Frank Zappa

Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa at a concert in Norway in 1977
Background information
Birth name	Frank Vincent Zappa
Born	December 21 1940(1940-12-21) Baltimore, Maryland
Died	December 4 1993 (aged 52) Los Angeles, California
Genre(s)	Rock, jazz, classical, experimental
Occupation(s)	Composer, Musician, Conductor, Producer
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, keyboards, vibraphone, synclavier, drums
Years active	1950s–1993
Label(s)	Verve/MGM, Bizarre/Straight, DiscReet, Zappa Records, Barking Pumpkin Records, Rykodisc
Associated acts	The Mothers of Invention Captain Beefheart
Website	Zappa.com
Notable instrument(s)
Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster Gibson SG Gibson Les Paul Fender Stratocaster Synclavier

Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American composer, musician, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa established himself as a prolific and highly distinctive composer, electric guitar player and band leader. He worked in almost every musical genre and wrote music for rock bands, jazz ensembles, synthesizers and symphony orchestra, as well as musique concrète works constructed from pre-recorded, synthesized or sampled sources. In addition to his music recordings, he created feature-length and short films, music videos, and album covers.

His ability to coalesce eclectic and highly-varied musical styles and genres into a unified musical expression was a hallmark of his output.

Career and Reputation

Although he only occasionally achieved major commercial success, he maintained a highly productive career that encompassed composing, recording, touring, producing and merchandising his own and others' music. Zappa self-produced almost every one of the more than sixty albums he released with the Mothers of Invention or as a solo artist. He received multiple Grammy nominations and won for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1988 for the album Jazz from Hell. Zappa was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, and received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. In 2005, his 1968 album with the Mothers of Invention, We're Only in It for the Money, was inducted into the United States National Recording Preservation Board's National Recording Registry. The same year, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. In 2007, his birthtown Baltimore declared August 9 official "Frank Zappa Day" in his honor.

Politically, Zappa was a self-proclaimed "practical conservative," an avowed supporter of capitalism and independent business. He was also a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion. Zappa was a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech and the abolition of censorship, and his work embodied his skeptical view of established political processes and structures. Although many assumed that he used drugs like many musicians of the time, Zappa strongly opposed recreational drug use. Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman (1960–1964; no children), and then in 1967 to Adelaide Gail Sloatman, with whom he remained until his death in December 1993 of prostate cancer. They had four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen. 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) who was of Greek-Arab descent, and Rose Marie Colimore who was of three quarters Italian and one quarter French descent. He was the oldest of four children (two brothers and a sister). During Zappa's childhood, the family often moved because his father, a chemist and mathematician, had various jobs in the US defense industry. After a brief period in Florida in the mid-1940s, the family returned to Edgewood, Maryland where Zappa’s father got a job at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility at nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to the home's proximity to the Arsenal which stored mustard gas, Zappa's father kept gas masks on hand in case of an accident. This had a profound effect on the young Zappa: references to germs, germ warfare and other aspects of the defense industry occur throughout his work.

As a child, Zappa was often sick, suffering from asthma, earaches and a sinus problem. A doctor treated the latter by inserting a pellet of radium on a probe into each of Zappa's nostrils. Nasal imagery and references would appear both in his music and lyrics as well as in the collage album covers created by his long-time visual collaborator, Cal Schenkel. While little was known at the time about the potential dangers of living close to chemicals and being subjected to radiation, it is a fact that Zappa's illnesses peaked when he lived in the Baltimore area.

In 1952, his family relocated mainly because of Zappa's asthma. They settled first in Monterey, California, where Zappa’s father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School. Shortly thereafter, they moved to Claremont, then again to El Cajon before once again moving a short distance, to San Diego. During this period, his parents bought a record player, one event initiating Zappa’s interest in music, as he started collecting records. Television also exerted a strong influence, as demonstrated by quotations from show themes and advertising jingles found in some of his later work.

