{"id":1009285,"date":"2026-08-18T20:03:17","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T20:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1009285\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T20:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T20:03:17","slug":"frank-beard-zz-tops-hard-shuffling-drummer-dead-at-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1009285\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Beard, ZZ Top’s Hard-Shuffling Drummer, Dead at 77"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFrank Beard<\/a>, the longtime, hard-shuffling drummer for Texas rock greats ZZ Top<\/a>, died on Monday. He was 77.<\/p>\n

\n\tBob Merlis, the band\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tZZ 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\u2019s current tour will resume this weekend in Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBeard had faced several serious health issues over the years. In 2002, he missed some shows after undergoing an emergency appendectomy, while in 2025 he \u201ctemporarily\u201d<\/a> stepped away<\/a> due to unspecified health issues. Earlier this month, ZZ Top abruptly canceled<\/a> a performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, citing \u201cinsurmountable obstacles\u201d; it was later revealed that Beard\u2019s health was the cause, though again no specifics were given.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThough not technically a founding member, Beard was ZZ Top\u2019s longtime and definitive drummer. He linked up with guitarist-singer Billy Gibbons after ZZ Top released their debut single, \u201cSalt Lick\u201d (featuring drummer Dan Mitchell), and was responsible for bringing in bassist Dusty Hill.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile so much of ZZ Top\u2019s aura centered on their hooks, their riffs, and their facial hair, the beardless Beard was the band\u2019s indispensable anchor. He was a master of the Texas shuffle, an inch-perfect, steady-rocking drum groove that held down ZZ Top\u2019s signature blues rock boogie on classic hits like \u201cTush\u201d and \u201cLa Grange.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBeard\u2019s playing was precise and tireless. In the 2019 documentary<\/a>, ZZ Top: That Little Ol\u2019 Band from Texas, he recalled the first time he and Gibbons played together: \u201cI was jacked up on speed,\u201d Beard cracked, \u201cso I made him jam for about eight hours \u2019til his tongue just fell out.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tGibbons added of the experience: \u201cIt didn\u2019t take 30 minutes, it didn\u2019t take 30 seconds \u2014 I knew that Frank Beard had the kind of chops that I was looking for. He played fiercely. He played with determination.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tBeard 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<\/a> that toured after the actual English psych rock group disbanded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBeard\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tUnder 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\u2019s 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<\/a>, Beard credited Ham for cleverly booking ZZ Top support gigs on tours with headliners that weren\u2019t likely to leave an impression.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen we were second on the bill, he would always get us on a tour with a band that was through \u2014 that was fixin\u2019 to break up and just doin\u2019 a money tour,\u201d Beard said. \u201cAnd we\u2019d 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\u2019t care who knew it, so people would remember us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tZZ 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 \u201cLa Grange.\u201d Their 1975 follow-up, Fandango!, did just as well on the strength of ZZ Top\u2019s first Top 20 single, \u201cTush.\u201d 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat was back to that thing of, \u2018You gotta go to California, you gotta go to New York,\u2019\u201d Beard said in the 2019 documentary. \u201cAnd we refused to do that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter 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\u2019 Band from Texas, Beard acknowledged spending much of the money he earned during this time on drugs, particularly pills, cocaine, and heroin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll the money I pissed off, that\u2019s a regret,\u201d he said. \u201cI sold my original Ludwig kit to buy drugs with it. Relationships I fucked up \u2026 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\u2019t go any further.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZZ Top returned in 1979, inking a new deal with Warner Bros Records and releasing their sixth album, Deg\u00fcello. 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\u2019s Eliminator, 1985\u2019s Afterburner, and 1990\u2019s Recycler; notched Top 10 singles like \u201cLegs\u201d and \u201cSleeping Bag\u201d; and even became MTV fixtures thanks to memorable videos for \u201cGimme All Your Lovin\u2019,\u201d and \u201cSharp Dressed Man.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOver the coming decades, ZZ Top continued to record and tour. They were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame<\/a> 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\u2019s health issues occasionally forced him off the road.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tOutside of music, Beard owned<\/a> 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\u2019s daughter from a previous marriage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking of the 50-plus years he enjoyed alongside his ZZ Top bandmates in That Little Ol\u2019 Band from Texas, Beard said, \u201cI 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\u2019m still satisfied with them. I\u2019m satisfied with Dusty and I\u2019m satisfied with Billy.\u201d He then quipped: \u201cWith these two guys, I\u2019ve never wanted to quit, and I\u2019ve never wanted to get fired.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Frank Beard, the longtime, hard-shuffling drummer for Texas rock greats ZZ Top, died on Monday. He was 77.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1009286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,398469,32175,9455,67,132,68,142283],"class_list":["post-1009285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-frank-beard","tag-obit","tag-obituary","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-zz-top"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117118304849588302","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1009285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1009285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1009286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1009285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1009285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1009285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}