 4:02
2. Stages - 3:32
3. Woke up With Wood - 3:45
4. Rough Boy - 4:50
5. Can't Stop Rockin ' - 3:01
6. Planet of Women - 4:04
7. I Got the Message - 3:27
8. Velcro Fly - 3:29
9. Dipping Low (In the Lap of Luxury) - 3:11
10. Delirious - 3:41

reception

The reviews of the album were mixed because the band was accused of putting commercial interests first. In her contemporary review, Deborah Frost from the music magazine Rolling Stone laments the use of synthesizers and drum computers , which was the right step from a commercial point of view, but which takes its soul from the music. Some of the music doesn't sound like it was made by humans, the actually bluesy voice of Gibbons sounds numb due to the use of technical effects. Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic describes the album as exactly what buyers expected after ZZ Top's “Eliminator”, although the band was still the “lil 'ol' blues band from Texas”. He sums up that the album corresponded to the zeitgeist , because no hard rock album had sounded more artificial and no blues rock album offered less blues than Afterburner . The online magazine laut.de notes that the album would have been better called "Eliminator II", "the ZZ top sound that was typical up until then is drowned out in technical gimmicks that are overproduced and appear opulent in a negative sense".

Web links

• Afterburner at Allmusic (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Sources Chart placements: DE ( Memento of the original from March 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. / AT / CH / UK / US , accessed March 18, 2010. 
2. ↑ Certifications: Afterburner. RIAA, accessed March 18, 2010 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} Steven Rosen: ZZ Top: From A to ZZ. (No longer available online.) Guitar World, October 22, 2009, archived from the original on June 19, 2010 ; accessed on March 18, 2010 (English). 
4. ↑ John F. Eiche, Pete Prown, Harvey P. Newquist: Legends of Rock Guitar: The Essential Reference of Rock's Greatest Guitarists . Hal Leonard Corporation, 1997, ISBN 978-0-7935-4042-6 , pp. 91 .
5. ↑ Glenn O'Brien: Life at the Top . In: Spin Magazine . February 1986, p. 43 .
6. ^ ^{A b} Glenn O'Brien: Life at the Top . In: Spin Magazine . February 1986, p. 72 .
7. ↑ Richard Crouse: Big Bang Baby. The Rock Trivia . Dundurn Press, 2000, ISBN 978-0-88882-219-2 , pp. 301 .
8. ↑ Deborah Frost: ZZ Top: Afterburner . In: Rolling Stone . 5th December 1985.
9. ↑ Biography ZZ Top. In: laut.de. Retrieved March 18, 2010 .