ZZ Top – Legs

“Legs” is a song by the band ZZ Top from their 1983 album Eliminator. The song was released as the fourth single in May 1984 more than a year after the album came out. It reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States (their highest charting single on the pop charts), and the dance mix version of the song peaked at number 13 on the dance charts.

The video was very popular. Just like their videos for “Gimme All Your Lovin'” and “Sharp Dressed Man,” it featured Billy Gibbons’ 1933 Ford Hot Rod, which he called The Eliminator. The big difference in “Legs” is that the main character is a girl.

The video had the same director (Tim Newman) and featured the three “Eliminator Girls,” but instead of sweeping a guy off in the Eliminator, the models rescue a girl who desperately needs some confidence. They give her a makeover and teach her how to handle guys to get what she wants.

The band also appeared in the clip, but were secondary to the girls and the car. Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill had been growing their beards for four years, so they were instantly recognizable, and the shot of their fuzzy guitars rotating when they took their hands off the instruments became a classic early-MTV image. The network was in its third year and did not have a huge amount of videos in its library, and “Legs” became a mainstay.

Eliminator was the first ZZ Top album to use synthesizers. The new sound, along with the exposure on MTV, helped the album sell over 10 million copies.
Two of the girls in the video were Playboy models: Jeana Tomasino (later Jeana Keogh) was Miss November, 1980, and Kymberly Herrin (in the red top) was Miss March, 1981. They joined Daniele Arnaud as the Eliminator Girls.

Tomasino and Arnaud also starred in the first two ZZ Top videos, which featured a third girl that Herrin replaced for “Legs.” The girl who gets the makeover is Wendy Frazier.

The video won the 1984 MTV Video Music Award for Best Group Video. Frazier and Newman attended the awards ceremony, and Newman accepted the award on behalf of the band. This was the first year the award was given. Sim Sadler and Bob Sarles edited “Legs,” for which both received nominations for Best Editing in the first MTV Video Music Awards, in the Billboard Music Video Awards, and in the American Music Video Awards that year.

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