Keeping in sync with my current obsession with everything King Crimson, I found this memory posted by Adrian Belew on his blog about one of his last meetings with Frank Zappa. Adrian Belew, who joined King Crimson in the early eighties, was in Zappa’s band in the seventies.
Adrian Belew is also featured in this short documentary about Zappa’s music (probably filmed in the late seventies). In the interview, Zappa is caustic, angry, irreverent, pretentious, petulant, and wonderfully Zappa – just what you would expect.
Guitar geeks rejoice - the young Steve Vai back when he played with Zappa. Zappa is known as some type of musical comedian and unfortunately most people don’t realize how great he is on guitar. Listen to him here and be impressed.
The legend is that when Steve was only 17, he was at Berklee and started sending Frank transcriptions of his guitar solos (these were eventually released as the transcriptions to Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar). Steve was hired as a transcriber and was soon playing as a side man in Frank’s band (hailed as the “Little Italian Virtuoso”). Steve Vai shines with Zappa – of special note is the Dangerous Kitchen on the Man From Utopia – the guitar lines mimicking the vocals are incredible.
I had a friend, a keyboardist, who tried to get hired by Zappa the same way Steve Vai did. He did some kind of work uploading Zappa music onto computer (this was back in the late 80s, when floppy discs were still “floppy” – no one knew what computers were back then – I thought his plan was very mysterious). He did manage to get some work with Zappa tribute groups but it was too late in the game and by then Zappa wasn’t touring anymore – bummer.
I have no idea how Zappa managed to mainstream himself, but here he is on Saturday Night Live. He rocks, his guitar playing sounds fantastic and it is so 1976! (The marimba seems completely out of context with the rest of what he has going on - but maybe that’s just me.)
Enjoy the slime oozing from the audience monitors.