††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††††
FRANK ZAPPA
After a short career as a professional songwriter Ч his elegiac "Memories of El Monte" was recorded by The Penguins Ч
in 1964 Zappa joined a local R&B band, The Soul Giants, as a guitarist. He
soon assumed leadership, renaming the band "The Mothers" (and, later still, "Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention" at the insistence of the record company).
They gradually began to gain attention on the burgeoning Los Angeles
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.
With
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.
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 Cruisin' With Ruben And 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.
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.
Zappa evolved a unique compositional approach Ч which he dubbed
'conceptual continuity' Ч 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.
He also became famous for regularly quoting musical phrases that
influenced or amused him Ч 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 Stravinsky's
"The Rite Of Spring".
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.
During a residency in
The Mothers' anarchic stage shows were legendary Ч 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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 Ч an event immortalised in Deep Purple's
'Smoke On The Water'.
Then in December, Zappa was attacked on stage at the Rainbow Theatre,
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).
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.
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.
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
(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,
"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 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.
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. Zappa
was immortalized by Konstantinas Bogdanas,
the famous Lithuanian sculptor who had previously cast portraits of Vladimir Lenin. Zappa received a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.
Zappa was married twice, once to Kay Sherman (1959Ц1964) 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, Dweezil, Ahmet Rodan, and Diva.
There is an asteroid named in his honor called 3834 Zappafrank.
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".
"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