It's kinda hard to overstate how big ZZ Top was in the early to mid-1980s. The little ol' band from Texas was already well-established with their own substantial fanbase by the MTV era, but with the release of Eliminator in 1983 Billy Gibbons, Dusty Hill, and Frank Beard hit the stratosophere.
So naturally their next step was going to space. You know, to get the car washed.
Released in 1985, Afterburner was ZZ's follow-up to the diamond-selling Eliminator and featured the now-iconic Eliminator hot rod with wings and jet engines on the back, soaring around the planet. It's a good visual metaphor for how the trio was likely feeling at the time, and while it never hit Eliminator numbers, Afterburner did very well. It spawned even more hit singles. "Sleeping Bag" is the most memorable, and "Velcro Fly" is the one my Dad would want to highlight, but for me, Afterburner is never better than its balled — and the music video is a key part of that.
The third single off Afterburner, "Rough Boy" is your classic slow-jam ballad about a man's man who's doing his best to win over a woman he loves, even if the situation is impossible. It's a song that makes great use of lead singer Billy Gibbons' gravelly intonation, and his guitar work in the intro is some of my favorite stuff he's ever done, playing with pinch harmonics and feedback in that way that only Gibbons can really handle. But hey, we're here to talk about the music video, right? So let's get to it.
The "Rough Boy" video was directed by Steve Barron, a legend of the format who also helmed classics like A-ha's "Take On Me" and Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing." He even directed the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie in 1990, which highlights a running theme in his work. Barron's one of the guys you called when you wanted to play with emerging filmmaking technologies to make something cumbersome but cool-looking, and ZZ Top definitely had that in mind with "Rough Boy."
In terms of subject matter, the video's really simple. The Afterburner space hot rod is flying around up there, and it needs to get washed, because of all that space dirt that gets on it. So, it flies into an orbital car wash, which works just like a regular car wash but with all kinds of gritty sci-fi touches. It's got that dirty space vibe that worked so well for Ridley Scott and George Lucas, but with the added fun of disembodied, sexy lady legs walking around, and just what every car wash needs: ZZ Top's disembodied heads, singing along.
Why are Dusty, Billy, and Frank just floating heads on some kind of weird 3D space display? Did they drive the car here like that? Do they run the car wash? Are the severed hands and feet playing their instruments (I want that space guitar, it's such a cool design) their severed hands and feet, or did they outsource that part? And what do you tip when you go to a space car wash anyway?
This is one of those videos that's just cruising on the tech available to its director and its band, and that's both disorienting and quite fun. This is not the same thing ZZ Top's new young fans got used to during the Eliminator era, when the guys were front and center in matching suits, spinning guitars on their belts and lowering their shades to ogle baddies. This is something weirder, because in 1985 ZZ Top could do pretty much whatever they want, and it worked, which I know because I still think about the space car wash at least once a month.
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