ZZ Top muziek cassette Eliminator 11 tracks HX-Pro dolby

Eliminator is the eighth studio album by American rock band ZZ Top. It was released on March 23, 1983, by Warner Bros. Records, and rose high on the charts in many countries. Four hit singles were released—"Gimme All Your Lovin'" which reached the American Top 40, "Sharp Dressed Man", "TV Dinners" and their most successful single, "Legs". Eliminator is ZZ Top's most commercially successful release, with sales of 11 million and diamond certification in the US.


Since El Loco in 1981, the bandleader, Billy Gibbons, had been moving ZZ Top's boogie and blues rock style towards the popular new wave style. For Eliminator, he increased the tempo and used more synthesizers and drum machines, producing a "tighter" album with a steady, driving beat.


The pre-production engineer Linden Hudson collaborated with Gibbons in Texas on the tempo and songs. The producer Bill Ham and the engineer Terry Manning joined Gibbons in Memphis, Tennessee, to edit the songs, replacing much of the contributions of bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard.

Ham claimed the album was solely the work of ZZ Top, but in 1986 Hudson won a lawsuit establishing himself as composer of the song "Thug".
Music videos for "Gimme All Your Lovin'", "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Legs" received regular rotation on MTV and helped ZZ Top gain popularity with a younger base.


A customized 1933 Ford coupe, depicted on the album cover, appeared in the videos. Following Eliminator's release, ZZ Top embarked on a worldwide concert tour.

The video for "Legs" earned the band the MTV Video Music Award for Best Group. Rolling Stone named Eliminator number 398 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It was listed at number 39 in The 100 Greatest Albums of the 80s, and it was also included in Robert Dimery's book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.

The first songwriting sessions for Eliminator were mainly Gibbons and Hudson working together in Beard's home studio while Beard was out playing golf. Beard and Hill sometimes participated, and Ham checked in occasionally. Hudson programmed a drum machine for the rhythm, and played keyboard bass. Gibbons and Hudson collaborated on lyrics and music, putting together a demo of "Got Me Under Pressure" featuring Gibbons's electric guitar work on top of the electronic sounds.


Gibbons felt that the synthesizers "created a nice platform that allowed the guitar to stand on its own", and that as the synthesizers could play an octave lower than a bass guitar, they created "a nice full bed of sound" that contrasted with his guitar. Ham was initially unaware that Gibbons was building a new sound without Beard or Hill. While the band was off touring, Hudson wrote "Thug" by himself.
Carrying the demo tapes created by Gibbons and Hudson, ZZ Top traveled without Hudson to Memphis, Tennessee, to stay at the Peabody Hotel while they recorded basic tracks at Ardent Studios, with Manning once again at the controls of the custom-built SpectraSonics mixing console.


For the majority of songs, Gibbons played Dean guitars with DiMarzio super distortion pickups, plugged into a Legend hybrid amplifier, and miked with an AKG 414B-ULS large-diaphragm condenser microphone.


When recording rhythm guitar parts, the sound pressure level (audio volume) was set very high to satisfy Gibbons, but this made it impossible for him to lift his fingers from the guitar to change chords without feedback. Instead, each chord was played once and doubled again on a pair of tracks, then the next chord was played twice and recorded to two more adjacent tracks. These alternating pairs of tracks were blended seamlessly into each other by Manning punching the tracks in and out. A side benefit of this laborious process was the elimination of the usual squeaks from shifting the fingers to change chords. Hill and Beard laid down bass guitar and drums, recording their parts onto 2-inch tape.



Hill sang his vocals for "I Got the Six". When they were finished, Hill and Beard returned home to Texas.
Gibbons, Manning and Ham continued to work on the album without Hill and Beard. Vocal harmonies were supplied by Manning and Jimi Jamison, the new lead singer of Cobra. To achieve Gibbons' desired clock-steady rhythm section, most of Hill's bass parts were replaced by Gibbons or Manning playing bass guitar or a Moog Source—a keyboard synthesizer. A Memorymoog was also used for supporting synth sounds.Most of Beard's drumming was replaced by drum machine or Simmons SDS-V electronic drums, keeping Beard's acoustic tom-tom drum fills and cymbal accents.


The song "Legs" was not coming together for Gibbons, so Manning carried the tape home to his 24-track attic studio and reworked every part except the guitar and vocals from Gibbons. Manning also created a longer dance mix for "Legs".To replace the drums, Manning programmed his Oberheim DMX drum machine, then augmented the snare drum and hi-hat sounds by triggering more samples on an AMS DMX delay unit. Eight years later, Gibbons thanked Al Jourgensen because his early Ministry drum samples had been used to polish Eliminator

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