Frank Beard, drummer of boogie-rock trio ZZ Top, dies at 77
[August 19, 2026]
By MARK KENNEDY
NEW YORK (AP) — Frank Beard, the drummer for the Texas boogie-rock trio
ZZ Top who kept the tempo for the band’s biggest hits like “Sharp
Dressed Man,” “Gimme All Your Lovin'” and “Legs,” has died. He was 77.
Beard was in hospice care when he died Tuesday at his ranch in Richmond,
Texas, with family members at his side, according to publicist Bob
Merlis. Band co-founder and guitarist Billy Gibbons, on tour with
bassist Elwood Francis, hailed Beard in a statement.
“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. The
band of which he was part for six decades is going to keep on keeping on
as he had wished,” Gibbons said.
ZZ Top sold more than 50 million records and had six singles that
reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay chart. Seven of
their albums have been in the Billboard 200’s Top 10 and they earned
three Grammy Award nominations.
“I’ve found the people I was meant to play with,” Beard says in the 2019
documentary “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas.” “I never wanted
to quit, and never wanted to get fired.”
Drummers went to social media to pay tribute to Beard's influence,
including Rage Against the Machine's Brad Wilk, who wrote his mind was
blown seeing Beard's two-hand shuffle live in high school. Former Guns
N' Roses drummer Matt Sorum called Beard “a very special and unique man
behind the kit.”
How the band came together
Beard, from Frankston, Texas, met Gibbons in a band called The Moving
Sidewalks and later introduced bassist and vocalist Dusty Hill who had
been in several bands with Beard.
The trio formed ZZ Top in 1969, naming themselves in part after blues
singer Z.Z. Hill and influenced by the British power trio Cream and
Jimmy Reed. They maintained their original lineup for more than five
decades. Their signature look — long, bushy beards on Gibbons and Hill,
and dark sunglasses for all — didn’t change much, either.
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 songs — with their sly and humorous lyrics — were 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.”
Breaking through
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.
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Dusty Hill, from left, Billy Gibbons and Frank Beard of ZZ Top
appear at the "American Idol" finale in Los Angeles on May 21, 2008.
(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, File)
 The band went on to have such hits
as “Tush” and “Cheap Sunglasses.” But their 1983 “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.
Long beards weren’t always part of the band’s look. Gibbons said it
happened by accident: In 1976, the trio took a 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.”
A boost from MTV
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 previously.
Hill died in 2021.
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.
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