There are always many fan theories around the name choices of bands from the '60s and '70s. Back when people still thought that rock music was the sound of the devil, all sorts of wild claims were made. ZZ Top has had its fair share of conspiracies about the roots of its name, but I found out the truth.
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It stands for Zuchini Zuchini Topsoil.
Or, if you care to listen to the band members themselves, it's actually a mash-up of some of the other famous stars' names at the time. Speaking on Ultimate Classic Rock Nights, Billy Gibbons told how they pulled the name ZZ Top out of thin air.
While sitting in the band's hangout room, they were spitballing a band name. Previously, Gibbons had been in a band called Moving Sidewalks, but they had just broken up. It was time for something fresh and something with a bit more pezzaz than Moving Sidewalks. Seriously, what a terrible name.
They looked around the room, at the various music posters plastered on the walls. "We had a little apartment, a little hangout room that was lined with those rainbow-colored blues posters you'd say nailed to the telephone poll, [listing] who was coming to town," he said in the interview.
They started to notice a running theme with a lot of the big names. "'It was odd how many current names had initials - O.V. Wright, D.C. Bender, and of course B.B. King - he was down on this end of the alphabet, then it was Z.Z. Hill," Gibbons of ZZ Top recalled.
ZZ Top Put Two And Two Together
So, they decided to follow suit. If the double initial followed by a word worked for some of the current greats, it would work for them too. "Jeez, ZZ and King, that's a good combo," he remembered. But that was just a bit too close to BB King. You can't rip off a man like King's name and get away with it. So, they tweaked it.
"King being at the top, I said, 'Okay, so it's gonna be ZZ Top, and that's the way it is." And from there the legendary rock band ZZ Top was born, thankfully staying away from the absolute bore fest of something like Moving Sidewalk.
