Avant-garde rock musician and composer, born in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He played guitar in a high school blues and rock band and briefly studied music theory in college. He led the satirical underground band The Mothers of Invention (with varying line-ups) in the 1960s and 1970s, making inventive and often scabrous albums such as Freak-Out! (1966) and We're Only in it for the Money (1967, a parody of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album). Influential solo albums included Lumpy Gravy (1968) and Hot Rats (1969); and from various new groupings of Mothers came Just Another Band from LA, Over-Nite Sensation, and more. He created and scored the film 200 Motels, and composed serious music, performed by Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, and others.
| Frank Zappa | ||
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"A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians." - Frank Zappa |
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| Background information | ||
| Birth name | Frank Vincent Zappa | |
| Born | December 21, 1940 | |
| Origin | Baltimore, Maryland | |
| Died | December 4, 1993 | |
| Genre(s) |
Rock Avant Garde Jazz Classical Experimental |
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| Occupation(s) |
Composer Musician Bandleader Conductor Producer |
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| Instrument(s) |
Vocals Guitar Bass Guitar Keyboards Vibraphone Synclavier Drums |
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| Years active | 1950s - 1993 | |
| Label(s) |
Bizzare Rykodisc DiscReet Zappa Barking Pumpkin |
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Associated acts |
Captain Beefheart | |
| Website | zappa.com | |
| Notable instrument(s) | ||
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Gibson Les Paul Gibson SG Fender Stratocaster |
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Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, guitarist, singer, film director, and satirist. In his 33-year musical career, Zappa proved to be one of the most prolific musician-composers of his era, releasing over sixty albums during his lifetime, almost all of which consisted of original compositions. Zappa was also noted as a spotter of talent and conductor of extremely stringent auditions, his various groups including such musicians as Adrian Belew, Terry Bozzio, Aynsley Dunbar, Bruce Fowler, Lowell George, Jean-Luc Ponty, Ruth Underwood, George Duke, Vinnie Colaiuta, Mike Keneally and Steve Vai.
Zappa has a large and dedicated worldwide following, particularly in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands and Scandinavian countries. Zappa, as demonstrated by his disparaging comments about the music business, never cared much for mainstream acclaim.
Zappa was married twice, once to Kathryn "Kay" Sherman (1960–1964; Gail Zappa handles the businesses of her late husband under the company name the Zappa Family Trust.
Biography
Early life and influences
Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland on December 21, 1940 to Francis Zappa (born in Partinico, Sicily, of Greek and Lebanese descent) and Rose Marie Colimore (who was of three quarters Italian including Sicilian and one quarter French descent).
During Zappa's earliest childhood, his father, a chemist and mathematician, worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility at nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to the home's proximity to the Arsenal, Zappa's father kept gas masks on hand in case of an accident. Evidently, this had a profound effect on the young Zappa; Zappa developed a sinus problem during his early teens.
By 1955 the Zappa family had relocated to Lancaster. By age 15, Zappa had attended six different high schools. Lancaster's location gave Zappa access to the exciting sounds of radio stations in Los Angeles and KSPC 88.7 FM in Claremont, where Zappa had his own Saturday night show.
As a student, Zappa was bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics.
Zappa was, from the beginning, interested in sounds for their own sake.
The pivotal events leading to Zappa's engagement with modern classical music occurred after his reading of a LOOK magazine story on the Sam Goody record store chain that lauded its ability to sell an LP as obscure as The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One. Zappa then 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 after a year of searching (he noticed the LP for the "mad scientist" looking photo of Varèse on the cover, and was surprised it was the Varèse LP he'd long been searching for), Zappa convinced the salesman to sell him the store's demonstration copy at a discount. Zappa's mother gave him considerable encouragement. Though she greatly disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to award Zappa the gift of a long distance call to the composer as a fifteenth birthday present. Zappa later received a letter from Varèse thanking Zappa for his interest, telling him about a composition he was working on called "Déserts" (living in the desert town of Lancaster, Zappa found this very exciting), and inviting Zappa to look him up if he was ever in New York. The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa kept the framed letter proudly displayed for the rest of his life.
Zappa's interest in composing and arranging burgeoned in his later high school years and he dreamed of being a composer.
