Most people are surprised to hear Eliminator isn’t the debut album from the Houston, Texas trio. It’s, I think, their eighth studio release. Gibbons played in the band The Moving Sidewalks, and even Jimi Hendrix lauded high praise on Billy’s fretwork. Gibbons merged his group with two members of American Blues, and started their
Tex-core career, resulting in a ton of touring, and then a few years off and a label change before coming back to focus on the big time.

Compared to older albums, Eliminator is heavily produced, slightly simplified, and focuses more on catchier songs that work well for radio and the new-fangled MTV thing that appeared at about the same time. The band is best known for their appearances in music videos at this time, with long beards, guitars that spin around, and
of course, that car. This is one of the best right place/right time stories for the new music network, because people loved their weird iconography and the invention of the image of the band, and they all ran out and bought the album. (Few people remember that it was the followup to this album, Afterburner that sold even more
copies and pulled in more of those precious-metal-coated records suitable for wall mounting.)

Normally, an album with a bunch of radio singles engineered for mass consumption would be exactly the kind of thing I wouldn’t want to buy. And, let’s face it, this album didn’t just have one freak single that accidentally hit the top 40 – 5 of the 11 songs on the album ended up getting Billboard chart time. But for whatever magical reason, this album has radio singles that I like, and that I still enjoy 20 years later. Every time I hear “Gimme All Your Lovin’”, I immediately wish I was in an old Ford, cruising down the highway, even if I’m in a rented Ford Contour. The drums and the tambourine sound are so perfectly engineered, the beat just drives the song. The lyrics are sweetly smooth, but they’ve still got enough of an edge to them that this is a good song to listen to with a bunch of friends at
a party and a bottle of whiskey at the table. Even on these radio-friendly songs, Gibbons manages to sneak in some hellishly cool blues guitar, with just enough whine that it sounds metal, even though he’s not playing anywhere near the speed of Slayer or something.

“Got Me Under Pressure” is a song that’s basically about a guy who’s fed up with a girl and her demands. It blows through at a good tempo and with this frenetic undertow that makes the protagonist sound like he’s about to go nuts. It’s good driving music, good drinking music, and it’s not just a Bryan Adams love song or something, so it’s great stuff. In contrast, “Sharp Dressed Man” is more conventional in its lyrics, but it’s got that blues boogie strut to it that made it a huge hit. It’s probably the one song that everyone remembers by the band, and even with that, I still like it.

One of my favorite songs, though, is “I Need You Tonight”, because it’s this slow, echoey song that is a lot more of straightforward blues with a little Texas sauce on the side. It’s got this detached, distant drum beat, and the guitar is filled with feedback, eerily laying down this totally depressing groove behind the lyrics. This is the song you listen to at three o’clock in the morning (as per the first line of the lyrics) when you’re driving down the middle of nowhere, lonely and depressed about someone that’s gone. This song is so beat and lonely, I absolutely love it. I wish I could learn how to play guitar just so I could start a band and play nothing but this song all day long.

Everyone knows “Legs”, mostly because of its video (which is pretty hilarious now.) I think Dusty Hill sings the lead on “I Got the Six”, another good road song. “Thug” has the weirdest rhythm ever, with a really odd little slappy bass line. I think “TV Dinners” is pretty straightforward and got some time on the radio, and “Dirty Dog” is another “Gimme All..”-style straight-up door-blower, while “If I Could Only Flag Her Down” is another boogie blues number. Another one of my favorite songs is the last one, “Bad Girl”, which has more of a Texas sound than the others, and just takes off and blows through verse and chorus at full pursuit speed. It sounds more like it belonged on their last album and they popped it on here to fill some space, but it’s a nice little treat to end the album.

Some people consider the sound of Eliminator to be dated, but I absolutely love it. Bill Ham, also their manager and sort of the “fourth ZZ Top-er” of the group, produced this one wisely, getting such a tight and clean sound, and making things so overblown and artificial, so it matched up with the eighties pop world. It doesn’t
sound bad, even the synth put in against the blues guitar, or the triggered and isolated drums that sound more like a Roland 800 than a human behind a kit. I think they managed to keep it real by doing all of this, and then getting a perfect guitar sound on top of it. And aside from the sound, I like the album so much because of its consistency. I’ve driven a hundred thousand miles with this tape in the player, and it goes from side one to two and back again and works perfectly. There’s no rock opera or sickly ballad that requires fast forwarding, and every song always works. This album is like the iron anvil you inherit from your grandpa and end up giving to your grandson. It just works, every time.

Rating: 10