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Zappa was a complex guy. He had persistence and some genius. Most of the time his solos didn't move me though.
Thoughts?
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02-25-2025 08:42 AM
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Good, but he tends to go on too long.
Not that I've heard that much of his playing...
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I like a lot of Zappa's Hot Rats/Waka Jawaka era stuff, and other stuff that got at that vibe...i think Frank's style really worked in this context.
His body of work is huge and there's plenty of it that is not my thing.
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I have thought of FZ as a composer whose instrument was the guitar.
I enjoy his music and when I listen to it, I am not focused on his playing, but the composition.
I know this really isn't the question posed by this thread, but just my thoughts.
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I'm the exact opposite. His playing moves me just as much as the other great soloists I love on different instruments. His tone, ideas, and playing technique especially I love because it was so visceral! He took chances. Yes he didn't play changes almost exclusively modal vamps but that's because he needed room to create a whole new composition on the spot. If he played changes it would stay the same song and he tried to create a new song on the spot every time which is incredibly difficult. Steve Vai said he never played the same thing twice unless it was an intrical part of the song such as returning to the melody. Taking chances like he did didn't always work but when it did it was jaw dropping!
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His 73 and 74 bands are some of my favorites of all time. I really like Franks music with a violin.
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I know this is a guitar forum but does anybody like Captain Beefheart? The magic ? bands use of interlocking guitars should appeal to you guitar players at least. I play guitar but I consider myself a piano ? player first. Also some bass and drums. I really want a double bass but I've never really been able to afford one.
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Zappa is super cool, I have a friend who's a super fan and he pointed me to Hot Rats Waka Jawaka and a number of other albums. Similar to jazz guys, there are just so many albums.
Captain Beefheart... I like Doc at the Radar Station and Safe as Milk. The other stuff gives off this weird to be weird vibe, and by the time I heard it I was so deep into experimental industrial, nothing musical was weird to me anymore.
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Have to say that what I hear in that video is impressive technique in service of nothing very interesting. Rather noodly. But I never listened to Zappa for the guitar playing. I first heard the early Mothers LPs around 1968, and while I really appreciated the composing and arrangements and the quality of the players, it wasn't the guitar playing that jumped out at me. (Though the guitar solo near the beginning of "The Little House I Used to Live In" kept my attention, as did Sugarcane Harris's violin work. That track also includes my favorite Zappa line of all time: "Everybody in this room is wearing a uniform, and don't kid yourself.")
But then, the guitar-centric jam-band aesthetic isn't my thing--the only Grateful Dead albums I have are Workingman's Dead and American Beauty.
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He stopped singing during the solos, so they are welcome.
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Frank Zappa was much more than a guitar player
Listen to Hot rats, Waka Jawaka, The Grand Wazoo ....
If you want to enlarge to other styles, go with the YCDTOSA serie.
And he was able to find some very talented musicians to work with (George Duke, Ruth Underwood, Napoleon Murphy Brock to name but a few)
and ....
I wish we could see how he would have acted and talked in these politically challenged times
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The only tune where Zappa actually plays over changes in Waka/Jawaka.
Mainly rock guitar, mainly extensive noodling with either much distortion of much compression.
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Saw him live once. Never thought much of his guitar playing, his solos don't really go anywhere. However, that was not his musical forte, he hired guys like Steve Vai to fulfill that role. He was an important musical innovator and bandleader but had a reputation for being a cruel slave-driver to his band members (post Mothers of Invention). Apparently he was like that because he had a Steely Dan like perfectionist mindset about the performance of his compositions.
Originally Posted by Marty Grass
How can you not respect a guy who would cut off all his hair and put a suit on to testify to Congress about their proposed record censorship regulation? It would be hard to find a pop artist these days who'd do that - not that they'd be given the chance, today's congress doesn't really give a fig what the general public thinks of their legislation, it only needs to pass muster with their rich donors.
Is Safe as Milk the album with Ry Cooder on it? Love his playing on it, e.g., the song Grown So Ugly. I liked his album "Lick My Decals Off, Baby" a lot. Originally Posted by AllanAllen
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He was a guitar player unlike any other in that his solos told a story. There was an arc rather than a series of thoughtless bursts. It's no surprise that one of his favourite guitarists at the time of his death was Allan Holdsworth.
Frank played melodically, true to the jazz saw of 'playing like a horn' i.e. he played melodic lines, but it takes on added meaning now that so much pop and jazz guitar playing is just rehearsed lines.
Frank said that he wasn't a 'great' guitarist but he was unusual in that he constructed his solos melodically and never knew what was going to happen once he started playing.
He could also play idiomatically, witness the blues playing in Road Ladies.
He also played more than one speeded up solo, lending more credence to his intention of making the guitar solo a constructive part of the textural whole rather then his turn to shine.
His solos were long but I don't agree they didn't go anywhere; you had to be familiar with his 'language' to appreciate them. They were compositions with some intriguing passages. His choice of extended notes within a chord and use of odd time divisions was unusual, as was his willingness to play in the low register for significant amounts of time.
But, yes, I see him primarily as a composer.
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Dee Snider appeared before Congress as well, but he did so wearing his regular clothes, hair and makeup. That gets my respect. Originally Posted by Mick-7
Even if Zappa had this quality [Frankly, I don't hear it], it certainly doesn't make him unique. Originally Posted by Hugo Gainly
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I like how his tone was always super high gain and gnarly, even in the 70s. It was liquidy and rough at the same time.
