Frank Zappa - Absolutely free

An iconoclastic genius, a free, independent and sharp mind spitting fire and vitriol at AmeriKa — not just Nixon's AmeriKa and the Vietnam War, but also the AmeriKa of sex-phobic hypocrisy, phony moralism, and the almighty dollar.
A sworn enemy of drugs of every kind and of the standard specs of his electric guitars, which he had modified with obsessive attention to detail, a despotic tyrant within his own bands, yet a kind and generous person in real life.
A musician who managed to distill, with singular intelligence and an unmistakable personality, a musical syncretism that has never been equaled and perhaps never will be. As Carmelo Bene put it, music that is de-genere — "de-genre", unclassifiable, impossible to pin down within a single category. Rock'n'roll, blues, contemporary classical music, jazz, doo-wop, vaudeville, musique concrète — Zappa the alchemist distills everything that came before him and everything around him in his bizarre stills, forming precisely that unmistakable, Zappa-esque style. Best to start from the beginning.

His father, of Italian descent, worked for the government. Because of this, the Zappa family moved from city to city, eventually settling in Baltimore, Maryland, where Frank Vincent was born on December 21, 1940. The young Zappa's poor health led the family to first settle in Florida, then move back to Maryland (where Frank fell ill again), and finally to California, where the climate was far more favorable and where Zappa senior found work teaching "metallurgy" (Frank always said he never understood what that meant or what qualifications his father had to teach it).
He attended Antelope Valley High School, and the cultural environment of the Los Angeles suburbs nearby shaped his youthful fascinations: Black music, doo-wop vocal groups, the kitsch of the pachucos (young men with their hair slicked into showy "ducktails" near the Mexican border). First as a drummer, then as a self-taught guitarist, Zappa took his first steps in bands with evocative names like The Blackouts and Joe Perrino & The Mellow Tones.
The setting was essentially pre-"American Graffiti", so to speak. But I remember that Frank, in one of the last interviews he gave me, in 1988, cut the subject short and, in one of his most cavernous voices, told me: "You weren't there. And if you weren't there, you can't understand."

From those years comes the legendary encounter, in a Sam Goody store, with an LP (back then people mostly bought singles, which were cheaper and more straightforward) by Edgard Varèse. "I was immediately fascinated by his photo on the cover: he looked like a mad scientist." "Ionisation", a work for percussion, opened up a dazzling universe of expressive and timbral possibilities for the young Zappa, who wore down the record's grooves "with a needle made of osmium", learning that organization of sound that would later become one of his greatest talents.

Zappa cut his teeth spending nights in a makeshift recording studio built by a certain Paul Buff, in Cucamonga. Money was scarce, and Frank, who in the meantime had gotten married at 19, scraped together enough to buy an electric guitar by composing music for two decidedly low-grade films: "The World's Greatest Sinner" and "Run Home Slow". Still strapped for cash, he recorded hardcore tapes with a female friend, got caught by a deputy sheriff, and was sentenced to 10 days in jail. He bought the studio from Buff and renamed it Studio Z, starting out producing surf singles, later collected in various anthologies such as "The Cucamonga Years" or "Rare Meat".

He also spent time with Don Van Vliet, a bizarre character with a strange, hoarse, powerful voice, with whom he shared memorable nights under the stars of the Mojave Desert, listening to rhythm'n'blues records and sharing that kind of closeness only two young men full of plans for the future, and armed with two guitars, can reach.
Frank recognized Don's talent and rechristened him Captain Beefheart. He also worked on the screenplay for a film that would never see the light of day, "Captain Beefheart vs. The Grunt People".

Having made contact with musicians from the L.A. scene, he formed his own group project, the Mothers, with Elliott Ingber, a gifted guitarist, Roy Estrada, a bassist whose falsetto would define the Mothers' early period, Jimmy Carl Black, a Native American drummer, Don Preston, a jazz keyboardist, and Bunk Gardner on sax, also coming from a jazz background. Frank was the catalyzing genius behind this oddball band. He began experimenting with the musical project/object that he would pursue with tenacity throughout his prolific career. In the Los Angeles of the Byrds and the surf scene, the bizarre Mothers became an attraction in the trendiest clubs; Zappa surrounded himself with the most singular characters, the "freaks", people teetering on the edge of madness, who drew Frank in and fueled his unstoppable creativity. At the Sunset Strip and the Whisky a Go Go, it was easy to stumble upon one of the Mothers' colorful shows.

