ZZ Top’s Frank Beard, Texas Shuffle’s Steady Hand, Dies At 77

Frank Beard, the hard-shuffling drummer who anchored ZZ Top for more than five decades, has died at the age of 77. Beard died yesterday (Aug. 17) while in hospice care, surrounded by family at his ranch in Richmond, Tx. No cause of death was given. The news brings another profound change to one of rock’s most famously durable lineups. Beard’s death comes five years after the passing of bassist Dusty Hill, leaving Billy Gibbons as the sole surviving member of ZZ Top’s classic trio.

ZZ Top has canceled its scheduled show tonight in Salt Lake City and tomorrow in Colorado Springs, Co., but the band’s current tour is expected to resume this weekend in Austin, Tx. “Today, [bassist] Elwood [Francis] 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.

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Although Beard wasn’t technically a founding member, it’s difficult to imagine ZZ Top without him. After the band released its debut single, “Salt Lick,” with drummer Dan Mitchell, Beard connected with Gibbons and ultimately brought Hill into the fold. Before long, the Moving Sidewalks had evolved into ZZ Top, and the three Texans would spend the next half-century turning a lean blues-rock formula into one of the most recognizable sounds — and images — in American music.

Beard was born June 11, 1949, in Frankston, Tx., and got his start in bands while still in high school before becoming a fixture in the Dallas scene. He and Hill played together in several groups during the ’60s, including the Warlocks and American Blues, as well as a short-lived, unauthorized touring version of the Zombies. His meeting with Gibbons proved decisive.

In a 2012 SPIN interview, Gibbons recalled the first time the three musicians played together. The plan was simple: “Let’s just do a simple shuffle,” for three or four minutes, just to see how everything fit. The jam lasted three hours. “I don’t know what you guys got going on but it’s an easy platform for me to stand on,” Gibbons remembered thinking. “Let’s make it happen.”

That easy platform would become ZZ Top’s foundation. Beard’s drumming supplied the precise, muscular Texas shuffle underneath Gibbons’ riffs and Hill’s bass, giving songs like “La Grange” and “Tush” their irresistible forward motion. He was the least visually conspicuous member of a band whose entire aesthetic was built around being conspicuous — the one ZZ Top member who famously didn’t have the beard.

That, too, was essentially accidental. As Gibbons told SPIN in 2012, the band had decided to stop touring, making public appearances and recording while waiting for its contract with London Records to expire before moving to Warner Bros. The three members scattered: Gibbons went to Europe, Hill to Mexico and Beard to Jamaica. “When it was time to finally meet again we saw that all of us had grown these ridiculous beards,” Gibbons said. “And I said, ‘Well let’s just leave them and see what happens.’”

“Frank threw in the towel early,” he added. “He might’ve been the smarter one.”

The joke was fitting for a drummer who seemed far less interested in the mythology surrounding ZZ Top than in the music itself. In that same SPIN conversation, Gibbons described the group as having a uniquely non-social chemistry: When they weren’t touring, they might call each other to organize the next outing, but they weren’t hanging out at restaurants or each other’s houses. “Our backbone is playing,” Gibbons said. “It’s about the music.”

And what playing they did. After their 1971 debut failed to chart, ZZ Top built its reputation the old-fashioned way, relentlessly working the road. Tres Hombres cracked the Top 10 in 1974 and produced “La Grange,” while 1975’s Fandango! yielded “Tush,” the band’s first Top 20 single. A brief hiatus followed 1976’s Tejas, during which Beard got sober after years of drug use.

The band returned in 1979 with Degüello, beginning the commercial ascent that would make ZZ Top one of the biggest rock acts of the ’80s and early ’90s. Eliminator, Afterburner and Recycler turned the trio into MTV staples, with videos for “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” transforming their beards, sunglasses, hot rods and choreography into pop culture shorthand.

Yet beneath all the visual spectacle remained the same three-piece engine. ZZ Top was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004. After the release of 2012’s La Futura, the group continued touring until Hill’s death in 2021. Gibbons and Beard carried on, with Beard occasionally forced off the road by health issues, including an emergency appendectomy in 2002 and unspecified health problems that temporarily sidelined him in 2025. Earlier this month, ZZ Top canceled its Hollywood Bowl performance, with Beard’s health later identified as the reason.

This is a developing story.

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