Before ZZ Top were sharp dressed men they were just a little three piece band from Texas. With no beards. But they had “that sound” driven by Billy Gibbons unmistakable guitar and vocal. Bob Heil and Heil Sound were there on the band’s early tours perfecting the live sound where, with a trio, everything mattered.…
From Joe Walsh trashing hotel rooms to groupies, Bob Heil recalls some of the crazier stories that to the rest of us seem like legend.
“A bloody lunatic, I’ll even carry your bags…” It started with a phone call to Bob Heil from Pete Townshend. “Can you build a quad sound system? I have an idea.” From that call, and subsequent visit to London, an artistic vision was transformed to something real that tens of thousands of fans could experience…
One of the most important, yet most overlooked, parts of a sound system is the monitor setup. Monitors allow the band members to hear themselves and one another in order to give their best performance. In today’s episode, Bob Heil talks about the critical role he played in developing the modern monitor setup and the…
If you’ve ever listened to Joe Walsh’s “Rocky Mountain Way” or “Do You Feel Like I Do” by Peter Frampton, you of course heard the Heil Talk Box. In addition to building that iconic device, Bob Heil also built touring systems for The Who, Humble Pie, and the Grateful Dead. Bob has a history in…