Frank Zappa
A brilliant jazz, rock, and classical musician who also wrote what he called a "very stupid little song" about venereal disease; an acute and acerbic social and political critic who refused to kowtow to any form of political correctness, preferring instead to be seen as an equal-opportunity offender - this was Frank Zappa. Born in 1940, Zappa's earliest musical influence in his teen years was Varèse's percussion composition Ionisation, which introduced him to the powerful explorations of modern classical music. Bored with formal studies, he dropped out of community college after one semester, and in the early 1960s set up shop in Los Angeles as a professional musician with his own recording studio. In 1964 he joined a local R&B band, The Soul Giants, as a guitarist, and became the group's leader, renaming it "The Mothers" - which subsequently had to be renamed "The Mothers of Invention" at their recording studio's insistence - you can guess why. Their 1966 debut album, Freak Out!, established the band firmly at the forefront of musical experimentation and satirical critique of American society; 1967's Absolutely Free and 1968's We're Only In It For The Money confirmed this status, while parodying the worst excesses of the hippie and flower power movement. Zappa created a unique approach to composition, which he called "conceptual continuity", which allowed him to bridge wildly varying musical styles in pursuit of expressive richness and clarity. Simultaneously, his requirement for precise tuning and timing from his fellow performers allowed him to merge studio production and live performance recordings seamlessly when creating new works. The original Mothers were disbanded in 1969, when Zappa released the solo album Hot Rats, featuring his jazz-inspired guitar backed by session players. A new version of the Mothers backed Zappa in the soundtrack to his movie 200 Motels, which was shot on videotape and transferred to 35mm film after editing, a Zappa innovation. In December 1971, Zappa was sidelined by a fire at the Montreux Festival, which destroyed the band's equipment (the theme of the song "Smoke on the Water"), and by an attack by a disgruntled audience member in London, which hospitalized Zappa with multiple fractures. Returning to the stage in 1972, he continued to tour with multiple versions of the Mothers, and produce albums at an astounding rate. He closed the 70s with Sheik Yerbouti and the triple LP Joe's Garage, both of which gathered critical acclaim from music fans, and condemnation from the conservative right. The 1980s saw Zappa continue his development of new experimental musical techniques, including ground-breaking work on synclavier composition. His political side was not neglected: on September 19, 1985, Zappa testified before the US Senate Commerce, Technology, and Transportation committee, attacking the Parents Music Resource Center, a music censorship organization founded by a group of congressional wives; he subsequently used excerpts from the PMRC hearings to good satirical and musical effect in his album Frank Zappa Meets the Mothers of Prevention. His final rock band tour took place in 1988; in 1991, Zappa was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, at which point he devoted the bulk of his time and energy to creating modern orchestral and synclavier works, which culminated in 1993's Civilization, Phaze III. Frank Zappa died on December 4, 1993, at the age of 52, after working a minimum of 12 hours per day for most of his life. Had he lived longer, he would have been happy to see the creation of downloadable music services like iTunes, a development he foretold in 1983.
