In Memoriam: Frank Beard (1949 – 2026)

(Pic: Jimmy Steinfeldt)

Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013, San Antonio, Texas: “I was just braggin’ on ya to Gilligan,” Billy F. Gibbons told me on our way to the elevators at the Grand Hyatt, as I concluded my reporting for ZZ Top: Tracking The Beards, my Austin Chronicle cover story which ran on Dec. 27. “There’s something to be said for someone who can get more than two words out of Frank.”

Gilligan was Houston tone-master Gibbons’ wife, and Frank was Beard, ZZ Top’s drummer of 56 years’ standing. He died August 17, 2026, while in hospice care at his Richmond, Texas ranch, surrounded by family. He had just turned 77 on June 11th of this year.

He was born Frank Lee Beard, one of those names that not only warns you he’s a Southerner, but one you expect to hear all three names shouted by one or another parent, accompanied by the phrase “git yore butt in here!” He was born in Frankston, Texas, but was raised in Irving, roughly 110 or 115 miles away. Less a town than a construction site, 1950s Irving was basically a set of cotton fields getting bulldozed into subdivisions when Frank grew up there. The population rocketed past 45,000, with a brand-new shopping center and university slapped down on land that had been pasture a decade earlier. It was the kinda raw, rootless boomtown that bred restlessness by default, without even the Dallas Cowboys playing every Sunday to give the place some sorta personality, at least not until 1971.

So, of course, like many American youth of his generation, The Beatles crashed through the static of his teenage years. He started playing drums at 15, discovering Dallas blues joints not long after, where legends like Freddie King showed him a world even earthier and more exotic than the one opened by “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” His exit visa outta the suburbs now got stamped, and hard. It was here he first encountered bassist Dusty Hill, founding a King Hell rhythm section solid enough to keep up with Lightnin’ Hopkins, then navigating through American Blues, before spending 56 years as ZZ Top’s engine room.

You hang onto a job like that for a lifetime by being exactly the drummer needed. Frank wasn’t there to conduct a second conversation over the top of the song, like the Keith Moons or Ginger Bakers of the world. Sure, Moon could make the drums feel like another lead instrument, while Baker could turn the rhythm section into this rolling polyrhythmic argument. Frank Beard’s genius was nearly the opposite: make the groove so inevitable you stop noticing anybody is manufacturing it.

Which is also why “simple” is a dangerous word with him. His playing can sound simple because there’s very little wasted motion. He’s not constantly announcing: HEY, EVERYBODY! THE DRUMMER HAS ARRIVED! He just laid that fat Texas pocket underneath Billy and Dusty, then later Billy and Friend Of The ‘Stack Elwood Francis, and let those riffs acquire mass.

If you wanna compare Frank Beard to anyone, you could do worse than Charlie Watts. Both men understood restraint creates that strut. Neither gent needed to fill every available fucking hole. The space is part of the beat.

But Frank was greasier.

Early ZZ Top had that blues-shuffle DNA that Frank grew up inside. You can hear the same rolling, swinging propulsion on scratchy Big Joe Turner 78s. Then something fascinating happened as they got bigger and harder: Frank became increasingly architectural. Think about the difference between the feel of “La Grange” and what eventually happens with Eliminator. The machinery changed, but the fundamental Beard principle didn’t: establish the fucking groove and do not let go of it.

By the time we reach the techno-with-guitars ZZ Top of the ‘80s and all those videos that saved MTV from total vapidity, Frank’s drumming almost became motorik-in-BBQ-sauce. During the Reagan administration, that famous ZZ Top economy became almost mechanized. Almost — the sequencers and electronics didn’t fight Frank’s natural approach. They’re an exaggeration of something that was already there: repetition, precision, forward motion, tiny variations acquiring enormous importance because the basic pulse is so unwavering.

Except this ain’t Düsseldorf. It’s Texas, baby.

So instead of antiseptic European machinery, there’s that Frank Beard grease on it. It’s smoky, juicy, blues phrasing dripping off its fingers. Meanwhile, Billy’s guitar is dragging its ass slightly sideways across this relentless beat while Dusty locks in underneath him.

