Zappa

From Publishers Weekly
Pop culture biographer Miles (Paul McCartney; Ginsberg; etc.) paints an engrossing portrait of the troubled musical genius who died of prostate cancer in 1993 at age 52. Zappa endured a peripatetic youth and an early brush with the law that fueled his trademark anti-authoritarian strain; his musical brilliance eventually transformed him from class clown into one of rock's major icons, with such landmark records as We're Only in It for the Money and Joe's Garage. Miles skillfully weaves together the major beats and minor notes of Zappa's remarkable life, no small feat given the musician's many contradictions: he was a hard-rocking star, but also a meticulous, studious composer influenced by Varèse and Stravinsky; he despised drug use and the trappings of stardom, but he loved groupies (he partook of their favors freely, eventually marrying one and fathering...children). A virtuoso, a perfectionist and a shrewd businessman, Zappa alienated, sued or otherwise offended nearly everyone in his life at some point; he especially loved tormenting his audience. Miles hits the ups and downs of Zappa's life like a skilled composer in his own right, and he captures the contentious eras (from the late 1950s on) in which Zappa's genius emerged. The result is a penetrating look both at Zappa and at the social and political milieu in which popular rock music stepped to the fore. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Ten years after his death, Frank Zappa can be better appreciated than during the mercurial composer and performer's life, and Miles' attempt to do so is the most comprehensive biography to date. Zappa's early work, which he occasionally referred to as "comedy music," seemed to mock the music he had grown up with; political satire coexisted with R&B stylings in such songs as "Who Are the Brain Police?" in Zappa's first album, Freak Out, which also debuted his long-running band, the Mothers of Invention. Miles examines the mid-1960s L.A. milieu that spawned that album and how Zappa's first release stretched the limits of pop music, and he presents Zappa's earlier home and family life in more depth than anyone else has. Eventually Zappa became a target of Tipper Gore and friends' campaign for pop-music warning labels and Czech president Vaclav Havel's choice for his fledgling administration's U.S. trade representative. Well written and exceedingly well referenced, right down to the exhaustive discography. Mike Tribby
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Ten years after his death, Frank Zappa continues to influence popular culture. With almost one hundred recordings still in print, Zappa remains a classic American icon. Scores of bands have been influenced by Zappa's music, and a talented roster of musicians passed through Zappa's bands. Now comes the definitive biography of Zappa by best-selling author Barry Miles, who knew Zappa personally and was present at the recording of some of his most important albums. Miles follows Zappa from his sickly Italian-American childhood in the 1940s to his youthful pursuit of what was a lifelong dream: becoming a classical composer. Zappa brings together the many different personalities of this music legend together for the first time: the self-taught musician and composer who gained fame with the "rock" band the Mothers of Invention; the political antagonist who mocked presidents while being invited to represent Czechoslovakia's cultural interests in the United States, and Zappa the family man who was married to the same woman for over thirty years. Rebel, performer, and a true musical visionary, Zappa is a brilliant and sweeping portrait of an American legend, written by one of rock music's most respected biographers.


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A new biography of the grungy "genius" of rock 'n' roll returns over and over again to a few themes, all carefully documented and likely to upset the faithful. A gregarious loner who grew up during the 1950s in the character-free towns littering the southern California desert, Frank Zappa displayed early on the odd mix of interests that would show up later in his work: doo-wop music, Hispanic pachuco culture, toilet humor, atonal avant-garde composers, and a love/hate relationship with trash culture. Pop-culture historian Miles (Jack Kerouac, 1998, etc.) is at his best when ably chronicling Zappa's early years, especially the 1960s, when he spread his freak flag via The Mothers of Invention (which he later disbanded, having come to see his bandmates as employees instead of collaborators) and such massively outsized compositions as Freak Out! An omnivorous music lover, Zappa boasted a legion of influences, which was reflected in his prodigious output; by the '70s, at least in this account, he seems to be releasing a double or triple album on every other page. This gives Miles plenty of material to sift through for references to things in Zappa's life, connections to other songs, and so on. Unfortunately, as the author himself often points out, for all his universally recognized musical talent, Zappa had a simply awful sense of humor, not to mention a viciously misanthropic outlook, and was always self-destructively undercutting his compositions with pointlessly smutty lyrics, "continually rubbing his audience's face in the dirt." Miles is far from an all-inclusive biographer, displaying as little interest in Zappa's personal life as the artist did himself and preferring instead to go intolengthy detail about his legendarily monastic editing and recording sessions. A portrait does emerge here, and it's a frighteningly soulless one: against it, Miles's occasional reminders of Zappa's musical genius seem more like afterthoughts than genuine analysis. Far from the last word on Zappa, but an interesting shot from the sidelines. Agent: Andrew Wylie/The Wylie Agency


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