Frank Beard is also known as The Merry Frankster and Rube Beard. Frank is born in Jacksonville, Texas, on June 11, 1949. He grew up in Irving, just east of Dallas. To be truthful, he took up the drums at the age of fourteen just to impress the ladies. In fact, it got him worldwide fame and a whole lot closer to the ladies. Here is how it all started...



When Frank scratched up enough money for his own drumkit he landed a job as a drummer at a strip club. Frank recalls his first first professional gig:

"[I was] playing at a strip club in Fort Worth with Dusty Hill for $10 a night. At the time, I was in a high school band, but we went to the strip club to audition one Friday night. We didn't get the job, but Dusty's brother's band, the American Blues were there and they hired me as their drummer. So I had to leave my high school band. That was about 1965."

Soon he could play songs like "Night Train" and "The Stripper" in his sleep. Pretty soon Frank got tired of that and hooked up with Dusty and Rocky in a band called The Warlocks.



Later Frank Beard wound up bent over the sink as drummer for American Blues bleaching his hair preparatory to dying it blue. "It hurt like hell", he recalls with some fondness. We'll never know if the combination of blue locks and the tub whacking really got to the gals or not, but it was the head of the trail that led to the little room where Billy was waiting for something momentous to happen.



Just three guys from Texas about to form a little old band from Texas that would eventually take the world by storm, and rewrite the rock 'n' roll history books: ZZ Top.



The bearded blues brothers began playing rock 'n' roll as ZZ Top on February 10, 1970. The band evolved out of Houston's psychedelic scene. ZZ Top's original line-up featured Dan Mitchell on drums. This initial trio completed ZZ Top's debut single, "Salt Lick", before Greig was fired. He was replaced by Bill Ethridge. Mitchell was then replaced by Frank Beard.



Initially ZZ Top joined a growing swell of southern boogie bands and started a constant round of touring, building up a strong following. Their debut album, while betraying a healthy interest in blues, was firmly within this genre, but Rio Grande Mud indicated a greater flexibility. It included the rousing "Francine" which, although indebted to the Rolling Stones, gave the trio their first hit and introduced them to a much wider audience.



One of rock's maverick attractions, Gibbons, Hill and Beard have retained their eccentric, colourful image, dark glasses and Stetson hats, complete with an almost casual musical dexterity that has won over hardened cynics and carping critics.



Frank's drum set during the XXX tour (1999-2000) consisted of some extra long toms and bass drums that spread twice as far as most double bass set ups. (See also some of the pictures on the right). In an interview with Tama Frank explains:

"It's an idea that I came up with a long time ago when the first double pedal came out, and that second pedal was on a spring. So, I thought about the idea of using the spring or outboard pedal, and not putting a pedal in front of the main pedal. I tried it out, but it didn't work because the spring made the action slow. We did an African tour a couple of years ago, and after I got off the tour, my wife and my family went on a safari of Kenya and Tanzania. I became fascinated with the drums down there. When I came back home, I got together with John Douglas, who is a complete genius, an excellent musician, and my drum technician and we worked out my ideas."

In addition to having produced a fine (but sparse) canon of work they will also stay in the record books as having the longest beards in musical history - although one member, the inappropriately named Frank Beard, was clean-shaven for years.



Whether it was by design or chance, ZZ Top are doomed to end every music encyclopedia.