Frank Beard, ZZ Top drummer, dies at age 77

Frank Beard, longtime ZZ Top drummer, has died, the band confirmed to CBS News. He was 77.

A cause of death was not immediately provided, but the band’s publicist said in a statement, “He was in hospice care when he passed away at his ranch in Richmond, TX with family members at his side.” He died on Monday.

Beard, along with guitarist Billy Gibbons and bassist Dusty Hill, formed ZZ Top in 1969. Hill died in 2021, and at his request, was replaced by his longtime bass tech, Elwood Francis.

“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. His signature backbeat was key to keeping ZZ on top,” Gibbons said in a statement posted on social media.

The band said it has canceled its two upcoming shows in Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs, but that the tour would continue this weekend at Austin City Limits, “one of Frank’s favorite venues and in a city that had been something of a second home for him.”

Beard was born in Frankston, Texas, on June 11, 1949, and was raised in Irving, Texas, according to the band’s publicist. Beard first met Hill and the two played together in several bands. Beard eventually joined the band The Moving Sidewalks with Gibbons, and “it was Frank Beard who, in the waning days of 1969, suggested to Billy Gibbons — then a frontman in search of a rhythm section — to audition Dusty Hill,” the band’s publicist said.

While Gibbons and Hill were known for their long, scraggly beards, Beard himself, somewhat ironically, usually went clean-shaven or only sported a mustache.

“It was a club called The Catacombs,” Gibbons told “CBS Sunday Morning” in 2019 of the band’s start back in 1969. “It was a day that Frank Beard, the man with no beard, he and I were gathered together to audition bass players. And about that time Dusty strolled up, strapped on the guitar, and I think we wound up playing one song for about three hours straight!”

After attaining success in the ’70s, Beard ran into issues with substance abuse and the band took a three-year hiatus.

“In the late ’70s, I entered rehab,” Beard told CBS News’ Jim Axelrod. “Somebody asked Dusty what he was gonna do. ‘Hey what are y’all gonna do, you know? Frank’s in rehab.’ And Dusty said, ‘Well, I’m goin’ fishing!'”

Gibbons, when asked if he had considered replacing Beard at the time, was emphatic: “No,” he said. “There is no other drummer. There’s one guy!”

Long beards weren’t always part of the band’s look. Gibbons said it happened by accident: In 1976, when the trio took their long break and scattered, Beard went to Jamaica, Hill went to Mexico and Gibbons went to France.

“Although we were speaking by phone, this was pre-video phone. And Dusty and I did not know that we had gotten so lazy that we had decided to forget to shave,” Gibbons told The Tribune in San Luis Obispo in 2010. “So after three years we returned and showed up, and lo and behold here was this sort of wacky-looking image. And it just kind of stuck with us.”

When Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards helped induct the trio into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, he joked: “These cats know their blues, and they know how to dress it up. When I first saw them, I thought, ‘I hope these guys are not on the run, because that disguise is not going to work.'”

ZZ Top has sold over 50 million albums over the course of their more-than-50-year-long career, saw six singles go to No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart, and earned three Grammy nominations, according to The Associated Press.

Eleven of their albums achieved Gold status, seven were certified platinum and the 1983 album “Eliminator” sold more than 10 million copies, giving it Diamond status, the band’s publicist said.

ZZ Top songs — with their sly and humorous lyrics — were also popular in Hollywood, which used “Gimme All Your Lovin'” in “Happy Feet,” “Sharp Dressed Man” in “Evan Almighty,” “Legs” in “Air,” “Sleeping Bag” in “I, Tonya,” “Tush” in “Dazed and Confused,” “Mexican Blackbird” in “From Dusk Till Dawn” and “La Grange” in “Armageddon.”

“The best way to describe ZZ Top is we’re interpreters of a great American art form,” Gibbons told The Dallas Morning News.

Their debut release, “ZZ Top’s First Album,” came out in 1970. Their sound was described as a hybrid mixing elements of rock, blues and funk into a steaming-hot Houston stew. They called themselves a “Little Ol’ Band From Texas.”

Three years later, they broke through commercially with “La Grange,” a funky blues song on the album “Tres Hombres” that paid tribute to the Chicken Ranch, a brothel outside of the Texas town of La Grange that operated from 1905 until 1973 and was immortalized in the Broadway show and the film, “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.” Gibbons has ascribed the power of “La Grange” to its simplicity — just two chords and a Robert Johnson-inspired guitar solo.

The band went on to have such hits as “Tush” and “Cheap Sunglasses.” 

“Eliminator” — named after one of Gibbons’ custom cars — added more production elements, synthesizers and drum machines to their stripped-down sound and yielded the hits “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Legs” and “Sharp Dressed Man.” The band toured with a Texas-shaped stage, live rattlesnakes and a longhorn steer.

The band’s rock-chic cool played well on the nascent MTV crowd and their videos, featuring models in short skirts emerging from one of Gibbons’ custom roadsters, became a mainstay.

They kept the beards, hats and cheap sunglasses in the video trilogy of “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” and “Legs,” made with director Tim Newman.

“ZZ Top reveled in the humor and ridiculousness of it all, busting their synchronized dance moves and spinning their white-fur guitars. These guys always got the joke, at a time when other bands were still just nervously lip-syncing in front of brick walls,” Rolling Stone said in 2021.

In 2012, superstar producer Rick Rubin helped update the trio’s sound with the band’s comeback album, “La Futura.” The album landed at No. 6 on the Billboard chart, their highest position since 1990’s “Recycler,” some 22 years earlier.

In March 2025, the band announced via Instagram that Beard would temporarily step away from the band’s tour to tend to foot and ankle problems. Beard died weeks after ZZ Top called off its Aug. 5 concert at the Hollywood Bowl due to his health issues. 

Beard is survived by his wife, Debbie Meredith, and three children.