Simon Rushworth
ZZ Top – My Head’s In Mississippi (Gibbons/Hill/Beard) b/w A Fool For Your Stockings (Gibbons/Hill/Beard) 1990
Two blokes with beards and a clean-shaven fella called Beard – it can only be those crazy rock funksters ZZ Top and we can’t wait for their Download set this summer.
This was the fourth of an incredible six hit singles from the US Top 10 album Recycler and in true Top style it mixes vintage Southern Rock with exemplary early 90s production, even rhyming Mississippi with ‘dizzy’ and managing to keep a straight face at the same time.
An elongated solo didn’t stop MHIM from topping America’s mainstream rock charts and many fans of the ZZs believe this era saw unofficial fourth member of the band Bill Ham hit new heights as a producer. An ability to retain the band’s classic sound and bring them bang up to date with the MTV generation was some achievement.
To date Recycler is the last ZZ Top album to be certified in the UK after shifting 60,000-plus copies but MHIM is a timely reminder of just how easy the beards and the Beard made it look in the quest for commercial rock success.