Of razor-sharp mind and weak physical constitution, Frank Zappa was a head man from earliest youth on. Even his humor was over his head, never through his stomach. At best he lived out his feelings in his songs. His surroundings would adore him all their lives, hardly anyone felt loved by him. Frank Zappa was a loner, and it is no wonder that he has many epigones, but never trained a school.
Zappa's first regular album "Freak Out!" was released in 1966, when he was already at the biblical age of 26 for rock music at that time. But by then he had already been extensively occupied with music. Rhythm & Blues belonged to his influences as well as the black Doo Wop, whose echo runs through his whole career. He was also fascinated by the music of composers such as Edgar Varèse and Anton Webern. At the age of eleven he learned to play drums, at 18 he converted to guitar. As early as 1958 he met Donald Vliet, who was soon to mutate into Captain Beefheart. In the same year he made his first official recording as a guitarist, which was released almost 40 years later under the title "Lost In A Whirlpool" on "Lost Episodes". Afterwards he played with Beefheart, Ray Collins, Don Preston and other later companions in several short-lived chapels of different orientations. In 1963 he performed his "Concerto for Two Bicycles" for the first time on television. In 1964 he joined the Soul Giants, from which the Mothers emerged after several metamorphoses. There he shared the guitar part for a short time with the later Canned-Heat member Henry Vestine.
Frank Zappa was a merciless perfectionist who not only pushed his musicians to the extreme, but also set the bar higher and higher for himself. His scores, which oscillated between progressive rock, jazz avant-garde and new music, were hardly playable for normal people. A caesura in his work was therefore the discovery of the synclvier in 1982, with which he was able to put the most complicated ideas into notes and play them back in the twinkling of an eye. Albums like "Francesco Zappa" or "Jazz From Hell" were almost exclusively recorded on the Synclavier. The device corresponded perfectly to Zappa's personality. It was totally dehumanized, but incomparably precise. But above all, as he remarked in his special way, a Synclavier came to him much cheaper than a permanently employed musician.
