Rumor’s spreadin’ ’round that ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard has left the band’s Elevation Tour to focus on an unspecified “health issue.”
The Texas trio’s reps said Saturday that its co-founder “has temporarily stepped away from the current tour to attend a health issue requiring his focus in the near term” and is “looking forward to a speedy recovery.”
John Douglas, a longtime tech member of the Texas boogie band, will man the drum kit in the interim. He played with ZZ Top back in 2002 when Beard underwent an emergency appendectomy in Paris.
The band’s Elevation Tour kicked off March 5 in Alabama and is slated to run through April 12 in Arkansas.
ZZ Top was formed in 1969 in Houston, featuring Beard alongside singer-guitarist Billy Gibbons and bassist-singer Dusty Hill. They went on to become one of rock’s best-loved trios — and bands — with their massive success driven by signature videos that then-nascent MTV played in heavy rotation. And Hill and Gibbons’ signature beards. They long had considered the rock band with the longest-tenured original lineup until Hill died in 2021 at 72. Elwood Francis has played bass for the group since Hill death.
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Known for such classic tracks as “La Grange,” “Tush,” “Cheap Sunglasses,” “Sharp Dressed Man,” “Legs” and many others, ZZ Top has released 15 studio albums during its career — including half live/half-studio album Fandango! They’ve sold more than 25 million records in the U.S. alone, per the RIAA, seven of LPs going platinum or multiplatinum, with four others going gold. The group was featured in the 2019 documentary ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band from Texas, which scored a Grammy nom for Best Music Film.
