{"id":573196,"date":"2026-08-18T23:40:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:40:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/573196\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T23:40:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:40:10","slug":"zz-top-drummer-frank-beard-dies-at-age-77","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/573196\/","title":{"rendered":"ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard dies at age 77"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beard was in hospice care when he died at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, with family members at his side, band representative Bob Merlis said.<\/p>\n

Born in Frankston, Texas in 1949, Beard joined ZZ Top in 1969 and followed the three-man band\u2019s progression from heavy blues to its experimental synthesiser sound of the 1980s.<\/p>\n

The trio also gained fame for popular music videos, including \u201cGimme All Your Lovin\u201d, which won three MTV Video Music Awards.<\/p>\n

ZZ Top\u2019s original bassist Dusty Hill died in 2021.<\/p>\n

The band, Billy Gibbons, bassist Elwood Francis and touring drummer Michael Monahan, has cancelled dates in Salt Lake City and Colorado Springs after Beard\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

The group said on social media it will continue shows this weekend at Austin City Limits in Texas, \u201cone of Fank\u2019s favourite venues and in a city that had been something of a second home for him\u201d.<\/p>\n

– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beard was in hospice care when he died at his ranch in Richmond, Texas, with family members at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":573197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[100518,7127,8239,696,1975,23930,102439,6179,7126,13243,156,36341,209,9851,111,139,69,282512,282511,165,3010,14578,282510],"class_list":["post-573196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-100518","tag-age","tag-american","tag-announced","tag-at","tag-band","tag-beard","tag-died","tag-dies","tag-drummer","tag-entertainment","tag-frank","tag-group","tag-longtime","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-publicist","tag-rockblues","tag-their","tag-top","tag-tuesday","tag-zz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/573197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}