Billy Gibbons: Pearly Gates, the Les Paul on every ZZ Top record | Ultimate Guitarist Reunion

Why fans still care

BILLY GIBBONS bought a 1959 Gibson Les Paul in 1968 for US$250 cash. He calls it Pearly Gates, and he says it has been on every ZZ Top record since 1971. He’s been looking for another guitar like it ever since. “It just hasn’t happened yet,” he told Guitar Player in 2020.

That guitar sits in the middle of a very long run. When ZZ Top went into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, the Hall called them, after 35 years, “the world’s longest-running band with no personnel changes”. The three men behind that line were Gibbons, Dusty Hill, Who’s Who number 9 in · Highway to Hell and Frank Beard, Who’s Who number 11 in · Highway to Hell.

By the Associated Press count, ZZ Top have sold more than 50 million albums, with 11 gold and 7 platinum records. Eliminator alone has been certified Diamond, which means more than 10 million copies sold in the US.

The riffs are still getting played. On Spotify, La Grange had passed 957 million plays by October 2026, and Sharp Dressed Man 706 million. In 2023 Rolling Stone put Gibbons at number 102 on its list of the 250 greatest guitarists, singling out La Grange and Jesus Just Left Chicago.

Early life and training

His official site starts the guitar story at Christmas 1963. That year he unwrapped a Gibson Melody Maker and a Fender Champ amp, about as plain a starter rig as you could get. A Gibson feature puts it a year earlier, a Christmas present in 1962, just after he turned 13. Either way, the Melody Maker was his first electric.

By the late 1960s he was playing in the Moving Sidewalks, a psychedelic band out of Houston. They made one album, Flash, in 1968, and they opened for Jimi Hendrix, Who’s Who number 6 and the Experience.

The same year he went looking for a Les Paul, and he knew exactly which kind. A photo of Eric Clapton, Who’s Who number 3 with a sunburst Les Paul, on the back of the Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton album, had sent him hunting for one of his own. In the Gibson feature he gives the other half of the plan: he wanted a Les Paul through a Marshall, because of the way he remembered Clapton, Who’s Who number 3 playing one through “the little 18 watt Marshall” in the Bluesbreakers days. He found the 1959 and paid US$250 for it. By his own account, he named it Pearly Gates after a 1939 Packard.

Career chapters

1. 1968Flash with the Moving Sidewalks; buys Pearly Gates
2. 1969ZZ Top formed
3. 1971ZZ Top’s First Album
4. 1973La Grange, on Tres Hombres
5. 1983Eliminator
6. 1996Rhythmeen, with Bo Diddley’s, Who’s Who number 40 Gretsch
7. 2004Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with ZZ Top
8. 2015First solo album, Perfectamundo
9. 2024Las Vegas proclaims Billy Gibbons Day, 16 December
10. 2026Solo tour with the BFG Band; Frank Beard, Who’s Who number 11 in · Highway to Hell dies, 17 August

How ZZ King became ZZ Top 1969

ZZ Top started in 1969 with Gibbons, Lanier Greig and Dan Mitchell. It soon settled into the trio everyone knows, with Dusty Hill, Who’s Who number 9 in · Highway to Hell on bass and Frank Beard, Who’s Who number 11 in · Highway to Hell on drums.

The name came off a wall. Gibbons told Ultimate Classic Rock in 2019 that the wall was covered in gig bills for acts with initials in their names, including B.B. King, Who’s Who number 2 and Z.Z. Hill. He thought about “ZZ King”, decided it was too close to B.B. King, Who’s Who number 2, and went with ZZ Top instead. “That’s the way it is,” he said.

The first album 1971

ZZ Top’s First Album came out in early 1971. Pearly Gates was on it, and by Gibbons’ account it has been on every ZZ Top record since.

La Grange 1973

La Grange came out of the sessions for Tres Hombres in Memphis in 1973, and it started as a blues warm-up jam. Gibbons told Guitar Player the boogie backbeat is “the heart of the song”.

He played the intro on a 1955 Fender Stratocaster with a fixed bridge and the riff on Pearly Gates, both through a 100-watt 1968 Marshall Super Lead. The band cut three solo takes, he tried doubling the guitars in overdubs, and the whole song was done in about an hour. It’s now the most played ZZ Top song on Spotify.

Tush followed on Fandango! in 1975. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame picks out La Grange and Tush when it talks about the band.

Eliminator and the big years 1983 to 1985

Then came Eliminator in 1983, their eighth studio album, with Gimme All Your Lovin’, Legs and Sharp Dressed Man on it. On 7 August 1996 the RIAA certified it Diamond.

It did well in Britain too. Eliminator reached number 3 on the UK albums chart and stayed on it for 139 weeks. Gimme All Your Lovin’ got to number 10 there, Legs to number 16 and Sharp Dressed Man to number 22.

Afterburner went one better in the UK, reaching number 2 and staying on the chart for 40 weeks, and the RIAA has certified it five times platinum.

The Associated Press puts the band’s tally at six number 1 singles on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, and three Grammy nominations.

Rhythmeen and Bo Diddley’s Gretsch 1996

About a year after ZZ Top formed, they were hired to open for Bo Diddley, Who’s Who number 40 and then stay on stage to back him. On that tour Gibbons tried out Diddley’s, Who’s Who number 40 1959 Gretsch Jupiter Thunderbird, and Diddley, Who’s Who number 40 told him to take it home. In 1996 Gibbons used it for the last solos on Rhythmeen. Then it went on to the rest of the album and the tour. That’s Gibbons’s own account, as Gretsch told it in 2010.

