Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappawas an American musician, songwriter, composer, record producer, actor and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works, and produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth21 December 1940
CityBaltimore, MD
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.
I think the music of the Fifties is really good. I suspect it's much better musically than much of what's available now. Not in terms of production, but in terms of content.
The Very Big Stupid is a thing which breeds by eating The Future. Have you seen it? It sometimes disguises itself as a good-looking quarterly bottom line, derived by closing the R&D department.
Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?' Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?
The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
Gimme the tune. Do I like this tune? Does it sound like another tune that I like? The more familiar it is, the better I like it. Hear those three notes there? Those are the three notes I can sing along with. I like those notes very, very much. Give me a beat. Not a fancy one. Give me a GOOD BEAT -- something I can dance to. It has to go boom-bap, boom-boom-BAP. If it doesn't, I will hate it very, very much. Also, I want it right away -- and then, write me some more songs like that -- over and over and over again, because I'm really into music.
Nobody looks good bent over. Especially to pick up a check.
Conducting" is when you draw "designs" in the nowhere-with a stick, or with your hands-which are interpreted as "instructional messages" by guys wearing bow ties who wish they were fishing.
I knew Jimi (Hendrix) and I think that the best thing you could say about Jimi was: there was a person who shouldn't use drugs.
Just because somebody hears something you say, or reads something that you write, doesn't mean you've reached them. With reading comprehension being what it is in the U. S., you can safely toss that one out the window. If you want to judge by the listening habits of people who buy records, the first thing they do is put it on and talk over it.
You know, people are basically shitty. It's when they prove it over and over again that it gets obnoxious.
Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?