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Frank Zappa Quotes
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Frank Vincent Zappa was an American multi-instrumentalist musician, composer, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity, and satire of American culture. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, 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. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse rock musicians of his era.As a self-taught composer and performer, Zappa's diverse musical influences led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz or classical.

Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his generation, he personally disapproved of drugs, but supported their decriminalization and regulation.

During Zappa's lifetime, he was a highly productive and prolific artist with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while critics found it lacking emotional depth. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and worked as an independent artist for most of his career. He remains a major influence on musicians and composers. His honors include his 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2000, he was ranked number 36 on VH1's 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at number 71 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and in 2011 at number 22 on its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".



Wikipedia  

✵ 21. December 1940 – 4. December 1993  •  Other names แฟรงก์ แซปพา
Frank Zappa photo
Frank Zappa: 129 quotes212 likes

Frank Zappa Quotes

“A wise man once said, "never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment."”

Frank Zappa

Interview with Grace Slick on Rockplace (11 February 1984).

“Drugs will turn you into your parents.”

Frank Zappa

“If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they’ll murder you in your sleep.”

Frank Zappa

To tourists at the Whisky-a-Go-Go, Los Angeles CA, December 1965
Liner notes for the album Freak Out! (27 June 1966).

“Don't eat the yellow snow.”

Frank Zappa

“Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on.”

Frank Zappa

“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.”

Frank Zappa

“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.”

Frank Zappa

Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 162.

“There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we'd all love one another.”

Frank Zappa

Zen Masters : The Wisdom of Frank Zappa (2003)

“The more you can escape from how horrible things really are, the less it's going to bother you… and then, the worse things get.”

Frank Zappa

“Gail has said in interviews that one of the things that makes our relationship work is the fact that we hardly ever get to talk to each other.”

Frank Zappa

The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989)

“Scientology, how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion?”

Frank Zappa

Concert address to audience at the Rockpile, Toronto (May 1969).

“I'm probably more famous for sitting on the toilet than for anything else that I do.”

Frank Zappa

Interview on Nationwide (1 July 1983).

“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. One good believable song about some guy’s girlfriend and how they broke up — a sincere one — is better than twenty albums of English rock that’s ever been produced.”

Frank Zappa

Oui interview (1979)

“The things that were happening in 1955 were cosmic … in terms of music history.”

Frank Zappa

Interview (5 March 1969) http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/t-z, broadcast on Pop Chronicles, Show 14 - Big Rock Candy Mountain: Phil Spector & Frank Zappa review the '50s http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19763/m1/

“It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice — there are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia.”

Frank Zappa

Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 203.

“I think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such an absurdity to take anything really seriously … I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously: I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen, I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what's the story here? Being alive is so weird.”

Frank Zappa

As quoted in No Commercial Potential : The Saga of Frank Zappa (1972) by David Walley, p. 4.

“So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there’s no way you’re gonna find out what it means.”

Frank Zappa

Oui interview (1979)

“You know, people are basically shitty. It’s when they prove it over and over again that it gets obnoxious.”

Frank Zappa

Oui interview (1979)

“Do you think you are protecting somebody by taking away seven words?”

Frank Zappa

Crossfire debate on censorship (1986)

“On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole.”

Frank Zappa

Liner notes for the album Freak Out! (27 June 1966).

“My solos are speech-influenced rhythmically; and harmonically, they're either pentatonic, or poly-scale oriented. And there's the mixolydian mode that I also use a lot…But I'm more interested in melodic things I think the biggest challenge when you go to play a solo is trying to invent a melody on the spot.”

Frank Zappa

As quoted in The Guitar Handbook (2002) by Ralph Denyer, p. 102

“You're an asshole! You're an asshole!
That's right!
You're an asshole! You're an asshole!
Yes yes!”

Frank Zappa

"Broken Hearts are for Assholes"
"Sheik Yerbouti" (1979)
Variant: You're an asshole, You're an asshole, that's right! You're an asshole, You're an asshole, yes yes!

“There are three things that smell of fish. One of them is fish. The other two are growing on you!”

Frank Zappa

"Jumbo Go Away".
You Are What You Is (1981)

“After all, he wrote this book here, and in the book it says he made us all to be just like him! So if we're dumb, then God is dumb — and maybe even a little ugly on the side.”

Frank Zappa

Dumb All Over.
You Are What You Is (1981)

“Watch out where the huskies go,
and don't you eat that yellow snow.”

Frank Zappa

"Don't Eat The Yellow Snow".
Apostrophe (') (1974)

“Beauty is a pair of shoes that makes you wanna die.”

Frank Zappa

Beauty Knows No Pain.
You Are What You Is (1981)

“You say your life's a bum deal 'n yer up against the wall. Well, people, you ain't even got no deal at all. 'Cause what they do in Washington. They just takes care of Number One. An' Number One ain't you. You ain't even Number Two!”

