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[[image:FrankZappa70s.jpg|right|thumb|200px|Frank Zappa in the early 1970s]]
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'''Frank Vincent Zappa''' (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was widely known as an American composer, bandleader, singer-songwriter,  and multi-instrumentalist;  but he was also a satirist, film director, graphic designer, a campaigner against censorship, and an autodidact.  When combined with his interest in multiple other topics it can be a challenge to document it all. 
  
'''Frank Vincent Zappa''' ([[December 21]], [[1940]] - [[December 4]], [[1993]]) was an [[United States|American]] [[Rock and roll|rock]]/[[jazz fusion]] [[music]]ian, [[composer]], and [[satire|satirist]].
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For over thirty years Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works. He produced most of the 60+ [[wikipedia:Album|albums]] that he released with his bands, variously known as the Mothers of Invention, The Mothers or as Zappa. These recordings were primarily distributed as vinyl [[wikipedia:phonograph record|phonograph records]] and, later, as [[wikipedia:compact disc|compact disc]]s.<ref>Vinyl records were the main means of distributing music in Zappa's lifetime, eventually superseded by digital compact discs towards the end of the 20th century. But note Zappa's [[ A Proposal For A System To Replace Phonograph Record Merchandising]], which anticipated digital downloading and streaming services decades before they would be available.</ref>
  
==Early life and influences==
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Zappa considered his work a continuum:
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<blockquote>It's all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had the master tapes and I could take a razor blade<ref>[[wikipedia:Reel-to-reel audio tape recording#Hostory|Tape editing]] required physically cutting the tape with a blade and sticking the required parts together.</ref> and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to.... I could do this twenty ways. The material is definitely related.<ref name="BM">Barry Miles, [[Frank Zappa: A Biography]] (Atlantic Books 2004)</ref></blockquote>
  
Born in [[Baltimore, Maryland]] on [[21 December]] [[1940]], Zappa was of mixed Sicilian, Italian, Greek, Arab, French, Irish, and German ancestry. He was the oldest of four children, with two brothers and a sister.  In January [[1951]] the Zappa family relocated to the west coast because of Frank's [[asthma]], settling in [[Monterey, California|Monterey]], [[California]], on the coast about 100 miles south of [[San Francisco, California|San Francisco]]. They moved to [[Pomona, California|Pomona]], then [[El Cajon, California|El Cajon]] before moving a short distance once again to [[San Diego, California|San Diego]] in the early [[1950s]]. By [[1955]] the Zappa family relocated to [[Lancaster, California|Lancaster]], which at the time was a small [[aircraft]] and farming town in the [[Antelope Valley]] in the [[Mojave Desert]] 73 miles north of downtown [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] north of the [[San Gabriel Mountains]]. By age 15, Frank had attended six different [[high school]]s, which may have contributed to his sense of alienation in adult life.
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Each piece of work added another element to the whole; a process he referred to as [[Project/Object]] and the thread that ran throughout the works to draw them into a unified whole was known as [[Conceptual Continuity]].  As Miles averred in his biography it is too simplistic to follow a trail of readily identifiable concepts, a poodle here or a sausage there, when the real intention was far more serious.<ref name="BM"></ref>
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==Youth==
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[[Image:ZappaFamily.jpeg|right|thumb|300px|The Zappas: Patrice, Francis, Rose, Carl, Frank, Bobby]]
  
His father, a [[chemist]] and mathematician who was born in [[Sicily]], worked nearby at [[Edwards Air Force Base]] which had at the time a federal government chemical warfare research facility. Due to their proximity to Edwards AFB, he kept gas masks at home in case of an accident, and this evidently had a profound effect on the young Frank. References to germs, germ warfare and other aspects of the 'secret' defence industry occur throughout his work. His father once wrote and published a small mathematical volume on gambling odds.
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Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland on the east coast of the USA one year before the USA's formal entry [[wikipedia:Attack on Pearl Harbor|into World War 2]]. He was the first child of [[Francis Zappa|Francis]] and [[Rose Marie Zappa|Rose]]. He would be joined by two brothers: [[Bobby Zappa|Bobby]] (1943 - 2018) and [[Carl Zappa|Carl]] (1948  - 2020) and a sister [[Patrice Zappa|Patrice]] (1951).
  
Lancaster's location gave the young Zappa access to the exciting sounds coming from radio stations in Los Angeles and beyond, as well as exposure to the hype that went with it, and his parents were affluent enough to afford a record player, records, a TV, and musical instruments. TV also exerted a strong influence and references to TV and TV shows, including quotations from themes and advertising jingles, can be found in almost every piece he wrote.
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He suffered with asthma and ear and sinus problems throughout his early childhood.<ref name="BM"></ref>  In 1944 his father took a job working for the US Navy calculating shell trajectories which required the family to move to Florida. And so began Zappa's peripatetic childhood.  They moved back to Maryland in 1946, to Edgewood beside the [[wikipedia:Aberdeen Proving Ground|Aberdeen Proving Ground]].  In 1951 his father was employed at the [[Wikipedia:Naval Postgraduate School|Naval Research Center & School]] and the family relocated to Pacific Grove, Monterey in California.  
  
Another formative event was a persistent sinus problem during his early teens. To Frank's lasting horror, his doctor treated the stubborn ailment by inserting a pellet of [[radium]] into his nose on a probe. Nasal imagery and references to the nose also recur, both in his writing and in the classic collage album covers created by his longtime visual collaborator, [[Cal Schenkel]].
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Young Zappa attended orchestral percussion lessons at tutor Keith McKillop's summer school in Monterey, where he played a solo self-composed piece on the snare drum, entitled '[[Mice]]' for a year-end concert. This was in the summer of 1953, before the family moved again - south to San Diego - where Zappa was enrolled in [[Wikipedia:Grossmont High School|Grossmont High School]]. Pursuing his interest in percussion he joined [[The Ramblers]], a high school R&B band that managed to secure a gig at the [[Uptown Hall]] in nearby Hillcrest. After ninth grade he entered [[Wikipedia:Mission Bay Senior High School|Mission Bay High School]], where he was enlightened about 'twelve-tone music' by [[Mr. Kavelman]]. In 1956 Zappa's father became employed on [[Wikipedia:Atlas (rocket)|Atlas]] programs at the Air Force Base in Lancaster, to where the family again moved and 16 year-old FZ enrolled at [[Antelope Valley High School|Antelope Valley High School]]. The desolation and surroundings of this location, together with the nearby air-base activities and emergency gas-masks about the house, were to have a strong influence on the fertile mind of the juvenile Frank Zappa and his musical relationships.
  
As a student, he was bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with his antics, and was once suspended from school for a dangerous prank involving explosive chemicals and a Parents' Open House night. He left community college after one semester in order to make low-budget films. He maintained his disdain for formal education throughout his life, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college. Nevertheless, he was in essence a [[polymath]]. He was highly intelligent, ambitious and articulate, widely read, and possessed a voracious intelligence, drive, singular concentration, enormous creativity and a huge capacity for work and organisation. However, he was passionately interested in music, developing wide-ranging and highly idiosyncratic musical interests and demonstrating superior ability at an early age. His parents were not musicians but had broad musical tastes also, and he grew up influenced in equal measures by [[avant-garde]] composers such as [[Edgar Varèse]] and [[Igor Stravinsky]], local [[rhythm and blues]] and [[doo-wop]] groups (particularly local [[pachuco]] groups), and modern jazz, including [[bebop]] and [[free jazz]], all of which influences show up in his work.  
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In Lancaster Zappa's future attitude in mixing humor with ''socio-political'' music can be glimpsed in his forming of the racially-integrated [[The Blackouts]] in 1957, who rehearsed in nearby [[Sun Village]], whilst earlier exposure to [[Ionisation]] - a recording by avant garde classical composer [[Edgard Varèse]] - instilled an interest in advanced rhythmic experimentation that never left him. This interest was compounded when he managed to speak to the composer's wife by 'phone late in '56, leading to a latter 'phone conversation with Varèse himself in early '57- who then responded further to FZ with a letter in the summer of that year.
  
Zappa was from the first interested in sounds for their own sake, which led to his interest in modern composers. His introduction to [[Stravinsky]] seems to have been a pivotal musical discovery but he was soon ranging even further afield, musically, in addition to his interests in jazz, doo-wop, R&B, and rock'n'roll. After reading a magazine review panning Varèse's dissonant drum piece in "Ionisation" (actually ''The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One'') as 'a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds', the teenage Zappa became convinced that he should seek out Varèse's music. When he spotted a copy of ''The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One'' in a local record store, where it was being used as a hi-fi demonstration record, he convinced the salesman to sell him the copy despite the fact that he didn't have the full price, beginning a lifelong passion for Varèse and his music. Zappa's mother gave him considerable encouragement. Although she greatly disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to give Frank the gift of a long distance call to the composer at his home in New York as a fifteenth birthday present. Unfortunately, Varèse was away in Europe at the time, but the young fan spoke to the composer's wife. He and Varèse subsequently wrote to each other. Zappa had Varèse's letter framed and he kept it for the rest of his life. [http://csunix1.lvc.edu/~snyder/em/zappa.html]
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The electric guitar, which Zappa had taught himself to play, also became a fascination and he began collecting R&B records that featured guitar solos; [[Howlin' Wolf]] with [[Hubert Sumlin]], [[Muddy Waters]], [[Johnny "Guitar" Watson]] and [[Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown]] were special favourites. A high school friend, Don Vliet (later to add 'van' to his nomenclature and become [[Captain Beefheart]]), shared his interest in other Mississippi Delta blues musicians and the avant-garde jazz of [[John Coltrane]], [[Cecil Taylor]] and [[Ornette Coleman]]. Zappa said of his first guitar, "It didn't have a make on it – it had been kinda sandblasted! My brother got it for $1.50 at an auction and it was an archtop, f-hole, ugly motherf***er with the strings about a half-inch off the fingerboard. I liked it because it was so tinny-sounding. It was just an acoustic guitar, but it was moving closer to that wiry tone I liked with Johnny Guitar Watson, especially if you picked it right next to the bridge." On moving to an electric guitar he said, "My father had a guitar which he kept in a closet, a round-hole guitar of anonymous make, and I stuck one of those DeArmond soundhole pickups in that, so it wasn't a real electric guitar. I guess it was around four or five years later that I actually got an electric guitar. There was a music store not far from my house, and I rented this Telecaster for $15 a month. Eventually I had to give it back, because I couldn't make the payments on it."
  