Zappa began his musical career on drums, taking his first lessons at school in the summer of 1953. Although he performed as a singer and guitarist for most of his career, Zappa always retained a strong interest in rhythm and percussion.
In 1956 Zappa met Don Van Vliet (best known by his stage name "Captain Beefheart") while taking classes at Antelope Valley High School and playing drums in a local band, The Blackouts. The Blackouts, a racially-mixed outfit, included Euclid James "Motorhead" Sherwood (who later lived with Zappa at 'Studio Z' and was a member of the Mothers of Invention). Zappa and Van Vliet became close friends, influencing each other musically, and collaborating in the late Sixties and mid-Seventies (on the 1975 album Bongo Fury). 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."
Zappa is quoted as saying, "Johnny "Guitar" Watson's 1956 song 'Three Hours Past Midnight' inspired me to become a guitarist." Zappa would later invite Watson to contribute on numerous albums.
In 1957 Zappa was given his first guitar and quickly developed into a highly accomplished and inventive player. Zappa eventually became one of the most highly regarded electric guitarists of his time. While it is possible that Zappa might have become a professional jazz musician, he was soon drawn into rock music.
After graduating in June 1958 Zappa 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. Zappa used 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, the Situationist International, and surrealism. Zappa thereafter always took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, designing some of his album covers (for example, Absolutely Free) and directing his own films and videos. Zappa's album covers are highly distinctive;
Zappa moved to Los Angeles in 1959 and spent most of the rest of his life there. Zappa had been 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, including a unique 5-track tape recorder, built by Paul Buff out of an old cabinet.
After being approached by a customer who offered him $100 to produce a suggestive tape for a stag party, Zappa and a female friend jokingly faked the "erotic" recording, which purported to contain the sounds of people having sex (which consisted of Frank and his friend jumping on the bed and making sex sounds). Unfortunately the customer was an undercover member of the Vice Squad and Zappa was jailed for ten days on charges of supplying pornography.
1960s
After a short career as a professional songwriter — his elegiac "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by Doo-Wop group The Penguins — in 1964 Zappa joined a local R&B band, The Soul Giants, as a guitarist. Around this time, Zappa also met and signed with longtime manager Herb Cohen. 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 radical new voice in rock music. 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 is 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.
The early Mothers' anarchic stage shows were legendary — during one famous 1967 performance at the Garrick Theatre in New York, Zappa managed to entice some soldiers from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a collection of baby dolls, having been told by Zappa to imagine that they were "gook babies".
Zappa's second and third studio albums were landmarks of record production highlighted by liberal use of 'cut-up' editing techniques. Absolutely Free (1967) continued Zappa's lyrical preoccupations with the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, with the alleged suppression of underground and alternative culture. The audio collage Lumpy Gravy (1968) — released as a solo album under the name Francis Vincent Zappa — took Zappa's production techniques to a new level and, according to Zappa himself, took nine months to edit (at this point, he still did all of his edits the old-fashioned way--with a razor blade).
During the late Sixties Zappa continued to develop as an artist, emerging as a superb lead guitarist, skilled producer and engineer, and a composer and arranger of extraordinary range and facility.
Zappa evolved a unique compositional approach — which he dubbed "conceptual continuity" — that ranged across virtually every genre of music. Conceptual continuity clues are to be found throughout Zappa's entire oeuvre. pop songs such as "My Sharona," "Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?", "Let's Dance," (David Bowie was a particularly frequent object of Zappa's derision;
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. 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, a process he dubbed xenochrony.
Although they were lauded by critics and their peers and had a rabid cult following, mainstream audiences often found much of Zappa and 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.
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 session players including violinist Don "Sugarcane" Harris, drummer John Guerin, multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood, and bassist Shuggie Otis.
During this period Zappa also produced the double album Trout Mask Replica for his old friend Captain Beefheart (who also appeared on Hot Rats) as well as releases by Alice Cooper, Tim Buckley, Wild Man Fischer and The GTOs.
