7 Times ZZ Top’s Dusty Hill Lit Up the Screen in TV + Movies

The death of longtime ZZ Top bassist and co-vocalist Dusty Hill on Wednesday (July 28) at age 72 sent a shockwave through the rock community. Subsequently, numerous musicians shared tributes and remembrances in his honor. But TV viewers and moviegoers not clued into ZZ Top’s bluesy brand of Southern rock might remember Hill differently.

That’s because, over the last 20 years, the bass player moonlighted as an on-screen entertainer — usually alongside his bandmates — in several television productions and a couple of movies. And outside of the band’s own song clips, home videos and concert films, a few Dusty Hill screen appearances stand out.

Maybe the most indelible of Hill’s TV turns came in a 2007 episode of the animated sitcom King of the Hill — he and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard appear as the cartoon versions of themselves, with Hill voicing himself. But the bass player additionally acted on Two and a Half Men, Deadwood and The Drew Carey Show.

That’s not to mention the instances that Hill has contributed to feature-length fictional entertainments. 1990’s Back to the Future Part III likely sticks out as the pinnacle of the musician’s film appearances, but there’s also a Disney movie from around the same time in which Hill and ZZ Top make a cameo in…a bathtub.

Below, bask in seven of Dusty Hill’s most memorable on-screen appearances.

‘Two and a Half Men’ (2010)
Hill appears with his ZZ Top bandmates in a Season 7 episode of Two and a Half Men, “Gumby With a Pokey,” wherein the lead character, Charlie Parker (Charlie Sheen), is trying out marijuana to help ease his insomnia. But the grass goes to head, and he subsequently sees all three ZZ Top members assembled in his living room, leading viewers to believe their manifestation is just a dream.