Zappa began his playing career on drums, taking his first lessons at school in the summer of 1953, aged 13. He drummed with local teenage combos, but later switched to guitar, which he quickly mastered. Although he performed as a singer-guitarist for most of his career, Zappa always retained a strong interest in rhythm and percussion. His bands have been notable for the excellence of their drummers and works such as ''The Black Page'' are notorious for the virtuoso complexity of their rhythmic structure and arrangement, featuring radical changes of tempo and metre and short, densely arranged passages which are contrasted with free-form breaks and extended improvisations. Classically trained percussionist and drummer [[Terry Bozzio]], who played for Zappa in the late [[1970s]] as well as playing and recording many well-known classical and avant-garde works, is on record as saying that Zappa's writing for percussion is as difficult and complex as anything else he has played.
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Back in Grossmont high school Zappa had begun to write chamber music when he was 14, but "No one would play it", he said. His first forays into composition were actually brought about because he liked to draw. "I saw some music and I liked the way it looked and set out to draw it. ... My formal education is a little skimpy. What I know is mostly from reading books I got out of the library. But I think that's good, if you want to be a composer. If you do go to school, you end up picking up the habits of your teachers", he said. Because Zappa was an incorrigible senior student at high school he was directed to take some harmony classes "to occupy his mind". He did two months of harmonics study and found the course very boring, learning rote fashion from [[Walter Piston]]'s harmony book. In fact, in the learning process,  he generally rebelled against what his eyes or ears disliked. "Every time one of the exercises was presented, you would hear how the chords were supposed to resolve. All I could hear was the infliction of normality on my imagination. And I kept wondering why should I pollute my mind with this shit, because if I ever got good at it, I'd be out of business", he said in an [[The Mother of All Interviews (Part 1)|interview with Don Menn]]. When Menn suggested to Zappa that, when [[Charles Ives]] was studying harmony at Harvard and found the course 'crazy', Ives wrote to his father saying, "This guy wants me to resolve my chords better", to which Ives' father responded "Tell your professor some chords just don't want to resolve." Zappa responded to Menn's suggestion with, "The guy who was teaching me was a guy named Mr. Russell, who was a jazz trumpet player, and I don't think that he enjoyed harmony very much either, but that's what he was teaching. I could have said to him, "Hey, some chords shouldn't resolve." And he would probably say, "Yeah, but you'll get a D if you don't resolve them."
  
In [[1956]] Zappa met [[Captain Beefheart]] (Don Van Vliet) while taking classes at Antelope Valley High School, when Zappa was playing guitar in a local band, The Blackouts, a racially-mixed outfit that also included Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood, who later lived with Zappa at 'Studio Z' and was a member of the Mothers of Invention, playing on many of their most famous recordings. They became close friends, influencing each other musically, and becoming collaborators in the late Sixties and mid- Seventies (on the album Bongo Fury, released 1975), although they later became estranged for a period of years. Van Vliet's own feelings about Frank Zappa were perhaps best summarized in a quote published in a March 1994 issue of Musician magazine: "I knew him for thirty-seven years, and in the end, the relationship was private."
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==First recordings==
  
In [[1957]] Zappa was given his first guitar and quickly developed into a highly accomplished and inventive player. He considered his solos "air sculptures", and developed an eclectic, fluent and extremely individual style, eventually becoming one of the most highly regarded electric guitarists of his time. It is possible that he might have become a professional jazz musician, but he was soon drawn into rock music, although he retained a lifelong attachment to jazz forms, voicings and structures and often drew his band members from the jazz world, if only because of the high degree of musical competence his music demanded.
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In 1958 William Ballard, Zappa's high school music teacher at Lancaster, provided the opportunity for Zappa to conduct two pieces with the school orchestra. Written for a string quartet, they were, '[[A Pound For A Brown (On The Bus)]]' and '[[Sleeping In A Jar]]'. In the same year The Blackouts made some recordings that later surfaced on [[The Lost Episodes]], Zappa won a statewide California art competition with a painting entitled 'Family Room', and graduated from the high school in the summer of June. In October he entered Lancaster's [[Wikipedia:Antelope Valley College|Antelope Valley Junior College]]. By December he had written a 12-tone serial exercise, called [https://www.donlope.net/fz/songs/Waltz_1.html Waltz For Guitar]. That same December two numbers were recorded in an empty Antelope Valley College classroom, with Zappa on lead guitar, his brother Bobby on rhythm guitar, Vliet on vocals, and a teacher named Jerry Ullberg providing "jivey negroid shoeshine boy" vocal, as Zappa describes it. The two songs were [[Lost In A Whirlpool]] and [[The Search For Tom Dooley]]. According to Zappa these mark the blues-singing debut of the yet to be christened Beefheart. Vliet, who then joined [[The Blackouts|The Omens]], said of the event, "Frank and I had a good time. We were just fooling around."
  
Zappa's interest in composing and arranging burgeoned in his later high school years and he dreamed of being taken seriously as a composer. Although he was primarily self-taught, his music teacher gave him considerable encouragement. By his final year he was writing prolifically and had not only composed, arranged and conducted an avant-garde performance piece for the school orchestra, but had also contrived to have the event both broadcast on local radio and recorded. A portion of this historic recording is included on the CD ''The Lost Episodes''. Zappa did see his childhood dream realized, as the [[London Symphony Orchestra]] played a program of his music, and the [[Ensemble Modern]] in [[1992]] received a 20-minute ovation after performing a program of his work a the [[Frankfurt]] Opera House.
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By 1959 Zappa had gained the friendship of English teacher [[Don Cerveris]], who had written an off-the-wall low-budget cowboy movie involving a bad ranch lady, a nympho cowgirl, a hunchback handyman and sexual union beside a rotting donkey. It was called [[Run Home Slow (The Film)|Run Home Slow]], for which Zappa was commissioned to score a soundtrack. He completed it, but there were setbacks and nothing came of this work until 1963, when Zappa produced and directed a recording of [[Run Home Slow Theme|Run Home Slow]] with a small pick-up orchestra, engineered by [[Paul Buff]], at [https://www.discogs.com/artist/392601-Art-Laboe Art Laboe's Original Sound] in Hollywood. The film was finally produced by Tim Sullivan, starred Mercedes McCambridge, and was released in 1965. Zappa said of Run Home Slow, "The money from this job was used to buy an electric guitar and the [[Pal Studio|Pal Recording Studio]] in [[Cucamonga]]. Pal was re-named [[Studio Z]]."
  
During high school Zappa had also developed a strong interest in graphic arts. After graduating in June [[1958]] he worked for a time in advertising. His sojourn in the commercial world was another important influence on his work, and within a few years Zappa was co-opting the techniques he learned as a commercial artist, and was using them to deconstruct music, the music business, the media and society at large by combining them with the ideas he had gleaned from his studies of [[dada]], [[situationism]], and [[surrealism]].  
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After writing the movie score Zappa moved south to Ontario, near Pomona, with his girlfriend [[Kay Sherman]], whom he married in December, 1960. In 1961 Mr & Mrs Zappa, Carl and Candy moved to Sarasota, Florida, leaving Bobby in California. The newly-married Zappa audited a course on composition set by [[Karl Kohn]] at Pomona College, Claremont, and this is the point at which he rented a white Fender Telecaster but couldn't maintain the payments. However, this didn't prevent him playing lead guitar with [[The Boogie Men]], a band which had Doug Rost on rhythm, Kenny Burgan on sax and [[Al Surratt]] on drums. In the summer he scored [[The World’s Greatest Sinner (The Film)|The World's Greatest Sinner]], a dark 'operatic' piece, narrated by the characters of [[The Devil (CC)|Satan]], Clarence and his wife Edna.
  
Zappa always took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, rapidly developing from album cover designer (e.g. ''Absolutely Free'') to director of his own films and videos. Zappa's album covers are highly distinctive, and frequently bizarre and surreal. His two most important visual collaborators were Cal Schenkel in the Sixties and early Seventies, and [[Donald Roller Wilson]] in the Eighties and Nineties. One of Zappa's best-known and best-loved album images is that created for the 1969 compilation ''Weasels Ripped My Flesh'', a disturbingly surreal painting by renowned album artist [[Neon Park]].
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In fact, between 1961 and 1962 Zappa's involvement with bands was quite gregarious. In Pomona he teamed up again with drummer Al Surratt in a group consisting of Rex Jakabowski and [[Ronnie Williams]] on guitars, [[Joe Perrino]] on piano and [[Dwight Bement]] on tenor sax. Up in Lancaster, Zappa, Surratt, Bement and Williams teamed up with [[Johnny Franklin]] on guitar, bass and baritone sax, [[Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood]] on baritone sax, and The Omens' guitarist [[Alex St. Clair|Alex Snouffer]]. Over at Pal Studio in Cucamonga, Zappa began a working relationship with Paul Buff, recording [[Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance]] (and possibly [[It's From Kansas]]?). From November 1961 to August 1962 Zappa and Bement performed with Perrino in his band, Joe Perrino & The Mellotones, in a residency at Tommy Sandi's Club Sahara in San Bernardino. At [[Wikipedia:Chaffey College|Chaffey Junior College]] in 1961, where he had studied harmony, Zappa introduced an 8-piece rock n' roll band in November, followed by a 20-piece chamber ensemble in December and the 55-member [https://www.discogs.com/artist/758080-Pomona-Valley-Symphony-Orchestra Pomona Valley Orchestra] in mid-December, conducted by Fred E. Graff.  'The World's Greatest Sinner' was the piece played on each occasion. There was a little light relief amid all this with Ronnie & Kenny Williams' [[Booger Stories]].
  
Zappa moved to Los Angeles in [[1959]] and spent most of the rest of his life there. He began working as a graphic artist while trying to establish himself as a musician and composer. Among his earliest professional recordings are two adventurous and remarkably accomplished scores for the low-budget films ''Run Home Slow'' and ''The World's Greatest Sinner''.
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In 1962 Zappa, Paul Buff and Ronnie Williams, as [[The Masters]], produced a single at Pal Studios on Buff's 'Emmy' label; '16 Tons/[[Breaktime]]'. An earlier meeting with [[Don Preston]] led to a jamming session in Preston's garage in late spring, with Preston on keyboards and 'object-trove' percussion, brothers [[Bunk Gardner|Bunk]] & [[Buzz Gardner]] on woodwinds and trumpet, [https://www.discogs.com/artist/3259983-Vic-Mio Vic Mio] on bass, and [https://www.discogs.com/artist/1135822-Jack-Lake Jack Lake] & Zappa on percussion. They also auditioned for a Channel 7 TV show in September. In August, Zappa had assisted in the production of [[Heavies]] at Pal Studios where, in December, he engineered a [[Dave Aerni]] production of [https://www.discogs.com/artist/252795-The-Tornadoes The Tornadoes].  During 1962 Zappa had also met [[Ray Collins]], and some 'field recordings' were made of Collins, Zappa and Surratt, which can be heard on [[Joe's XMASage]], along with Zappa and his wife Kay conversing on [[Mormon Xmas Dance Report]]. Kay also plays clarinet on the pre-recorded orchestral tape Zappa employed on The [[Steve Allen]] Show. They divorced in 1963.
  
In [[1962]] he appeared as a solo artist on the [[Steve Allen]] Show performing a satirical dadaist piece involving a bicycle. Although many of the tapes of this series were later destroyed, the video of Zappa's remarkable performance survives. He married his first wife Kay the same year but the relationship soon deteriorated and they divorced two years later. In [[1963]] he began playing professionally around Los Angeles and bought the small Pal Recording Studio in [[Rancho Cucamonga, California|Rancho Cucamonga]], California (formerly called Cucamonga), which he renamed "Studio Z".  
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Zappa's work through 1963 in Pal Studios at Cucamonga was prolific, reflecting the nature of dedication he would apply to his work throughout his career. A number of recordings are now available of these [[Cucamonga Years (by Cover)|Cucamonga Years]]. The song  [[Any Way The Wind Blows (The Track)|Any Way The Wind Blows]] was produced in this period, and a third recording of it would subsequently appear on Zappa's first contractual-album release. Names to check out in this period are; [https://www.discogs.com/artist/1359136-Ron-Roman Ron Roman], [[Baby Ray & The Ferns]], [[Bob Guy]], [[The Heartbreakers]], [https://www.discogs.com/artist/5028681-Brian-Lord-2 Brian Lord & The Midnighters], [[Ned & Nelda]], [[The Hollywood Persuaders]], [[Mr. Clean]], [https://www.discogs.com/artist/520674-The-Rotations The Rotations], Sin City Boys, and [[Loeb & Leopold]].
  