Frank Zappa

"The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing"
You Are What You Is (1981)

“There is no hell. There is only France.”

Frank Zappa

&quot;Church Chat&quot; - Lyrics http://globalia.net/donlope/fz/lyrics/You_Can&#x27;t_Do_That_On_Stage_Anymore_Vol_4.html#Church <br class="br">You Can&#x27;t Do That on Stage Anymore (1991)

“When God created Republicans, he gave up on everything else.”

Frank Zappa

Appearance on Thicke of the Night (28 April 1984).

“To me, absurdity is the only reality.”

Frank Zappa

As quoted a review of This door is too small (for a bear) (2010) http://www.needcompany.org/cgi-bin/www_edit/projects/nc/scripts/nc.cgi?session=38&amp;a=v&amp;t=EN&amp;id=11029

“Classical musicians go to the conservatories, rock´n roll musicians go to the garages.”

Frank Zappa

Interview at Swedish Radio, programme Nightflite (circus 1980) http://home.swipnet.se/bengt-jonsson/zappaint.htm#Bobby

“Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition.”

Frank Zappa

Interview on Channel 4 (1 June 1983) - YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFjZOeL10MA&amp;NR

“On Ventura, there she goes
She just bought some bitch'n clothes
Tosses her head n flips her hair
She got a whole bunch of nothin in there”

Frank Zappa

"Valley Girl"
Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch (1982)

“Every socialistic type of government… produces bad art, produces social inertia, produces really unhappy people, and it's more repressive than any other kind of government.”

Frank Zappa

Interview, &quot;My Afternoon with Frank Zappa&quot;, Larry Rogak, (New York writer and attorney) Zappa.com (May 8, 1980) http://www.zappa.com/messageboard/viewtopic.php?f=4&amp;t=11831

“So I'm watchin' and I'm waitin'
Hopin' for the best
Even think I'll go to prayin'
Every time I hear 'em sayin'
That there's no way to delay
That trouble comin' every day
No way to delay
That trouble comin' every day”

Frank Zappa

"Trouble Every Day".
Freak Out! (1966)

“The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consistent and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only "good guys" in it, or eating cottage cheese.”

Frank Zappa

The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989)

“I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country that has a working First Amendment.”

Frank Zappa

Appearance on CBS Morning News (18 September 1985) - YouTube video http://youtube.com/watch?v=LD1DI2SntFI

“We're not talking light-hearted foolishness here — when we go for stupid we go for BIG STUPID — like people who shoot at you on the freeway, or the Rambos and Rambo-ettes who blow people away in shopping malls and fast-food restaurants with automatic weapons.”

Frank Zappa

Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 239.

“The biggest threat to America today is not communism. It's moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that's happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe … I really think that. … When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view, and if that code happens to be very, very right wing, almost toward Attila the Hun…”

Frank Zappa

Crossfire debate on censorship (1986)

“I may be vile and pernicious
But you can't look away
I make you think I'm delicious
With the stuff that I say
I'm the best you can get
Have you guessed me yet?
I'm the slime oozin' out
From your TV set.”

Frank Zappa

"I'm the Slime"
Over-Nite Sensation (1973)

“Why should I smile when I'm sitting here with you?”

Frank Zappa

To John Lofton
Crossfire debate on censorship (1986)

“Shes a valley girl
In a clothing store
Okay, fine…
Fer sure, fer sure.”

Frank Zappa

"Valley Girl" (co-written with Moon Zappa).
Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch (1982)

“The bassoon is one of my favorite instruments. It has the medieval aroma, like the days when everything used to sound like that. Some people crave baseball…I find this unfathomable, but I can easily understand why a person could get excited about playing the bassoon.”

Frank Zappa

Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 144.

“I've smoked ten marijuana cigarettes in my life, and probably the last time I had one near my face was twelve, fifteen years ago. And the reason I did was because, since I do smoke, people would say, "Here, smoke this, you'll get high." So I smoked it, and it gave me a sore throat and made me sleepy. And I must either presume that that's what high means, or something was wrong. But I've never had a positive result from smoking marijuana. It just wasn't my cup of tea. And I never used LSD, never used cocaine, never used heroin or any of that other stuff.”

Frank Zappa

Rolling Stone interview (1988)

“The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they're property.”

Frank Zappa

Appearance on The Howard Stern Show (1987).

“And it's the same across the nation
Black and white discrimination
Yellin' "You can't understand me!"
'N all that other jazz they hand me
In the papers and TV and
All that mass stupidity
That seems to grow more every day
Each time you hear some nitwit say
He wants to go and do you in
Because the color of your skin
Just don't appeal to him
(No matter if it's black or white)
Because he's out for blood tonight.”

Frank Zappa

"Trouble Every Day"
Freak Out! (1966)

“Look here brother, who you jivin' with that cosmik debris?”

Frank Zappa

"Cosmik Debris"
Apostrophe (') (1974)