ZZ Top Prom: Photo Seems To Show Band At High School Dance (UPDATED)

PHOTO: Best Prom Ever?

Emerging today from the annals of the internet: a photo that appears to show ZZ Top at a school prom.

The picture, available below, shows Dusty Hill, Frank Beard and Billy Gibbons as men who would appear to be in their early 20s. Though we can't verify it at this time, the photo matches up with an account of a 1971 appearance at the Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School prom. That performance took place two years after the band was formed.

“People were actually crashing our prom,” one student recounted. “People were trying to sneak in anyway they could just to see these guys perform. It was really funny.”

UPDATE: A Redditor posted the following comment, which seems to verify the Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School connection:

This is from my dad's senior prom in May 1971! This was taken at Little Cypress-Mauriceville High School in Orange, Texas.

Apparently some time between signing the contract to play for the dance and the actual prom itself, the band broke out big. They tried to get out of the contract, but the school couldn't find a replacement on such short notice so ZZ Top still performed. My dad said that people were climbing through the windows, crashing their prom, just to hear the band play. This was all at a really small school with a graduating class of around 100, maybe less. I'll try to get him to scan his yearbook that has this exact picture in it.

The Reddit thread on which the image originally appeared identified the photo as being taken in 1969, but Hill didn't join the band until 1970.

Were you at the prom? If so, leave a comment and we'll update our post accordingly.

zz top prom

Dusty Hill and Billy Gibbons at this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction:

zz top prom

ZZ Top

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