Frank Beard was the enigma at the heart of ZZ Top. "I never wanted to quit ZZ Top. And I never wanted to get fired"

ZZ Top’s Frank Beard posing for a photograph in the 1980s.

Frank Beard, who has died at the age of 77, spent much of his life sitting slightly apart from the mythology of ZZ Top. While Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill transformed themselves into a pair of synchronised Texan mystics in shades, Stetsons and chest-length facial hair, Beard remained the odd one out at the back of the stage; headphones on, expression unreadable, laying down the immense, disciplined grooves that helped drive ZZ Top from hard-touring blues boogie trio to one of the most distinctive arena bands of the MTV era.

“I’m a seventh-generation Texan,” Beard said in the documentary That Little Ol’ Band From Texas. “I know that my father’s family came into Texas in 1836. I know that my grandmother, Bessie Dossett, walked behind a covered wagon in 1899 from Louisiana.”