Zappa had begun recording at Pal since the early [[1960s]] and after receiving a payment for one of his film scores he was able to buy the studio. Soon after, his marriage ended and he moved out of his apartment and into the studio, where he began routinely working 12 hours per day and more, setting a pattern that would endure for almost all of his life. Although only a small business, Pal was particularly attractive to Zappa because it contained a unique 5-track tape recorder built by the previous owner, Paul Buff. At this time, only a handful of the most expensive commercial studios had multitrack facilities and for smaller studios, the industry standard was still mono or two-track. By the time he recorded his first LP with The Mothers in [[1966]] he was already an accomplished recording and mastering engineer and from his third LP on and for the rest of his career, he produced all his own work.
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The studio also became the place for a reunion with Don van Vliet, where he and Zappa briefly formed [[The Soots]], with Zappa & Snouffer on guitars, Vliet on vocals, and [[Vic Mortenson]] on drums. Zappa also recorded [[Speed Freak Boogie]] with [https://www.discogs.com/artist/530617-Doug-Moon Doug Moon] at Pal, and these musicians would later appear in [[Magic Band]] line-ups.
  
After being approached by a customer who wanted him to produce a suggestive tape for a stag party, Zappa and some friends jokingly faked the "erotic" recording, which purported to contain the sounds of people having sex. Unfortunately the customer turned out to be an undercover member of the Vice Squad and Zappa was jailed for ten days on charges of supplying pornography. His entrapment and brief imprisonment left a permanent mark on him, and was a key event in the formation of his [[anarchism|anti-authoritarian]] stance.
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The first broadcast of a pure orchestral Zappa work occurred at [http://www.msmc.la.edu/pages/107.asp Mount St. Mary's College] (now primarily a college for catholic girls), in LA, on May 19, 1963. Zappa said of the event, "I spent $300 and got together a college orchestra, and I put on this little concert. Maybe less than a hundred people showed up for it, but the thing was actually taped and broadcast by [[KPFK]]. By the time I graduated from high school in '58, I still hadn't written any rock and roll songs, although I had a little rock and roll band in my senior year. I didn't write any rock and roll stuff until I was in my 20's. All the music writing that I was doing was either chamber music or orchestral, and none of it ever got played until this concert at [[Mt. St. Mary's Orchestra|Mount St. Mary's]]." Whilst conducting this piece Zappa also performed on a zither.
  
==The Mothers of Invention==
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==The first Mothers Of Invention formation  (1964-1970)==
  
After a short career as a professional [[songwriter]]&nbsp;&mdash; his elegiac "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by [[The Penguins]]&nbsp;&mdash; in 1964 Zappa joined a local R&B band, The Soul Giants, as a [[guitarist]]. He soon assumed leadership, renaming the [[rock band|band]] "The Mothers" (and, later still, "[[Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention]]" at the insistence of the record company).
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In 1964 Zappa teamed up with a local R&B outfit, [[The Soul Giants]], whose line-up included vocalist [[Ray Collins]] (b. 19 November 1937, USA), bass player [[Roy Estrada]] (b. 17 April 1943, USA), and drummer [[Jimmy Carl Black]] (b. 1 February 1938, El Paso, Texas, USA). Zappa changed their name to [[The Mothers]], but "Of Invention" was later added at the insistence of their label, Verve Records. A string of guitarists came and went, including [[Alice Stuart]] and [[Henry Vestine]], before [[Elliot Ingber]] was added to the line-up. Produced by [[Tom Wilson]] in 1966, the late black producer whose credits included [[Cecil Taylor]], [[John Coltrane]] and [[Bob Dylan]], the Mothers Of Invention's [[Freak Out!]] was a stunning debut, a two-record set complete with a whole side of wild percussion, a vitriolic protest song, "[[Trouble Every Day]]", and the kind of minute detail (sleeve-notes, in-jokes, parodies) that generate instant cult appeal. They made great play of their hair and ugliness, becoming the perfect counter-cultural icons. Unlike the east coast band [[The Fugs]], the Mothers were also musically skilled, a refined instrument for Zappa's eclectic and imaginative ideas. Ingber left to form the Fraternity Of Man before the recording of the band's second album, [[Absolutely Free]]. He was replaced for a short period by [[Jim Fielder]], before Zappa chose to expand the Mothers Of Invention with the addition of second drummer [[Billy Mundi]], keyboardist [[Don Preston]] (b. 21 September 1932, USA), and horn players [[Bunk Gardner]] and [[Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood]].
  
They gradually began to gain attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles [[underground music|underground]] 'freak scene' and in 1965 they were spotted by leading record producer [[Tom Wilson]], who had earned acclaim as the producer of the seminal [[Bob Dylan]] albums ''[[Bringin' It All Back Home]]'' and ''[[Highway 61 Revisited]]'', as well as the breakthrough 'electric' version of [[Simon & Garfunkel]]'s ''[[Sounds of Silence]]''. Wilson was also notable for being one of the only African-Americans working as a major label pop producer at this time. Wilson signed The Mothers to the [[Verve Records|Verve]] label, which had built up a strong reputation for its fine modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was then attempting to diversify into pop and rock, but with an "artistic" or "experimental" bent. Around this time, Zappa also met and signed with longtime manager [[Herb Cohen]].
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Tours and releases followed, including [[Absolutely Free]], the solo [[Lumpy Gravy]] and [[We're Only In It For The Money]], (with its brilliant parody of [[The Beatles]]' [[Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]] record cover) a scathing satire on hippiedom and the reactions to it in the USA, and a notable appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in London - this was documented on the compulsive [[Uncle Meat]] album. On this double LP one can hear really sophisticated music, mixing highly individual melodies and complex arrangements, rarely heard in rock music before (like "[[Dog Breath]]", "[[A Pound For A Brown On The Bus|Pound For A Brown]]", "[[King Kong]]"), plus sheer madness, containing the dialogues from the movie of the same title. In stark contrast, [[Cruising With Ruben & The Jets]] paid excellent hommage to the doo-wop era. British fans were particularly impressed with [[Hot Rats]], a solo Zappa record that ditched the sociological commentary for barnstorming jazz-rock, blistering guitar solos, the extravagant "[[Peaches En Regalia]]" and a cameo appearance by [[Captain Beefheart]] on "[[Willie The Pimp]]". Another characteristic contribution to the sound of this period was the blues-rooted, raw violin playing of [[Don "Sugarcane" Harris]] that we can enjoy hearing on several albums from these years.
  
With Wilson credited as producer, The Mothers recorded their groundbreaking double album debut ''[[Freak Out!]]'' ([[1966]]), a mixture of often topical R&B and experimental sound collage that attempted to capture the 'freak' subculture of Los Angeles at that time. One of the first record albums united by an underlying theme, it was also only the second double LP of rock music ever released, and firmly established Zappa as a major new voice in rock music. Wilson is also credited with producing the even more accomplished follow-up ''[[Absolutely Free]]''; but for the third LP, Wilson was listed as 'Executive producer', and Zappa took over as producer for all the Mothers and solo Zappa recordings issued from that time on. It's clear that even on the two first albums, Zappa was already responsible for virtually all of the musical decisions, with Wilson providing the industry clout, credibility, and connections to get the unknown group the financial resources they needed to produce a double album with use of an orchestra; by the third album, Zappa had already enough of a proven track record to allow for a more accurate description in the album's credits of their respective roles. During this period, Wilson also had Zappa collaborate with [[The Animals]] on the song "All Night Long" on their album [[Animalism]].
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Collins had quit in April 1968, and the Mothers Of Invention would eventually disintegrate the following August, though the brilliant [[Burnt Weeny Sandwich]] album was published wearing the same name. The LP contained a respectful [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky]]-parody ("[[Igor's Boogie]]"), a funny cover ("[[WPLJ]]"), classical piece discorded in a happy, humoristic manner, plus some great solo-based numbers that predicted the approaching jazz-rock period. Both [[Uncle Meat]] and [[Hot Rats]] appeared on Zappa's own [[Bizarre Records]] label which, together with his other outlet [[Straight Records]], released a number of highly regarded albums that were nevertheless commercial flops. Artists to benefit from Zappa's patronage included the [[GTO's]], [[Larry Fischer|Larry "Wild Man" Fischer]], [[Alice Cooper]], [[Tim Buckley]]. [[Captain Beefheart]]'s indispensable Zappa-produced classic, [[Trout Mask Replica]], was also released on Straight.
  
Zappa's second and third studio albums were landmarks of record production and were highlighted by liberal use of his famous 'cut-up' editing techniques. The brilliant ''[[Absolutely Free]]'' (1967) continued Zappa's lyrical preoccupations with the hypocrisy and conformism of American society and the sinister suppression of underground and alternative culture. It was followed by the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late Sixties work, ''[[We're Only In It For The Money]]'' (1968) which featured some of the most radical audio editing and production yet heard in pop music, and ruthlessly satirised the [[hippie]] and [[flower power]] phenomena. The cover photo (which included [[Jimi Hendrix]]) famously parodied that of [[the Beatles]]' [[Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]].
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==1970-1975==
  
This was bookended by two closely linked companion pieces. The dazzling audio collage ''[[Lumpy Gravy]]'' (1967) took Zappa's production techniques to a new peak and, according to Zappa himself, took nine months to edit. After ''We're Only In It For The Money'', next was his [[Doo-Wop]] tribute ''[[Cruising with Ruben & the Jets]]''. Other important Mothers recordings from this period (including the pivotal song ''Oh No'') were collected in the 1970 compilation album ''[[Weasels Ripped My Flesh]]''.
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Eager to gain a "heavier" image than the band that had brought them fame, The Turtles' singers Mark Volman (b. 19 April 1947, Los Angeles, California, USA) and Howard Kaylan (b. Howard Kaplan, 22 June 1947, the Bronx, New York City, New York, USA), aka [[Flo & Eddie|Flo And Eddie]], joined up with Zappa for the movie [[200 Motels (The Film)|200 Motels]] and three further albums. The newly re-christened Mothers now included [[George Duke]] (b. 12 January 1946, San Rafael, California, USA; keyboards, trombone), [[Ian Underwood]] (keyboards, saxophone), [[Aynsley Dunbar]] (b. 10 January 1946, Liverpool, England; drums), and [[Jeff Simmons]] (bass, vocals), although the latter was quickly replaced by [[Jim Pons]] (b. 14 March 1943, Santa Monica, California, USA). [[Fillmore East, June 1971]] included some intentionally outrageous subject matter prompting inevitable criticism from conservative observers.
  
