Frank Zappa Biography
Frank Zappa was a highly versatile and prolific American rock composer and producer who is known for complex music that incorporates elements of avant-garde classical music, experimental jazz, and an array of pop forms including, but by no means limited to, doo-wop, reggae, show tunes, lounge jazz, country and western, disco, and rock & roll. Another Zappa trademark are his biting satirical lyrics, sung either by himself in his dry, sardonic voice, or by the skilled singers whom he would hire to perform his more technically challenging vocal lines. He is also known for his improvised guitar solos played over vamped chord progressions that excluded the use of thirds in order to allow greater freedom of note-choice and, therefore, musical expression.
Frank Vincent Zappa was born in Baltimore, MD on December 21, 1940. In December of the following year, his family moved to California, where, aside from a brief time spent in New York City in his mid-20s, Zappa lived until his death on December 4, 1993. As a child, Zappa was a fan of a variety of music, including blues, R&B, and avant-garde classical music (especially Edgard Varèse), all of which would influence his own musical development. At the age of 15, he joined his first band, an R&B group in which he played drums. By the time Zappa was in college, he had switched to guitar. His musical training, however, was ultimately informal, and as a composer he was largely self-taught.
In 1965, Zappa formed The Mothers, his first band that would be dedicated to playing his original music. They were signed to Verve Records subsidiary MGM Records in 1966 under the new, less suggestive name, The Mothers of Invention. That same year, they released their first album, Freak Out!, a double-album that introduced previously unheard of modernist musical influences into pop music while lyrically satirizing the hippie movement.
Over the next few years, the band line-up would change often, and Zappa would increasingly lean towards releasing material under his own name. The culmination of his in-studio work with The Mothers of Invention is considered by many to be the brilliant double-album Uncle Meat, which was released on Zappa’s own Bizarre label in 1969.
In the following decades, Zappa released several notable albums under his own name. Though he was not a mainstream act by any stretch of the imagination, he did manage to sell albums and sustain a very successful career. His highest charting album was Apostrophe (’), which, thanks to the airplay received by the song “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow,” made it to the Hot 100’s number ten spot in 1974. Another notable commercial success would come in 1979, when his double-LP Sheik Yerbouti peaked at number 21 on the charts, and the single from that album, “Dancin’ Fool” reached the Top 50. “Dancin’ Fool” was nominated for a Grammy (Best Rock Vocal Performance by a Male), and from that same album, “Rat Tomago” was also nominated (Best Rock Instrumental Performance).
His most successful single came from the 1982 album Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch. “Valley Girl,” on which his daughter Moon Unit Zappa sung with a Southern California valley girl affectation, peaked at number 32 on the charts and was nominated for a Grammy (Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal). The album itself, which was overall quite lacking in commercial appeal, made the Top 30 as a result of the single.
It was occasional successes such as the above that allowed the business-savvy Zappa to continue to release much less commercially successful albums and to tour internationally with some of the best musicians around, including guitarists Steve Vai and Adrian Belew, and drummer Terry Bozzio, who famously performed Zappa’s “musician’s nightmare,” “The Black Page.” It was also his less popular instrumental works of which he was most proud, and which he increasingly pursued as he approached middle age.
During his career, he had managed to introduce many young music lovers to the works of 20th century composers such as Edgard Varèse, Conlon Nancarrow, Alban Berg, and Igor Stravinsky. Many of these fans grew up to be musicians themselves who, thanks to Zappa’s influence, were eager to play music outside of the mainstream, including the music of Zappa himself. This sort of devotion from accomplished musicians helped lead to a 1992 commission from the German contemporary classical music orchestra, The Ensemble Modern.
Despite suffering from prostate cancer, Zappa managed to work with the ensemble and to attend some of the resulting performances, an album of which – entitled The Yellow Shark – was released in November of 1993. Frank Zappa passed away the following month at the age of 52.
