Eliminator

Eliminator is the band's eighth studio album and its biggest seller, with 11 million copies in the United States and the only ZZ Top diamond certification. It was named after a drag racing term, because Ham said the band should feature Gibbons' newly customized 1933 Ford coupe. Filmmaker Mike Griffin had suggested Top Fuel, and Ham shifted the idea to Eliminator. The car sits on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Since 1981 Gibbons had been moving the band toward new wave. Inspired by Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, he worked with the engineer Linden Hudson in a studio Hudson built at Beard's home outside Houston. Hudson, a former radio DJ, showed Gibbons research that many hits sat near 124 beats per minute, so most of the album runs faster than the band's usual pace. Legs and Sharp Dressed Man are both at 125 and Gimme All Your Lovin' at 120. Gibbons said in 2012 that Eliminator was the first album where he used a drum machine.

Making it

The band took demos to Ardent Studios in Memphis and stayed at the Peabody Hotel while recording basic tracks with Manning at the controls. Manning programmed an Oberheim DMX drum machine, added acoustic tom fills and cymbals, and ended up doing virtually all the drums. Most of Hill's bass was replaced by Gibbons or Manning on bass guitar or a Moog Source keyboard. Jimi Jamison and Manning sang backing vocals. Hill sang lead on I Got the Six. Rhythm guitar was recorded one chord at a time, each chord doubled on a pair of tracks and blended by Manning punching in and out, which also removed the squeaks of fingers changing chords. For Legs, Manning reworked every part except Gibbons' guitar and vocals in his attic studio.

The credits give the songs to Gibbons, Hill and Beard, but Hudson wrote Thug alone. He sued Lone Wolf, the band's management company, for $1 million, and in December 1986 a judge decided in his favor and awarded him $600,000.

Videos and reception

Jeff Ayeroff of Warner Bros. convinced the label to pay for the first ZZ Top video, for Gimme All Your Lovin'. Tim Newman directed it and the clips for Sharp Dressed Man and Legs, in which three women drive the Eliminator car. The Legs video introduced the white sheepskin spinning guitars. Singles placed on the Mainstream Rock chart: Gimme All Your Lovin' at number two in April 1983, Sharp Dressed Man at eight, TV Dinners at 38 and Legs at number three in June 1984. The album peaked at number nine in the United States and number three in the UK, and spent 101 weeks on the Canadian chart.

Robert Christgau wrote that the faster tempo produced boogie in overdrive. Some fans reacted badly to the synthesizers, and Hill compared the reaction to the one Bob Dylan met when he went electric. Guitar World called it a brilliant merger of roadhouse blues and synthesizer swells and looped beats in 2002. Rolling Stone ranked it 398 on its list of 500 greatest albums, and it appears in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. A remastered version came out in 2008, with a Collector's Edition on 10 September 2008.