From respected roots rockers to bearded music video age icons, this Texas band maintained a consistently successful career throughout the 1970s and 1980s, embracing many new trends that crossed its path. While not as active in the late 1990s as they were in their prime, ZZ Top's three members (Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard on guitar, bass, and drums, respectively) remain one of the few groups to have its original members intact after 25 years. Existing throughout the 1970s as a critically acclaimed, popular Texas blues-boogie band, the band updated its sound to include propulsive synthesizer rhythms. Further, ZZ Top was one of the first pre-music-video rock bands to immediately take advantage of the advent of MTV.

ZZ Top in concert.

In the late 1960s, Billy Gibbons played in the Texas psych-punk band The Moving Sidewalks, and Dusty Hill and Frank Beard were the rhythm...