The Hall of Fame 2004

Keith Richards, Who’s Who number 31 inducted ZZ Top into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. He kept it short. “These cats know their blues, and they know how to dress it up,” Richards, Who’s Who number 31 said.

Billy F Gibbons, solo 2015 to 2026

On his own records he’s billed as Billy F Gibbons. The first, Perfectamundo, came out in 2015, followed by The Big Bad Blues in 2018 and Hardware in 2021. He also recorded Livin’ It Up Down in Texas for the soundtrack of the TV series Landman.

On 16 December 2024, Las Vegas proclaimed Billy Gibbons Day. Then, from 20 January to 28 February 2026, he played 27 North American dates with the BFG Band: organist Mike Flanigin, and drummer Chris “Whipper” Layton, who used to play drums for Stevie Ray Vaughan, Who’s Who number 4. In November 2025 Ultimate Classic Rock reported that a fourth solo album was in the works.

He’s played with other guitarists in this painting along the way. In 2014 ZZ Top toured with Jeff Beck, Who’s Who number 15, who said he’d wanted to play with them since Eliminator.

Craft, sound and style

Everything comes back to Pearly Gates. It’s a 1959 Gibson Les Paul, the year guitarists chase, and he got his for US$250. He has never found its twin.

He wasn’t after any old Les Paul, either. He wanted one like the sunburst on the back of the Blues Breakers album, and he kept looking until he had it.

His official site names Curt Kirkwood and Dimebag Darrell among the guitarists he influenced. Kirkwood called Gibbons one of his “big favorites” in a 1987 interview, and switched to picking with a peso after reading that Gibbons did. Dimebag picked Tush as one of his favourite tracks in 1993 and said the Texas blues sound “definitely rubbed off” on him. That’s a long way from a Melody Maker and a Fender Champ under the Christmas tree.

Pearly Gates

Pearly Gates is a 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard. In a Gibson feature from around 2016, Gibbons said it “can be heard on each and every recording with ZZ Top”. In 2009 Gibson’s Custom Shop made a limited run of copies, and they sold out straight away.

The other guitars

He’s never been a one-guitar man. A 1957 Gibson Flying V was in hand “for the first wave of ZZ sounds”, he told the Fretboard Journal in 2012. He also has a 1950s Gibson Moderne prototype he bought from a painter in San Antonio, and a 1955 Goldtop with one P-90 pickup that he tunes well down.

Gibson has made guitars to his design. His signature Goldtop has two volume knobs, one master tone and no pickup selector, with two Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickups. The BGSG is a stripped-back SG with a Flying V-style neck, as the Gibson feature describes it.

By 2015 his number one on stage was a chambered T-style guitar by John Bolin, with the “Peeler” finish, a sticker design inspired by the worn finish on an old 1956 Precision bass. He has most of his guitar bodies chambered.

Ask him about acoustics and you get a short answer. “Out of the question,” he told the Fretboard Journal in 2012. He thinks they’re bad luck.

Amps

The amp on La Grange was a 100-watt 1968 Marshall Super Lead, with both guitars going through it. That was the pairing he’d been after since he first saw Clapton’s Bluesbreakers set-up: a Gibson Les Paul into a Marshall.

Strings, and a question from B.B.

He plays very light strings, a 7 gauge on top, and he gives B.B. King, Who’s Who number 2 the credit. Gibbons told Guitarist he was about 22 and just starting out with ZZ Top when B.B. asked to try his guitar in a dressing room. B.B. strummed it a few times, handed it back and asked, “Why you working so hard?” Gibbons had thought heavy strings were how you got a heavy sound. He went down to nines, then eights, and now sevens. “B.B., we thank you!” he said in 2026.

Coins and pinch harmonics

He often picks with a coin, a US quarter or a Mexican peso, or with a standard pick held so the fatter shoulder does the work. The Gibson feature calls his pinch harmonics a trademark. The thick edge of the pick strikes the string and his thumb grazes it straight after, so the note whines.

Feel

His rhythm playing is tight but loose, and it comes from John Lee Hooker’s boogie. In his leads he often starts a phrase just before the “one”, so you’re pulled into the solo before the bar begins.

He doesn’t believe in filling every gap. If you know where you’re heading, he told Rolling Stone Australia in 2023, you can “make someone wiggle in their seat a little bit”. Brian May, Who’s Who number 20 put it another way in 2024: Gibbons isn’t showing off or proving a point, he’s playing from his heart.

Stories people still tell

1. The guitar named after a car.

   Pearly Gates got its name from a 1939 Packard, by Gibbons’ own account. The guitar cost US$250 in 1968, cash.

2. The wall of gig bills.

   ZZ Top might have been ZZ King. Gibbons says it sat too close to B.B. King’s, Who’s Who number 2 name on the wall, so he changed one word.

3. Opening for Hendrix, Who’s Who number 6.

   Before ZZ Top, Gibbons played in the Moving Sidewalks, a Houston band, and they opened for Hendrix, Who’s Who number 6 and the Experience.

4. The other name.

   His official site lists an alias, Justis Walkert, alongside the Billy F Gibbons he uses on his solo records.

Legacy

Dusty Hill, Who’s Who number 9 in · Highway to Hell died in 2021. Frank Beard, Who’s Who number 11 in · Highway to Hell died on 17 August 2026, aged 77, and ZZ Top’s shows in Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs were cancelled. “His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top,” Gibbons said.

Within a week the band was back on stage at Austin City Limits, with Michael Monahan on drums. Gibbons spoke to the crowd before they played. “I guess some of you probably know there’s a new man in town,” he said.

He is now the one surviving member of the classic trio. Pearly Gates is still with him.