- Zappa the man:

Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore, on December 21st of the year 1940. During his childhood, Frank belonged to a middle-low class family. His family moved several times because of his father's job in the Navy and for this reason Frank attended numerous schools. He barely had time to settle sometimes, when it was already time to move again. He wasn't very sociable but with time he assumed the role of the "class clown" in school. He wasn't a good student and he got sick very often, usually depending on the weather. The colder the weather, the worse his health would be. 

Frank and Gail

Frank, Moon Unit, Gail, Diva and Dweezil

Gail, Moon Unit and Frank

Zappa was a family man. He married Gail Sloatman and had four kids, Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva . He used to say that his only friends were his family members, and other them, he had no friends. He had a very stable homelife, rare in the rock and roll world. He always treated his children as grownups and let them experiment, always in a safe place. In his autobiography he appears reading the US constitution to his children instead of a storybook.

He was fascinated by horror movies and that's what inspired him later on in his life to make movies himself.

He was an extremely opinionated person, often a mess of contradictions.

Although Frank was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 1990, he did not stop smoking. He said that he didn't believe that all the stories about the evil effects of tobacco were true, "to me, a cigarette is food, and tobacco is my favorite vegetable". Cigarettes and coffee were his fuels.

The last years of his life he concentrated in classical music. He gave several concerts around Europe and had scheduled an opera in Vienna for 1994.

Unfortunately, Frank Zappa the "rock legend" died on 1993 of prostate cancer, still making music, and still smoking.

Some of my favorite Zappa quotes are:

- “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”
- “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.”
- “Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.”
-“I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.”
- “Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?'
Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?”
- “There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” 
- “If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they'll murder you in your sleep.”
-“May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face.”
- “The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own”




Reference:http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/22302.Frank_Zappa

Zappa the social critic:

Zappa always spoke his mind on several subjects. Songs in his album Freak Out! such as 'Hungry Freaks, Daddy' and 'I Ain't Got No Heart' express his feelings towards America's society empty culture values.

One subject in particular that put him in the spotlight was his aversion to drugs of all types. He disliked drugs and people who did them. He was quoted saying that "taking drugs is a license to be an asshole" and he felt the same about alcohol. He always thought that drugs had to be legalized and taxed in order to have more controls over what type of drugs were out there, and to take the romance out of doing them. His songs 'Who Needs The Peace Corps' and 'Cocaine Decisions' talk about drugs and the consecuences of taking them. He was so against them that his band members were not allowed to take drugs while on tour and if they did Frank wouldn't hesitate on firing any of them. To take precautions, Frank would even stay at a different hotel than the band, as he did not want to be caught involved any illegal activities. The incident he had with the police when he was young which landed him 10 days in jail was enough to scar him for life. Frank was always a control freak and the fact that drugs made people's personalities mutate, and change their value systems, did not appeal to Frank at all. 

He criticized the Psychedelic Movement and its instigators, and had no respect for people who did drugs, even soft ones. 

Other views of Frank included the thought that churches should be taxed, and that the educational system had nothing to offer to society. 

He always said that people were asleep in America and they needed to wake up! His song 'Whats The Ugliest Part Of Your Body'  was written with the purpose of making young people stand up to the older who wanted to contain them in "boxes". He encouraged young people to be free and speak their minds without following the status quo, to freak out!  Absolutely Free was an album completely anti-drug, anti flower power movement, full of references to "purple jello", LSD, and other drugs. He wanted individuals not to follow these social movements. 
On the sleve of his album Freak Out! he included what 'freaking out' meant: "On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress and social etiquette in order to express CREATIVELY his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole. Less perceptive individuals have referred to us who have chosen this way of FEELING as “Freaks,” hence the term: Freaking Out. On a collective level, when any number of “Freaks” gather and express themselves creatively through music or dance, for example, it is generally referred to as a FREAK OUT. The participants, already emancipated from our national social slavery, dressed in their most inspired apparel, realize as a group whatever potential they possess for free expression. We would like everyone who HEARS this music to join us... become a member of the United Mutations...Freak Out!

His songs always had a statement to make either social or political, however, after an incident in Berlin where people saw him as "the next movement to follow", Zappa stopped adding political and ideological ideas in his lyrics, perhaps because he feared they would be misinterpreted. 

