The ZZ Top Guitar Lesson post I made on this blog is one of the most visited pages to date. I can understand why, ZZ top has tons of songs that guitarists of all ages want to learn. It’s kind of like “Iron Man”, every guitar player has to learn “Tush” don’t they? Last year I finally bought a ZZ Top Guitar Tab book Anthology - just so I could learn all the riffs that I hadn’t figured out over the years. This is one of the only guitar books I’ve purchased in the last decade, and it was worth every penny!

ZZ Top - Guitar Anthology - Guitar Recorded Version Songbook

Hal Leonard, $24.49

Billy Gibbons has such a unique blues sound, and his tasty licks and riffs are in some of my all time favorite songs - like “LaGrange”, “Waiting for the Bus”, “Tube Snake Boogie”, and “Just Got Paid”. I’ve read that he has played his ‘59 Les Paul on every single record to date, and he named it “Pearly Gates” for it’s heavenly blues sound.

Seymour Duncan has produced the “Pearly Gates” humbucker, and let me tell you - it will change your guitars sound into a blues-rock machine! I even use mine for a great Van Halen, 80’s hair metal sound. I installed a pair of Pearly Gates pickups in my Ibanez Artcore semi-hollow body guitar, and it sounds 100 times better! I got a great deal on my Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates on eBay - here are some deals listed there right now:

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US $94.95 End Date: Sunday Sep-14-2008 15:03:50 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $94.95 Buy it now | Add to watch list

This is an incredible performance you may not have seen yet, it’s Billy Gibbons of “that little ‘ol band from Texas” - ZZ Top! He’s playing at the Fender gala at NAMM - and he belts out his rendition of “Texas Flood” on his well-worn Telecaster. He talks a little bit before the song - which is why this guitar video is 8 minutes long. He remembers that back in the day he and Stevie Ray Vaughan would fight over the words to the third verse of this song (and it turns out they both had them wrong). You just can’t beat Billy Gibbons, he makes it sound like “Pearly Gates” Every Time!