1970s
Around 1970, Zappa put together a new version of The Mothers that included British drummer Aynsley Dunbar, jazz keyboardist George Duke, previous Mothers member Ian Underwood, and no fewer than three members of The Turtles: bass player Jim Pons, who before joining The Turtles had been the lead singer of The Leaves (of "Hey Joe" fame);
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. This double album was followed by two live sets, Fillmore East - June 1971 and Just Another Band From L.A., which included the 20-minute track "Billy The Mountain," Zappa's satire on rock opera, set in Southern California. The event and immediate aftermath can be heard on the bootleg album Swiss Cheese/Fire, released legally as part of Zappa's Beat the Boots II compilation. Later that month, Zappa was attacked at the Rainbow Theatre, London. Zappa suffered 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 healing).
In 1971-72 Zappa released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, which were recorded during the forced layoff from concert touring, using floating lineups of session players and Mothers alumni.
In the mid 1970s Zappa began recording material for Läther (pronounced "leather"), an ambitious four-LP project. Läther featured all aspects of Zappa's musical styles —rock tunes, theatrical works, complex instrumental compositions, and Zappa's own trademark tube distortion-drenched guitar solos were all recorded for the release. Zappa had completed the recording for the album and presented it to Warner Bros. Wary of a quadruple-LP, they refused to release it and told Zappa that he owed them four more records.
In an attempt to complete his contract, he reedited Läther into four separate albums, and delivered the master tapes to Warner Bros., who refused to release the albums, and told him he still owed them four more albums. Zappa soon appeared on the (at the time) influential Los Angeles radio station KROQ, allowing them to broadcast the Läther album and encouraging listeners to make their own tape recordings. A lawsuit between Zappa and Warner Bros.
In 1976 the cessation of cordial relations with Zappa's long-time manager Herb Cohen occurred. The breakup was an acrimonious affair exacerbated by Zappa's ongoing feud with Warner Bros. Cohen had created DiscReet Records with Zappa as a label of Warner Bros., in order to be used as a business venture to aid funding of Zappa albums. Zappa however discovered that Cohen had been skimming more than he was allocated from the label, and he also alleged that Cohen had used some of Frank's money to fund recordings for other artists. Cohen filed a lawsuit against Zappa in return, due to Zappa taking the master copies of Zoot Allures (1976) directly to Warner Bros., thus bypassing DiscReet completely. While it is unknown what became of the lawsuits, with both parties remaining tight-lipped about the affair, Zappa and Cohen would never work together again. Zappa eventually gained the rights of all his material created under the Warner Bros.
Zappa's 1970s period ended with the releases of Sheik Yerbouti (1979), which contained Zappa classics such as Dancin' Fool, Bobby Brown (Goes Down), as well as Jewish Princess, which received some controversial attention, and the triple LP Joe's Garage (1979), which features lead singer Ike Willis as voice of "Joe". Joe's Garage is considered to be one of Zappa's definitive achievements of the period. It features a coherent story line (which Zappa, however, later described as "stupid") about the suppression of freedom of speech (and music), and mixes catchy songs like "Catholic Girls," "Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up," and the title track, with long guitar solos taken from live concerts and mixed with studio material (cf. Finally, the album contains what would become one of Zappa's most famous signature guitar pieces, "Watermelon in Easter Hay." Sheik Yerbouti was a commercial success, and according to Zappa's record company Rykodisc: "Bobby Brown (Goes Down)" is perhaps the oddest of Zappa's successes. Said Zappa to Matt Groening in a 1992 interview, "I don't think anything has outsold Sheik Yerbouti, partly because "Bobby Brown" keeps becoming a hit every ten years...
1980s
In 1980, Zappa helped former band members Warren Cuccurullo, Terry Bozzio and Patrick O'Hearn 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. In 1981, the double album You Are What You Is was released, featuring 19 songs, which included such complex instrumentals as "Theme from the 3rd Movement of Sinister Footwear", but mainly focused on rock songs with Zappa's sardonic social commentary. "Dumb All Over", is an example of this, being a devastating tirade on religion, as is "Heavenly Bank Account", wherein Zappa rails against people such as Jerry Falwell for relying upon the US administration to finance the religious organization, the "Moral Majority," while simultaneously embezzling the funds. The album is also notable for the presence of guitar virtuoso Steve Vai who joined Zappa's touring band in the Fall of 1980. The album is a mixture of complicated instrumentals, of which "The Blue Light" is a salient example, demonstrating Vinnie Colaiuta's dexterity around a drum kit, and Zappa's use of sprechstimme (speaking voice), a compositional technique utilized by such composers as Arnold Schoenberg, and Alban Berg. Colaiuta's performances on Zappa's albums Tinsel Town Rebellion, Joe's Garage and Shut Up 'n Play Yer Guitar are considered by many drummers to be among the most astounding ever recorded.
