Frank Beard, the longtime drummer for ZZ Top, died Monday at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, while in hospice care surrounded by family. He was 77. A cause of death wasn’t disclosed.
Bandmates Billy Gibbons and Elwood Francis confirmed the news. “Today, Elwood and I lost a great friend and collaborator, and the world lost one of the most naturally innovative drummers and a great and true son of Texas,” Gibbons said. The band said it will “keep on keeping on” as Beard wished, canceling only two tour dates, in Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs, before resuming with two shows at Austin City Limits, one of Beard’s favorite venues to play.
The Only Beard Without a Beard
For more than five decades, ZZ Top’s public image was built around the waist-length beards of Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill. The joke that never got old: the one member of the band whose actual last name was Beard was the only one who never grew one, sticking to a simple mustache instead.
He didn’t need the visual gimmick. Beard’s drumming was the band’s engine, the Texas shuffle underneath “La Grange,” “Tush,” “Legs,” and “Sharp Dressed Man.” He joined the group that would become ZZ Top in 1969, alongside Gibbons and Hill, and stayed behind the kit through the band’s rise into arena rock and its 2004 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Asked to sum up his career at that induction, Beard kept it simple: “All I have done is play the drums.”
His career wasn’t without a rough patch. Beard developed a serious drug addiction in the late 1970s that led to a three-year band hiatus in the early ’80s while he got sober. He came back, got behind the kit, and kept playing for another four decades.
Beard’s death leaves Gibbons as the last surviving member of ZZ Top’s classic lineup. Bassist Dusty Hill died in 2021 at 72, found in his sleep at his home in Houston.
What do you think? What’s the ZZ Top song you’d play to remember Frank Beard’s drumming? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on BeezLoop.com!
Related coverage: CBS News.
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