In an interview of a show called Crossfire which aired on CNN, Zappa states the problems of "when you have a government that prefers a certain moral code, derived from a certain religion, and that moral code turns into legislation to suit a certain religious point of view, and if that code happens to be very very right wing[...]" [here he is called an anarchist by the interviewer, who also says that every form of government is based on a type of morality]... to which Frank answers: "morality in terms of behavior not in terms of theology". 

Zappa the entrepreneur:

Frank Zappa always tried to balance his art and the business aspect of it. Creativity was extremely important to him, and the way he delivered his art was even more important because everything had a meaning (‘conceptual continuity’). He paid specific detail to all he did and for this reason he disliked record labels that tried to change and censure the lyrics and covers of his albums.

In Zappa’s biography, Barry Miles tells us about Frank’s first trip outside North America. He flew to London to publicize Absolutely Free and The Mothers European tour. In this trip many of Frank’s entrepreneurial aptitudes would show up: “[He] calculated every detail of the presentation and marketing of the Mothers in Europe […]” He knew it had been hard making the American crowd buy The Mother’s album, and he was concerned on finding a ways to entice the British public to do the same. He took this trip as a research approach to get acquainted with the market conditions in Britain. He was well aware of the fact that market conditions vary greatly depending on the country as culture, religion, language, and preferences are different all over the world. Miles quotes Zappa saying: “We do this in the States too –I find there are regional variations in taste and we try to cater for them”. Adapting to the local market is one very smart business approach. During this trip, Zappa also referred to their music as a “product”, which definitely showed the business and managerial side of his personality.

On an interview I spotted on YouTube, when Zappa is asked whether he agrees or not with the thought that rock and roll music has satanic influences in it and it represents the forces of evil, he states that “if there is evil in the record industry, its from the lawyers and the executives, and its from the people at the record companies”. This is how badly he regarded these companies, and as he got fed up he went on to form his own record labels with manager and business partner Herb Cohen: “Bizarre Records” and “Straight Records” (both ventures with Warner Bros. Records). Having his own label gave Zappa creative and copyrights control, and full power on what was released by the MOI. However, Zappa’s search for economic independence came with other difficulties. The band had no salary. They would get advances on performances, and most of the money came from royalties. A lot of the band members were angry because they felt they were being left out of touring money and royalties. Zappa even put conversations on this matters on Uncle Meat.

It seems that Frank continuously had an entrepreneurial spirit in trying to come up with something innovative all the time. Whether it was groundbreaking music and sounds, a new developed technique for music making (xenochrony), or even an original way to express people being different (freaking out). His entrepreneurial spirit was also present in creating his own record labels, which led him to discover several artists such as Alice Cooper and The GTO’s.

Frank Zappa at PMRC Senate Hearing

Finally, his managerial and conflict resolution skills were put to test when he had to fight four lawsuits at the same time in the year 1977: one against his manager Herb Cohen, two against Warner Bros. Records, and one other with his manager against MGM. 



Frank always criticized The Beatles by saying they were just a commercial group interested in selling copies, and even made a parody of their album Sgt Pepper on his album We’re Only In It For The Money. But in my opinion, everybody was, and is, kind of in it for the money too! (and for the love for music of course). No one wants to be a starving artist. The concept of entrepreneurship is directly related to creativity, in fact it cannot exist without it, so it is only natural that Frank engaged in these types of activities during his career.

— Zappa the musician-performer:

The first instrument that Frank learned how to play was the drums at 12 years old, and he went on to be the drummer of several bands. This is actually the instrument that got him interested in one of his musical idols, Edgard Varèse, listening to the rare strong drums on his classical compositions. Zappa didn’t pick up the guitar until he was 18, when he bought one at an auction. His brother and a Mickey Baker book taught him some chords and how to play it.  He then got his first electric guitar at 21 and got progressively better at it. He was influenced by several guitarists such as: Johnny Guitar Watson, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Guitar Slim (Eddie Jones) and Matt Murphy. Frank, however, never lost his love for percussion.