During the late Sixties Zappa continued his rapid artistic development, emerging as a superb lead guitarist, a skilled producer and engineer, and a composer and arranger of extraordinary range and facility. He increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool; his editing skills are apparent on the stunning work he produced in the late Sixties with The Mothers.  
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1971 was not a happy year for Zappa: on 4 December [[Tours/1971#Smoke On The Water|fire destroyed the band's equipment while they were playing at the Montreux Casino]] in Switzerland (an event commemorated in Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water") and six days later Zappa was [[Tours/1971#The Rainbow Theatre Incident|pushed off-stage at London's Rainbow theatre]], crushing his larynx (lowering his voice a third of an octave), damaging his spine and keeping him wheelchair-bound for the best part of a year. He spent 1972 developing an extraordinary new species of big band fusion ([[Waka/Jawaka]] and [[The Grand Wazoo]]), working with top west coast session musicians. However, he found these excellent players dull touring companions, and decided to dump the "jazztette" for an electric band. [[Over-Nite Sensation]] announced fusion-chops, salacious lyrics and driving rhythms. The live band featured an extraordinary combination of jazz-based swing and a rich, sonorous rock that probably only Zappa (with his interest in modern classical music) could achieve. The multi-purpose talent of singer, flute player, saxophonist, guitarist and ready-for-any-joke entertainer [[Napoleon Murphy Brock]], percussion virtuoso [[Ruth Underwood]], violinist [[Jean-Luc Ponty]], featured in the [[King Kong]] project, and keyboard player [[George Duke|Duke]] (whose beautiful, shiny voice was first discovered and showcased by Zappa) shone in this context. [[Apostrophe (')]] showcased Zappa's talents as a story-teller in the Lord Buckley tradition, and also (in the title-track) featured a jam with bass player [[Jack Bruce]]: it reached number 10 in the Billboard chart in June 1974. [[Roxy & Elsewhere]] caught the band live, negotiating diabolically hard musical notation - "[[Echidna's Arf (Of You)]]" and "[[Be-Bop Tango|Be-Bop Tango (Of The Old Jazzmen's Church)]]" - with infectious good humour. [[One Size Fits All]], an under-acknowledged masterpiece, built up extraordinary multi-tracked textures. "[[Andy]]" was a song about b-movie cowboys, while "[[Florentine Pogen]]" and "[[Inca Roads]]" were complex extended (and very Zappa-like) pieces. In 1975, [[Captain Beefheart]] joined Zappa for [[Tours/1975|a tour]] and despite an earlier rift, sang on [[Bongo Fury]], both reuniting in disgust over the USA's bicentennial complacency.  
  
Zappa evolved a unique compositional approach&nbsp;&mdash; which he dubbed 'conceptual continuity'&nbsp;&mdash; that ranged across virtually every genre of music. His work combines satirical lyrics and pop melodies with virtuoso instrumental prowess, where long, jazz-inflected improvisational passages are counterbalanced with densely edited and seemingly chaotic collage sequences that mix music, sound effects and snatches of conversation.
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==1976-1980==
  
He also became famous for regularly quoting musical phrases that influenced or amused him&nbsp;&mdash; one of his most famous and regular quotes was the riff from the perennial Sixties rock hit  'Louie Louie', which appears in various forms in more than twenty separate recordings over the whole span of his career. He also frequently quoted from or referred to TV show themes and advertising jingles, from famous rock songs such as ''My Sharona'' and ''Stairway To Heaven'', and from classical works such as [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky's]] "The Rite Of Spring".
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[[Zoot Allures]] in 1976 was principally a collaboration between Zappa and drummer [[Terry Bozzio]], with Zappa overdubbing most of the instruments himself. He was experimenting with what he termed "[[Xenochrony]]" (combining previous unrelated tracks with different meters to create a piece of synchronous music) and produced intriguing results on "[[Friendly Little Finger]]". The title track took the concept of sleaze guitar onto a new level (as did the orgasmic moaning of "[[The Torture Never Stops]]"), while "[[Black Napkins]]" was an incomparable vehicle for Zappa's guitar work. If [[Zoot Allures]] now reads like a response to punk, Zappa was not to forsake large-scale rock showbiz. A series of [[Tours/1976#October_through_November|concerts in New York in late 1976]] had a wildly excited crowd applauding tales of singles bars, devil encounters and stunning Brecker Brothers virtuosity (recorded as [[Zappa In New York]]). This album was part of the fall-out from Zappa's break-up with [[Warner Brothers]] Records, who put out three excellent, mostly instrumental albums with "non-authorized covers" (adopted, strangely enough, by Zappa for his CD re-releases): [[Studio Tan]], [[Sleep Dirt]] and [[Orchestral Favorites]]. The punk-obsessed rock press did not know what to make of music that parodied Miklos Rozsa, crossed jazz with cartoon scores, guyed rock 'n' roll hysteria and stretched fusion into the twenty-first century. Undaunted by still being perceived as a hippie, which he clearly was not ([[We're Only In It For The Money]] had said the last word on the Summer Of Love while it was happening!), Zappa continued to tour.
  
Zappa earned a fearsome reputation as a ruthless taskmaster who possessed a seemingly limitless capacity for work (he regularly worked as much as twenty hours a day in the studio until very late in his career) who also possessed immense technical knowledge and a photographic memory of the contents of his vast archive. He also became known for dismissing the contributions of his musicians, going so far as to withhold royalties rather than share the glory.
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His guitar-playing seemed to expand into a new dimension: "[[Yo' Mama]]" on 1979's [[Sheik Yerbouti]] was a taste of the extravaganzas to come. In [[Ike Willis]] (most of the time reinforced by the inseparable [[Ray White]]), Zappa found a vocalist who understood his required combination of emotional detachment and intimacy, and featured him extensively on the three volumes of [[[[Joe's Garage Acts I, II & III|Joe's Garage]]. After the mid-70s interest in philosophical concepts and band in-jokes, the music became more political. [[Tinseltown Rebellion]] and [[You Are What You Is]] commented on the growth of the fundamentalist Right. This period showcased the unique talents of percussionist [[Ed Mann]] (who gloriously took over the most important role of excellent [[Ruth Underwood]]), "Zappa's favourite" drummer [[Vinnie Colaiuta]], "capable-of-all" guitar virtuoso [[Steve Vai]] (who performed the unbelievably hard and valuable work of scoring Zappa's most "impossible" guitar solos), keyboard players [[Tommy Mars]] and [[Bobby Martin|Robert Martin]], worthy partners of Zappa's most eccentric on-stage musical and practical jokes.
  
During a residency in New York's Greenwich Village in late 1966, Zappa became friends with [[Jimi Hendrix]]  and is reputed to have introduced Hendrix to the [[Wah-wah pedal]].
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==1981-1990==
  
The Mothers' anarchic stage shows were legendary&nbsp;&mdash; during one famous 1967 performance at the Garrick Theatre in [[New York City|New York]], Zappa managed to entice some soldiers from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a collection of baby dolls.
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Zappa had a hit in 1982 with "[[Valley Girl]]", which featured his daughter [[Moon Zappa|Moon Unit]] satirizing the accents of young moneyed Hollywood people. That same year saw him produce and introduce a New York concert of music by Varese. The title track of [[Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch]] indicated that Zappa's interest in extended composition was not waning; this was confirmed by the release of a serious orchestral album recorded with the [[London Symphony Orchestra (The Orchestra)]] in 1983. Zappa was quite outrageously prolific in 1984: renowned French composer [[Pierre Boulez]] conducted Zappa's work on [[Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger]]; he released a rock album [[Them Or Us]], which widened still further the impact of his scurrilously inventive guitar; [[Thing-Fish]] (its scenario was first published in [[Larry Flynt]]'s Hustler magazine...) was a "Broadway musical" about AIDS, homophobia and racism; and he unearthed an eighteenth-century composer named [[Francesco Zappa]] and recorded his work on a synclavier. The following year's [[Does Humor Belong In Music?]] and [[Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention|Meets The Mothers Of Prevention]] were effective responses to the rise of powerful censor groups in America. [[Jazz From Hell]] presented wordless compositions for synclavier that drew inspiration from the expatriate American experimentalist composer [[Conlon Nancarrow]]'s pieces written for piano player. Zappa could satisfy here his liking for using samples and highly complicated, "impossible for humans" rhythmic orgy. From the flood of his works during the 80's it is absolutely worth mentioning the highly courageous, triple-LP box set, [[Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar (The Series)|Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar]], a collection of his madly individual guitar solos (also a masterpiece of overdubbing and musical editing), which was the first of a series represented also by the later [[Guitar]] and [[Trance-Fusion]] albums.
  
Around 1968 Zappa also began regularly recording his concerts, beginning with a simple two-track portable recorder and eventually progressing to a portable 48-track digital system. In the process he built up a vast archive of live recordings. In the late 1990s some of the best of these recordings were collected for the 12-CD set ''You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore''. Because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing in concert, from the 1970s on Zappa was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and he is known to have inserted 'live' guitar solos into the final studio recordings of some compositions.
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Zappa's next big project materialized in 1988: a 12-piece band playing covers, instrumentals and a brace of new political songs (collected respectively as [[Broadway The Hard Way]], [[The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life]], and [[Make A Jazz Noise Here]]). After rehearsing for three months the power and precision of the band were breathtaking, but they broke up during [[Tours/1988|their first tour]]. As well as the retrospective series [[You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore]] (six volumes of double CD-s!), Zappa released his most popular bootlegs in two installments as part of his "[[:Category:Beat The Boots|Beat The Boots]]" campaign.  
  
Although they were lauded by critics and their peers and had a rabid cult following, mainstream audiences often found much of the Mothers' music, appearance and attitude impossible to comprehend, and the band was often greeted with derision. More importantly, the financial strain and interpersonal tensions involved in keeping a large jazz-rock ensemble on the road eventually led to the group's demise in 1969, although numerous members would remain with or return to Zappa in years to come.
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==1990s: the final years==
  
During this period Zappa also produced the extraordinary double album ''[[Trout Mask Replica]]'' for his old friend [[Captain Beefheart]] as well as releases by [[Alice Cooper]], [[Tim Buckley]], [[Wild Man Fischer]] and [[The GTOs]].
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In [[Czechoslovakia]], where he had long been a hero of the cultural underground, he was appointed as the country's Cultural Liaison Officer with the West, while he gave his last live performance in Budapest, celebrating the soviet troops' withdrawal from [[Hungary]], in 1991. The same year he announced he would be standing as an independent candidate in the 1992 US presidential election (almost immediately he received several death threats!), but in November his daughter confirmed reports that he was suffering from cancer of the prostate.
  
==1970s==
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In the last years of his life Zappa finally had the chance to work with an orchestra that could achieve the level of performance he had always looked for in "serious" music. Germany-based, multi-national [[Ensemble Modern]] can be heard on the last album to be released during his lifetime, [[The Yellow Shark]], on the posthumous releases [[Civilization Phaze III]] and [[Everything Is Healing Nicely]]. He was to be the conductor in the series of concerts given by EM in Germany and Austria, but due to increasing pain he had to abandon the last shows and go home.
  
