Fred Frith
Fred Frith (b. February 17, 1949) is a British avant-garde rock musician. He was a member of the band Henry Cow, before starting a solo career.
A productive musician, Frith has collaborated with Brian Eno, Robert Wyatt, Mike Oldfield, Bill Laswell, The Residents, Henry Kaiser and Catherine Milliken.
Frank Zappa
Interviewed by Dan Warburton for Paris Transatlantic (19 March 1998), Frith remembered: "Henry Cow started as a blues band. That's what we were doing. I met Tim Hodgkinson in a blues club. We evolved into other things simply because, at that time and in that place, so much was going on that we discovered new things almost hourly. I can remember a day when I heard "Big Pink" by The Band, and the first Beefheart record, and Frank Zappa all on one afternoon. You know, that's a lot of input. And in all three cases those were things that became profoundly important for me." In the same interview, Frith said that his use of hand signals to direct his musicians was inspired by Zappa too: "(...) It involves quite a lot of rehearsal just to learn the signs. What's important in an improvising situation is that you react fast, but on the other hand reacting fast and playing something precise is not always easy. (...) I've been working with this kind of cued language for quite a long time, using graphic scores in rehearsal and also as a workshop tool, and actually it's something that I first saw used by Frank Zappa in the Sixties when he used hand signals with the Mothers. It's something which has been around in various contexts-it's interesting to me to think that it began in a rock context, although this is now totally forgotten." [1]
In the 16 November 1974 issue of New Musical Express, Frith devoted an article to what he felt where the Great Rock Solos of Our Time and also wrote about Frank Zappa. [2] [3] The articles were later so published in book form as The Guitar Book.
Interviewed by Allan MacInnis for Straight (25 April 2026), Frith said: "I think we owe an enormous debt to Zappa, especially the early years. Uncle Meat was on repeated listening for a while when it came out! I admit I lost interest after Hot Rats when it seemed to become more about tastelessness combined with killer chops and a certain disdain for the audience, but that would be a longer and more nuanced conversation." When Frith and his band, Keep the Dog, performed in Moscow in 1989, Frith happened to meet Frank Zappa, "almost by accident", who was also there as part of his job as a Cultural Ambassador of Czechoslovakia under Václav Havel who, to Frith's thrill, also happened to be a fan of Henry Cow: "We found ourselves ordering coffee at the same cafe in the foyer and had a brief but friendly conversation, mostly about the Synclavier, an instrument which I found it impossible to like but which he apparently trusted more than real musicians. The owners of Synclaviers tended to know each other so we had mutual friends like Henry Kaiser and Laurie Anderson. Anyway, he duly attended our concert which was a big success —an audience that really seemed to hear and understand what we were doing. I didn’t see him afterwards, but the promoter told me he’d said something to the effect of ‘Well, I know where that’s coming from!’ Sigh. Reminds me of when I gave a copy of 'Guitar Solos' to Captain Beefheart when we were touring together in 1974. Many years later John French told me with much amusement that Don had passed the record on to him and said: ‘Check it out, he’s ripping me off!’" [4]
In 1999, Frith also wrote a composition dedicated to Zappa: T Square Park Lark (For Frank Zappa). [5]
Sources
- ↑ https://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/frith.html
- ↑ https://harsmedia.com/pdftrib/FredFrithNMEArticles.pdf
- ↑ https://www.afka.net/Articles/1974-11_NME.htm
- ↑ https://www.straight.com/music/fred-frith-returns-to-vancouver-seditious-soccer-and-playful-perversity#
- ↑ https://fred-frith.bandcamp.com/track/t-square-park-lark-for-frank-zappa
