ZZ Top Stories in Honor of Frank Beard
If you're from Texas, and especially if you're from Houston, ZZ Top looms large over the social, cultural, and musical landscape.
They were huge in the '70s, and then in the '80s, when they took over the world and MTV with the Eliminator record, you couldn't get away from them.
And these weren't sequestered rock stars. They were everywhere in Houston. You'd see them all around.
Later, in my professional life, when I worked in the food business, they had some contract issues, and I got brought in by a friend of a friend to help them with a few things.
Although my main contact was Billy Gibbons, I did see Frank a couple times, and I will say this on his passing: I think it's the Tab colas that kept him going.
I never saw him without one.
I'd have all this stuff to do, and all this hierarchy to negotiate, but all I could think about was, where is he getting those Tabs? Maybe it was the chemicals in there that were keeping him alive.
He also had his dog with him at all times.
When they finished playing, she'd run out and get him from the drum riser, like she'd been waiting for him the whole time.
I have one of these dogs that's attached to me. Just the sweetest thing.
He was a great drummer till the end, or at least until I stopped going to shows, and for a while there, I was going to a lot of them.
My favorite ZZ Top story happened in a south Austin Mexican restaurant.
Billy was doing some shopping with his wife, and she had gone to a Nordstrom Rack store—or I think it was before Rack, it was just a huge discount store.
And he just wanted to get some food.
I met him down there.
He was always super generous with selfies and talking to people, and they would tell him the same story with the same nerves, with the same jumpiness, and he was very gracious in making them feel all right about what they were doing.
Although, inevitably, they were interrupting something.
Again, he was a total gentleman, and it was really nice to see.
So anyway, an especially nervous lady came up.
And she was fumbling with her phone, and she couldn't hardly get his name out. She couldn't find the right way up on her phone. Maybe she was looking at it backwards.
And he finally says, hey, here, let me do this. Why don't we take a selfie?
And she's like, oh my gosh, selfie, what a great idea, as if it's the first time she'd ever heard the word.
Anyway, we finally get the picture taken after he's negotiating this humongous phone—one of those Galaxy phones with 50 different camera lenses, and to her credit, you didn't know which side was up.
But the picture gets taken, Billy does it, and he looks at her and asks, "Can I give you one piece of advice?"
She's like, "Oh yes, what?"
"Get a fucking iPhone."