The first items of music Zappa purchased were R&B singles, and he began building a large collection he would keep for the rest of his life. He was, however, mainly interested in sounds for their own sake, in particular, the sounds of drums and percussion. He got a snare drum at age twelve, and started learning the rudiments of orchestral percussion. Events that initiated Zappa's deep engagement with modern classical music occurred when he was around thirteen. He read 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. The story further described Varèse's percussion composition Ionisation as "a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds." Zappa then became convinced that he should seek out Varèse's music. When he finally found a copy after a year of searching (he noticed the LP for the "mad scientist" looking photo of Varèse on the cover), Zappa convinced the salesman to sell him the store's demonstration copy at a discount. Thus began a lifelong passion for Varèse's music and that of other modern classical composers.

"Since I didn't have any kind of formal training, it didn't make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin' Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels . . ., or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music." —Frank Zappa, 1989

Zappa therefore grew up influenced in equal measures by avant-garde composers such as Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern, R&B and doo-wop groups (particularly local pachuco groups), as well as modern jazz. His own heterogeneous ethnic background and the diverse cultural and social mix that existed in and around greater Los Angeles at the time were also crucial in situating Zappa as a practitioner and fan of "outsider art". Indeed, throughout his career he was deeply distrustful and openly critical of "mainstream" social, political and musical movements, and he frequently lampooned popular musical fads like psychedelia, bubblegum pop, rock opera and disco.

By 1955, the Zappa family moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert, close to Edwards Air Force Base, Los Angeles, and the San Gabriel Mountains. Zappa's mother gave him considerable encouragement in his musical interests. Though she disliked Varèse's music, she was indulgent enough to award Zappa a long distance call to the composer as a fifteenth birthday present. Unfortunately, Varèse was in Europe at the time, so Zappa spoke to the composer's wife. 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. Varèse invited Zappa to see him if he ever came to New York. The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa kept the framed letter displayed for the rest of his life.

Zappa began his career as a musician on drums, and while attending Mission Bay High School in San Diego, he joined his first band, The Ramblers. Although he performed as a singer and guitarist for most of his later career, Zappa's original influence by classical percussion compositions made him retain a strong interest in rhythm and percussion and his bands have been noted for the excellence of their drummers and percussionists. His works such as "The Black Page," written originally for drum kit but later developed for larger bands, are notorious for complexity in rhythmic structure, featuring radical changes of tempo and metre as well as short, densely arranged passages.

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 became a member of the Mothers of Invention). Zappa and Van Vliet became close friends, influencing each other musically, and collaborating in the Sixties and mid-Seventies (e.g., on Van Vliet's Trout Mask Replica, which Zappa produced, and the 1975 Mothers of Invention live album Bongo Fury). They later became estranged for a period of years, but were in contact at the end of Zappa’s life.

In 1957 Zappa was given his first guitar. Among his early influences were Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Howlin' Wolf and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown (he would in the 1970s and 80s invite Watson to perform on several albums). Zappa considered soloing as the equivalent of forming "air sculptures," and developed an eclectic, innovative and personal style. He eventually became one of the most highly regarded electric guitarists of his time.

Zappa's interest in composing and arranging burgeoned in his later high school years where he started seriously dreaming of becoming a composer. By his final year at Antelope Valley High School, he was writing, arranging and conducting avant-garde performance pieces for the school orchestra. Due to his family’s frequent moving, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student, Zappa was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics. He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and he would later acknowledge two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album Freak Out! He left community college after one semester, and maintained thereafter a disdain for formal education, taking his children out of school at age 15 and refusing to pay for their college.

Zappa left home in 1959, and moved into a small apartment in Echo Park, Los Angeles. After meeting Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman during his short stay at college, they moved in together in Ontario, and got married in December 1960. Around that time, Zappa worked for a short period in advertising. His sojourn in the commercial world was brief, but gave him valuable insights into how it works. Throughout his career, Zappa always took a keen interest in the visual presentation of his work, designing some of his album covers and directing his own films and videos.