Father Of Invention (1993)

People Magazine, December 20, 1993.

Four years ago, over a noontime breakfast of espresso, doughnuts and cigarettes, Frank Zappa explained why, at 48, he was quitting rock and roll. "A long time ago, the music business was dada - it used to be absurd," said the freak daddy of the most dada rock band of all time, The Mothers of Invention. "It used to be any kind of world. Now the music business is people who make endorsements for liquids with bubbles in them."

And so Zappa, the lifelong contrarian whose music mocked and shocked the rock world for three decades, bowed out quietly. A year later the prolific composer and satirist behind such albums as Uncle Meat and Weasels Ripped My Flesh would learn that he was suffering from the untreatable prostate cancer that killed him on Dec. 4 at 52. Though he had been ill for several years, repeated examinations had failed to reveal the cancer until 1990. "That's why it came as such a shock", Zappa said last spring. "You can imagine how irate a person might be when you are informed, 'yeah, you've got it, and we can't operate on it.'"

Chemotherapy and one prolonged morphine treatment left the vehemently antidrug Zappa unable to put in his usual 16-hour days composing avant-garde music. Still, he was able to complete his last work, Civilization Phaze III, at the L.A. home he shared with his wife of 26 years, Gail, 48, and their four children, Moon, 26, Dweezil, 24, Ahmet, 19, and Diva, 14. Old friends dropped by and even Al and Tipper Gore - whose 1985 campaign to sticker rock records drew Zappa's ire - sent a note of encouragement. Said Zappa protege Alice Cooper, "Everybody that was considered a genius, from The Beatles to Brian Wilson, looked to Zappa as the genius."

Though he often said he didn't care how he was remembered, Zappa once framed his own legacy when discussing his 60-odd albums. "I don't do anything for applause," he said. "Everything I do is for laughs."