Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 10, 1993 TAG: 9312100015
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By ROBERT W. BUTLER KANSAS CITY STAR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
This is an epitaph that Zappa, who died of prostate cancer Saturday at age 52, surely would have endorsed. The guy never tried to be lovable; he tried to make us think.
A supremely talented musician, Zappa the man was prickly, sardonic and brutally truthful. He defied conventional wisdom, fad and ideological cant at every turn, whether the subject was music, politics or America's cultural milieu.
In short, Frank Zappa kept us honest. And the sad thing is that nobody else out there even comes close to filling his shoes.
By now it's accepted that Zappa was a musical genius - even by people who don't much care for his music. His staggering compositional and recording output, which ranges from rock to jazz to avant-garde classical to what can only be described as high-satire pop operettas, defies categorization. If you can make any generalization about Zappa's work, it is this: He always tried to stay several steps ahead of his fans. He was always presenting a new challenge, daring us to hear things we hadn't heard before.
Of course he was a master at wrapping his musical ideas in eye-catching packaging.
Zappa's original group, the Mothers of Invention, consisted of veteran jazz and R & B musicians who were deliberately groomed by Zappa to look and act weirder than any other group of the late '60s. Mostly middle-aged men, they were instructed to grow their hair long and cultivate the scuzziest beards possible. Onstage they might dismember toy baby dolls or simply sit on their instruments until the audience threatened to riot. Only then would the music begin.
Zappa said the original Mothers emitted "therapeutic shock waves" designed to rock listeners out of their complacency.
From the beginning it was obvious Zappa would follow his own muse. The Mothers' first album, "Freak Out," featured an angry cut called "Trouble Comin' Every Day," which was Zappa's commentary on the causes of the infamous Watts riot. The band's next LP, "Absolutely Free," exposed the impossibility of achieving real freedom while adhering to the values of uptight white suburbia; the album concluded with a lounge-lizard number called "America Drinks and Goes Home" that finally was drowned out in the sounds of a barroom brawl.
But lest listeners imagine Zappa was a champion of the new Haight Ashbury ethic, he roared back with "We're Only in It for the Money," a merciless rip of the self-delusion at the heart of the hippie scene.
One of Zappa's songs from that period, "Oh No," was a jazzy waltz that observed:
You say with your love you can change all of the fools
All of the hate
I think you're probably out to lunch.
These were sentiments even a Rush Limbaugh could applaud.
Surely one of Zappa's most controversial and constant hallmarks was his love of scatological and sexual humor, which often seems so puerile that fans who regarded him as a musical avatar complained of his potty mouth.
Zappa responded with three albums consisting solely of live guitar solos. He called them "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar,""Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar" and "Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar."
But if Zappa's wit often offended even his fans, it served a larger purpose. He fervently believed that the salvation of mankind depended upon the free and uncensored exchange of ideas, words and images. On occasion that got him into hot water, as when the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith took the musician to task for his satirical song "Jewish Princess."
It also made him a champion of free speech, as when he defied Tipper Gore's efforts to limit young listeners' access to raunchy records.
Frank Zappa didn't tolerate fools, and he didn't really care whether you liked him. He was no good at playing publicity games; he loathed the sort of self-congratulatory glad-handing that marked industry PR events such as the Grammy Awards show.
He was, in short, an intimidating figure. Even writers were cowed by him. This, after all, was the man who described rock journalism as "people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for the benefit of people who can't read."
It would seem that Frank Zappa didn't have a sentimental bone in his body. And yet when he died, his two oldest children - on whom he had placed the almost unforgivable burden of the names Moon Unit and Dweezil - were at his side. In their mid-20s, they still lived at home with Zappa and his wife, Gail. In defiance of every truism about young adults, they liked their family.
And so it seems that, as formidable and belligerent as he might have been, Frank Zappa was no stranger to love. He seems to have had it all.
by CNB