Not long after, Zappa managed to land a contract with Verve, the MGM jazz label, which signed the band after adding "of Invention" to the name to avoid any dirty double meanings. Tom Wilson, producer of Bob Dylan and John Coltrane, produced Freak Out!, the first album by the Mothers Of Invention. Released in August 1966, it was a true revolution: Zappa managed to capture the energy of the freaks, the free minds crowding California — beatniks, street poets — condensing political and musical ideas with his typical intuition, anticipating the turbulent months to come. A double album as a debut was unthinkable at the time. Purely avant-garde tracks like "Help I'm A Rock" or "The Return Of The Son Of Monster Magnet", where contemporary music, free jazz and blues inflections merge into something truly new and unprecedented, sit alongside disillusioned pop songs like "Go Cry On Somebody's Else Shoulder". "Trouble Every Day", a song that would be revisited several times throughout Frank's intense career, describes the Watts riots with a journalistic eye.

From this period comes the famous appearance on Joe Pyne's TV talk show; it wasn't unusual for Pyne, a war veteran, to launch into a personal attack as soon as a new guest was introduced, particularly targeting "longhairs": actors, singers and entertainers. Those were times when a man with long hair alone could cause a scandal. According to some, this aggressiveness of his was due, at least in part, to a serious disability — a leg amputated, lost in the war — which was said to have made him especially bitter and hostile toward the whole world.
Frank Zappa showed up dressed like the scruffiest of hippies, with his guitar and extremely long hair. Pyne looked him over disapprovingly and said: "Well, Mr. Zappa, judging by your hair, you must be a young lady!". Frank immediately shot back with one of his doses of vitriol: "Well, Mr. Pyne, judging by your leg, you must be a table."

Given the groundbreaking impact of Freak Out!, from the very start Frank Zappa divided audiences between fans and people irritated by the irreverence of the lyrics, their ostentatious scruffiness, and the music itself, which shamelessly mixed the "sacred" and the profane, classical and rock. He began refining the theatricality of the Mothers Of Invention's shows, as the band, meanwhile growing, honed their skills in the school-gymnasium of Frank's boundless music, both as musicians and as stage professionals. Ingber, too undisciplined (and too fond of weed), was fired: he would go on to play with Fraternity Of Man, then with Beefheart's Magic Band, and finally with Little Feat.

In May 1967, Absolutely Free was released, the second album, considered by many to be one of his best, in which Zappa delved further into the path laid out by the debut. The cover art alone gives a clear idea of Zappa's opinion of American FM radio, bearing the famous slogan "KILL UGLY RADIO!". Nixon's AmeriKa, the Vietnam War, the hippies and their plastic illusions, sex-phobic hypocrisies: all distilled into sparkling musical ideas, songs in unusual, odd time signatures. Romantic little pop tunes written and performed to deceive the listener, subliminal messages. A memorable record. A once-in-a-lifetime moment, with lines like those from "Call Any Vegetable" — "(…) I have a great relationship with vegetables: I eat them and they come out of my asshole" — or numbers like "Plastic People", featuring the famous Nixon impression addressing "Fella America".

The group landed a steady engagement at the Garrick Theatre in New York. Onstage, Zappa shook up the routine by putting together a show he called Pigs & Repugnant, a kind of mini-opera in which he brought soldiers, uniformed Marines and assorted people up on stage, and used a large stuffed giraffe from which he'd squirt whipped cream onto the front rows. Zappa's fame grew rapidly.

Still in 1967 came his move closer to the boundaries of syncretic music with Lumpy Gravy, released under his own name, recorded with an expanded lineup and marking his first experiment with an orchestra (which he christened with one of his incredible made-up names: Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra & Chorus). The record, dense with avant-garde ideas and lucid madness, marks an important milestone in Zappa's musical evolution, as does that same year's triumphant European tour, which culminated in a legendary performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London.
It's no coincidence that Lumpy Gravy is the album Zappa always said was his favorite. Indeed, it's his first genuine step toward that "serious", contemporary music which, in later, more mature albums such as Uncle Meat, would find more fully realized linguistic niches.

With the release of the following We're Only In It For The Money, featuring its famous cover parodying the Beatles' Pepper artwork, the lineup saw the arrival of the talented multi-instrumentalist Ian Underwood, who would remain the mustachioed Maestro's "right-hand man" for many years. The musical recipe was still that of Freak Out! and Absolutely Free. Worth noting is even a cameo by Eric Clapton, who recites spaced-out lines in an affected voice. The two had met during the London tour.