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Frank had a style that make him unique..as a composer and band leader/ and self described businessman.
Released 62 albums..and many "bootleg" issues. His music has a sound..as do many other musicians and bands.
Some of his music is complex and has elements of many styles..from basic "do-wop" to classical - Zubin Mehta performed Franks music
with the Mothers of Invention (1970 ?)
and after all this and many grammy noms..only one pop/rock radio hit..If you know it..Please..don't admit it.
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Valley Girl? Originally Posted by wolflen
It might be my favorite Zappa song...
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I love his style, the same way as I like Vernon Reid style of shred, it's rough and annoying and raw emotional, and got some chops!
My favourite album is Sheik Yerbouti, full of 'offensive' songs, and that solo on Yo Mama is magical! The music is just great, and my kind of humour.
On the other hand, albums like Shut Up And Play Yer Guitar, I can't listen too much of that. FZ guitar playing is like a spice, can't overdo it.
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I love Frank's stuff! A friend at work gave me a lot of Zappa CDs back around '94-'96... an amazing gift. I had plenty to listen to for a few years lol.
Frank's last solo in the OPs video at about 16:00: made me smile.
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Although I can't say that there is one Frank Zappa album that I love, I do like his playing.
But he's turned me on to a couple things by mentioning them in interviews. One was Edgard Varese, who I got really into in high school. Another was Johnny "Guitar" Watson, who Frank said was the master of the one-note guitar solo. He is massively underrated, imho, and in general I love one-note guitar solos (Lindsey Buckingham is another master; I think I have a list of notable one-note solos somewhere).
Someone mentioned Vernon Reid as another rough shredder. Zappa also makes me think of Sonny Sharrock and Pete Cosey. High gain, fuzz, blown-out sounding improv that isn't clean 32 notes.
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Zappa is sui generis.
I remember another thread like this a few years ago. People argue heatedly about "was Zappa a good guitarist" for awhile, then drop it, forgot they argued about it, and pick it up again 3-4 years later. Like a lot of stuff...maybe time to start up that "Gibson is not making archtops anymore" thread. (Seriously, there was a guy on a FB group who apparently just learned about this.)
On his best stuff, he is awesome--"opaque melodies that would bug most people, music from the other side of the fence." He came from the blues and R&B, but threw enough outside influences to make it interesting.
And he knew how to set up a simple guitar and Fender amp for maximum dirt, and could use feedback, overdrive, a whammy bar and a wah-wah with the best of them.
Like many I am of the opinion that the worth of an FZ solo was inversely proportional to the length. "Fifty-fifty" being a good example...
There are so many great solos, one hardly knows where to start, but the solos for Fifty-fifty, Montana, Pojama People and Watermelon in Easter Hay come to mind. I also like his solos on his more orchestral pieces like Black Napkins, which should dispel any myth that he was a sloppy plinker who faked his way through complicated songs.
He wasn't one for soloing in atypical modes over rapid chord changes, but then again some of our most famous jazz-oriented musicians are best known for their modal and blues-based work, not 1/16-note arpeggios over Giant Steps at 240 bpm.
Oh and that famous story of Joe and Tommy asking Zappa to play Giant Steps...what was Tommy Tedesco's most famous song? (Possibly earning him the most money...) The theme to Bonanza. He also played on the theme songs for Green Acres and Batman.
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Definitely a Zappa fan! Saw him live a few times and loved it!
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I want to make it clear that my opinions of Frank Zappa's music are quite different -- and quite a bit more charitable -- than my opinions of Frank Zappa's guitar playing.
For the record, I believe he was a gifted composer, innovative producer, visionary bandleader, fantastically versatile, a dedicated craftsman, prolific beyond belief, and hugely influential...to me at least, but apparently to a whole crap-ton of other musicians as well.
He was also a unique guitarist...
...who probably had a far more inflated sense of his own skills as a player than were deserved.
His harmonic vocabulary was rudimentary at best. I would wager that 85% of the guitar solos he ever improvised were strict mixolydian, and for the few tunes where the band behind his solos weren't just vamping between I and bVII, they were just vamping on the I.
His melodic vocabulary was more piquant; he could, on occasion, coax some truly beautiful lines out of those all-too-familiar modes. You could sing those improvised lines, or score them for other instruments (and he often did both) and they would be archetypal melodies with a dramatic arc and a motific unity that was utterly inimitable yet brilliantly concise/compact, a true gem. As someone in this thread already noted, he could tell a story. On occasion...
Other times, he was wanking.
His rhythmic vocabulary was off-the-hook, as sophisticated -- and probably moreso -- than any other improvising guitarist who ever lived. The problem was, his technique was sloppy...and so it's a fine line between executing a perfectly-timed septuplet nested as the first partial of a half-note triplet with sloppy technique, and just effing up a riff. The guys who transcribed his guitar solos must've had the patience of saints, and were giving FZ the benefit of the doubt.
His tone, from about 1973 on, was to die for.
Prior to 1973, not so much.
Did I mention he was unique? Nobody else sounds like Frank Zappa on guitar.
If he had never touched the guitar in his life and just had been a composer and bandleader, I think he'd still be as important a figure in music as he is. If he'd only ever just been a guitar player, I think he'd be completely forgotten.
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I completely agree with your sentiments. But I don't think he had an inflated idea of his guitar playing, he knew it was not great, so he hired other guitarists to play his music. Originally Posted by Bob_Ross
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Raney and Abersold, great interview.
Today, 11:21 PM in Improvisation