After he disbanded the original Mothers, Zappa released the acclaimed solo instrumental album [[Hot Rats]], featuring his [[jazz]]-inflected guitar playing backed by jazz, blues and R&B players session players including violinist [[Don "Sugarcane" Harris]], drummer [[John Guerin]], and bassist [[Shuggie Otis]]. It remains one of his most popular and accessible recordings and arguably had a major influence on the development of the [[jazz-rock fusion]] genre.
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In May 1993 Zappa, clearly weak from intensive chemotherapy, announced that he was fast losing the battle as it had spread into his bones. In the long interview published in [[Playboy]] just before his death he nonetheless declared that he wouldn't start to write sad music just because he was going to disappear. He succumbed to the disease seven months later, and died in his home on 4 December 1993, Los Angeles, California.
  
Around 1970 Zappa put together a new version of The Mothers that included British drummer [[Aynsley Dunbar]], jazz keyboardist [[George Duke]],  previous Mothers member, multi-instrumentalist [[Ian Underwood]] and singers [[Howard Kaylan]] and [[Mark Volman]], who had been the lead singers in Sixties folk-pop band [[The Turtles]]. They were nicknamed "The Phlorescent Leach and Eddie" by Zappa. (Their own music was later published under Liccianetti Music.) Because contractual problems prevented them from recording as The Turtles or even under their own names, Volman and Kaylan were often billed as "Flo and Eddie".
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==After Zappa's death==
  
The new lineup debuted on Zappa's next solo LP ''Chunga's Revenge'', which was followed by the sprawling soundtrack to the movie project ''200 Motels'', featuring both The Mothers and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. At the time George Duke was in the band and appears both in the film and on the sound track as a musician. He left the band to play with Cannonball Adderly and was replaced Don Preston from the original Mothers, who acted in the film, but is not playing on the soundtrack.  This double disc album was followed by two superb live sets, ''Fillmore East - June 1971'' and ''Just Another Band From LA'', which included the 20-minute track "Billy The Mountain", Zappa's satire on rock opera, set in Southern California. The former features hilariously low-concept cover art just at the apex of the era of great rock "album cover artwork". The latter was released according to FZ to provide some royalties to the band members who were suddenly in limbo, unable to tour.
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Around one year after his death [[Civilization Phaze III]] was released, his first posthumous release, which had been being made for 30 years by then. The earliest recordings on this album were originally made during the sixties, they are completed by synclavier pieces being mixed until his very last days: it can be regarded as a kind of testament of his thoughts and music, even though we must consider the fact that making a synthesis was always as far from Zappa's intentions as it possibly can be. No doubt about that if he was still alive he would continue to surprise us by shocking new musical (and other kind of) ideas every day.
  
In 1971 there were two serious setbacks. While performing in [[Montreux]], Switzerland, the Mothers' equipment was destroyed when a flare set off by an audience member started a disastrous fire that burned the casino where they were playing&nbsp;&mdash; an event immortalised in [[Deep Purple]]'s "[[Smoke On The Water]]".
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In 1995, a remarkable reissue programme was undertaken by [[Rykodisc]] Records in conjunction with his widow [[Gail Zappa]]. The entire catalogue of over 50 albums was remastered and re-packaged with loving care. Rykodisc deserve the highest praise for this bold move. In 2003 [[Dweezil Zappa]] promised more unreleased material from the vaults of his father as he took over as the family archivist - [[Halloween]] and [[Quaudiophiliac|QuAUDIOPHILIAc]] is his work.
  
Then in December, Zappa was attacked on stage at the Rainbow Theatre, London. The jealous husband of a female fan pushed Frank offstage landing him unconscious in the orchestra pit, with serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx (which caused his voice to drop a third after it healed). This left him wheelchair bound for a time, forcing him off the road for over a year. (He was wearing a leg brace for a period thereafter, had a noticeable limp and couldn't stand for very long while onstage.) He said one leg healed shorter than the other -- a reference found years later in the lyrics of "Dancin' Fool" . He employed a bodyguard thereafter when touring, John Smothers, a former [[Los Angeles Police Department|L.A.P.D.]] officer.
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Viewed in perspective, Zappa's career reveals a perfectionist using only the highest standards of musicianship and the finest recording methods. The reissued CDs highlight the extraordinary quality of the original master tapes and Zappa's idealism.
  
In 1971-72 he released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, ''Waka Jawaka'' and ''The Grand Wazoo'', which were recorded during the layoff from live concert touring, using floating lineups of session players and Mothers alumni. He began touring again in late 1972, first with a Grand Wazoo 'big band' and with groups that variously included Ian Underwood on brass and reeds, Ian's wife Ruth on vibes, Sal Marquez (trumpet), Napoleon Murphy Brock (sax and vocals), Bruce Fowler (trombone), Tom Fowler (bass), Chester Thompson (drums), George Duke (kbds, vocals) and [[Jean-Luc Ponty]] (violin).
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Additionally, he is now rightly seen as one of the great guitar players of our time. Although much of his oeuvre can easily be dismissed as flippant, history will certainly recognize Zappa as a sophisticated, serious composer and a highly accomplished master of music. This musical genius never ceased to astonish, both as a musician and composer: on the way, he produced a towering body of work that is probably rock music's closest equivalent to the legacy of [[Duke Ellington]].
  
He continued a high rate of production through the early [[1970s]], including the excellent and accessible albums ''One Size Fits All'' and ''Apostrophe'', ''OverNite Sensation'' and ''Roxy and Elswhere'' featuring ever-changing versions of a band no longer called the Mothers.
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==Notes==
  
==1980s==
 
  
In [[1980]], Zappa helped former band members [[Warren Cuccurullo]] and [[Terry Bozzio]] launch their new band, [[Missing Persons]], by letting them record their 4-song demo EP in his brand new UMRK (Utility Muffin Research Kitchen)  studios.
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[[Category:Biographical Trivia|Zappa]]
 
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[[Category:Rock Artists|Zappa]]
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 evangelist]]s and the [[United States Republican Party|Republican]] party.
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[[Category:Producers|Zappa]]
 
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[[Category:Bandmembers|Zappa]]
On [[September 19]], [[1985]], Zappa testified before the [[United States Senate|US Senate]] Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or [[PMRC]], a music [[censorship]] (though others would say [[watchdog]]) organization founded by then-Senator [[Al Gore]]'s wife [[Tipper Gore]] and including many other political wives, including the wives of five members of the committee.  He said,
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[[Category:Composers|Zappa]]
:"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.
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[[Category:Film Directors|Zappa]]
 
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[[Category:Zappa Family|Zappa]]
:"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."
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[[Category:We're Only In It For the Money (The List)|Zappa]]
 
 
Zappa put some of the PMRC hearings to music in his song "Porn Wars." Zappa is heard interacting with Senators [[Fritz Hollings]], [[Slade Gorton]], [[Al Gore]] (who admitted to being a Zappa fan), and, most notably, a funny exchange with Florida Senator [[Paula Hawkins]] over what toys the Zappa children played with.
 
 
 
His last tour in a "[[rock band]] format" took place in [[1988]] with a 12-piece group which was reported to have a repertoire 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.''
 
 
 
==1990s==
 
 
 
In the early [[1990s]] Zappa devoted almost all of his energy to modern orchestral and [[synclavier]] works.  In [[1990]] he was diagnosed with [[prostate cancer]], a disease which caused his death in [[1993]].  Although ill, in [[1992]] he appeared as a guest conductor with the ''[[Ensemble Modern]]'' in a series of concerts in Germany devoted to his compositions, recordings from which appeared on ''[[Yellow Shark]]''. 
 
 
 
During these years, he edited numerous CD collections of concert recordings made throughout his career.  In 1993, he completed ''[[Civilization, Phaze III]]'', a major synclavier work he had begun in the '80s.  He stated in interviews that he was working on hundreds of synclavier pieces, most of which remained unfinished. 
 
 
 
Frank Zappa died on [[December 4]], and was interred in the [[Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery]] in  [[Westwood, Los Angeles, California|Westwood, California]].
 
 
 
Zappa was inducted into the [[Rock and Roll Hall of Fame]] in [[1995]]. That same year the only known cast of Zappa was installed in the center of [[Vilnius]], the capital of [[Lithuania]].  Zappa was immortalized by [[Konstantinas Bogdanas]], the famous Lithuanian sculptor who had previously cast portraits of [[Vladimir Lenin]].  In 2002 a bronze bust was installed in a square in [[Bad Doberan]], a small town in the north of [[Germany]], where, since 1990, there's an international Festival celebrating the music of Frank Zappa. Zappa received a posthumous [[Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award]] in [[1997]].
 
 
 
==Other information==
 
 
 
Zappa was married twice, once to Kay Sherman (1959&ndash;1964) and then to Gail Sloatman, whom he remained with until his death. Sloatman and Zappa had four children, two sons and two daughters, all of whom had rather unusual names. They are: [[Moon Unit Zappa|Moon Unit]], [[Dweezil Zappa|Dweezil]], [[Ahmet Zappa|Ahmet Rodan]], and [[Diva Zappa|Diva]].
 
 
 
After his death an internet email campaign to the [[International Astronomical Union]]'s Minor Planet Center led to an [[asteroid]] being named in his honor: [[3834 Zappafrank]], the asteroid having been discovered by Czech astronomers. [http://www.klet.org/names/view.php3?astnum=3834] [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andymurkin/Resources/MusicRes/ZapRes/asteroid.html] Since then other things have been named in his honor including: another asteroid ([[16745 Zappa]]), a [[gene]] (ZapA  gene of [[Proteus mirabilis]], a microbe that  causes urinary tract infections [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andymurkin/Resources/MusicRes/ZapRes/ZapA.html]), a [[goby]] fish (''[[Zappa confluentus]]'' [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andymurkin/Resources/MusicRes/ZapRes/fish.html]  ), a [[jellyfish]] (''[[Phialella zappa]]'' [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andymurkin/Resources/MusicRes/ZapRes/jellyfish.html which was actually named by Nando!]), an extinct [[mollusc]] (''[[Amauratoma zappa]]''), and a [[spider]] with an abdominal mark supposedly resembling Zappa's mustache (''[[Pachygnatha zappa]]'' [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/andymurkin/Resources/MusicRes/ZapRes/spider.html]).
 
 
 
Zappa portrays the voice of the pope in a 1992 episode of [[Ren & Stimpy]].
 
 
 
==Note on his name==
 
As his autobiography ''The Real Frank Zappa Book'' notes, his real name was "Frank", never "Francis". Until rediscovering his birth certificate as an adult, Zappa himself believed he had been christened Francis, and he is credited as Francis on some of his early albums.  Some encyclopedias still incorrectly claim that his real name was "Francis". 
 
 
 
Zappa means "hoe" in Italian.
 