The next album, described by Zappa as "an attempt by the Mothers of Invention to get their hostile music played on the radio", is a bizarre, fun, heartfelt tribute to doo-wop and the dumb love song, to that particular brand of rhythm'n'blues that marked the beginnings of the Zappa adventure. On second drums (Jimmy Carl Black alone wasn't enough for the Mothers, and for years he'd already been joined by Billy Mundi, who left before this album to join Rhinoceros) came Arthur Tripp III, an orchestral percussionist and all-round musician, who contributed significantly to the Mothers' new "klang". Tracks like "Love Of My Life" would remain requested live staples for future incarnations of Frank's bands. Cruising With Ruben & The Jets is the last album the Mothers of Invention would release on Verve. Zappa and his manager Herb Cohen founded Bizarre Records, through which Frank sought total control over the artistic content of his work, and shortly after, the Straight label, intended to launch new talent, signing a distribution deal with Reprise Records (part of the Warner group).

The feverish sessions that followed this stimulating new development were remarkably productive, with Zappa writing music in one room while the Mothers recorded in another.
The album that emerged in 1968 is another double album, and marks one of the absolute high points of Zappa's output. Uncle Meat features sound collages, jazzy pieces, tributes to Dolphy, Mingus and Waller blended with Stravinsky, Hendrix and Varèse. A true manifesto of the Zappa gospel, this double album best represents Frank's overall project, synthesis, and "system". Even today, it probably remains, objectively, his finest album.
Standouts include the theme of "Uncle Meat" as well as the variations of "King Kong", a long, free-leaning suite, "A Pound For A Brown On The Bus", "Mr. Green Genes", "Dog Breath in the Year Of The Plague" — just to name a few of the themes that would later be developed throughout Zappa's entire career, with remarkable continuity of vision.

Meanwhile, Straight was releasing gems like "Trout Mask Replica", Captain Beefheart's inspired masterpiece. Great artists like Alice Cooper, Tim Buckley, Judy Henske and Lenny Bruce would follow, but also genuine oddballs like Wild Man Fisher, produced by Zappa, or the infamous album by the GTOs (Girls Together Outrageously), a bizarre groupie band conceived and managed by the man himself, fronted by the "notorious" Pamela des Barres, Frank's friend, babysitter to his daughter Moon, and a fixture in his home.

In 1969 Zappa, under his own name, gave birth to what is perhaps his most famous record, Hot Rats, which saw Ian Underwood increasingly establish himself as his right-hand man and featured a cameo from Captain Beefheart as "Willie The Pimp", a surreal track sung with a sandpaper voice. The album opens with "Peaches En Regalia", one of the most famous and representative moments of the Zappa sound. In modern terms we'd call it a fusion album, if that word didn't now suggest music of dubious quality, so it's better to use the era's own term and say that Frank Zappa was exploring the boundaries of jazz-rock.

The following records are also of excellent quality, like Burnt Weeny Sandwich, which, given the quality of every composition on it, feels almost like a third Uncle Meat album, featuring the long live-recorded track "Little House I Used To Live In", which draws on the extraordinary talent of Black blues violinist Don "Sugarcane" Harris, while "Holiday In Berlin", with its overture, recreates the sound of a dazed jug band. Rhythm guitar duties are handled by Lowell George, leader of Little Feat.

Weasels Ripped My Flesh is a collection of outtakes and tracks that hadn't found a place on earlier albums, yet still of the highest quality. Take the legendary "My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama", whose themes echo ideas reminiscent of Pete Townshend, or the Stravinsky-esque "Toads Of The Short Forest". There are further avant-jazz suggestions on "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue". Although Frank always claimed to have no connection whatsoever to jazz, it's clear he was a keen listener of it, as later albums would go on to prove.