Basically, the electronics didn’t turn Frank Beard into a machine. Technology revealed how motorik Frank Beard had always been: Don’t fuck with the moment. Don’t decorate the moment. Find the pocket. Then sit in the motherfucker.

“I was fortunate enough to have stepped into this powerhouse bass player/drummer relationship that was unrelenting,” Gibbons reflected in 2013. “Then once the three of us gelled, it was ’Let’s go!’”

“Probably one of the reasons it has worked so well for so long is they enjoy being the chassis, the railbed,” he grinned a little later, indulging one of his frequent hot rod metaphors. “And I get to be the gear grinder.”

Frank never wavered from being the railbed and that “don’t fuck with the moment, etc.” philosophy up to and well past the time I encountered him, during an adventure that took me across two states over 15 days and gave me rare access to ZZ Top’s music, world, and history. A famously laconic and reticent interview, it caught everyone off guard when he granted my request to go on the record. I felt it was necessary to bring the whole of ZZ Top into focus. My notes from the time, which ran here four years ago, set the scene. The transcript that follows has never seen print up to now.

TEXT TO RAOUL HERNANDEZ, 7:10 PM Sat, Dec 7th, 2013: “Just got Frank interviewed. Dusty and Billy are on their way. It IS happening!”

Rewind three hours earlier, to the catering area. I’ve just spent a half-hour in the company of a chain-smoking Frank Beard, ZZ Top’s compact drummer. The Alamodome is providing the band a huge room, divided by portable curtains into separate areas for the three musicians, with a common area with a table holding what will later be stuffed into my shopping bags. Each partitioned area has couches, and a rolling Anvil dressing case sits beside it with a pair of purple Nudie suits on hangers on a rolling rack, hats atop the case. In Frank’s area sit his wife, his son Nico (who techs for his father), and a friend from Austin. Joining us in the dressing area: Gizzmo, who’s a friendly lil’ pup.

“He’s supposed to be a pomeranian/chihuahua mix,” Beard says in the thickest drawl of anyone in the touring party. “They lied - he’s just a mutt. My boy got him, but got sick of him. So, I took the dog.”

TEXT TO RAOUL HERNANDEZ, 7:43 PM Sat, Dec 7th, 2013: “I got some especially good history stuff from Frank, and he stated he preferred the old school way this new one was recorded. Also, TWO DUSTY SONGS WERE LEFT OFF! They’re about to be restored to the record. He likes Dusty’s singing, too - told me a great story about Dusty’s mother yelling to let her son sing at one of their first big shows!”

TEXT TO RAOUL HERNANDEZ, 7:45 PM Sat, Dec 7th, 2013: “Oh, Frank finally gave in - he now has a small beard. :-D”

Indeed, the jokes no longer apply: Frank Beard - long the one without a beard - has a scraggly patch of whiskers on his chin that Pablo Gamboa has dubbed the “ZZ goatee.” And Beard looks far more fit and healthy up close than he has looked standing a few yards from his drum riser across two states.

TIM: That’s actually a good way to start. You were just telling me that you do have a couple of houses in Austin?

FRANK: That’s correct. We bought a house in Devil’s Cove on Lake Travis, and that’s the Number Two Party Cove in the United States. And it was excellent (laughs) until the lake went half-dry! We bought it in 2007, and the lake went dry, then it filled back up in 2009. Then it went down again. I got tired of waiting on it, so we bought a second house on the main body. So, now we’re moving.

[NOTE: Devil’s Cove has been called a lot of things over the years. “One of the Top Five party coves in the country” is about as specific as anybody’s ever gotten in print. Nobody’s produced a numbered list with Frank’s cove sitting at #2, and the Lake of the Ozarks’ infamous Party Cove usually gets first billing when people rank this stuff. But Frank wasn’t citing a source, he was bragging about his neighborhood. I’m leaving the number exactly where he put it. — TIM]

T: So, do you now divide your time between Houston and Austin?

F: Pretty much.

T: I know you guys played a lot of early gigs down in Austin, probably down at the Armadillo?

F: That’s right! Armadillo World Headquarters! One of the great places!

T: What do you remember about those early gigs down there?

