Dusty Hill, bassist for rock band ZZ Top, is dead. “We’re saddened by today’s news that our buddy Dusty Hill died in his sleep at home in Houston, Texas,” shared band members Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard on Wednesday on the ZZ Top website.
At first there was no further information on the cause of death. The magazine Variety but reportedthat Gibbons and Beard had performed without Hill for the first time in half a century of band history in the past few weeks. As a result, Hill was officially absent for hip treatment and was replaced by Elwood Francis.
ZZ Top were founded in the summer of 1969 in Houston / Texas. The commercial breakthrough came in 1973 with “Tres Hombres”. The third studio album is now considered a classic. Gibbons, Hill and Beard released six albums in the 1970s alone. In Germany they gave a few appearances at that time, in the USA they completed the huge “World Wide Texas Tour” with almost 100 concerts from 1976 to 1977.