Then came the decision to get back on the road. Frank revamped the band and renamed it Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention. He recruited the vocal talents of Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, former Turtles, who went by Flo & Eddie and would bring cabaret elements into Zappa's act. The occasion was the start of filming on "200 Motels", which portrays the (to put it mildly) adventures of a rock band on the road. This time Frank managed to see the project through, and the thoroughly deranged film was released in 1971 by United Artists. Besides Zappa and the Mothers with Flo & Eddie, the cast also included Keith Moon of the Who, playing a nymphomaniac nun, and Ringo Starr, playing Zappa's alter-ego, dressed as Frank, complete with big moustache and goatee, plus an unspecified number of groupies, fans and so on, a symphony orchestra of Mahlerian proportions, complete with a choir that Frank, thoroughly amused, had sing arias like the aptly titled "Penis Dimension".
Artistically it comes across as a bit forced, but it undoubtedly shows flashes of genius and led Zappa to work with a real symphony orchestra for the first time. A live version of 200 Motels, which had little to do with the original, was performed at UCLA with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta: it stands as one of the absolute artistic peaks of Zappa's career, captured in a genuine state of grace. Unfortunately, it only survives as a bootleg, though one that has been reissued many times and isn't hard to find.

The following albums bear witness to the entertaining Mothers lineup with Flo & Eddie, which featured English bluesman Aynsley Dunbar on drums, and to their broad satire: Chunga's Revenge, the most rock-oriented album Zappa had made up to that point, which gave him the chance to shine as a visionary and extraordinarily gifted guitarist, and the satirical Live At Fillmore East, June 1971 and Just Another Band from L.A., released the following year, in March 1972. The first album featured John Lennon and Yoko Ono on stage with the Mothers, but those recordings were left off Zappa's album for legal reasons and were instead published by Lennon on his 1972 double album "Sometimes in New York City". Zappa would release them, remastered, years later. The second album features a classic live staple of the Mothers from those years, the hilarious story of "Billy The Mountain" (Billy, the mountain, and his wife Ethel, a tree).

The winter 1971 tour proved to be the most disastrous: on December 4th, the Mothers played at the Montreux jazz festival, on Lake Geneva. In the middle of Don Preston's moog solo on "King Kong", the venue caught fire and all of the Mothers' equipment was destroyed. Deep Purple, who were also on the bill that night, would document the disaster in the famous song "Smoke On The Water".
Not even a week later, in London, during the first of two nights by the Mothers at the Rainbow Theatre, Frank was attacked by a drunk during the encore. "We were playing 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' when this guy jumped on stage screaming that I'd winked at his girlfriend! I woke up afterwards in pain in the orchestra pit." The multiple fractures (including one to his larynx) that Zappa suffered that night not only forced him to cancel the entire European tour, which had already sold out in advance, but kept him confined to a wheelchair for most of 1972.

Zappa edited the music from the film 200 Motels and released it as a soundtrack on a double LP for United Artists in 1971. The self-titled album brought Frank little commercial satisfaction: without the visual madness of the film – which was boycotted by distributors almost everywhere – the music alone proved too difficult for a rock audience, while failing to interest pop listeners.

Far from being discouraged, Frank worked feverishly on two albums that saw the Mothers' lineup expand toward the structure of a jazz-style big band. Waka/Jawaka, the first of the two albums, achieves on the track "Big Swifty" the full realization of Zappa's great syncretism, blending the jazz of Ellington and Mingus with Stravinsky's rhythmic verve and Black funk.
The direction set by the previous record is perfected on the subsequent masterpiece The Grand Wazoo, from 1972, a sparkling album rich in oblique melodies, suspended between jazz, funk, classical and rock. With mature, formally flawless compositions, Frank brings his jazzy phase to a close. George Duke delivers a use of the Rhodes piano that would prove highly influential. An incredible balance of sounds and melodies. Zappa received praise from critics and satisfaction from sales.

Why change a winning team? Never, in Zappa's world! The new Mothers delivered a different kind of album for 1973. Having abandoned Bizarre (and especially the failed Straight), Zappa signed a distribution deal with Warner Bros for his new label, DiscReet (Tom Waits would be launched by the new label shortly after).
In the studio, Zappa conceived an album of rock songs full of sexual double entendres and murky atmospheres, drawing on vocal contributions from Tina Turner (uncredited on the record due to various disputes) on the devastating backing vocals, jazzman Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, the great George Duke on keyboards, and the great Napoleon Murphy Brock on sax and vocals.
Overnite Sensation would be Frank's only album in 1973. "Camarilla Brillo" and "Dirty Love" became audience favorites. On "I'm The Slime", Zappa denounces the dangers facing an audience increasingly hooked on television. That same year he began recording sessions for another of his most successful albums, the rock masterpiece Apostrophe ('), which would again feature an expanded lineup, with a contribution from Jack Bruce on bass. A devastating sequence of rock songs, blues, and Stravinsky-esque little tunes: Zappa dives deep into rock. Irresistible. Like Nanook, the hugely well-endowed Eskimo, his adventures on the tundra, and the warnings about the dangers of eating "yellow snow". One of his most entertaining and successful records.