F: They were pretty wild. I actually got fired down there, one time. I overindulged during the show, and our manager (Bill Ham) got so mad at me, he fired me. So, Dusty quit, because he fired me. Then (Ham) changed his mind! (laughs)

T: Well, yeah. You guys were a package deal, right?

F: Yeah, we were. Still are, probably!

T: I’d say so. Amazing working chemistry there.

F: We’ve been going nearly 50 years now. I met Dusty when I was maybe 15 or 16, playing in different bands in Dallas. We started playing together in the American Blues in about ‘66, ‘67, something like that. Made a couple of records, and as bands do, we broke up. Then I got a call from another buddy from Dallas, Billy Etheridge was down in Houston, and he started playing with Billy (Gibbons). He said, “Hey, I found this great guitarist down here. I’ve been playing with him, but the drummer’s not cutting it. We need you.” So, I packed up all my drums and threw ‘em in this Volkswagen I had and went down there. I jammed with Billy and Billy Etheridge, and got hired right on the spot. Then two months later, Billy Etheridge’s wife was a Braniff stewardess, and she got transferred to Tulsa. So, he quit. I said, “Well, I know a guy in Dallas who can fill in for us.” That was Dusty, and that was ‘69! Been together ever since.

T: Yeah, there’s only been two lineups of ZZ Top ever, and this one is the one that worked.

F: Well, we don’t even consider the other lineups. They were just...what we were doing.

T: I’ve never actually heard the American Blues. Were you guys doing something along the same lines as the Moving Sidewalks?

F: Pretty much. We were influenced by what was going on. The psychedelic thing was going on. We had a lot of psychedelic-type stuff and blues. So, it was kind of a mix of that, kind of like. 13th Floor Elevators were like that. We had a song called “Chocolate Ego.” (laughs) (sings) “I’ve got a chocolate ego/You’ve got a magic eye/We can get together/We can just learn to fly.”

T: Wow! I’m gonna have to look that up!

F: Hell, yeah! There’s two of ‘em (albums): Is Here and Do Their Thing. You can find ‘em on eBay!

T: You’ve got a box set out now that’s the complete catalog through the Warner Bros. years, all beautifully remastered…

F: Well, the new box set is supposedly the old mixes, which I vastly preferred. When they remastered everything and digitally changed it? I prefer it the way it was recorded. I like the original sounds. That was the way it sounded back then, and if there’s hisses and pops in there? Tough beans!

T: It is the original LP mixes, just remastered. And it sounds fantastic.

F: Yeah. I prefer that.

T: Do you ever kinda handle that box and think -

F: - I haven’t even seen it!

T: Really?

F: No. I haven’t seen the new one.

T: (after an awkward pause) Okay, let me just ask you some various Austin-related questions. One famous incident was the Barn Dance... (big laughs)

F: Right, right, right!

T: Talk about that one a little bit.

F: Our manager, Bill Ham, put that whole thing together and really did an incredible job. He managed to get the five biggest promoters in the United States to work together, which in itself was an incredible feat. He had Barry Fey and Don Fox and Alex Cooley and Bill Graham. He said, “We’re gonna do this show in Austin,” and we weren’t that big yet. We were starting to get big, but I didn’t think we were that big. It always seemed like a pie-in-the-sky dream to me, that we could pull off something like that.

Then he got Darrell Royal to let us play in the football stadium. I don’t know that it ever happened before, but it certainly never happened afterwards! (laughs) The fans messed up his brand-new Astroturf football field, and he swore, “No, there will never be another show there.” And I don’t think there has been.

T: Well, 1995, that finally got broken: They let The Eagles play there.

F: Did they? Well, alright! But [Royal] was gone by then, right?

T: I think you’re right.

F: Right. His ban lasted as long as he did.

T: My editor and I were taking a look at a web page about that, and we saw Jimmy Page listed as playing. We were wondering about that — Jimmy Page solo?!

F: I don’t remember that. I don’t remember him being on there. I remember it was...golly, who was it?

T: Well, Bad Company is listed.

F: Bad Company! Santana...and one other. I don’t remember. That was pre-’78. I got sober in ‘78, so anything pre-’78 is like...pfft! I’m not the one to talk to.

