ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard quits tour to take care of health

ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard is stepping away from the band’s Elevation tour to undergo a procedure related to his health.

Beard “has temporarily stepped away from the current tour to attend to a health issue requiring his attention in the near term,” the band’s management company posted Saturday on X (formerly Twitter).

“Beard, along with fellow ZZ Top members Billy F. Gibbons and Elwood Francis, presently on the Elevation tour since March 5, have engaged fellow Texan and longtime tech member, percussionist and drummer, John Douglas, for the interim.”

Douglas previously filled in for Beard in 2002 when the latter had an emergency appendectomy in Paris.

The band’s anchor, bass player Dusty Hill, died in 2021 in his sleep. He was 72, and his death marked the end of the band’s 51-year run with its original members: Hill, Gibbons and Beard.

Francis, who had been working as a guitar technician with the band, started covering Hill’s gigs shortly before his death and has wound up staying in the role.

“When I first started doing it, Dusty was just sick and going home for a few weeks. It was entirely different; I was just helping out,” he told Guitar World last summer. He said at first he didn’t have to worry about the “weight of the crown” because he was just helping out. But stepping into the role wasn’t easy.

“It’s just weird,” Francis said. “Dusty is their bass player. I’m not the bass player. I’m not in the band. I’ll never be in the band. I shouldn’t be in the band. It’s Dusty’s thing.”