The following tour was documented by the brilliant live album Roxy And Elsewhere, which once again shows Frank and the Mothers, despite the lineup upheavals, in a genuine state of grace, with a truly incredible band featuring talents like percussionist Ruth Underwood (Ian's wife and a prominent member of the Hamilton Face Band) and lead vocalist and sax player Napoleon Murphy Brock, who often launches into gripping melting solos alongside Frank's Gibson SG and George's minimoog. Great humor and theatricality dominate, with genuinely funny musical sketches, far less "heavy" than those of Flo & Eddie. Just listen to "Village Of The Sun", an incredible track about the town of Palmdale "where they raise turkeys!", with wild arrangements and compelling energy.

With more or less the same lineup, featuring Chester Thompson on drums and a cameo from Captain Beefheart on harmonica (under the pseudonym Bloodshot Rollin' Red) and Johnny Guitar Watson, Zappa released One Size Fits All in 1975, another rock masterpiece. Here, with tracks like "Inca Roads", straddling jazz and progressive, or "Sofa", an absurd and irresistible Teutonic waltz that became one of his most celebrated pieces, Frank reaches the peak of his rock "incarnation". Dazzling, intelligent guitar solos alternate, in that unmistakable and highly personal style, inspired not so much by blues or modal scales as by the jagged cadence of human speech, along with driving bass/drum grooves, often in intricate compound time signatures, yet rendered pleasantly accessible thanks to Zappa's genius for arranging, blending and transforming such different music and styles. Sudden shifts in tempo, but also in genre and structure. "Pojama People" and "Inca Roads" contain two of Zappa's most impressive guitar solos.

The following Bongo Fury documents that year's tour, undertaken together with his old friend Beefheart, on which readings of Van Vliet's dazed poetry are interwoven with driving rock tracks like "Carolina Hard Core Ecstasy". An interesting record, though rather uneven.

Another profound change in lineup and label marks the following Zoot Allures, released in October 1976 on Warner, after the DiscReet experiment had failed and Zappa had fallen out, with an accompanying lawsuit, with manager Herb Cohen. Zoot Allures, put together hastily to fulfill contractual obligations, features the very young talents of Terry Bozzio on drums and Patrick O'Hearn on bass, though on many tracks it's Zappa himself playing multiple instruments, bass included. The formula is still that of direct rock, but apart from a couple of successful moments, such as "Torture Never Stops", or the title track and a well-judged live instrumental solo, "Black Napkins", the album fails to match the quality of its predecessors. During this period Zappa produced Grand Funk Railroad's "Good Singin', Good Playin'", even playing a breathtaking guitar duet, under a pseudonym, with Mark Farner.

Redemption came with the next album, recorded live and released in March 1978. Zappa In New York is a double album, with an expanded lineup and a jazz chamber orchestra, showing Zappa focused on composition, with tracks like "The Black Page", originally written as a drum solo for Bozzio, or "The Purple Lagoon", for large ensemble. A memorable record, with Bozzio playing the devil on "Titties & Beer", which would become a much-requested live staple. "The Illinois Enema Bandit", drawn from a bizarre local news story, tells of a robber who gave his victims enemas. Then there's "Honey, Don't You Want A Man Like Me?", an extraordinary piece of musical cabaret, where the band displays its remarkable virtuosity.

Here begins one of the most famous Zappa-related disputes: while Frank was feverishly working on his new album, a box set meant to be called Leather, Warner Bros. instead demanded he immediately deliver three single albums. As a result, three albums of Zappa tapes recorded over the preceding years were released without Frank's authorization, with covers lacking liner notes and not even the musicians' names. Studio Tan came out in October 1978. It contains "The Adventures Of Greggary Peccary," a live Mothers warhorse that parodies Gregory Peck. And soon after, in the early months of 1979, Sleep Dirt and Orchestral Favorites were pressed.
Despite the albums being of good quality, Zappa was furious, filed a lawsuit against Warner (which he would later win) and showed up at a radio station with the Leather tapes under his arm. Inviting people to tape it for themselves, he broadcast the entire work for free. This sparked a flood of bootlegs of those tapes, among them "The Dead Girls Of London," a track featuring Van Morrison as lead vocalist.

