Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American singer-songwriter, innovative rock guitarist, modernist composer, multi-instrumentalist, satirist, film-maker, and bandleader.
His honors include his 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. ==1940s–1960s: early life and career== ===Childhood=== Zappa was born on December 21, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland.
After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the Aberdeen Proving Ground run by the U.S.
Wilson signed the Mothers to the Verve division of MGM, which had built up a strong reputation for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences.
Wilson signed the Mothers to the Verve division of MGM, which had built up a strong reputation for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences.
In 1952, his family relocated for reasons of health to Monterey, California, where his father taught metallurgy at the Naval Postgraduate School.
He also liked the Italian classical music listened to by his grandparents, especially Puccini's opera arias. By 1956, the Zappa family had moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in the Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert close to Edwards Air Force Base; he would later refer to Sun Village (a town close to Lancaster) in the 1973 track "Village of the Sun".
Zappa's interest in the guitar grew, and in 1957 he was given his first instrument.
He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album Freak Out! Due to his family's frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics.
In 1959, he attended Chaffey College but left 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.
The latter soundtrack was recorded in 1963 after the film was completed, but it was commissioned by one of Zappa's former high school teachers in 1959 and Zappa may have worked on it before the film was shot.
Karl Kohn of Pomona College, they moved in together in Ontario, and were married December 28, 1960.
Excerpts from the soundtrack can be heard on the posthumous album The Lost Episodes (1996). During the early 1960s, Zappa wrote and produced songs for other local artists, often working with singer-songwriter Ray Collins and producer Paul Buff.
Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966. ==Late 1960s: the Mothers of Invention== ===Formation=== In 1965, Ray Collins asked Zappa to take over as guitarist in local R&B band the Soul Giants, following a fight between Collins and the group's original guitarist.
Examples are "Plastic People" and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It", which contained lyrics critical of the hypocrisy and conformity of American society, but also of the counterculture of the 1960s.
Marines from the audience onto the stage, where they proceeded to dismember a big baby doll, having been told by Zappa to pretend that it was a "gook baby". Zappa uniquely contributed to the avant-garde, anti-establishment music scene of the 1960s, sampling radio tape recordings and incorporating his own philosophical ideals to music and freedom of expression in his pieces.
Bands such as AMM and Faust also contributed to the radio sampling techniques of the 1960s.
Situated in New York, and only interrupted by the band's first European tour, the Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, We're Only in It for the Money (released 1968).
The former score was commissioned by actor-producer Timothy Carey and recorded in 1961.
The latter soundtrack was recorded in 1963 after the film was completed, but it was commissioned by one of Zappa's former high school teachers in 1959 and Zappa may have worked on it before the film was shot.
Although none of the recordings from the period achieved major commercial success, Zappa earned enough money to allow him to stage a concert of his orchestral music in 1963 and to broadcast and record it.
They were rejected by Dot Records for having "no commercial potential", a verdict Zappa subsequently quoted on the sleeve of Freak Out! In 1964, after his marriage started to break up, he moved into the Pal studio and began routinely working 12 hours or more per day recording and experimenting with overdubbing and audio tape manipulation.
The meeting never took place (Varèse died in 1965), but Zappa framed the letter and kept it on display for the rest of his life. At Antelope Valley High School, Zappa met Don Glen Vliet (who later changed his name to Don Van Vliet and adopted the stage name Captain Beefheart).
In March 1965, Zappa was approached by a vice squad undercover officer, and accepted an offer of $100 () to produce a suggestive audio tape for an alleged stag party.
Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966. ==Late 1960s: the Mothers of Invention== ===Formation=== In 1965, Ray Collins asked Zappa to take over as guitarist in local R&B band the Soul Giants, following a fight between Collins and the group's original guitarist.
His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages.
He graduated from Antelope Valley High School in 1958, and later acknowledged two of his music teachers on the sleeve of the 1966 album Freak Out! Due to his family's frequent moves, Zappa attended at least six different high schools, and as a student he was often bored and given to distracting the rest of the class with juvenile antics.
Zappa managed to recover some of his possessions before the studio was torn down in 1966. ==Late 1960s: the Mothers of Invention== ===Formation=== In 1965, Ray Collins asked Zappa to take over as guitarist in local R&B band the Soul Giants, following a fight between Collins and the group's original guitarist.
In early 1966, they were spotted by leading record producer Tom Wilson when playing "Trouble Every Day", a song about the Watts riots.
They married in 1967, had four children and remained together until Zappa's death. Wilson nominally produced the Mothers' second album Absolutely Free (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York, although by this time Zappa was in de facto control of most facets of the production.
It is an "incredible ambitious musical project", a "monument to John Cage", which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques. ===New York period (1966–1968)=== The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater (at 152 Bleecker Street, above the Cafe au Go Go) during Easter 1967.
In a 1967 radio interview, Zappa explained that the album's outlandish 11-minute closing track, "Return of the Son of Monster Magnet" was in fact an unfinished piece.
They married in 1967, had four children and remained together until Zappa's death. Wilson nominally produced the Mothers' second album Absolutely Free (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York, although by this time Zappa was in de facto control of most facets of the production.
As Zappa put it, "[W]e're satirists, and we are out to satirize everything." At the same time, Zappa had recorded material for an album of orchestral works to be released under his own name, Lumpy Gravy, released by Capitol Records in 1967.
It is an "incredible ambitious musical project", a "monument to John Cage", which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques. ===New York period (1966–1968)=== The Mothers of Invention played in New York in late 1966 and were offered a contract at the Garrick Theater (at 152 Bleecker Street, above the Cafe au Go Go) during Easter 1967.
After the contractual problems were resolved, the album was reissued by Verve in 1968.
Situated in New York, and only interrupted by the band's first European tour, the Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, We're Only in It for the Money (released 1968).
In the 1970s/1980s, he invited Watson to perform on several albums.
He also liked the Italian classical music listened to by his grandparents, especially Puccini's opera arias. By 1956, the Zappa family had moved to Lancaster, a small aerospace and farming town in the Antelope Valley of the Mojave Desert close to Edwards Air Force Base; he would later refer to Sun Village (a town close to Lancaster) in the 1973 track "Village of the Sun".
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American singer-songwriter, innovative rock guitarist, modernist composer, multi-instrumentalist, satirist, film-maker, and bandleader.
His honors include his 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. ==1940s–1960s: early life and career== ===Childhood=== Zappa was born on December 21, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland.
His honors include his 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. ==1940s–1960s: early life and career== ===Childhood=== Zappa was born on December 21, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland.
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