Ask ZZ Top founder and frontman Billy Gibbons his favorite place to perform and he’ll say without hesitation: Tucson.
“Somebody said, ‘Tucson, wow. What do you do there?’ I said, ‘Eat Mexican food,’” Gibbons said in an interview posted to the TikTok account Coreusright.
Dusty Hill, left, and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top played some rockin blues to a near-capacity crowd at the Tucson Convention Center on Sept. 16, 1997.
"I lived there for a brief period of time, but fell in love with ... the desert Southwest," the 76-year-old Houston, Texas, native told the interviewer, who responded, "Nobody's ever said that, Billy. Don't bull(expletive) me. Tucson?"
Gibbons clarified that Tucson was one of many favorites, “but it’s right up there.”
The TikTok post came a couple of months after Gibbons played a solo show at Rialto Theatre in July. The last time he was here with ZZ Top was in 2024 when they brought “The Elevation Tour” to Linda Ronstadt Music Hall.
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Before that show, KXCI host Hannah Levin interviewed Gibbons, who shared some of his favorite ranchera music.
KXCI host Hannah Levin had ZZ Top frontman Billy Gibbons on her show when he and the band brought their “Elevation Tour” to Linda Ronstadt Music Hall in 2024. That was the last time the band has played a Tucson show. Gibbons played a solo show at Rialto Theatre in July.
Gibbons’ love fest with Tucson goes back to the late 1960s when he lived here just before he formed ZZ Top in 1969.
In an April 1984 interview with Rolling Stone’s Kurt Loder when the band had a few days off in Tucson, the writer tagged along with the Texas rocker on a tour of Gibbons’ favorite hangouts including in the "Duty Hut," a backroom sex dungeon in Jim "God" Anderson's long gone Drachman Street bar Some Place Else.
Contact reporter Cathalena E. Burch at cburch@tucson.com. On Bluesky @Starburch
Cathalena E. Burch
Reporter