 
 
==Quotation==
 
 
 
"I _(you just fill in the blank)_, do hereby solemnly swear, in accordance with the regulations of the contract with this here rock and roll engagement, and the imbecilic laws of the State of Florida, and the respective regulations perpetrated by Red-Necks everywhere, do hereby solemnly swear, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES, TO REVEAL MY TUBE, WAD, DINGUS, WEE-WEE, AND/OR PENIS ANYPLACE ON THIS STAGE!! This Does NOT include Private Showings in the motel      room, however." "Mothers of Invention Anti-Smut Loyalty Oath," September 1970
 
 
 
== 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|Mothermania: The Best of the Mothers]]'' ([[1969]])
 
* ''[[Worst of the Mothers]] ([[1969]])
 
* ''[[The !@#$ of the Mothers of Invention]]'' ([[1969]])
 
* ''[[Hot Rats]]'' ([[1969]])
 
* ''[[Burnt Weeny Sandwich]]'' ([[1969]])
 
* ''[[Weasels Ripped My Flesh]]'' ([[1970]])
 
* ''[[Chunga's Revenge]]'' ([[1970]])
 
* ''[[King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays the Music of Frank Zappa]]'' ([[Jean-Luc Ponty]]) ([[1970]])
 
* ''[[Fillmore East - June 1971]]'' ([[1971]])
 
* ''[[200 Motels]]'' ([[1971]])
 
* ''[[Just Another Band From L.A.]]'' ([[1972]]) (See [[1972 in music]])
 
* ''[[Waka/Jawaka]]'' ([[1972]])  (See [[1972 in music]])
 
* ''[[The Grand Wazoo]]'' ([[1972]])  (See [[1972 in music]])
 
* ''[[Over-Nite Sensation]]'' ([[1973]])  (See [[1973 in music]])
 
* ''[[Apostrophe (album)|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]])
 
* ''[[Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger]]'' ([[1984]])
 
* ''[[Them or Us]]'' ([[1984]])
 
* ''[[Thing-Fish]]'' ([[1984]])
 
* ''[[Francesco Zappa]]'' ([[1984]])
 
* ''[[Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention]]'' ([[1985]])
 
* ''[[Does Humor Belong In Music?]]'' ([[1986]])
 
* ''[[Jazz From Hell]]'' ([[1986]])
 
* ''[[London Symphony Orchestra vol 2]]'' ([[1987]])
 
* ''[[Guitar (album) Frank Zappa|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]]'' ([[1989]])
 
* ''[[The BRT Big Band Plays Frank Zappa]]'' ([[BRT Big Band]]) ([[1990]])
 
* ''[[You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4]]'' ([[1991]])
 
* ''[[Make A Jazz Noise Here]]'' ([[1991]])
 
* ''[[Beat The Boots I]]'' 9 discs (boxed or separate) ([[1991]]):
 
** ''[[As An Am]]'' ([[1981-82]])
 
** ''[[The Ark]]'' ([[1968]]}
 
** ''[[Freaks & Motherfu*#@%!]]'' ([[1970]])
 
** ''[[Unmitigated Audacity]]'' ([[1974]])
 
** ''[[Anyway The Wind Blows]]'' (2 discs) ([[1979]])
 
** ''[['Tis The Season To Be Jelly]]'' ([[1967]])
 
** ''[[Saarbrucken 1978]]'' ([[1978]])
 
** ''[[Piquantique]]'' ([[1973]])
 
* ''[[Beat The Boots II]]'' 8 discs (boxed or separate) ([[1992]]):
 
** ''[[Disconnected Synapses]]'' ([[1970]])
 
** ''[[Tengo Na Minchia Tanta]]'' ([[1970]])
 
** ''[[Electric Aunt Jemima]]'' ([[1968]])
 
** ''[[At The Circus]]'' ([[1978]])
 
** ''[[Swiss Cheese/Fire!]]'' (2 discs) ([[1971]])
 
** ''[[Our Man In Nirvana]]'' ([[1968]])
 
** ''[[Conceptual Continuity]]'' ([[1976]])
 
* ''[[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]])
 
* ''[[Yahozna Plays Zappa]]'' ([[Yahonza]]) ([[1992]])
 
* ''[[Ahead Of Their Time]]'' ([[1993]])
 
* ''[[Zappa's Universe|Zappa's Universe - A Celebration Of 25 Years Of Frank Zappa's Music]]'' ([[Joel Thorne]]/[[Orchestra of Our Time]])([[1993]])
 
* ''[[The Yellow Shark]]'' ([[Ensemble Modern]]) ([[1993]])
 
* ''[[Civilization, Phaze III]]'' ([[1994]])
 
* ''[[Harmonia Meets Zappa]]'' ([[Harmonia Ensemble]]) ([[1994]])
 
* ''[[Strictly Commercial]]'' ([[1995]])
 
* ''[[Music By Frank Zappa]]'' ([[Omnibus Wind Ensemble]]) ([[1995]])
 
* ''[[The Lost Episodes]]'' ([[1996]])
 
* ''[[Läther]]'' ([[1996]])
 
* ''[[Frank Zappa Plays the Music of Frank Zappa: A Memorial Tribute]]'' ([[1996]])
 
* ''[[Have I Offended Someone?]]'' ([[1997]])
 
* ''[[Frankincense: The Muffin Men Play Zappa]]''  ([[Muffin Men]])  ([[1997]])
 
* ''[[Mystery Disc]]'' ([[1998]])
 
* ''[[Cucamonga Years|Cucamonga Years: The Early Works of Frank Zappa 1962-1964]]'' ([[1998]])
 
* ''[[Cheep Thrills]]'' ([[1998]])
 
* ''[[Son of Cheep Thrills]]'' ([[1999]])
 
* ''[[Everything Is Healing Nicely]]'' ([[1999]])
 
* ''[[Frankly A Cappella]]'' ([[The Persuasions]]) ([[2000]])
 
* ''[[The Zappa Album]]''  ([[Ensemble Ambrosius]])  ([[2000]]
 
* ''[[Bohuslän Big Band plays Frank Zappa]]'' ([[Bohuslän Big Band]]) ([[2000]]) 
 
* ''[[FZ:OZ]]'' ([[2002]])
 
* ''[[Halloween (album)|Halloween]]'' ([[2003]])
 
* ''[[Zappa: Greggery Peccary & Other Persuasions]]'' ([[Ensemble Modern]]) ([[2003]])
 
* ''[[Joe's Corsage]]'' ([[2004]])
 
* ''[[Joe's Domage]]'' ([[2004]])
 
* ''[[QuAUDIOPHILIAc]]'' ([[2004]])
 
 
 
== Further reading ==
 
* ''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; The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play,'' by Ben Watson, contains extensive notes on history, tours and releases.
 
* ''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]].
 
*''Mother! the Frank Zappa Story'', by Michael Gray
 
*''Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story of Frank Zappa'', by Neil Slaven
 
*''Necessity Is... The Early Years of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention'', by Billy James
 
*''Cosmik Debris: The Collective History and Improvisations of Frank Zappa'', by Greg Russo, Crossfire Pubns; 2nd Rev edition (January 9, 2003), ISBN 0964815702
 
*''My Brother was a Mother'', by Patrice "Candy" Zappa
 
*''Them or Us'', by Frank Zappa
 
*''Under the Same Moon'', by Suzannah Thana Harris
 
*''Being Frank: My Time with Frank Zappa'', by Nigery Lennon
 
*''Zappa: A Biography'', by Barry Miles,  Publisher: Grove Press (November 9, 2004), ISBN  080211783X
 
*''Dangerous Kitchen: The Subversive World of Zappa'', by Kevin Courrier, ECW Press (June, 2002) ISBN  1550224476
 
*''Frank Zappa'', by Carl-Ludwig Reichert, dtv (November, 2002) ISBN  3-432-31039-1
 
 
 
== External links ==
 
{{wikiquote}}
 
*http://www.zappa.com/
 
*[http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/6095/ A Tribute to Frank Zappa (much detailed biographical material - click on "Biography")]
 
*[http://go.palmdalelibrary.org/cgi-bin/strasburg/view.pl?table=strasburg_data&id=2680 Innovators Highlight Pop Music Wasteland (Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, Clarence White)]
 
*[http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/special/rocknroll/0003834.html Details of (3834) Zappafrank]
 
*[http://www.ibiblio.org/mal/MO/philm/zappa/ Philm Freax: Frank Zappa]
 
*http://www.tangento.net/prezappa.html
 
*[http://www.thewire.co.uk/archive/essays/zappa.html Don't do That On Stage Anymore, July 1995, The Wire]
 
*[http://www.lukpac.org/~handmade/patio/ the zappa patio (detailed discography including bootlegs)]
 
*[http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/ FZ Lyrics & Else (includes musicians list track by track)]
 
*[http://members.shaw.ca/fz-pomd/ The Planet Of My Dreams (includes line-ups chronology)]
 
*{{imdb name | id=0953261 | name=Frank Zappa}}
 

Latest revision as of 01:55, 21 April 2022

Frank Zappa in the early 1970s

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was widely known as an American composer, bandleader, singer-songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist; but he was also a satirist, film director, graphic designer, a campaigner against censorship, and an autodidact. When combined with his interest in multiple other topics it can be a challenge to document it all.

For over thirty years Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works. He produced most of the 60+ albums that he released with his bands, variously known as the Mothers of Invention, The Mothers or as Zappa. These recordings were primarily distributed as vinyl phonograph records and, later, as compact discs.[1]

Zappa considered his work a continuum:

It's all one album. All the material in the albums is organically related and if I had the master tapes and I could take a razor blade[2] and cut them apart and put it together again in a different order it still would make one piece of music you can listen to.... I could do this twenty ways. The material is definitely related.[3]

Each piece of work added another element to the whole; a process he referred to as Project/Object and the thread that ran throughout the works to draw them into a unified whole was known as Conceptual Continuity. As Miles averred in his biography it is too simplistic to follow a trail of readily identifiable concepts, a poodle here or a sausage there, when the real intention was far more serious.[3]

Youth

The Zappas: Patrice, Francis, Rose, Carl, Frank, Bobby

Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland on the east coast of the USA one year before the USA's formal entry into World War 2. He was the first child of Francis and Rose. He would be joined by two brothers: Bobby (1943 - 2018) and Carl (1948 - 2020) and a sister Patrice (1951).

He suffered with asthma and ear and sinus problems throughout his early childhood.[3] In 1944 his father took a job working for the US Navy calculating shell trajectories which required the family to move to Florida. And so began Zappa's peripatetic childhood. They moved back to Maryland in 1946, to Edgewood beside the Aberdeen Proving Ground. In 1951 his father was employed at the Naval Research Center & School and the family relocated to Pacific Grove, Monterey in California.

Young Zappa attended orchestral percussion lessons at tutor Keith McKillop's summer school in Monterey, where he played a solo self-composed piece on the snare drum, entitled 'Mice' for a year-end concert. This was in the summer of 1953, before the family moved again - south to San Diego - where Zappa was enrolled in Grossmont High School. Pursuing his interest in percussion he joined The Ramblers, a high school R&B band that managed to secure a gig at the Uptown Hall in nearby Hillcrest. After ninth grade he entered Mission Bay High School, where he was enlightened about 'twelve-tone music' by Mr. Kavelman. In 1956 Zappa's father became employed on Atlas programs at the Air Force Base in Lancaster, to where the family again moved and 16 year-old FZ enrolled at Antelope Valley High School. The desolation and surroundings of this location, together with the nearby air-base activities and emergency gas-masks about the house, were to have a strong influence on the fertile mind of the juvenile Frank Zappa and his musical relationships.

In Lancaster Zappa's future attitude in mixing humor with socio-political music can be glimpsed in his forming of the racially-integrated The Blackouts in 1957, who rehearsed in nearby Sun Village, whilst earlier exposure to Ionisation - a recording by avant garde classical composer Edgard Varèse - instilled an interest in advanced rhythmic experimentation that never left him. This interest was compounded when he managed to speak to the composer's wife by 'phone late in '56, leading to a latter 'phone conversation with Varèse himself in early '57- who then responded further to FZ with a letter in the summer of that year.

