ZZ Top isn’t done. Not even close.

Billy Gibbons says the band will keep rolling after the death of drummer Frank Beard — and he’s not hedging about it. In a new interview with Texas Monthly, the ZZ Top co-founder, vocalist and guitarist said the band will continue with its current lineup, and that it is “still ZZ Top.”

It’s a big statement for a band that has now lost both of its co-founders: Beard, who died in 2026, and bassist Dusty Hill, who died in 2021. But Gibbons isn’t framing it as a farewell. He’s framing it as a handoff — one both men planned themselves.

The band’s current lineup is Gibbons on guitar and vocals, Elwood Francis on bass and Mike Monahan on drums. And according to Gibbons, both Beard and Hill picked their own replacements.

“They understood the show must go on. It’s the oldest saying in show business,” Gibbons said.

Gibbons recalled a phone call from Beard about eight months ago — a rare moment of vulnerability from a man he says almost never admitted he wasn’t up to a challenge. Beard told him he was feeling weakness in his bass-drum foot, up into his calf, and suggested Monahan keep his seat warm.

“Are you saying he’s the guy?” Gibbons asked. “Yeah,” Beard replied.

Gibbons tried to reassure him: “Well, to be quite honest, I think we’re going to be just fine.” Beard’s answer: “Yeah, that’s what worries me.” They laughed.

Then Gibbons laid out exactly how he sees this new chapter of the band:

“We’re at a very interesting vortex. The band is enjoying being a hybrid. The legacy of ZZ Top solidified sometime in the not-too-distant past. I purposely say solidified, as in, it can’t be broken up. You could take a sledgehammer to it and the ZZ Top legacy would remain intact. Now that there’s a dramatic difference in the lineup, this is where the hybrid bit comes in. We’re still ZZ Top, and only now we have the luxury of adding to what took fifty years to build. And I couldn’t be happier about it.”

He also recalled how Beard lit up when Francis first joined: “Frank was a curmudgeon. Across fifty years, I rarely saw the guy smile unless he was trying to poke fun at somebody. But once Elwood took the stage, I’d turn around and see Frank constantly looking at Elwood and smiling and laughing at the novelty of having this new guy who was on fire. It really rebonded Frank and me.”

The band isn’t easing back in, either. ZZ Top is on tour right now, playing Guadalajara, Mexico, tonight (Nov. 9), Mexico City on Nov. 11 and Monterrey on Nov. 13, before heading on to South America.

For anyone who grew up on “La Grange,” “Sharp Dressed Man” and “Legs” — the beards, the cheap sunglasses, the spinning guitars — this is the news that matters: the little ol’ band from Texas isn’t going anywhere. The legacy, as Gibbons puts it, can’t be broken up. And now the band gets to add to it.

Source: Rock and Roll Garage

Photo: Billy Gibbons performing in Tours, France, in 2011. (Antoine Tilly / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)