Author: Frank ZappaPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671705725
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
Recounts the career of the rock music performer.
Freak Out
Author: Pauline ButcherPublisher: Plexus Publishing
ISBN: 0859657159
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 551
Book Description
This new, completely revised and updated edition contains a wealth of new material, excerpts from the author's diaries and private letters home about life in Hollywood. In 1967, 21-year-old Pauline Butcher was working for a London secretarial agency when a call came through from a Mr Frank Zappa asking for a typist.The assignment would change her life forever. For three years, Pauline served as Zappa's PA, moving with him, his family and the Mothers of Invention, to a log cabin in Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills, where the 'straight' young English girl mixed with Oscar winners and rock royalty. Freak Out! is the captivating story of a naive young English girl thrust into the mad world of a musical legend as well as the most intimate portrait of Frank Zappa ever written.
The Hot Rats Book
Author: Bill GubbinsPublisher:
ISBN: 9781493047758
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 256
Book Description
Hot Rats, the second solo album by Frank Zappa, is considered by his fans and critics alike to be a groundbreaking, important record, as well as one of his most innovative efforts of all time. The first recording project after the dissolution of the original Mothers of Invention, Zappa composed, arranged, and produced all of the music on Hot Rats while playing electric guitar on all tracks. The album contains the song "Peaches en Regalia," widely recognized as a modern jazz-fusion standard. This entire groundbreaking and historical record--including using new sixteen-multitrack recording and overdub technics for the first time ever--was captured in photos by Bill Gubbins, who shot the recording sessions and live performances of the record immediately following its release. Most of these images have never before been published in book form, appearing here for the first time. The "Hot Rats" Book: A Fifty-Year Retrospective of Frank Zappa's "Hot Rats" also contains essays by author Bill Gubbins; Ian Underwood, who was involved in working with Zappa on the recording sessions; Steve Vai; David Fricke; and Matt Groening.
Electric Don Quixote: The Definitive Story Of Frank Zappa
Author: Neil SlavenPublisher: Omnibus Press
ISBN: 0857120433
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 504
Book Description
Frank Zappa's reputation as one of rock's maverick geniuses has continued to grow since his death in 1993. Revised and updated, Electric Don Quixote is still the most comprehensive chronicle of his extraordinary life and career. Author, Neil Slaven, brings together the complex strands of Zappa's life and work in a book that will please not just Zappa fans but anyone interested in the history of rock music. Fully illustrated and includes a comprehensive discography.
Zappa the Hard Way
Author: Andrew GreenawayPublisher: Anchor Books
ISBN: 9781908724007
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 252
Book Description
'Zappa The Hard Way' is the story of Frank Zappa's last ever world tour that ended in mutiny. In 1988 Frank Zappa toured with a twelve-piece band that had rehearsed for months, learned a repertoire of over 100 songs and played an entirely different set each night. It is why, in Zappa's own words, it was "the best band you never heard in your life" - a reference to East Coast American audiences who never got the chance to see this particular touring ensemble. Zappa appointed bass player Scott Thunes to rehearse the group in his absence. In carrying out this role, Thunes was apparently abrasive, blunt and rude to the other members and two factions quickly developed: Thunes and stunt guitarist Mike Keneally on the one side; the remaining nine band members on the other. The atmosphere deteriorated as the tour progressed through America and on to Europe. Before leaving Europe, Zappa told the band that there were ten more weeks of concerts booked in the USA and asked them: "If Scott's in the band, will you do the tour?" With the exception of Keneally, they all said "no." Rather than replace Thunes, Zappa cancelled almost three months of concerts and never toured again - claiming to have lost $400,000 in the process. 'Zappa The Hard Way' documents that tour. If you think touring can be fun, think again! Yes there were groupies and the usual paraphernalia associated with rock 'n' roll, but there was also bitterness and skulduggery on a scale that no one could imagine. Author Andrew Greenaway has interviewed the surviving band members and others associated with the tour to unravel the goings on behind the scenes that drove Zappa to call a halt to proceedings, despite the huge personal financial losses. This paperback edition includes a foreword by Zappa's sister Candy, and an afterword by Pauline Butcher, Zappa's former secretary and author of 'Freak Out! My Life With Frank Zappa', 'Zappa The Hard Way' might just be the best book you've never read in your life!
Being Frank
Author: Nigey LennonPublisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 0983488401
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
Since his untimely death from prostate cancer in 1993, the legend of iconoclastic musician Frank Zappa has continued to grow. The years following his passing have seen the publication of numerous books, both sacred and profane, which examine his life and work, but the best, and only, up-close-and-personal account of the man and his music remains the original: Nigey Lennon’s Being Frank: My Time with Frank Zappa. Musician/author Lennon maintained a personal and professional relationship with Zappa during the period which is generally agreed to have been the composer’s most creative, and she invests her recollections with considerable musical and emotional insight. The fact that Lennon is an accomplished musician and composer in her own right enables her to perceptively analyze Zappa's complex music, and her previous experience as a biographer of Mark Twain and Alfred Jarry is evident as she examines the complex conditions of Zappa's turbulent life. But above all, Being Frank is simply a great read: filled with wry humor, poignancy, and, of course, a plethora of the juicy road stories that Zappa himself didn't dare to include in his own autobiography. The e-book edition of Being Frank is certain to find a new audience for this classic title, which has been in great demand since its third print run sold out several years ago. “Irreplaceable...is the word to describe Being Frank...[Lennon's] memoir is both spiky and musically literate...Lennon’s previous books were on Mark Twain and Alfred Jarry, which indicates the kind of cultural perspective required to get a grip on Zappa: something brighter than rock-journo pedantry.” –Ben Watson, author of Frank Zappa: The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play
Dangerous Kitchen
Author: Kevin CourrierPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 590
Book Description
For thirty years, from 1966 until his death in 1993, Frank Zappa was one of the most influential, innovative, and controversial popular musicians, combining a wide range of musical styles with social and political parody. In this innovative biography, Courrier explodes the myths of Zappa's drug use and fetishism to illuminate the facts about this outrageously gifted composer's emergence during the eclectic and experimental sixties, linking his form of artistic rebellion to its cultural precedents, and examining Zappa as a true original. Illustrated with 30 b/w photos.
Author: Ben WatsonAmerica the Beautiful
Author: Moon Unit ZappaPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9780743219136
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
America Throne is living the good life in L.A. Her career is sprouting, and she is in love -- with Jasper Husch, a sexy-sultry artist from San Fran. But just as soon as they've realized domestic bliss, Jasper has a change of heart, and America falters on the slippery slope of hope: hoping that he will come back, hoping that new sex will erase all evidence of him, and hoping that in nurturing a truce with her dead father she will make peace with all men. America's trip from self-destruction to wholeness is a romp on the wilder shores of the West Coast. From a dodgy therapist to a silent retreat, America Throne's "aha" moment culminates with, "While we are all busy swimming upstream, the universe is conspiring to take us to something better." In America the Beautiful, Moon Zappa has taken the broken-heart story and given it a twist all her own through the emotional honesty and edginess of America Throne. Hailed as "brilliant" (Sunday Telegraph Magazine), America the Beautiful is the debut of an unforgettable and unfaltering new voice.
Author: Kelly Fisher Lowe