Tireless as ever, in that same year, 1979, Frank founded Zappa Records, this time signing a distribution deal with CBS and kicking off a new season with Sheik Yerbouti, still flying the flag of the most innovative and oddball rock, with parodies of Dylan (on "Flake") and Frampton (whose big hit of the moment, "I'm In You," became "I Have Been In You"), this time adding to his long list of discovered-and-launched talents the great Adrian Belew, a guitarist with an unmistakable style and a visionary, innovative gift. The 1979 tour is documented in the feature film Baby Snakes, whose soundtrack would be released as a picture disc in March 1983.

1979, a remarkably prolific year, also saw the release of the Joe's Garage saga, an incredible rock opera spread across three whole LPs, in which Zappa imagines a claustrophobic Orwellian future where music is outlawed in order to manufacture new criminals. This album too (originally released as a single LP — "Act I" in September, followed by a double album, "Act II & III" in November) represents one of the creative peaks of Zappa-rock, thanks also to the contribution of extraordinary collaborators such as Vinnie Colaiuta on drums, Art Barrow and Patrick O'Hearn on bass, Italian-American Warren Cuccurullo — later with Duran Duran — on guitar, and the great Ike Willis on lead vocals, playing the part of Joe.
On the final volume of Joe's Garage, a track built around a long guitar solo in 9/8 time, "Watermelon In Easter Hay," definitively enshrines Frank among the great rock guitarists. The authoritative magazine Guitar Player dedicates a cover story and extensive retrospective coverage to him.

In 1981, spurred on by the esteem shown by the specialist press, Zappa threatened to release a twelve-LP album of pure guitar solos, which fortunately saw the light of day only as a triple album, initially available by mail order only, and later issued as a box set by CBS. The amusing title Shut Up And Play The Guitar and the quality of the breathtaking solos it contains, all rigorously live, soon made the album one of the classics of rock guitar.

A very young, unknown guitarist took it upon himself to transcribe over three hours of the Maestro's improvisations into sheet music and deliver them to him, full of devotion and admiration. He would be recruited into Frank's new band. His name is Steve Vai, and he would become one of the greatest guitar heroes of the 1990s.

Meanwhile, Zappa Records was dropped in favor of a new label, Barking Pumpkin Records, and a distribution deal was signed with EMI. A mail-order company for selling Frank's records and merchandise, Barfko Swill, was also founded. Still operating today, and still run by his wonderfully charming wife Gail, it also distributes exclusive products, such as limited-edition unreleased albums or box-set reissues of old albums: from this very period comes Old Masters. Zappa, after yet another years-long lawsuit, won back the rights to the Mothers Of Invention's early albums from MGM/Verve and reissued them in box sets, re-recording bass and drums on some tracks, raising eyebrows among critics and causing outrage among the most hardcore fans.

A live album, Tinseltown Rebellion, and a partly studio-recorded album, You Are What You Is, both satirical, double, and rock, close out the prolific year of 1981.
From the latter, Frank drew a single, "Goblin Girl," and a (crazy, like all the others) video for the title track in which he pokes fun at Michael Jackson, "You Are What You Is" — "(…) Me, weird? Michael Jackson is weird!" It would even air on the fledgling MTV.

The following year finds Zappa on a world tour (including Italy) shortly after the release of the album Ship Arriving Too Late To Save A Drowning Witch, which contains "Valley Girl," a single of unexpected, incredible success, which Frank recorded together with his teenage daughter Moon, in which she imitates the typical speech of girls her age from the Los Angeles suburbs and their vapid, superficial idols.
In Italy, Frank played in July in Milan, at Parco Redecesio, with Steve Vai on "Stunt Guitar." The concert is memorable, in spite of everything: Zappa is attacked by a cloud of ravenous mosquitoes; kids shooting up in the front rows below the stage, unbearable heat, objects thrown onto the stage, and so on.
The cover of the following album, released in March 1983, The Man From Utopia, was commissioned by Frank from Tanino Liberatore, the creator of Ranx Xerox, and depicts none other than a Zappa/Xerox battling mosquitoes. On this album Frank explores rhythmic nooks and crannies through syncopation and delay, something he had already begun doing back in the days of Sheik Yerbouti. The track "The Dangerous Kitchen" is a case in point. But also standing out are "Cocaine Decisions," a track against cocaine abuse in the plastic world of Times Square yuppies, and "Stick Together," a scathing satire of union overreach in America (just imagine what he would have written about it here!).

