ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons reveals Gillette offered band $1 million each to shave their beards
ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons has claimed that Gillette offered the band $1 million to shave their beards.
The beards remain a vital part of ZZ Top’s image, and it’s impossible to imagine them clean-shaven, but Gillette still tried to convince them to wave goodbye to their facial hair with a lucrative financial incentive.
Gibbons has confirmed the story on Jay Mohr’s Mohr Stories podcast, stating, “It’s true,” before alleging that Gillette deny it happened, and adding, “It was a million dollars per man,” in relation to him and the late Dusty Hill.
The guitarist recalled, “But we called Mr. Merlis [music executive Bob Merlis]. I said, ‘Bob, we got this offer.’ ‘What?’ I said, ‘We’ve been offered a million dollars each to shave on TV’.”
However, Merlis made him look past the offer, remembering, “‘Well,’ he said, ‘The money’s good.’ He said, ‘You might as well consider doing it, but I’m not so sure you guys, any of you guys, know what’s under there’.”
Ultimately, ZZ Top chose to reject the alleged offer, which Gibbons still believes was the right thing to do, adding, “So we passed. We passed, and our fans loved it. Word got out.”
While Dusty Hill sadly died in 2021, the legendary rock group remain active with Elwood Francis joining the line-up in bass.
The group are set to embark upon an extensive headline tour across North America later this year, which will begin on March 22nd in Amarillo, Texas, and will wrap up two months later in Huntington, West Virginia.
Then, in the summer, they will return to Europe for shows in Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France and Spain. However, there are no current plans for ZZ Top to perform in the UK.
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