The Mothers of Invention

As a bandleader Frank was a control freak and saw the band as an extension of himself. Some of The Mothers of Invention band members such as Ray Collins and Jimmy Carl Black describe him as being extremely controlling, very disapproving of their drug use, and a tough bandleader to work with overall. His authoritarian style irritated many of them. Frank made everyone rehearse before a show, no exceptions. He was a perfectionist.

The band’s performances had a "conceptual continuity", an intentional control of thematic and structural elements flowing though all the live shows.  These performances were described many times are creative and bizarre, where Zappa was usually very outspoken. He always stayed true to himself during his presentations, even if the crowd wasn’t pleased (he had very little respect for his fans). His "conceptual continuity" did not only flow throughout his performances, it did so on every aspect of his art and music. Every album, every song, every cover, every character. His "concept album" Freak Out! inspired many musicians such as The Beatles, who published they album Sgt. Pepper as the very first rock 'concept album', but later admitted to had been very influenced by Zappa's album.

Freak Out! album cover

The shows were very theatrical and frequently included ritual activities with vegetables and the use of props such as dismembered dolls. They also integrated several comedic skits such as the ones performed at the Garrik Theater in their New York show “Pigs and Repugnant”, where they married people on stage and insulted the audience.

On stage, Zappa was the clown, frequently acting as a fool. He had a cynical humor through which he expressed his bitterness towards several subjects. He would bring a cartoon element to his performances.

On the musical side, the group tended to improvise a lot while on stage, always guided by Frank and his famous hand signals.

John Smothers

Franks Zappa was way ahead of his time in many aspects; one of them was the implementation of security. On 1971 he hired himself a bodyguard (John Smothers), after a fan made him fall ten feet off the stage, and he nearly died. Many assume that he realized what the danger of being in the public eye really meant, and what that was going to represent for famous rock musicians in the future, especially because fans would often get out of control in rock concerts. He decided to prevent incidents like these by assessing the right amount of security in all his concerts, including his bodyguard who stayed with him throughout the rest of his career.This represented an evolution of rock concerts security in the 70's.

As it turns out, a year after a fan assaulted Zappa, John Lennon, who did not implement that type of security security, was murdered by one obsessed fan.

 

— Zappa the composer:

 It is very interesting the fact that even before Zappa could read music (he liked the way music looked written on paper), he was already trying to make compositions for his school band to play. Zappa was very particular about the way he composed his music, he knew exactly what he wanted and they way it had to be executed. He was always looking for the complexity of music. In his songs, he always went the extra step when it came to the levels of sophistication; levels who hadn't been achieved by anyone before at that time.
His first major composition "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" from the album Absolutely Free became a classic song because of the constant fluctuations in its rhythm, and the rhythm fluctuations, a trademark in all Zappa's future songs. His songs included free floated rubatos, or a sophisticated discourse of a 3/4 rubato and then a 7/8, very unusual for rock bands.

"Brown Shoes Don't Make It" - MOI

Zappa liked to experiment with different genres of music, it is therefore normal to find 1930's jazz, burlesque, foxtrot, vaudeville and beat-boxing, all in one song. He developed a technique known "xenochrony" by extracting parts of songs already recorded in a studio or during a concert, and placing it in another.

Frank always liked Spike Jones, and entertainer from the 1950's because he always managed to find a way to say what he really wanted to say in is songs without saying the precise word. Jones worked around the system, and Frank followed this idea in his avant-garde songwriting.

In his lyrics, he always gave a piece of his mind on whatever the subject was. Most of his songs included controversial topics that were current at that point in time, whether political or social. He was candid when it came to giving his opinion, usually delivered with a dose of heavy sarcasm. The lyrics of his songs were often interconnected and inspired by real people or real events of Zappa's life. Although his songs songs rarely included emotions, there are some that do such as "Mom and Dad" which is very rare in Zappa's pieces.

"Mom & Dad" - MOI (from the album Freak Out!)

In his early years, Zappa was highly influenced by R&B and doo-wop groups of his time, musicians such as Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, and Weber, as well as from Indian, Tibetan and Middle Eastern music. From these, he stated synthesizing what he really liked.  

He was interested in doing what hadn't been done before in terms of rhythm and in getting his point across in terms of lyrics.

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REFERENCES: All the information posted on this blog was retrieved from Concordia University Professor Michael Pinsonneault's class slides and from the book Zappa:A Biography by author Barry Miles.