have I seen your face before?

originally published in Die Planung / A Terv No. 247, 2048

Have I seen your face before?
Lyrics by Reverend Willy G and Dusty Hill
Taken from the ZZ Top album Dromomania (2048)

Hounds howlin' in the desert night (1)
Keep my hands on the wheel, everything's all right
She shakes and shimmies all over the road
Oh she's always happy when she carry a load (2)

That's when her fever will materialize
White line fire lighting up the eyes
She's long forgotten all those roads we crossed
No need for countin', all their souls were lost (3)

[Spoken: He said]
"Seems we traveled far yet never left this place?"
"Hey son this is where time becomes space"(4)

Souls whisper in the dark nearby
Names drowning in the engine's cry (5)
They will be screaming at the break of day
Her fever shivering all over the highway(6)

This child ain't stoppin' till the vision's blind
Thunderbird baby burnin' holes through your mind
Trails covered up in desert sand (7)
Keep goin' this is promised land

[Spoken: He said]
"Tell me again have I seen your face before?"
"No son I'm from a distant shore"(8)

(guitar solo)

[Spoken: He said]
"Hey man look there's just nowhere to run?"
"And that's exactly where we're goin' son"

(1) The anxiety was felt already back in 2005. When Billy Gibbons (later Reverend Willy G) announced, from the stage of The Beacon Theater in New York: "the same three guys playing the same three chords for thirty-five years!!!!!!!!!!", there was a murmur of unease coming from certain parts of the audience. And in the years to come this murmur would swell until it became an ocean.

(2) ZZ Top have always been considered masters of innuendo. The more suspicion the band provoked over the years, the more dedicated their fans became in trying to decipher the hidden meaning of their words. Even though their gospel was still more or less restricted to singing about cars but secretly referring to women (or sometimes the other way around), some believed it also carried the hidden promise of eternal life.

(3) On 5th April 2008 drummer Frank Beard's body was found at the roadside of Highway Six just outside Houston, Texas. Apparently he had been thrown out of a moving car, at high speed. Rumors about band infighting, just prior to beards death, soon started circulating. Supposedly, Beard had felt it was time to finally settle down and put an end to the endless touring, and this had upset the other two band members. A police investigation followed and the district attorney decided to have The Reverend and Dusty Hill arrested on suspicion of involvement in the death of their former drummer. At this time ZZ Top still had a massive fan base in Houston and when the two were hauled in huge crowds showed up for their support. When word got out that the warden had threatened to shave their beards, the fans were so enraged that the police were forced to fire teargas in order to keep them from storming the prison. With no further evidence and eager to calm things down the governor of Texas decided to release them on bail two days later. A news reporter asked The Reverend on the way to his Cadillac how he felt about Frank's death and whether it was finally time to put an end to ZZ Top. The Reverend responded, as impassive as ever behind his dark glasses: "The boogie must go on."

(4) Without the steady backbone of Frank Beard's drumming, the two remaining members headed off into uncharted territory. It seemed like for every new tour they would turn up the volume just one more notch, until the amplitude reached unfathomable proportions. At the same time their break-neck boogie was gradually being slowed down until it floated out into a dirty, sluggish porridge of endless ur-blues. The Reverend's voice became that of a man trying to walk through a swamp with his body covered up to his forehead in mud. This caused some wild reactions among their hardcore fans, which started accusing them of treason. Bill Ham, their old manager and the man responsible for bringing them fame and fortune back in the days, told Rolling Stone in September 2011: "They're pissing on Frankie's grave. That little ol' band from Texas has become this ugly old whale. And its breath stinks of death and rotting fish" (Bill Ham's body was found two weeks later in a ditch outside Houston) More positive reactions came from unexpected quarters. In 2016, after having witnessed one of their shows, Marc Erickson of The Wire wrote: "The ZZ Top song is a song about the quest for the lost American frontier. Only in their world the frontier was never lost - they just keep on pushing it westwards in eternity." In the same year the late guitar legend Ry Cooder stated in an interview for Guitar Player magazine: "Theirs is the most transcendental American music [….] It scents of heaven yet reeks of the blues."

