Frank Zappa : The Biography - Softcover

Barry Miles

3.82

1,066 ratings by Goodreads

9781843540922: Frank Zappa : The Biography

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1843540924 ISBN 13: 9781843540922

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2005

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Barry Miles knew Frank Zappa intimately. His biography follows Zappa from his sickly Italian-American childhood in the 1940s - when his father used DDT to clean the kitchen - to his death from cancer in 1993. Zappa's initial desire was to be a classical composer, but he soon realized that this ambition was more likely to lead to starvation than stardom. Instead, he decided to join a band that played music people actually want to listen to and in the mid 1960s he became the leader of a group called 'The Mothers of Invention' who went on to be one of the most internationally famous and influential rock groups of all time. In Frank Zappa Miles traces this rollercoaster career and has produced an authoritative and hugely enjoyable portrait of a singular man - and his music.

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About the Author:

Barry Miles is author of many seminal books on popular culture, including the authorised biography of Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now; Ginsberg: A Biography; William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible; Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats and The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963.

From Publishers Weekly:

Pop culture biographer Miles (Paul McCartney; Ginsberg; etc.) paints an engrossing portrait of the troubled musical genius who died of prostate cancer in 1993 at age 52. Zappa endured a peripatetic youth and an early brush with the law that fueled his trademark anti-authoritarian strain; his musical brilliance eventually transformed him from class clown into one of rock's major icons, with such landmark records as We're Only in It for the Money and Joe's Garage. Miles skillfully weaves together the major beats and minor notes of Zappa's remarkable life, no small feat given the musician's many contradictions: he was a hard-rocking star, but also a meticulous, studious composer influenced by Var�se and Stravinsky; he despised drug use and the trappings of stardom, but he loved groupies (he partook of their favors freely, eventually marrying one and fathering...children). A virtuoso, a perfectionist and a shrewd businessman, Zappa alienated, sued or otherwise offended nearly everyone in his life at some point; he especially loved tormenting his audience. Miles hits the ups and downs of Zappa's life like a skilled composer in his own right, and he captures the contentious eras (from the late 1950s on) in which Zappa's genius emerged. The result is a penetrating look both at Zappa and at the social and political milieu in which popular rock music stepped to the fore.
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