Geniuses Compared

What connects Frank Zappa to Franco Battiato? Nothing, one might think, apart from sheer genius as composers. Yet dig a little deeper and the ties between the two turn out to be plentiful, starting with their shared Sicilian roots. Born in Baltimore on 21 December 1940, the American composer was in fact the son of Francis Zappa (born Francesco Zappa), an Italian industrial expert from Partinico (near Palermo) who worked for the US government at Edwards Air Force Base near Los Angeles. Zappa expressed this Sicilian heritage in his own way, sometimes grotesquely and irreverently, as in the famous track "Tengo na minchia tanta" (1982), inspired by the obsessive use of the phrase by the Sicilian technicians setting up the stage for a concert in Palermo. But there would be other "tributes" too: from his praise for the Tenores De Bitti to the album "Francesco Zappa".

Right, but what could possibly be the trait d'union with the noble maestro from Ionia? First and foremost, the omnivorous hunger that fed both their compositions. "Depth must be hidden beneath the surface," Battiato used to say, since he loved smuggling all his knowledge into pop music. "Inside Battiato you could find Pink Floyd, Stockhausen, Frank Zappa, minimalism," as Angelo Bozzolini, director of the documentary "Il coraggio di essere Franco" (broadcast some time ago on Rai1), would later point out. And it was precisely his inability to put up barriers in his art that led the young Battiato to actually meet Frank Zappa, during a 1972 tour, expressing all his admiration to him. But that wasn't the end of it: Zappa, in turn, confided to Battiato that he admired his music, and was in particular a great fan of the album "Fetus". And precisely to encourage that young Sicilian musician, at the time deep into the most experimental phase of his career, Frank Zappa sent him a pair of silver winged shoes, the kind he wore on stage, as a token of good luck and respect for having produced "the best prog rock album in Europe".

The album "Foetus", released in 1974, is an English-language version of his debut record "Fetus" (1972), a concept album inspired by Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave New World", which depicts a dystopian society where every individual is manufactured in a laboratory. The work explores themes of musical and philosophical experimentation, with enigmatic lyrics and the use of instruments that were rare at the time, such as the VCS3 synthesizer and electronic drums, making it one of the first records produced in Italy built around heavily electronic instrumentation.

From then on, Frank Zappa and Franco Battiato never met again, and it seems the Maestro also parted ways with that precious memento: in one interview he claimed to have lost it during a house move, leaving a cloud of mystery over its fate; according to other sources, he gave it away to his drummer. What remained, though, was the elective affinity that, despite their obvious differences, continued to bind together two brilliant and unpredictable personalities.

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10/04/2026