The grueling 1982 tour allowed Frank to raise enough funds to crown one of his great dreams: hearing his music performed by a symphony orchestra. Frank's great teenage love for Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and Anton Webern had always been nurtured throughout his career. On a few occasions, such as during the recording of Lumpy Gravy or in the various versions of 200 Motels, both the film-and-record version and the magical 1970 evening with Zubin Mehta, Zappa had experimented with orchestral music using small or medium-sized orchestras. But, with few exceptions, this was not truly "serious music." Having recruited the London Symphony Orchestra in grand style, along with the young but promising conductor Kent Nagano, Frank flew to London with scores for a full symphony orchestra under his arm, the fruit of years and years of feverish, tireless work.

One thing Zappa, workaholic that he was, hadn't factored in was just how unionized the LSO musicians were. Purple with rage, he had to wait for "breaks" every two hours, got furious at the imprecision of the performances, at discovering some musician "pretending to play" ("...and what if I pretend to pay him, huh? No: the union protects him!..."), at the quality of the recording, and so on. Still, those sessions would yield two albums, London Symphony Orchestra vol. I and II, the first released in June 1983, while the second would not come out until June 1987.
Two works in which Zappa's talent, as well as his influences from Stravinsky to Varèse, are so evident that they even caught the interest of the guru of contemporary music, French composer and conductor Pierre Boulez, who would commission Frank to write a piece for his chamber orchestra, the legendary Ensemble Intercontemporain. The result is The Perfect Stranger: a visionary piece, released by Zappa on an album of the same name, which also features compositions performed on the Synclavier, an extremely expensive, cutting-edge musical machine at the time — "I can play whatever I want, without wasting time trying to get some dumb bass player to understand a 19/8. And besides, it doesn't need breaks." In fact, Frank wrote music specifically to exploit the tonal possibilities of the Synclavier.

Them Or Us, a rock album, was instead released to coincide with the 1984 world tour, which again took in Italy. The record features tracks recorded live and then overdubbed in the studio, as had by then become Zappa's standard recording method. Worth noting are "The Closer You Are," yet another tribute to doo-wop, and a cover of "Whipping Post" by the Allman Brothers, a track that had been requested as an encore by a fan during a 1979 tour date, catching the band off guard. Since then, it's become a live classic where Frank gets to show off, once again, his talent as a blues guitarist too.

In the meantime, he staged a rock-theatrical work: Thing-Fish, with an accompanying triple album released that same year. It's a piece of social satire, probably comprehensible only to residents of North Hollywood, though it does feature some far-from-trivial elements. In response to those who accused him of writing classical music that was too difficult, Frank invented an ancestor for himself, one Francesco Zappa, an 18th-century Milanese from whom Mozart supposedly pilfered minuets. He released an LP under the ancestor's name, Francesco Zappa, made up entirely of ironic, wonderfully silly Mozartian minuets written and performed by Frank on the Synclavier, with which he closed out the prolific year of 1984.

During this same period, he also found time to fight a furious battle in Congress against the censorship of lyrics being pushed by a sort of "league of self-righteous mothers," led by the wife of a Republican senator.

In November 1985, the album Frank Zappa Meets The Mothers Of Prevention was released, containing "Porn Wars," a hilarious, sanctimonious rap built from fragments of speeches by politicians and preachers. Frank also put out a version for the European market without the track, since it was essentially tied to American current affairs and therefore of little interest to European audiences. A rock song, "We're Turning Again," celebrates his great departed friends, turned into music-business legends: Jimi, Janis and John. There's still plenty of Synclavier for visionary tracks built on heart-pounding polyrhythms like "Little Beige Sambo" or "Alien Orifice," but also a funny, loopy swing number like "Yo Cats."

The following year, in January, came Does Humour Belongs In Music, the first Frank Zappa album — a live one once again — to be released solely in the then brand-new digital CD format, a technology Zappa staunchly championed, even against the ranks of audiophiles who, from the very start, turned up their noses at digital sound. In November, Frank released a further album, performed almost entirely on the Synclavier, the excellent Jazz From Hell, which contains one of his most incredible compositions, "G-Spot Tornado," with breathtaking rhythmic fractions, and the live track "St. Etienne," recorded in the French town of the same name, graced by a wonderful guitar solo.