The electric guitar, which Zappa had taught himself to play, also became a fascination and he began collecting R&B records that featured guitar solos; Howlin' Wolf with Hubert Sumlin, Muddy Waters, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown were special favourites. A high school friend, Don Vliet (later to add 'van' to his nomenclature and become Captain Beefheart), shared his interest in other Mississippi Delta blues musicians and the avant-garde jazz of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman. Zappa said of his first guitar, "It didn't have a make on it – it had been kinda sandblasted! My brother got it for $1.50 at an auction and it was an archtop, f-hole, ugly motherf***er with the strings about a half-inch off the fingerboard. I liked it because it was so tinny-sounding. It was just an acoustic guitar, but it was moving closer to that wiry tone I liked with Johnny Guitar Watson, especially if you picked it right next to the bridge." On moving to an electric guitar he said, "My father had a guitar which he kept in a closet, a round-hole guitar of anonymous make, and I stuck one of those DeArmond soundhole pickups in that, so it wasn't a real electric guitar. I guess it was around four or five years later that I actually got an electric guitar. There was a music store not far from my house, and I rented this Telecaster for $15 a month. Eventually I had to give it back, because I couldn't make the payments on it."

Back in Grossmont high school Zappa had begun to write chamber music when he was 14, but "No one would play it", he said. His first forays into composition were actually brought about because he liked to draw. "I saw some music and I liked the way it looked and set out to draw it. ... My formal education is a little skimpy. What I know is mostly from reading books I got out of the library. But I think that's good, if you want to be a composer. If you do go to school, you end up picking up the habits of your teachers", he said. Because Zappa was an incorrigible senior student at high school he was directed to take some harmony classes "to occupy his mind". He did two months of harmonics study and found the course very boring, learning rote fashion from Walter Piston's harmony book. In fact, in the learning process, he generally rebelled against what his eyes or ears disliked. "Every time one of the exercises was presented, you would hear how the chords were supposed to resolve. All I could hear was the infliction of normality on my imagination. And I kept wondering why should I pollute my mind with this shit, because if I ever got good at it, I'd be out of business", he said in an interview with Don Menn. When Menn suggested to Zappa that, when Charles Ives was studying harmony at Harvard and found the course 'crazy', Ives wrote to his father saying, "This guy wants me to resolve my chords better", to which Ives' father responded "Tell your professor some chords just don't want to resolve." Zappa responded to Menn's suggestion with, "The guy who was teaching me was a guy named Mr. Russell, who was a jazz trumpet player, and I don't think that he enjoyed harmony very much either, but that's what he was teaching. I could have said to him, "Hey, some chords shouldn't resolve." And he would probably say, "Yeah, but you'll get a D if you don't resolve them."

First recordings

In 1958 William Ballard, Zappa's high school music teacher at Lancaster, provided the opportunity for Zappa to conduct two pieces with the school orchestra. Written for a string quartet, they were, 'A Pound For A Brown (On The Bus)' and 'Sleeping In A Jar'. In the same year The Blackouts made some recordings that later surfaced on The Lost Episodes, Zappa won a statewide California art competition with a painting entitled 'Family Room', and graduated from the high school in the summer of June. In October he entered Lancaster's Antelope Valley Junior College. By December he had written a 12-tone serial exercise, called Waltz For Guitar. That same December two numbers were recorded in an empty Antelope Valley College classroom, with Zappa on lead guitar, his brother Bobby on rhythm guitar, Vliet on vocals, and a teacher named Jerry Ullberg providing "jivey negroid shoeshine boy" vocal, as Zappa describes it. The two songs were Lost In A Whirlpool and The Search For Tom Dooley. According to Zappa these mark the blues-singing debut of the yet to be christened Beefheart. Vliet, who then joined The Omens, said of the event, "Frank and I had a good time. We were just fooling around."

By 1959 Zappa had gained the friendship of English teacher Don Cerveris, who had written an off-the-wall low-budget cowboy movie involving a bad ranch lady, a nympho cowgirl, a hunchback handyman and sexual union beside a rotting donkey. It was called Run Home Slow, for which Zappa was commissioned to score a soundtrack. He completed it, but there were setbacks and nothing came of this work until 1963, when Zappa produced and directed a recording of Run Home Slow with a small pick-up orchestra, engineered by Paul Buff, at Art Laboe's Original Sound in Hollywood. The film was finally produced by Tim Sullivan, starred Mercedes McCambridge, and was released in 1965. Zappa said of Run Home Slow, "The money from this job was used to buy an electric guitar and the Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga. Pal was re-named Studio Z."

After writing the movie score Zappa moved south to Ontario, near Pomona, with his girlfriend Kay Sherman, whom he married in December, 1960. In 1961 Mr & Mrs Zappa, Carl and Candy moved to Sarasota, Florida, leaving Bobby in California. The newly-married Zappa audited a course on composition set by Karl Kohn at Pomona College, Claremont, and this is the point at which he rented a white Fender Telecaster but couldn't maintain the payments. However, this didn't prevent him playing lead guitar with The Boogie Men, a band which had Doug Rost on rhythm, Kenny Burgan on sax and Al Surratt on drums. In the summer he scored The World's Greatest Sinner, a dark 'operatic' piece, narrated by the characters of Satan, Clarence and his wife Edna.

In fact, between 1961 and 1962 Zappa's involvement with bands was quite gregarious. In Pomona he teamed up again with drummer Al Surratt in a group consisting of Rex Jakabowski and Ronnie Williams on guitars, Joe Perrino on piano and Dwight Bement on tenor sax. Up in Lancaster, Zappa, Surratt, Bement and Williams teamed up with Johnny Franklin on guitar, bass and baritone sax, Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood on baritone sax, and The Omens' guitarist Alex Snouffer. Over at Pal Studio in Cucamonga, Zappa began a working relationship with Paul Buff, recording Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance (and possibly It's From Kansas?). From November 1961 to August 1962 Zappa and Bement performed with Perrino in his band, Joe Perrino & The Mellotones, in a residency at Tommy Sandi's Club Sahara in San Bernardino. At Chaffey Junior College in 1961, where he had studied harmony, Zappa introduced an 8-piece rock n' roll band in November, followed by a 20-piece chamber ensemble in December and the 55-member Pomona Valley Orchestra in mid-December, conducted by Fred E. Graff. 'The World's Greatest Sinner' was the piece played on each occasion. There was a little light relief amid all this with Ronnie & Kenny Williams' Booger Stories.

In 1962 Zappa, Paul Buff and Ronnie Williams, as The Masters, produced a single at Pal Studios on Buff's 'Emmy' label; '16 Tons/Breaktime'. An earlier meeting with Don Preston led to a jamming session in Preston's garage in late spring, with Preston on keyboards and 'object-trove' percussion, brothers Bunk & Buzz Gardner on woodwinds and trumpet, Vic Mio on bass, and Jack Lake & Zappa on percussion. They also auditioned for a Channel 7 TV show in September. In August, Zappa had assisted in the production of Heavies at Pal Studios where, in December, he engineered a Dave Aerni production of The Tornadoes. During 1962 Zappa had also met Ray Collins, and some 'field recordings' were made of Collins, Zappa and Surratt, which can be heard on Joe's XMASage, along with Zappa and his wife Kay conversing on Mormon Xmas Dance Report. Kay also plays clarinet on the pre-recorded orchestral tape Zappa employed on The Steve Allen Show. They divorced in 1963.

Zappa's work through 1963 in Pal Studios at Cucamonga was prolific, reflecting the nature of dedication he would apply to his work throughout his career. A number of recordings are now available of these Cucamonga Years. The song Any Way The Wind Blows was produced in this period, and a third recording of it would subsequently appear on Zappa's first contractual-album release. Names to check out in this period are; Ron Roman, Baby Ray & The Ferns, Bob Guy, The Heartbreakers, Brian Lord & The Midnighters, Ned & Nelda, The Hollywood Persuaders, Mr. Clean, The Rotations, Sin City Boys, and Loeb & Leopold.

The studio also became the place for a reunion with Don van Vliet, where he and Zappa briefly formed The Soots, with Zappa & Snouffer on guitars, Vliet on vocals, and Vic Mortenson on drums. Zappa also recorded Speed Freak Boogie with Doug Moon at Pal, and these musicians would later appear in Magic Band line-ups.

The first broadcast of a pure orchestral Zappa work occurred at Mount St. Mary's College (now primarily a college for catholic girls), in LA, on May 19, 1963. Zappa said of the event, "I spent $300 and got together a college orchestra, and I put on this little concert. Maybe less than a hundred people showed up for it, but the thing was actually taped and broadcast by KPFK. By the time I graduated from high school in '58, I still hadn't written any rock and roll songs, although I had a little rock and roll band in my senior year. I didn't write any rock and roll stuff until I was in my 20's. All the music writing that I was doing was either chamber music or orchestral, and none of it ever got played until this concert at Mount St. Mary's." Whilst conducting this piece Zappa also performed on a zither.

The first Mothers Of Invention formation (1964-1970)

In 1964 Zappa teamed up with a local R&B outfit, The Soul Giants, whose line-up included vocalist Ray Collins (b. 19 November 1937, USA), bass player Roy Estrada (b. 17 April 1943, USA), and drummer Jimmy Carl Black (b. 1 February 1938, El Paso, Texas, USA). Zappa changed their name to The Mothers, but "Of Invention" was later added at the insistence of their label, Verve Records. A string of guitarists came and went, including Alice Stuart and Henry Vestine, before Elliot Ingber was added to the line-up. Produced by Tom Wilson in 1966, the late black producer whose credits included Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane and Bob Dylan, the Mothers Of Invention's Freak Out! was a stunning debut, a two-record set complete with a whole side of wild percussion, a vitriolic protest song, "Trouble Every Day", and the kind of minute detail (sleeve-notes, in-jokes, parodies) that generate instant cult appeal. They made great play of their hair and ugliness, becoming the perfect counter-cultural icons. Unlike the east coast band The Fugs, the Mothers were also musically skilled, a refined instrument for Zappa's eclectic and imaginative ideas. Ingber left to form the Fraternity Of Man before the recording of the band's second album, Absolutely Free. He was replaced for a short period by Jim Fielder, before Zappa chose to expand the Mothers Of Invention with the addition of second drummer Billy Mundi, keyboardist Don Preston (b. 21 September 1932, USA), and horn players Bunk Gardner and Jim "Motorhead" Sherwood.

Tours and releases followed, including Absolutely Free, the solo Lumpy Gravy and We're Only In It For The Money, (with its brilliant parody of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band record cover) a scathing satire on hippiedom and the reactions to it in the USA, and a notable appearance at the Royal Albert Hall in London - this was documented on the compulsive Uncle Meat album. On this double LP one can hear really sophisticated music, mixing highly individual melodies and complex arrangements, rarely heard in rock music before (like "Dog Breath", "Pound For A Brown", "King Kong"), plus sheer madness, containing the dialogues from the movie of the same title. In stark contrast, Cruising With Ruben & The Jets paid excellent hommage to the doo-wop era. British fans were particularly impressed with Hot Rats, a solo Zappa record that ditched the sociological commentary for barnstorming jazz-rock, blistering guitar solos, the extravagant "Peaches En Regalia" and a cameo appearance by Captain Beefheart on "Willie The Pimp". Another characteristic contribution to the sound of this period was the blues-rooted, raw violin playing of Don "Sugarcane" Harris that we can enjoy hearing on several albums from these years.