T: You’ve got a new album out, a studio album that is really quite good. Why did it take so long to get a brand new album out?

F: I don’t know. The industry’s changed so much that we didn’t know how one would be accepted or not. It’s just a different world than when we started out. I know the record we put out before this one, the sales were not that good because everyone had their hands on it through the internet. Some engineer or somebody had released copies, and everyone who wanted it had downloaded it before it even came out.

T: Do you like La Futura?

F: Yeah! I like the fact that it was made more like the way we used to make records: Getting together and jamming and playing. It’s not overproduced. It’s just pretty much an in-your-face, what-you-see-is-what-you-get record.

T: It is a good, raw rock ‘n’ roll record.

F: Yeah!

T: And one thing that occurs to me about it, this band has always remained true to its blues roots. But as time goes on, it might take on a few things to keep the music interesting, like in the ‘80s when you took on sequencers and had a second hit-making heyday with that.

F: Exactly.

T: I can hear that you guys are reaching back to your early sound with this record. But I can also hear that maybe you guys have been paying attention to bands like The White Stripes or The Black Keys.

F: Yeah! But to me, they were more like we were when we started out, too. They were more organic, so that just fitted in with what we wanted to do, was getting back to the way we used to do things. It’s not that much fun to play by yourself and layer your record out. It’s just a lot more fun, everybody getting together and playing it, then when you’ve done it, everybody looking at each other and going, “Okay.” You don’t have to wait for anybody to say, “Okay, that’s the one.” Then you don’t try to tear it to pieces because maybe something was not right. It was right just then. You did it. That’s just the way I like it. I don’t really like the overproduced, one-at-a-time-type thing.

T: So, you guys were playing in a room together?

F: Yup. Our little Foam Box Studios.

T: With Rick Rubin behind the board.

F: Not so much. He was involved more in the picking of material, or saying, “Work with this another week. See what you can do to change this.” We went out and did a lot of stuff at Shangri La. But I think the majority of it is stuff that we did on our own. He’s a good guy. But we’re old dogs. You can’t teach us that many new tricks.

T: Well, it’s working for you.

F: Yeah!

T: I like the record a lot.

F: Yeah, you can’t tell. I like “Flyin’ High.” I really like it, and it’s not a typical ZZ song because of the harmonies and all that. But I really like that song, and it almost didn’t make it on there, because Rick Rubin didn’t like it that much. You don’t know. We all agreed on “Gotsta Get Paid.” But there were a couple of tracks that Dusty sang on that didn’t make it on there that I thought were keepers. But I think they’re re-releasing it and putting those two tracks back on. I think when it first came out on iTunes, the first downloads had those two tracks. But one thing we wanted to do was have 10 tracks on the album. I guess the record before that, we had put 18 on there. We had 18 songs, and we just thought, “Well, we’ll put them all on there.” That didn’t work, so this time, we thought, “We’ll just put on the best 10.” But we couldn’t decide which were the best 10.

Like I said, there were a couple of Dusty things that I liked a lot. Of course, Dusty was upset they didn’t make it, too! (laughs)

T: My editor is a huge fan of Dusty’s singing, and he keeps saying, “Ask them why he’s not singing more!” (laughs)

F: Yeah, in the beginning, we were playing a show...I think it was at the Cotton Bowl. It was 50,000 people there or whatever, but you could hear this one voice crying out from the crowd, “LET DUSTY SING ONE!” It was his mom! (big laughs) She was about 60 years old at the time! So, we’ve always got to think about that one: “Let Dusty sing one!”

T: You think he’ll sing more than that on the next one?

F: I hope so! I like the ones Dusty sings.

T: Are you guys looking to do another record?

F: Not really. We will, if we feel like the time is right. But we’re not like, “Oh, gotta make another record! Gotta make another record!” Don’t really care one way or another.

T: I liked the vinyl on this one. It was cool because it was two 12-inch 45s.

F: Wow!

T: Sounds MASSIVE!

F: Really? There you go! Once again, you’re one up on me! (laughs) But I do like vinyl. I’ve still got all our stuff on vinyl.

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