1981 also saw the release of three instrumental albums Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar Some More, and The Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, which were initially sold via mail order by Zappa himself, but were later released commercially through CBS label due to popular demand. As the titles reveal, these albums focus exclusively on Frank Zappa as a guitar soloist. Frank Zappa's guitar solos had been a trademark during his career, and now he decided to release albums focusing on his work as a guitarist. The tracks on the albums are predominantly from 1979-80, and highlight Zappa's exceptional improvisational skills and unique sound. A third guitar-only album, Trance-Fusion, was completed by Zappa shortly before his death, but had not been officially released until 2006.
In May of 1982, Zappa released Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, which featured his biggest selling single, "Valley Girl" (topping out at #32 on the Billboard charts). In her improvised "lyrics" to the song, Zappa's daughter Moon Unit satirized the vapid speech of teenage girls from the San Fernando Valley. The second album was the first fully orchestral recording of Zappa pieces, something he had been waiting to accomplish for some time.
For the remainder of his career, much of Zappa's work was affected by use of the synclavier as a compositional and performance tool. Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger, which juxtaposed orchestral works commissioned and conducted by world-renowned conductor Pierre Boulez and premiere synclavier pieces; Francesco Zappa a synclavier rendition of works by 17th century composer, Francesco Zappa (a relation to Frank is uncertain);
On September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the US Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center or PMRC, a music censorship (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. In his prepared statement, Zappa said
Zappa put some excerpts from the PMRC hearings to music in his composition "Porn Wars" from the 1985 album Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention. 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. Zappa would also go on to argue with PMRC representatives on the CNN's Crossfire in 1986 and 1987.
The album Jazz From Hell, released in 1986, brought Zappa his first Grammy Award in 1988 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
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 200 (mostly Zappa) compositions, but which split in acrimonious circumstances before the tour was completed. The tour was documented on the albums Broadway The Hard Way (new material featuring songs with strong political emphasis), The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life (Zappa "standards" and obscure cover tunes), and Make a Jazz Noise here (mostly instrumental and experimental music). 4 and 6.
In the late '80s Zappa's passion for American politics was becoming a bigger part of his life.
1990s
In 1990, Zappa visited Czechoslovakia at the request of President Václav Havel, a lifelong fan, and was asked by Havel to serve as Special Ambassador to the West on Trade, Culture and Tourism. Zappa enthusiastically agreed and began meeting with corporate officials interested in investing in Czechoslovakia. Zappa's political work would come to a halt all too soon, however.
After his diagnosis, Zappa devoted almost all of his energy to modern orchestral and synclavier works.
Frank Zappa died on December 4, 1993, age 52 of prostate cancer, and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in 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 has been an annual international festival celebrating the music of Frank Zappa, the "Zappanale". Jimi Hendrix gave Zappa the burnt and broken parts of the Fender Stratocaster guitar that he destroyed onstage at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. After Hendrix's death in 1970, Zappa rebuilt the instrument and played it extensively during the 1970s and 1980s. In 2002, Zappa's son Dweezil jokingly put the guitar up for auction on his website with a starting bid of $1 million. An old rumor states that at some point in the 1960s, Zappa once won a gross-out contest by eating his own excrement on stage. Zappa denied the claim, stating, "For the record, folks; Three of Frank's songs made the list ("Jewish Princess," "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and "Dirty Love.") On December 6, 1976, Zappa introduced Black Sabbath at their Madison Square Garden concert. He once declared Sabbath's "Iron Man" (Paranoid, 1970) the greatest ever rock track, he would later change his choice of track to "Supernaut" from the group's Vol.4 Album (1972) A jam was once organised featuring Sabbath and Zappa, but Sabbath pulled out of the project. The Simpsons' creator Matt Groening is a fan and participated in what is dubbed "the Mother of all Frank Zappa interviews" and created a Life In Hell strip which honoured Zappa having a main character pledge allegiance to the United Mutations, with various references to Zappa lyrics.
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