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Frank Zappa Biography |
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 - December 4, 1993) was an American rock and jazz musician, composer and satirist.
Life
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Zappa was raised in Lancaster, California where he grew up influenced in equal measures by avant garde composers such as Edgar Varese and Igor Stravinsky and the local rhythm and blues and doo-wop groups. In his high school years he met Captain Beefheart and they influenced each other musically at that time.
After a short career as a professional songwriter (his elegiac "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by The Penguins) Zappa joined a local R&B band as a guitarist. A short time later he re-christened the band "The Mothers" (and, later still, "Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention" at the insistence of the record company.)
The Mothers were signed by well known producer Tom Wilson, and soon produced the double album Freak Out (1966) a mixture of often topical R&B and experimental sound collage. The similarly eclectic Absolutely Free and Lumpy Gravy followed the next year. Zappa also recorded We're Only In It For The Money, a withering satire on both flower power and the prevailing mood of mainstream America; the cover parodied that of the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, replacing flowers with vegetables.
After several more albums with the Mothers including the Doo-Wop flavoured Cruising With Ruben And The Jets, Zappa released the solo instrumental album Hot Rats, featuring his free jazz inflected guitar playing, as well as a live set recorded at the Fillmore East and featuring John Lennon. He continued this high rate of production through the early 1970s, including the excellent and accessible albums One Size Fits All and Apostrophe, with a new versions of the Mothers. See Tom and Jerry for an anecdote from this era.
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 studios.
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 evangelists and the Republican party.
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 organization founded by Al Gore's wife Tipper Gore and including many other political wives, including the wives of five members of the committee. He said,
"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.
"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."
In the early 1990s Zappa devoted almost all of his energy to modern orchestral and synclavier works. In 1992 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, a disease which caused his death on December 4, 1993. His last tour in a "rock band format" took place in 1988 with a 12-piece group which was reported to have a repetoire 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.
On his death in 1993, Frank Zappa 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. Konstantinas Bogdanas, the most renowned Lithuanian sculptor who had previously been casting portraits of Vladimir Lenin immortalized Zappa.
Zappa was married twice, once to Kay Sherman (1959-1964) and then to Gail Sloatman, who 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, Dweezil, Ahmet Rodin, and Diva.
There is an asteroid named in his honor called 3834 Zappafrank.
Quotes
"Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is THE BEST..." - from Packard Goose
"Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny."
"Arf, she said."
"The poodle bites, the poodle chews it."
"Look here brother, who you jivin' with that Cosmic Debris?"
"There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another. "
"I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?" Senate Hearing on Porn Rock, 1985, in response to Tipper Gore's allegations that music incites people towards deviant behavior, or influences their behavior in general
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 (1969)
Hot Rats (1969)
Burnt Weeny Sandwich (1969)
Weasels Ripped My Flesh (1970)
Chunga's Revenge (1970)
Filmore 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 (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)
The Perfect Stranger (1984)
Them Or Us (1984)
Thing-Fish (1984)
Francesco Zappa (1984)
FZ Meets The Mothers Of Prevention (1985)
Does Humor Belong In Music? (1986)
Jazz From Hell (1986)
London Symphony Orchestra vol 2 (1987)
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)
You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore vol 4 (1991)
Make A Jazz Noise Here (1991)
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)
Ahead Of Their Time (1993)
Zappa's Universe (1993)
The Yellow Shark (1993)
Civilization, Phaze III (1994)
Strictly Commercial (1995)
The Lost Episodes (1996)
Läther (1996)
Mystery Disc (1998)
Everything Is Healing Nicely (1999)
FZ:OZ (2002)
Halloween (2003)
Joe's Corsage (2004) |
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