Billy Gibbons has confirmed that ZZ Top are working on a new album.
In an upcoming interview with Classic Rock, Gibbons – who releases his third solo album, Hardware, in June – confirmed that he has been stockpiling material for the Texan trio’s first record since 2012’s La Futura.
“The last laugh has yet to be heard,“ he says. “‘While we were working on Hardware, I was sending the roughs that might not have been fitting for that but were certainly fitting for the ZZ thing.
“I get to tiptoe out of Hardware and back into ZZ, which is underway now.”
Gibbons couldn’t confirm when the album would be finished or released, though he suggests late 2021 or 2022. “If it were this year, it would be the very late end,” he says.
Gibbons also reveals that he believes he caught Covid early in the pandemic, shortly after playing a tribute show for Fleetwood Mac guitarist Peter Green in London.
“We flew to Spain afterwards, and we were eating all this fancy, expensive food and I said to [wife] Gilligan, ‘I can’t taste any of this.’
“When were finishing Hardware, we had a visitor who was an out of town physician. He said, ‘Would you like to take an antibody test?’, which I did. He said, ‘You may want to consider donating some of your blood, your antibodies are off the chart!’”
Hardware, which features former Guns N’ Roses/Velvet Revolver drummer Matt Sorum and guitarist Austin Hanks alongside Gibbons, is released on June 4.
Read the full interview with Billy Gibbons in the next issue of Classic Rock, out May 25.
