Best Known As: Iconoclastic rocker who did "Dynamo Hum"
Guitarist Frank Zappa was also a production wizard whose early work with The Mothers of Invention displayed terrific musical knowledge and an outrageous sense of humor. His foul and funny lyrics were consciously crass, earning him cult status though at times masking the complexity of his compositions. After dozens of solo albums, including Weasels Ripped My Flesh, Apostrophe and Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Zappa went from being an underground rock star to being a highly regarded -- if not widely appreciated -- composer. He died in 1993.
After Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia in 1989, he asked Frank to take a position in the ministry of culture.
Frank Zappa was one of the most accomplished composers of the rock era; his music combines an understanding of and appreciation for such contemporary classical figures as Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and Varèse with an affection for late-'50s doo wop rock & roll and a facility for the guitar-heavy rock that dominated pop in the '70s. But Zappa was also a satirist whose reserves of scorn seemed bottomless and whose wicked sense of humor and absurdity have delighted his numerous fans, even when his lyrics crossed over the broadest bounds of taste. Finally, Zappa was perhaps the most prolific record-maker of his time, turning out massive amounts of music on his own Barking Pumpkin label and through distribution deals with Rykodisc and Rhino after long, unhappy associations with industry giants like Warner Brothers and the now-defunct MGM.
Zappa became interested in music early and pursued his studies in school, up through a six-month stint at Chaffey College in Alta Loma, CA. He scored a couple of low-budget films and used the money to buy a low-budget recording studio. In 1964, he joined a local band called the Soul Giants, which, over the course of the next two years, evolved into the Mothers, who played songs written by Zappa. The band was signed to the Verve division of MGM by producer Tom Wilson in 1966 and recorded its first album, a two-LP set called Freak Out!, which introduced Zappa's interests in both serious music and pop as well as his scathing wit. (Verve insisted on adding "of Invention" to the band's name.)
Subsequent albums extended the musical and lyrical themes of the debut, and they came frequently. Three albums, for example, hit the charts in 1968: We're Only in It for the Money, a Mothers album that made fun of hippies and Sgt. Pepper; Lumpy Gravy, a Zappa solo album recorded with an orchestra; and Cruising With Ruben & the Jets, on which the Mothers played neo-doo wop. Toward the end of the '60s, Zappa expanded the Mothers lineup, turning more toward instrumental jazz-rock, much of which displayed his technically accomplished guitar playing. But by the end of the decade, he had broken up the band.
In 1970, however, Zappa reassembled a new edition of the Mothers, featuring former Turtles lead singers Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan as frontmen. The lineup moved the group more in the direction of X-rated comedy, notably on the album Fillmore East: June 1971, but it was short-lived: during a performance at the Rainbow Theatre in London, Zappa was pushed from the stage by a demented fan and seriously injured.
While he recovered, Zappa released several albums, then he re-formed the Mothers with himself as lead singer and made pop/rock albums such as Over-nite Sensation that were among his best-selling records ever. By the end of the '70s, Zappa was recording on his own labels, distributed in some cases by the majors, and he had attracted a consistent cult following for both his humor and his complex music. (Zappa's band, in fact, became a training ground for high-quality rock musicians, much as Miles Davis' was for jazz players.)
In the '80s, Zappa gained the rights to his old albums and began to reissue them, at first on his own and then through the pioneering Rykodisc CD label. He wrote his autobiography and embarked on a world tour in 1988. That was the end of his live performing, except for such isolated appearances as one in Czechoslovakia at the invitation of its post-Communist president, Zappa fan Vaclav Havel. In late 1991, it was confirmed that Zappa was seriously ill with cancer. Nevertheless, his schedule of album releases continued to be rapid. Zappa died in December of 1993, with a number of posthumous releases to follow. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
Career Highlights: The World's Greatest Sinner, Frank Zappa Presents: The Amazing Mr. Bickford, Uncle Meat: The Mothers of Invention Movie
First Major Screen Credit: The World's Greatest Sinner (1962)
Biography
A musician since high school, Frank Zappa left college after six months for paying jobs, and by age 23, he'd accumulated enough capital to open his own small-scale recording studio. He gained national popularity in the mid-'60s as guitarist/composer of the Mothers of Invention. To many adults, Zappa was a near-obscene provocateur, forever skirting the boundaries of taste and indulging in senseless cacophony; to those in the know, Zappa was as serious a stylist as his classical music idols, Stravinksy and Varese. He was also perhaps the most articulate and knowledgeable rock star on the scene, demonstrating his expertise in the many slyly humorous articles that he wrote for mainstream magazines. In direct opposition to his "hippie freak" outward appearance, Zappa was a tireless, intimidatingly well-organized craftsman. He was known as one of the strictest and most demanding musical producers in the business, insisting that his musicians abstain from booze and dope if they wanted to work with him. Zappa's tight recording schedule allowed him a few precious moments to appear in films, though the results were not always that precious: a comic walk-on in the Monkees flick Head (1968); an acting/directing stint in the will-of-the-wisp, free-form rockumentary 200 Motels (1971); and the three-hour ego trip Baby Snakes (1979) in which producer/director Zappa allowed actor Zappa way too many scenes in which fans groveled at his feet (even Zappa finally decided that that was too much, and edited the film down to an hour and a half). After his untimely death from colon cancer in 1993, Frank Zappa's show business legacy was carried on by his daughter, singer Moon Unit Zappa (who, for better or worse, introduced the "Valley Girl" vernacular to an unsuspecting world) and by Frank's son, Dweezil Zappa, an engaging young TV actor who supplied voices for the USA network cartoon series Duckman -- which featured, as main-theme and background music, the experimental compositions of the late Frank Zappa. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
"A drug is neither moral nor immoral -- it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole."
"You can't be a Real Country unless you have a BEER and an airline -- it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER."
"Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read."
"Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something."
"The manner in which Americans consume music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made."
"There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another."