Collins had quit in April 1968, and the Mothers Of Invention would eventually disintegrate the following August, though the brilliant Burnt Weeny Sandwich album was published wearing the same name. The LP contained a respectful Stravinsky-parody ("Igor's Boogie"), a funny cover ("WPLJ"), classical piece discorded in a happy, humoristic manner, plus some great solo-based numbers that predicted the approaching jazz-rock period. Both Uncle Meat and Hot Rats appeared on Zappa's own Bizarre Records label which, together with his other outlet Straight Records, released a number of highly regarded albums that were nevertheless commercial flops. Artists to benefit from Zappa's patronage included the GTO's, Larry "Wild Man" Fischer, Alice Cooper, Tim Buckley. Captain Beefheart's indispensable Zappa-produced classic, Trout Mask Replica, was also released on Straight.

1970-1975

Eager to gain a "heavier" image than the band that had brought them fame, The Turtles' singers Mark Volman (b. 19 April 1947, Los Angeles, California, USA) and Howard Kaylan (b. Howard Kaplan, 22 June 1947, the Bronx, New York City, New York, USA), aka Flo And Eddie, joined up with Zappa for the movie 200 Motels and three further albums. The newly re-christened Mothers now included George Duke (b. 12 January 1946, San Rafael, California, USA; keyboards, trombone), Ian Underwood (keyboards, saxophone), Aynsley Dunbar (b. 10 January 1946, Liverpool, England; drums), and Jeff Simmons (bass, vocals), although the latter was quickly replaced by Jim Pons (b. 14 March 1943, Santa Monica, California, USA). Fillmore East, June 1971 included some intentionally outrageous subject matter prompting inevitable criticism from conservative observers.

1971 was not a happy year for Zappa: on 4 December fire destroyed the band's equipment while they were playing at the Montreux Casino in Switzerland (an event commemorated in Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water") and six days later Zappa was pushed off-stage at London's Rainbow theatre, crushing his larynx (lowering his voice a third of an octave), damaging his spine and keeping him wheelchair-bound for the best part of a year. He spent 1972 developing an extraordinary new species of big band fusion (Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo), working with top west coast session musicians. However, he found these excellent players dull touring companions, and decided to dump the "jazztette" for an electric band. Over-Nite Sensation announced fusion-chops, salacious lyrics and driving rhythms. The live band featured an extraordinary combination of jazz-based swing and a rich, sonorous rock that probably only Zappa (with his interest in modern classical music) could achieve. The multi-purpose talent of singer, flute player, saxophonist, guitarist and ready-for-any-joke entertainer Napoleon Murphy Brock, percussion virtuoso Ruth Underwood, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, featured in the King Kong project, and keyboard player Duke (whose beautiful, shiny voice was first discovered and showcased by Zappa) shone in this context. Apostrophe (') showcased Zappa's talents as a story-teller in the Lord Buckley tradition, and also (in the title-track) featured a jam with bass player Jack Bruce: it reached number 10 in the Billboard chart in June 1974. Roxy & Elsewhere caught the band live, negotiating diabolically hard musical notation - "Echidna's Arf (Of You)" and "Be-Bop Tango (Of The Old Jazzmen's Church)" - with infectious good humour. One Size Fits All, an under-acknowledged masterpiece, built up extraordinary multi-tracked textures. "Andy" was a song about b-movie cowboys, while "Florentine Pogen" and "Inca Roads" were complex extended (and very Zappa-like) pieces. In 1975, Captain Beefheart joined Zappa for a tour and despite an earlier rift, sang on Bongo Fury, both reuniting in disgust over the USA's bicentennial complacency.

1976-1980

Zoot Allures in 1976 was principally a collaboration between Zappa and drummer Terry Bozzio, with Zappa overdubbing most of the instruments himself. He was experimenting with what he termed "Xenochrony" (combining previous unrelated tracks with different meters to create a piece of synchronous music) and produced intriguing results on "Friendly Little Finger". The title track took the concept of sleaze guitar onto a new level (as did the orgasmic moaning of "The Torture Never Stops"), while "Black Napkins" was an incomparable vehicle for Zappa's guitar work. If Zoot Allures now reads like a response to punk, Zappa was not to forsake large-scale rock showbiz. A series of concerts in New York in late 1976 had a wildly excited crowd applauding tales of singles bars, devil encounters and stunning Brecker Brothers virtuosity (recorded as Zappa In New York). This album was part of the fall-out from Zappa's break-up with Warner Brothers Records, who put out three excellent, mostly instrumental albums with "non-authorized covers" (adopted, strangely enough, by Zappa for his CD re-releases): Studio Tan, Sleep Dirt and Orchestral Favorites. The punk-obsessed rock press did not know what to make of music that parodied Miklos Rozsa, crossed jazz with cartoon scores, guyed rock 'n' roll hysteria and stretched fusion into the twenty-first century. Undaunted by still being perceived as a hippie, which he clearly was not (We're Only In It For The Money had said the last word on the Summer Of Love while it was happening!), Zappa continued to tour.

His guitar-playing seemed to expand into a new dimension: "Yo' Mama" on 1979's Sheik Yerbouti was a taste of the extravaganzas to come. In Ike Willis (most of the time reinforced by the inseparable Ray White), Zappa found a vocalist who understood his required combination of emotional detachment and intimacy, and featured him extensively on the three volumes of [[Joe's Garage. After the mid-70s interest in philosophical concepts and band in-jokes, the music became more political. Tinseltown Rebellion and You Are What You Is commented on the growth of the fundamentalist Right. This period showcased the unique talents of percussionist Ed Mann (who gloriously took over the most important role of excellent Ruth Underwood), "Zappa's favourite" drummer Vinnie Colaiuta, "capable-of-all" guitar virtuoso Steve Vai (who performed the unbelievably hard and valuable work of scoring Zappa's most "impossible" guitar solos), keyboard players Tommy Mars and Robert Martin, worthy partners of Zappa's most eccentric on-stage musical and practical jokes.

1981-1990

Zappa had a hit in 1982 with "Valley Girl", which featured his daughter Moon Unit satirizing the accents of young moneyed Hollywood people. That same year saw him produce and introduce a New York concert of music by Varese. The title track of Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch indicated that Zappa's interest in extended composition was not waning; this was confirmed by the release of a serious orchestral album recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra (The Orchestra) in 1983. Zappa was quite outrageously prolific in 1984: renowned French composer Pierre Boulez conducted Zappa's work on Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger; he released a rock album Them Or Us, which widened still further the impact of his scurrilously inventive guitar; Thing-Fish (its scenario was first published in Larry Flynt's Hustler magazine...) was a "Broadway musical" about AIDS, homophobia and racism; and he unearthed an eighteenth-century composer named Francesco Zappa and recorded his work on a synclavier. The following year's Does Humor Belong In Music? and Meets The Mothers Of Prevention were effective responses to the rise of powerful censor groups in America. Jazz From Hell presented wordless compositions for synclavier that drew inspiration from the expatriate American experimentalist composer Conlon Nancarrow's pieces written for piano player. Zappa could satisfy here his liking for using samples and highly complicated, "impossible for humans" rhythmic orgy. From the flood of his works during the 80's it is absolutely worth mentioning the highly courageous, triple-LP box set, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, a collection of his madly individual guitar solos (also a masterpiece of overdubbing and musical editing), which was the first of a series represented also by the later Guitar and Trance-Fusion albums.

Zappa's next big project materialized in 1988: a 12-piece band playing covers, instrumentals and a brace of new political songs (collected respectively as Broadway The Hard Way, The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life, and Make A Jazz Noise Here). After rehearsing for three months the power and precision of the band were breathtaking, but they broke up during their first tour. As well as the retrospective series You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore (six volumes of double CD-s!), Zappa released his most popular bootlegs in two installments as part of his "Beat The Boots" campaign.

1990s: the final years

In Czechoslovakia, where he had long been a hero of the cultural underground, he was appointed as the country's Cultural Liaison Officer with the West, while he gave his last live performance in Budapest, celebrating the soviet troops' withdrawal from Hungary, in 1991. The same year he announced he would be standing as an independent candidate in the 1992 US presidential election (almost immediately he received several death threats!), but in November his daughter confirmed reports that he was suffering from cancer of the prostate.

In the last years of his life Zappa finally had the chance to work with an orchestra that could achieve the level of performance he had always looked for in "serious" music. Germany-based, multi-national Ensemble Modern can be heard on the last album to be released during his lifetime, The Yellow Shark, on the posthumous releases Civilization Phaze III and Everything Is Healing Nicely. He was to be the conductor in the series of concerts given by EM in Germany and Austria, but due to increasing pain he had to abandon the last shows and go home.

In May 1993 Zappa, clearly weak from intensive chemotherapy, announced that he was fast losing the battle as it had spread into his bones. In the long interview published in Playboy just before his death he nonetheless declared that he wouldn't start to write sad music just because he was going to disappear. He succumbed to the disease seven months later, and died in his home on 4 December 1993, Los Angeles, California.

After Zappa's death

Around one year after his death Civilization Phaze III was released, his first posthumous release, which had been being made for 30 years by then. The earliest recordings on this album were originally made during the sixties, they are completed by synclavier pieces being mixed until his very last days: it can be regarded as a kind of testament of his thoughts and music, even though we must consider the fact that making a synthesis was always as far from Zappa's intentions as it possibly can be. No doubt about that if he was still alive he would continue to surprise us by shocking new musical (and other kind of) ideas every day.

In 1995, a remarkable reissue programme was undertaken by Rykodisc Records in conjunction with his widow Gail Zappa. The entire catalogue of over 50 albums was remastered and re-packaged with loving care. Rykodisc deserve the highest praise for this bold move. In 2003 Dweezil Zappa promised more unreleased material from the vaults of his father as he took over as the family archivist - Halloween and QuAUDIOPHILIAc is his work.

Viewed in perspective, Zappa's career reveals a perfectionist using only the highest standards of musicianship and the finest recording methods. The reissued CDs highlight the extraordinary quality of the original master tapes and Zappa's idealism.

Additionally, he is now rightly seen as one of the great guitar players of our time. Although much of his oeuvre can easily be dismissed as flippant, history will certainly recognize Zappa as a sophisticated, serious composer and a highly accomplished master of music. This musical genius never ceased to astonish, both as a musician and composer: on the way, he produced a towering body of work that is probably rock music's closest equivalent to the legacy of Duke Ellington.

Notes

  1. Vinyl records were the main means of distributing music in Zappa's lifetime, eventually superseded by digital compact discs towards the end of the 20th century. But note Zappa's A Proposal For A System To Replace Phonograph Record Merchandising, which anticipated digital downloading and streaming services decades before they would be available.
  2. Tape editing required physically cutting the tape with a blade and sticking the required parts together.
  3. 3.0 3.1 3.2 Barry Miles, Frank Zappa: A Biography (Atlantic Books 2004)