Frank Beard, the longtime, hard-shuffling drummer for Texas rock greats ZZ Top, died on Monday. He was 77.
Bob Merlis, the band’s representative, confirmed the news, saying Beard died while in hospice care, surrounded by family, at his ranch in Richmond, Texas. An exact cause of death was not given.
ZZ Top also announced that it would cancel its scheduled show tonight (Aug. 18) in Salt Lake City and its gig on Wednesday (Aug. 19) in Colorado Springs. The band’s current tour will resume this weekend in Austin.
Beard had faced several serious health issues over the years. In 2002, he missed some shows after undergoing an emergency appendectomy, while in 2025 he “temporarily” stepped away due to unspecified health issues. Earlier this month, ZZ Top abruptly canceled a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, citing “insurmountable obstacles”; it was later revealed that Beard’s health was the cause, though again no specifics were given.
Though not technically a founding member, Beard was ZZ Top’s longtime and definitive drummer. He linked up with guitarist-singer Billy Gibbons after ZZ Top released their debut single, “Salt Lick” (featuring drummer Dan Mitchell), and was responsible for bringing in bassist Dusty Hill.
While so much of ZZ Top’s aura centered on their hooks, their riffs, and their facial hair, the beardless Beard was the band’s indispensable anchor. He was a master of the Texas shuffle, an inch-perfect, steady-rocking drum groove that held down ZZ Top’s signature blues rock boogie on classic hits like “Tush” and “La Grange.”
Beard’s playing was precise and tireless. In the 2019 documentary, ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas, he recalled the first time he and Gibbons played together: “I was jacked up on speed,” Beard cracked, “so I made him jam for about eight hours ’til his tongue just fell out.”
Gibbons added of the experience: “It didn’t take 30 minutes, it didn’t take 30 seconds — I knew that Frank Beard had the kind of chops that I was looking for. He played fiercely. He played with determination.”
Beard was born June 11, 1949, in the small town of Frankston, Texas. He got his start playing in bands in high school and eventually became a fixture in the Dallas music scene, where he met Hill. The two played together in several groups during the Sixties, including the Warlocks, American Blues, and even the infamous fake version of the Zombies that toured after the actual English psych rock group disbanded.
Beard’s career nearly stalled out after he got his girlfriend pregnant; the couple got married, began to raise their child, and spent some time living with Beard’s parents. But after moving his family to Houston, Beard was introduced to Gibbons, then playing in a group called the Moving Sidewalks. Beard soon joined the group, brought in Hill, and the band changed their name to ZZ Top.
Under the guidance of manager and producer Bill Ham, ZZ Top spent their early years gigging constantly wherever they could. While their 1971 debut, ZZ Top’s First Album, failed to chart or spawn any noteworthy singles, the group steadily developed a reputation on the road. Speaking with Rolling Stone in 1984, Beard credited Ham for cleverly booking ZZ Top support gigs on tours with headliners that weren’t likely to leave an impression.
“When we were second on the bill, he would always get us on a tour with a band that was through — that was fixin’ to break up and just doin’ a money tour,” Beard said. “And we’d get out there and just kick their ass. We did Mott the Hoople that way, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple. They were through, and they didn’t care who knew it, so people would remember us.”
ZZ Top finally broke through themselves in the mid-Seventies. Their 1974 album, Tres Hombres, cracked the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 albums chart, earned gold certification from the RIAA, and featured the indelible “La Grange.” Their 1975 follow-up, Fandango!, did just as well on the strength of ZZ Top’s first Top 20 single, “Tush.” But despite this budding success, ZZ Top seemed to confound the rock press, who tended to dismiss them or lump them in with other Southern rock bands.
“That was back to that thing of, ‘You gotta go to California, you gotta go to New York,’” Beard said in the 2019 documentary. “And we refused to do that.”
After the release of another 1976 album, Tejas, ZZ Top went on a brief hiatus, in part so Beard could get sober. In That Little Ol’ Band from Texas, Beard acknowledged spending much of the money he earned during this time on drugs, particularly pills, cocaine, and heroin.
“All the money I pissed off, that’s a regret,” he said. “I sold my original Ludwig kit to buy drugs with it. Relationships I fucked up … In the back of my mind, I knew I needed to kick heroin. I needed to stop doing cocaine. I had done it all, and I couldn’t go any further.”
ZZ Top returned in 1979, inking a new deal with Warner Bros Records and releasing their sixth album, Degüello. The LP hit Number 24 on the Billboard 200 and kicked off a wildly successful run that saw the band enjoying a prolonged commercial peak through the Eighties and early Nineties. During that time, ZZ Top dropped multiplatinum albums like 1983’s Eliminator, 1985’s Afterburner, and 1990’s Recycler; notched Top 10 singles like “Legs” and “Sleeping Bag”; and even became MTV fixtures thanks to memorable videos for “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” and “Sharp Dressed Man.”
Over the coming decades, ZZ Top continued to record and tour. They were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, and in 2012 they released La Futura, which would turn out to be their last album with Hill, who died in 2021. Gibbons and Beard continued to tour without Hill, though Beard’s health issues occasionally forced him off the road.
Outside of music, Beard owned and operated a ranch in Richmond, Texas, and maintained a love of golfing and car racing. He and his wife, Debbie, had twin boys, while also helped to raise Beard’s daughter from a previous marriage.
Speaking of the 50-plus years he enjoyed alongside his ZZ Top bandmates in That Little Ol’ Band from Texas, Beard said, “I would say, for me, I have found the people that I want to play with. And I was able to do that at a very early age. I’m still satisfied with them. I’m satisfied with Dusty and I’m satisfied with Billy.” He then quipped: “With these two guys, I’ve never wanted to quit, and I’ve never wanted to get fired.”
