ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard is dealing with health issues during summer tour

ZZ Top is pushing ahead with their ongoing American summer tour despite yet another setback for the Texas veterans: drummer Frank Beard has been forced to step back temporarily due to health issues. A band spokesperson confirmed to Rolling Stone that fill in drummer Michael Monahan will be taking over behind the kit for the remaining shows. Alongside Monahan, the band will perform with founding guitarist and vocalist Billy Gibbons and bassist Elwood Francis, the former guitar tech of the late Dusty Hill, who joined the group after Hill's death in July 2021 at the age of 72.

The announcement was prompted by the sudden cancellation of their Hollywood Bowl show in Los Angeles on August 5, which was supposed to be the opening night of the headline summer tour featuring rotating support acts including Cheap Trick and George Thorogood and the Destroyers. At the time, the band's management referred to "unforeseen personnel matters" without any further explanation. Gibbons said in a statement: "Insurmountable obstacles require canceling our Hollywood Bowl performance. Friends, fans and followers of ZZ Top are the best in the business and the band is counting on everyone to bear with us for this brief interruption."

Beard, who joined ZZ Top in 1969 and is now 77 years old, has been dealing with health issues for a while. In 2022 he missed a show in Paris after emergency appendix surgery, with drum tech John Douglas stepping in. Earlier last year he was again sidelined with foot and ankle problems, a stretch during which both Douglas and Monahan had already filled in for him. In September 2025 Beard returned to the stage, and Gibbons was enthusiastic about his comeback at the time. Now he is once again absent, and the exact nature of his current condition has not been disclosed.

The irony has been a talking point among fans for years: Beard is the only one of the three original ZZ Top members who does not have a beard. On the early records he appeared as "Rube Beard," but from the second album onward he was credited under his real name. He played on every studio album the band released, from ZZ Top's First Album in 1971 through to La Futura in 2012. With Dusty Hill already gone, Gibbons is now the only classic member still actively touring.

The Big One tour is continuing as planned for now. After the August 11 show at the Marymoor Amphitheater in Redmond, Washington, a string of concerts is scheduled across Oregon, Utah, Colorado, Texas and further east, wrapping up with a final American date on October 9 in Port Wentworth, Georgia. Shows in Mexico and South America follow in November. Dutch fans are not directly involved in this tour, but for anyone who knows the legendary Texas blues rock band as Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees and the iconic force behind songs like La Grange and Sharp Dressed Man, Beard's continued absence is a worrying sign for the future of the group in its most original form.