Video Premiere: ZZ Top & Jeff Beck Get Mega Meta in ‘Sixteen Tons’

Back in 2012, a mysterious viral video popped up on YouTube titled “Jeff Beck and ZZ Top — Ernie Ford’s SIXTEEN TONS,” in which the two stadium-rock legends appeared to be jamming on the Merle Travis-penned working man’s classic. The video turned out to be a hoax — albeit a very clever and convincing one — utilizing 2009 footage from when ZZ Top and Beck appeared onstage together at the 25th anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert at Madison Square Garden.

But on Aug. 13, 2014, ZZ Top and Jeff Beck had the last laugh, when in a life-imitating-art-imitating-life moment, they made this duet a glorious reality onstage during a joint show at Los Angeles’s Greek Theatre.

In what ZZ Top’s Gibbons told the L.A audience was “a mega meta kinda thang” move, he suggested that he, bandmates Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, and Beck recreate the “Sixteen Tons” hoax-video jam (created by a still-unknown “someone who obviously had too much time on their hands”), using the exact same arrangement heard in the prank mashup video.

Now, in conjunction with the recent release of the famously bearded Southern rock trio’s ZZ Top Live: Greatest Hits From Around the World, Yahoo Music is premiering the official live video for “Sixteen Tons.” And this time, it’s the real deal.