Tres Hombres (Album)

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Tres Hombres
Studio album by ZZ Top

Publication
(s)

July 26, 1973

Label (s) London Records

Format (s)

LP

Genre (s)

Blues rock

Title (number)

10

running time

33:26

occupation

production

Billy Ham

Studio (s)

Brian Studios, Ardent Studios

chronology
Rio Grande Mud
(1972) 		Tres Hombres Fandango!
(1975)
Single release
1973 La Grange

Tres Hombres ( Spanish for "three men") is the third studio album by the American blues rock band ZZ Top . It reached number 8 on the Billboard 200 , marking the band's commercial breakthrough. The music magazine Rolling Stone ranks it 490 on its list of the 500 best albums of all time . So far, the album has sold over 5 million times.

Creation of the album and content

The recordings took place at Brians Studios in Tyler , Texas and at Ardent Studios in Memphis , Tennessee . In Billy Gibbons' opinion, the band's songwriting overcame the musical boundaries they had imposed on themselves with previous albums. For the first time harmonies found their way into the music, the guitar solos were played quickly. In order to improve the sound of the solos and make them more understandable, guitarist Gibbons later played them more slowly than on the album.

The guitar riff for the single " La Grange " was created on an older Stratocaster model from Fender , whose own sound, in Gibbons' opinion, went well with the mood of the song. The song is about a brothel and the southern tradition of fathers taking their sons to a brothel on the threshold of adulthood so that they could have their first sexual experience. The last line of lyrics of the song is inspired by Buddy Holly's piece "Peggy Sue Got Married". The title of the song goes back to La Grange , the capital of Fayette County in Texas. The first two tracks on the album "Waitin 'for the Bus" and "Jesus Just Left Chicago" were written at different times, but they were relatively close together. The sound engineer accidentally made a song out of it, so that these two tracks sounded like one piece of music.

In 1985 the album was reworked for the CD version, but since 2006 the original recordings have also been available in a remastered version on CD.

Track list

  1. Waitin 'for the Bus (Gibbons / Hill) - 2:59
  2. Jesus Just Left Chicago (Gibbons / Hill / Beard) - 3:30
  3. Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers (Gibbons / Hill / Beard) - 3:23
  4. Master of Sparks (Gibbons) - 3:33
  5. Hot, Blue and Righteous (Gibbons) - 3:14
  6. Move Me on Down the Line (Gibbons / Hill) - 2:32
  7. Precious and Grace (Gibbons / Hill / Beard) - 3:09
  8. La Grange (Gibbons / Hill / Beard) - 3:52
  9. Shiek (Gibbons / Hill) - 4:05
  10. Have You Heard? (Gibbons / Hill) - 3:15

Remastered Edition bonus tracks

  2. Waitin 'for the Bus (live) - 2:42
  3. Jesus Just Left Chicago (live) - 4:03
  4. La Grange (live) - 4:44

reception

The Rolling Stone remarked in a contemporary review that the album was a step back to the roots of the band in the "white blues". The recordings would have had little echo and would be close to the band's live sound; the three-chord technique is reminiscent of musical models such as Canned Heat . Stephen Thomas Erlewine from Allmusic describes the album in his review as a "driving blues-rock album from a Texas bar band" with a dirty groove and an infectious feel.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 500 Greatest Albums of all Time: ZZ Top, 'Tres Hombres'. Rolling Stone Magazine, accessed April 3, 2014 .
  2. ↑ a b Steven Rosen: ZZ Top: From A to ZZ. (No longer available online.) Guitar World, October 22, 2009, archived from the original on January 9, 2010 ; accessed on February 8, 2010 (English). 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.guitarworld.com
  3. ↑ a b Jeb Wright: From A to Z: An Interview with ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons. Classic Rock Revisited, archived from the original on January 3, 2010 ; accessed on June 24, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Glenn O'Brien: Life at the Top . In: Spin Magazine . February 1986, p. 72 .
  5. ↑ Steve Apple: ZZ Top: Tres Hombres . In: Rolling Stone . September 13, 1973.