Home > Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music > Zappa, Frank

(Vincent), outspoken American ROCK artist; b. Baltimore, Dec. 21, 1940, of Italian descent (Zappa means "hoe" in Italian); d. Los Angeles, Dec. 4, 1993. The family moved to California when Frank was young. From his school days Zappa played guitar and organized groups with weird names such as The Omens and Captain Glasspack and His Magic Mufflers. In 1960 he composed the sound track for the low-budget film The World's Greatest Sinner, and in 1963 he wrote another for Run Home Slow.

In 1965 Zappa joined the RHYTHM-AND-BLUES band the Soul Giants. He soon took over its leadership and thought up the name the Mothers of Invention. The band's first few albums combined many of Zappa's interests: MUSIC CONCRÈTE in the style of EDGARD VARÈ SE, raucous, satirical lyrics attacking the hippie lifestyle, and rock 'n' roll—powered guitar riffs. Their self-named first album and its followup, Freak Out!, became underground hits. Along with Absolutely Free (with Brown Shoes Don't Make It), We're Only in It for the Money, and Lumpy Gravy, these works were the earliest concept albums.

In 1969 Zappa replaced the original Mothers with new musicians, a process he would repeat every few years. Eventually he stopped using the Mothers name altogether. Moving farther afield, Zappa produced a film and SCORE for 200 MoteL, about life on the road as a rock star. He became a cult figure, and as such suffered the penalty of violent adulation. Playing in London in 1971, he was nearly killed when a drunken fan pushed him off the stage into an empty orchestra pit. Similar assaults forced Zappa to hire a bodyguard for protection. In 1982 his planned appearance in Palermo, Sicily, the birthplace of his parents, had to be canceled because a mob rioted in anticipation of the event.

Zappa deliberately confronted the most cherished social and emotional sentiments by putting out such songs as Broken Hearts Are for Assholes. His Jewish Princess offended the sensibility of American Jews. His production Joe's Garage contained Zappa's favorite scatological materials, and he went on analyzing and ridiculing urinary functions in such numbers as Why Does It Hurt When I Pee? (ironically and tragically, Zappa died from prostate cancer that went undetected for a decade). Other less sharply directed satires included Dancin' Fool and I Have Been in You. In 1980 he produced the film Baby Snakes, which shocked even the most impervious senses.

Zappa's lyrical disdain and angry attitudes tend to disguise the remarkable development in his music. Having turned rock into a social and versatile medium, he moved into the greater complexities of JAZZ, with an interest in separating performance from recording. His Hot Rats, a jazzrock release, gave the new FUSION music a significant boost. Zappa recorded every performance he ever played, and over the years released them, sometimes in large boxed sets (Shut Up'n Play Yer Guitar, 1981; You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore; Beat the Boots, two sets).

But Zappa astounded the musical community when he proclaimed his total adoration of the music of Varèse, gave a lecture on him, and supported concerts of his music in N.Y. Somehow, without formal study, he managed to absorb the essence of Varèse's difficult music. This process led Zappa to produce truly astonishing full orchestral scores reveling in artful DISSONANT COUNTERPOINT: Bob in Dacron and Sad Jane and Mo' 'n Herb's Vacation, and the cataclysmic Penis Dimension for chorus, soloists, and orchestra.

An accounting of Zappa's scatological and sexological proclivities stands in remarkable contrast to his unimpeachable private life and total abstention from alcohol and drugs. An unexpected reflection of Zappa's own popularity was the emergence of his daughter, born Moon Unit, as a rapper on his hit Valley Girls, in which she used the vocabulary of growing womanhood of the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles ("Val-Speak"). His son, Dweezil, is also a musician whose first album, Havin' a Bad Day, was modestly successful.

In 1985 Zappa became an outspoken opponent of the activities of the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), an organization comprised largely of wives of U.S. senators (and a future vice president) who accused the recording industry of exposing American youth to "sex, violence, and the glorification of drugs and alcohol" through song lyrics. Their demands to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) included the labeling of record albums to indicate lyric content.

Zappa voiced his opinions in no uncertain terms, first in an open letter published in Cashbox, then in one to President Ronald Reagan. Finally, in 1985, he appeared at the first of a series of highly publicized hearings involving the Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation Committee, the PMRC, and the RIAA, where he eloquently testified for freedom of speech.

Later recordings that make extensive use of the SYNCLAVIER include Francesco Zappa (arrangements of works by the 18th-century Italian composer and cellist who happens to share Zappa's surname) and Jazz From Hell. Upon learning of his fatal illness, Zappa went through his entire recorded output, digitalized and remixed it, and sold it outright to the Rykodisc label. The last release before his death was The Yellow Shark.