Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa (December 21, 1940 - December 4, 1993) was an American rock musician, composer and satirist.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Zappa was raised in California where he grew up influenced in equal measures by avant garde composers such as Edgar Varese and Igor Stravinsky and the local rhythm and blues and doo-wop groups.

After a short career as a professional songwriter (his elegiac "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by The Penguins) Zappa joined a local R&B band as a guitarist. A short time later he re-christened the band "The Mothers" (and, later still, "Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention" at the insistence of the record company.)

The Mothers were signed by well known producer Tom Wilson, and soon produced the double album Freak Out (1966) a mixture of often topical R&B and experimental sound collage. The similarly eclectic Absolutely Free and Lumpy Gravy followed the next year. Zappa also recorded We're Only In It For The Money, a withering satire on both flower power and the prevailing mood of mainstream America; the cover parodied that of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, replacing flowers with vegetables.

After several more albums with the Mothers including the Doo-Wop flavoured Cruising With Ruben And The Jets, Zappa released the solo instrumental album Hot Rats, featuring his free jazz inflected guitar playing, as well as a live set recorded at the Fillmore East and featuring John Lennon. He continued this high rate of production through the early 1970s, including the excellent and accessible albums One Size Fits All and Apostrophe, with a new versions of the Mothers. See Tom and Jerry for an anecdote from this era.

After a break Zappa returned, and much of his later work was influenced by his use of the synclavier as a compositional and performance tool and his mastery of studio techniques for producing specific instrumental effects. His work was also more explicitly political satirising the rise of television evangelists and the Republican party.

On September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the US Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music censorship organization founded by Al Gore's wife Tipper Gore and including many other political wives, including the wives of five members of the committee. He said,

"The PMRC proposal is an ill-conceived piece of nonsense which fails to deliver any real benefits to children, infringes the civil liberties of people who are not children and promises to keep the courts busy for years dealing with the interpretational and enforcemental problems inherent in the proposal's design.

"It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC's demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation."

In the early 1990s Zappa devoted almost all of his energy to modern orchestral and synclavier works. In 1992 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, a disease which caused his death on December 4, 1993. His last tour in a "rock band format" took place in 1988 with a 12-piece which was reported to have a repetoire of over 800 (mostly Zappa) compositions, but which split acrimoniously before the tour was completed. The tour was documented on the albums The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life (Zappa "standards" and obscure cover tunes), Make a Jazz Noise here (mostly instrumental and experimental music) and Broadway The Hard Way (new original material), with bits also to be found on You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore Volume 6.

Zappa was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

Discography

• Freak Out! (1966)
• Absolutely Free (1967)
• Lumpy Gravy (1967)
• We're Only In It For The Money (1968)
• Cruising With Ruben & The Jets (1968)
• Uncle Meat (1969)
• Mothermania (1969)
• Hot Rats (1969)
• Burnt Weeny Sandwich (1969)
• Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970)
• Chunga's Revenge (1970)
• Fillmore East - June 1971 (1971)
• 200 Motels (1971)
• Just Another Band From L.A. (1972)
• Waka/Jawaka (1972)
• The Grand Wazoo (1972)
• Over-Nite Sensation (1973)
• Apostrophe (1974)
• Roxy & Elsewhere (1974)
• One Size Fits All (1975)
• Bongo Fury (1975)
• Zoot Allures (1976)
• Zappa In New York (1978)
• Studio Tan (1978)
• Sleep Dirt (1979)
• Sheik Yerbouti (1979)
• Orchestral Favorites (1979)
• Joe's Garage (1979)
• Tinseltown Rebellion (1981)
• Shut Up 'N' Play Yer Guitar (1981)
• You Are What You Is (1981)
• Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch (1982)
• The Man From Utopia (1983)
• Baby Snakes (1983)
• London Symphony Orchestra vol 1 (1983)
• The Perfect Stranger (1984)
• Them Or Us (1984)
• Thing-Fish (1984)
• Francesco Zappa (1984)
• FZ Meets The Mothers Of Prevention (1985)
• Does Humor Belong In Music? (1986)
• Jazz From Hell (1986)
• London Symphony Orchestra vol 2 (1987)
• Guitar (1988)
• You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore vol 1 (1988)
• You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore vol 2 (1988)
• Broadway The Hard Way (1989)
• You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore vol 3 (1989)
• The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life (1991)
• You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore vol 4 (1991)
• Make A Jazz Noise Here (1991)
• You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore vol 5 (1992)
• You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore vol 6 (1992)
• Playground Psychotics (1992)
• Ahead Of Their Time (1993)
• The Yellow Shark (1993)
• Civilization, Phaze III (1994)
• Strictly Commercial (1995)
• The Lost Episodes (1996)
• Läther (1996)
• Mystery Disc (1998)
• Everything Is Healing Nicely (1999)
• FZ:OZ (2002)

Additional Reading Material:

• The Real Frank Zappa Book, by Frank Zappa and Peter Occhiogrosso, is the definitive Zappa autobiography. Includes his Senate testimony.

• No Commercial Potential--The Saga of Frank Zappa, by David Walley

• Frank Zappa's Negative Dialectic of Poodle Play, by Ben Watson

• In Cold Sweat-Interviews With Really Scary Musicians, by Thomas Wictor, contains an extensive interview with Scott Thunes, one of Zappa's most creative bassists.

• Lunar Notes-Zoot Horn Rollo's Captain Beefheart Experience, by Bill Harkleroad, contains several references about Zappa's collaboration with Don Van Vliet, better known as Captain Beefheart.