Frank Zappa
Depending on your cultural experience, you may be familiar with one Frank Zappa out of many. If you were a Top 40 listener in the '80s, you may know him primarily as the man behind the novelty hit "Valley Girl." If you're drawn to the weird and wooly, you might be able to recite the lyrics to such raunch-rock classics as "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow," "Titties and Beer" or "Dirty Love." You may even remember him as the guy who tore Tipper Gore a new one at a Senate hearing.
But music fans eventually come to realize that Zappa was an inspired composer and a dazzling guitarist, and that he managed to fuse modern-classical motifs, complex jazz-rock excursions and down-and-dirty, blues-drenched jams. His material demanded virtuoso musicians, and over the years his bands have featured such formidable instrumentalists as Jean-Luc Ponty, Steve Vai and George Duke. In the final phase of his career, he sold out symphony halls in Europe conducting his own wildly adventurous orchestral compositions.
As a storyteller, of course, Frank Zappa was relentless in his derision of religious hypocrisy, social repression and self-deluding counterculture. And his 1985 stand against the would-be music censors known as the PMRC (headed by Mrs. Gore) was the one bright spot in that dreary political drama. Among other choice comments, he likened the PMRC's legislative crusade to "treating dandruff by decapitation."
Cancer claimed him in 1993, but his influence has continued to grow. In 1995 Frank Zappa was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy two years later. His work has recently been presented in a daring multimedia form by his son Dweezil, himself a superb guitarist, as the live series Zappa Plays Zappa.
And whether listeners are getting lost in the mad time-signature shifts of Hot Rats or giggling at the lyrics to Joe's Garage, they're experiencing quintessential Frank Zappa. As the man himself said, "the goal here is entertainment."
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