Frank Zappa was born today in Baltimore in 1940. Zappa’s career spanned multiple decades and genres, including rock, jazz, classical and avant-garde. He was a self-taught musician and composer and he released over 60 albums in his career, while also producing movies, music videos and much of his own cover art. Zappa was outspoken and uncompromising, full of contradiction and brimming with an often misunderstood genius.
Zappa’s first nationwide television appearance was on the Steve Allen Show in 1963, where he played a bicycle as an instrument. Twenty two years later he would be testifying before Congress regarding the PMRC and music censorship. In between, Zappa influenced hundreds of wildly different artists, including Black Sabbath, Weird Al Yankovic, Jeff Buckley, Alice Cooper, Brian Eno, John Frusciante and George Clinton.
Zappa’s first major release came in 1966 with the album “Freak Out”. It is alleged that the album served as an inspiration to Paul McCartney and influenced the Beatles’ 1967 “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album. Ironically, following the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s”, Zappa parodied the album with his album “We’re Only in It for the Money” in 1968. This sort of wit and satire would be a constant theme throughout Zappa’s career.
Zappa enjoyed the most success during the 1970s and he released over 20 albums in that decade, including the acclaimed “Over-Nite Sensation”, “Apostrophe”, “Sheik Yerbouti” and “Joe’s Garage Act I”. It was in the following decade that he released his most successful single, however. The song “Valley Girl” featured Zappa’s daughter Moon Unit improvising a satirical take on the Valley Girl culture in California. It reached #32 on the singles chart and gave casual listeners the wrong idea that Zappa was a novelty song act.
From the 1980s until his death from prostate cancer in 1993, Frank Zappa continued recording a wide variety of music. Zappa’s son Dweezil continues to keep his father’s music alive through the tribute band Zappa Plays Zappa. Frank Zappa was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and is thought of as one of the most important musicians of the 20th century.
(This is a rerun from last year: http://www.elevenwarriors.com/forum/anything-else/2015/12/65346/frank-za...)
