ZZ TOP- drummer Frank Beard dies, 77

Drummer Frank Beard loses battle with ravages of addiction at age 77.
Remarkably evergreen over five decades after release, ZZ Top’s breakthrough third album Tres Hombres in July 1973 is still a fan favorite because of undated sound and a saddlebag full of timeless tunes. ZZ Top leads off with the funky “Waitin’ for the Bus”, the Texas blues “Jesus Just Left Chicago”, the party perennial “Beer Drinkers and Hellraisers”, the dashboard pounder “Move Me on Down the Line”, and the surprise crossover hit of Summer 1973,”La Grange”.

The late legendary ZZ Top manager and producer Bill Ham was an old-school former independent record promoter from Houston that could smell a hit from a thousand miles away. But initially he didn’t “hear” the band’s first (and certainly most important) hit back in 1973 on Tres Hombres, and almost missed the breakthrough of what had become America’s longest running original rock band in history until the sudden death of Dusty Hill in 2021.
You see, Ham knew that radio station airplay was the key to success in those days, so band managers like himself worked very closely with record label promotion executives to “front load” the sequence of songs on an album to put the perceived hit songs first.
So when ZZ Top’s critical third album Tres Hombres  came out in July 1973, if the savvy manager had identified “Lagrange”, the heavily John Lee Hooker-inspired rave up about a redlight roadhouse outside Houston, as truly crossover Top 40 material, why would he have buried it as track #9 on the album?
My classic rock interview which includes the all-important transitional second ZZ Top album, Rio Grande Mud, focuses on the improvements in recording quality and songwriting reflected in such perennials as “Francine”, “Just Got Paid”, “Sure Got Cold After the Rain Fell”, and the introduction of “the squank” to guitar vernacular on “KoKo Blue”. Squankmaster Billy Gibbons, drummer Frank Beard, and the dearly missed Dusty Hill tell the colorful tales of the earliest days of ZZ Top here In the Studio for  Tres Hombres’ five decade pit stop.

In this classic rock interview about their first four unique albums, guitarist/singer Billy Gibbons, bass player/singer Dusty Hill, and drummer Frank Beard cover the topics of “Vampire Travel”; a three-legged beaver; blowing the roof off a New Orleans nightclub ; beer drinkers and hellraisers; “T” for Texas ,”T” for Tennessee ; wearing 60 pound Nudie suits while performing in summer at 3 in the afternoon in an Ohio cornfield… you know, all the rock ‘n’roll basics.

ZZ TOP covers pre-Viagra goat gland operations in Mexico; Southern Select beer ; the Mexican food feast photo in the original album cover fold-out; border radio XERF; and the “squank” ….just the usual rock cliches.

In the conclusion to our  In The Studio rockumentary of the July 1973 ZZ TOP album  Tres Hombres, the boys discuss the infamous Chicken Ranch outside of Houston, the inspiration for their breakout hit”La Grange” and  years later the Broadway musical Best Little Whorehouse in Texas; redneck road surfing from the back of a pickup truck in an iron cage in”Master of Sparks”; Queen Bee barbecue; and why legendary University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal was not a ZZ TOP fan. – Redbeard