ZAPPA, Francis Vincent ("Frank")

(b. 21 December 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland; d. 4 December 1993 in Los Angeles, California), musician, composer, social critic, and leader of the progressive 1960s rock band the Mothers of Invention.

Zappa, a Roman Catholic of Italian, Greek, Sicilian, Arab, and French descent, was the oldest of four children of Francis Vincent Zappa, Sr., a University of North Carolina graduate who worked as a meteorologist, metallurgist, and mathematician, and his wife, Rose Marie, a homemaker. The family moved to southern California in 1950. Zappa began learning drums in 1953 and was the drummer in his first band, the Ramblers, in 1955. For the next nine years he played in numerous bands, and by 1958 he had switched to guitar, thereafter his preferred instrument. Among his band mates in the Black-Outs, one of his high school bands, was Don ("Captain Beefheart") Van Vliet. After graduating from Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, California, in 1958, Zappa dropped in and out of Antelope Valley Junior College in Lancaster and Chaffey Junior College in Alta Loma, California. At Chaffey in 1959 he met and married Kay Sherman, whom he divorced in 1964; the couple had no children.

In 1961 Zappa began writing film scores. His first few ventures failed, but by 1964 his royalties provided him with enough capital to open Studio Z, his own recording studio in Cucamonga, California. Among its products was a pornographic audiotape that earned Zappa a misdemeanor conviction, ten days in jail, three years' probation, ineligibility for the draft, and the demise of Studio Z. Blunt sexuality, most of it more "obscene" than that for which he was convicted, would characterize his lyrics, prose, and general attitude throughout his career. Soon after his release from jail in 1964 he joined a bar band called the Soul Giants, took over its leadership, and renamed it first the Muthers and then, in late 1965, the Mothers of Invention. After seeing them at the Whiskey-a-Go-Go in Los Angeles early in 1966, the producer Tom Wilson signed them to Verve Records.

The first Mothers of Invention album, Freak Out!, was released in July 1966, but most of its material was written in 1965. It did not sell well, yet was instantly acclaimed as an underground masterpiece. "Underground rock"—progressive rock music recorded on albums or bootleg tapes, never as singles, and underpromoted by the record companies—existed from about 1965 to 1972. Since the album received almost no radio airplay except on college stations, its popularity, which became substantial in its heyday from 1967 to 1969, was mainly through word of mouth. The lineup at the Woodstock Festival in Bethel, New York, in August 1969 consisted largely of underground musicians, although many of them subsequently achieved mainstream commercial success. A strong case could be made that Zappa invented underground rock and that Freak Out! was the first significant underground rock album. It started a dedicated cult around Zappa that persisted even after his death.

Typical Zappa lyrics are sarcastic and mocking. In mid-1960s youth slang, "plastic" meant phony, conformist, or Babbitt-like (after the title character in the book by Sinclair Lewis). Most rock bands of the time attacked this plastic element of society, but none so scathingly as the Mothers, especially on their first two albums. Zappa also saw hippies as plastic. Most of America had not even heard of hippies before the 1967 "Summer of Love," the earliest national expression of the 1960s youth counterculture of recreational drugs, free love, long hair, and unconditional peace. Zappa had already figured them out and lampooned them several times on Absolutely Free (May 1967). He turned his full attention to them on his third album, We're Only in It for the Money (January 1968), thoroughly savaging them as hypocrites, naive ignoramuses, and shallow thrill seekers, especially in the song "Who Needs the Peace Corps?". Zappa married Gail Sloatman in 1967. They had four children, two of whom, Moon Unit and Dweezil, achieved fame in their own right.

Other albums from this era include the mainly instrumental Lumpy Gravy (May 1968); Cruising with Ruben and the Jets (November 1968), an extended parody of doo-wop music; Mothermania: The Best of the Mothers (March 1969), a "greatest hits" compilation; the jazz-influenced Uncle Meat (April 1969); the virtuoso tour de force Hot Rats (October 1969); and three highly experimental albums that many consider his best work, Burnt Weeny Sandwich (October 1969), Weasels Ripped My Flesh (August 1970), and Chunga's Revenge (October 1970). In 1969 he briefly disbanded the Mothers and concentrated on discovering and producing new acts, notably Captain Beefheart and Alice Cooper.

In many senses, the American 1960s as a cultural, especially musical, phenomenon ended when Bill Graham closed the Fillmore East in New York City on 27 June 1971. The three weeks before the closing were a grand celebration of the Fillmore's heritage. The final acts were the Mothers, the Hampton Grease Band, and Head over Heels (5–6 June); the Byrds and McKendree Spring, with a surprise appearance by Elton John and his band as Reggie and the Frankensteins (9 June); Bloodrock, Glass Harp, and Alice Cooper (11–12 June); B. B. King, Moby Grape, and Grootna (18–19 June); Johnny and Edgar Winter (24 June), and the Allman Brothers and J. Geils (25–27 June). The Mothers' live album, Fillmore East, June 1971, released in September 1971, clearly marks the end of Zappa's 1960s period. In 1967 Zappa began publishing short articles of satire and social criticism. The most poignant and perceptive of these is "The Oracle Has It All Psyched Out" in Life (28 June 1968). In it Zappa eloquently, almost poetically, expounds upon one of his favorite themes, the inseparability of sex and rock and the personal liberation afforded by both.

Zappa looked grungy, acted sleazy, and was certainly eccentric, but in stark contrast to the stereotype of scruffy, long-haired 1960s rock musicians, Zappa did not take drugs or drink alcohol and, while on the road, did not allow members of his bands to indulge in these substances. On-stage he was completely uninhibited, and off-stage he was a tireless, shameless champion of free speech, dirty speech, and sexual content. The stand-up comic Lenny Bruce, noted for his crude attacks on establishment hypocrisy, made his last public appearance with Zappa and the Mothers at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on 24 June 1966. Around 1969 Zappa satirized college fraternities by sitting naked on a toilet for a poster captioned "Phi Zappa Krappa." His libertarian, anti-censorship stance led to his notorious confrontation with Vice President Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore, and the Parents Music Resource Center in the late 1980s.

Zappa's musical influences were as diverse as the avantgarde classical composer Edgard Varèse, the guitarist Wes Montgomery, and the torrid rhythm-and-blues musician Hank Ballard. Rather than call himself a rock musician, he always described himself as a classical composer working in the milieu of rock. Active in music as long as possible, he lost a three-year fight against prostate cancer at the age of fifty-two. He is buried in an unmarked grave next to the 1930s film star Lew Ayres in Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles.

John Rocco's article on Zappa in Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, vol. 3 (1991–1993), lists the most important biographical and critical works. To focus on the 1960s, the 1972 first edition of David Walley's No Commercial Potential: The Saga of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention is more valuable than the 1996 rewrite. Also useful are two of Zappa's own articles in Hit Parader: "The Incredible History of the Mothers" (June 1968) and "What Ever Happened to the Mothers of Invention?" (Apr. 1970).

Eric v. d. Luft