The Philosopher

Frank Zappa

The face

The background

Nationality:
American
Branchs:
rock music, progressive rock, blues, experimental music, jazz, jazz fusion, classical music, pop music, avant-garde music, doo-wop, comedy music, electronic music, musique concrète
Period:
20th century

The synopsis

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, songwriter, guitarist, conductor, actor, satirist, filmmaker, and activist. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he additionally produced nearly all the 60-plus albums he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. His discography is characterized by nonconformity, improvisation, sonic experimentation, musical virtuosity and satire of American culture. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse musicians of his generation. As a mostly self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music. He began writing classical music in high school, while simultaneously playing drums in rhythm-and-blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His debut studio album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out! (1966), combined satirical but seemingly conventional rock-and-roll songs with extended sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach throughout his career. Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas and characters reappearing throughout his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his generation, he disapproved of recreational drug use, but supported decriminalization and regulation. Zappa was a highly productive and prolific musician with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while detractors found it lacking emotional depth. He had greater commercial success outside the U.S., particularly in Europe. Though he worked as an independent artist, Zappa mostly relied on distribution agreements he had negotiated with the major record labels. He remains a major influence on musicians. His many honors include his posthumous 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The works

The quotes

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.
Frank Zappa
One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.
Frank Zappa
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
Frank Zappa
I think we need more idiot control.
Frank Zappa
There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.
Frank Zappa
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
Frank Zappa
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
Frank Zappa
Everybody believes in something and everybody, by virtue of the fact that they believe in something, uses that something to support their own existence.
Frank Zappa
A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.
Frank Zappa
I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.
Frank Zappa
There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.
Frank Zappa
Most people wouldn't know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.
Frank Zappa
It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.
Frank Zappa
Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.
Frank Zappa
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
Frank Zappa
Without deviation progress is not possible.
Frank Zappa
If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.
Frank Zappa
You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
Frank Zappa
All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.
Frank Zappa
No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.
Frank Zappa
Music is always a commentary on society.
Frank Zappa
Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.
Frank Zappa
The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
Frank Zappa
Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.
Frank Zappa
Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.
Frank Zappa
I searched for years I found no love. I'm sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.
Frank Zappa