(5) As the boogie went on the anxiety grew. For every new album and every new tour more voices were heard muttering about the uncanniness of a band never knowing when it's time to quit. Different rumors circulated about how they managed to keep themselves going. Some said the original members had been replaced sometime at the end of the last century and that the two men, now seen hiding behind chest-long beards and sunglasses, were either the sons of Gibbons and Hill or some complete strangers.

(6) With the release of ZZ Top's 28th album Anamnesia in 2029 - marking the band's 60th anniversary - the controversy suddenly escalated. Media evangelists started going wild about how ZZ Top's refusal to stop was an offense to the Christian faith. Protesters began showing up outside of the stadiums screaming about witchcraft. James Murdoch, chief executive of News Corporation, offered the band ten million dollars if they would have their beards shaved off live on Fox News. But - just as when Gillette offered them a similar deal back in 1984 - they declined. The same George W Bush, who in 1997 - as governor of Texas - had declared the 15th of May "ZZ Top day", became one of their most fanatic enemies. Fired with Christian rage and senility he forced his grandson, Texas Governor George Bush III, to put a ban on the band, forbidding them to ever perform in their home state again. Whereupon The Reverend responded: "If we can't go to Texas, we're gonna make Texas come to us". And they embarked on a tour of endless proportions. The "Texas Forever" tour lasted over five years and spanned all seven continents. And The Reverend blessed every new city they entered by including it in his vision of a new inverted Texas. The tour would surpass every other tour they made in scope, grandness and ferocity. Whereas the "Bringing Texas to the People" tour of 1974 featured livestock on stage the band now added the element of animal slaughter. Their concerts became wild bacchanals where the amplified death cries of oxen mixed with The Reverend's howling guitar. Wynton Hall reported in The Los Angeles Times in 2031: " The combination of beards, blood and unbearable noise made the whole spectacle more resemble some sick Austrian art event from the last century than a rock concert."

(7) When asked about his ability to defy death by a TV journalist in 2040, The Reverend responded with one of his customary riddles: "My mama, being a patriot Texan, used to tell me and my little sister: 'Y'all be good children, and when you grow up and die, instead of goin' to heaven, you'll stay here in Texas. You know maybe I've jus' been good enough". But there was no mama and no little sister to be found. In 2042 the writer Jonathan Carver traveled to Houston and Dallas and ordered to have copies of the birth certificates of Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill issued. He was told that no babies with such names had been born in either town. He then tried to track down old friends of theirs by asking around among musicians in blues joints and dance halls, but he always found himself in dead ends. Some of the people he talked to had memories of them going as far back as the seventies. An aged retired stripper even claimed she had memories of un-bearded days, but when interrogated further her eyes became clouded and she started to mumble incoherently. Nobody had memories of them as children. It seemed as if they had appeared out of thin air at a certain moment in time. Writing an article about his failure to track them down Carver expected to make it to the headlines. But strangely enough very few people seemed to care anymore. The anxiety and hatred that the band had provoked just ten years earlier were gone. ZZ Top appeared to have levitated into that sphere of phenomena which people take for granted in life; like the ever-changing seasons or the sun setting in the east.

(8) The article "Derveni, Olbia and the two Zetas", written by Per Nystroem and published in The American Journal of Archaeology (vol. 152, no 1/2048), marks the beginning of a new chapter in the ZZ Top controversy. In his article Nystroem discusses some discoveries he made while retranslating the Derveni papyrus, an ancient scroll dating to 340 B. C. and written in Koine Greek. The papyrus was discovered in 1962 and it describes the cosmology of an ecstatic mystery religion, today known as Orphism. In his article Nystroem points to the recurring mention of "the two Zetas" in the text; two mysterious beings who "walk as equals among gods and men" and whose singing can "coax the rocks and the trees into dance" and "make the ground fertile with the seed of men". He then goes on to discuss the famous Olbia tablets, unearthed by archeologists in 2016, which have been dated to the fifth century B. C. One of the tablets carries a depiction of what has been believed to be two long-bearded satyrs, each one carrying a huge phallus in one hand and grasping a writhing snake in the other. Nystroem points out that with little imagination the two snakes can be read as two Greek zetas. He refuses to draw further conclusions from his discovery, but ends his article by quoting a line from ZZ Top's First Album, released 77 years ago:

"Have I seen your face before?
I said: Oh no, you must be wrong,
I'm from a distant shore."

erik bünger
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