Frank Zappa would get in trouble if he were still around, but if he had lived into the present century, he’d probably shrug and say, “What’s new?” Zappa was a burr under the saddle of the ‘60s Counterculture and a stick in the eye of sanctimonious conservatives. He was unafraid of being hurtful to delicate sensibilities of all sorts.
Director Alex Winter’s Zappa is a fast-moving biography that documents the creative life of its namesake. The opening scene is significant, and not just because it was recorded at one of the final shows before his death in 1993. The scene is Prague, still aglow in post-Cold War optimism. Zappa was in good humor as he encouraged the crowd, only recently liberated from Soviet repression. He was much too bright for the usual “Hello fill in the city name!” rock star schtick. No “Are you rocking tonight, Prague!” Instead: “This is just the beginning of your new future in this country,” he told the audience. He added, “Please try to keep your country unique. Don’t change it into something else.” A fierce intelligence lurked behind his naughty class-clown persona.
Zappa is composed in part from bits of interviews recorded over the years. He claims he wanted to be a chemist until he discovered music that he really related to—an album by Edgard Varese. Alienated from his small-town California environs, he “sought music that was strange” and Varese’s percussive art music became one stream of inspiration. Another was blues and R&B, sounds he explored with his friend Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart). In high school, Zappa formed The Blackouts, a racially integrated band that “did not go down well with the cowboys and bigots who lived in this area,” he recalled. Add a touch of Spike Jones and the cauldron of Zappa’s creativity began to simmer.
“Hippies did not like us,” Zappa said, referring to the band where he made his reputation, The Mothers of Invention. Early footage in the documentary shows The Mothers at LA’s Whisky A Go Go, but according to surviving band members, they jelled theatrically after they moved to New York and took a nightly residency at the Garrick Theater. Zappa thought drugs were for fools and treated his band like a symphony orchestra with himself as the conductor. One band member recalls 8-10 hour rehearsals to meet Zappa’s exacting standards,
Zappa is an avid look into one of rock music’s singular talents.