1988 sees Zappa return on the road, with a big band made up of old acquaintances like trombonist Bruce Fowler, but also new talents like guitarist and keyboardist Mike Keneally. Before setting off on tour, he releases Guitar, a double album of guitar solos and ideal follow-up to Shut Up And Play Your Guitar, along with Broadway The Hard Way, a heavily politicized album of songs in which Zappa tears into televangelists (“Jesus Thinks You’re a Jerk”) and Republicans on tracks like “Dickie’s Such An Asshole”. Also worth noting is the cover of “Murder By Numbers”, featuring a cameo vocal appearance from Sting.

The tour is a success. Zappa puts together a hilarious version of Ravel's Bolero, as well as a cover of the famous riff from Iron Butterfly's “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”, blending it with themes and rhythms by Stravinsky. Other covers performed include “Stairway To Heaven” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”.

Two double albums released in 1991, The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Live and Make A Jazz Noise Here, attest to the quality of the band. Irony, brass sections blowing out irreverent jabs at jazz, classical and rock. Zappa's 1988 big band is also a wonder to watch: choreography, theatricality and incredible skill in performing Frank's intricate scores.
Meanwhile, a string of double and triple CDs is released, collecting live performances spanning Zappa's entire career. The six-volume series is called You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore.

The double album Playground Psychotics comes out in November 1992 and features previously unreleased recordings from the Mothers Of Invention dating back to 1968, buried in Zappa's vast archives, as does Ahead Of Their Time. Both covers are entrusted to Frank's longtime graphic designer and friend, Cal Shankel.

Despite being diagnosed with prostate cancer, Zappa, though suffering, throws himself body and soul into two projects: The Yellow Shark, released in October 1993, which will be the last album Frank publishes in his lifetime. It's another breathtaking record, with Zappa rearranging old pieces and composing new ones for the exceptional chamber orchestra Ensemble Modern, whose musicians even taxed themselves to raise the funds needed to fly from Germany to Los Angeles and rehearse for months on end with the American composer.
The Yellow Shark will be performed in Frankfurt, Germany, and Frank, despite his failing health, will manage to take the stage to conduct a few pieces.

Also worth mentioning is Civilization, Phaze III, released posthumously in 1994, which absorbs Zappa's final compositional energies, marking a significant turn toward musique concrète, with its study of the natural reverberations of the Bösendorfer Imperial piano.

In 2015, the last studio album Zappa completed before his death in 1993 finally saw the light of day. Dance Me This, the fateful 100th release in his discography, sets aside the grandiosity of his ensemble and orchestral works without giving up a complex sonic concept, venturing in places into territory still unexplored for him. Once past the first two Synclavier-centered tracks, attention shifts abruptly to a sort of black hole in five movements: “Wolf Harbor” is a contemporary suite entirely devoid of irony, where even certain horse-like snorts become organic elements of the whole.
Tonal percussion and drums dominate the scene, in a profusion of disorienting rumbles and jingles, flanked by electronic breaths straight out of a phonology studio. If we were to adopt an “academic” standard of judgment, we'd rank it among the most mature efforts of Zappa the composer, who conceived the entire album as a score for modern dance troupes.
With the same ease with which it was introduced, the suite fades into the tuvan throat singing heard at the start of the record, for two brief moments that function as pure interludes, before descending once more into the seriousness of “Piano”, a solo piece that displays all the fierce intensity of Boulez's sonatas.
“Calculus” is a non-ending that revisits the vibrant diplophonic vocals, while in the background the rhythm section speeds up and slows down like a film reel gone haywire, lending one last sense of estrangement to a work whose meaning was already inscrutable to begin with.

Frank Vincent Zappa, American composer, sets off on his final tour on December 4, 1993. After this, only fragmentary posthumous albums will follow. No matter. What remains is his incredible music, his role as an attentive and vigilant witness to his times, his ability to see beyond myths and easy suggestions, his courageous refusal of comfortable positions, his constant willingness to sing out of tune with cultural conformism. His cultural and musical legacy is enormous. Fortunately, his music is performed today at festivals and in contemporary classical concert programs. In Italy too, we recall a memorable performance, of great symbolic value, by the Divertimento Ensemble of The Yellow Shark at La Scala in Milan (something Zappa would have appreciated), cementing his place among contemporary composers.
The influence Zappa exerted on pop music and beyond is immense, perhaps second only to the Beatles. As Pierre Boulez wrote, “Frank Zappa will one day be given the recognition he deserves, that is, as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century”.

Contributions by Michele Palozzo (“Dance Me This”)

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