Frank Zappa on guitar: Underrrated, overrrated or just about right?

[StevegSr]

I've never felt that Zappa gave Fripp cause to look over his shoulder, but I do feel that Zappa's playing gets overlooked because of his larger than life persona, his politics, his songwriting, etc. How do you view the late Mr. Zappa's guitar chops?

[Steve F.]

Anyone who has double and triple sets that are released, named "Guitar", and feature multiple versions of solos from the same composition, is not 'underrated'.

IMO.

[Zeuhlmate]

Faboulous guitar soloist. I consider some of his solos among the best guitar solos I know. Cant see how you can underrate him.

[walt]

Frank never "dazzled" me with his technique.What he did do,imo, was have a fundamental working knowledge of his axe,and his solos were (generally) cogent and filled with ideas.They told a story;they went to 'interesting places'.I seldom grew bored with a Zappa guitar solo.

[infandous]

Frank was the first to admit (and did) that he was not a "shredder" in the sense that some of his band members were (like Vai). He couldn't play anything he wanted. But he had a fantastic musical mind, and a solid understanding of the guitar, and he was able to blend those two things into some of the greatest guitar solos I've ever heard in my life. He had a style all his own, that even his son doesn't really replicate on stage (though he comes close sometimes). No, I don't think he was ever underrated. I don't think he was ever overrated either, for that matter

[Baribrotzer]

I actually liked him as a rhythm guitarist, which role he quit taking in the mid-Seventies. Absolutely in-the-pocket and compositionally perfect for the songs, and I think it's a shame he got bored with that and started hiring other people to chunk rhythm and play the written lines. As a soloist, he was interesting, but a bit like Hendrix - a wildly creative, completely open-minded blues guitarist, but still more a blues guitarist than anything else. At some point, he just stopped trying to play over anything more complex than a two-chord vamp or blues changes. But the few early glimpses of him on trickier forms were a fascinating might-have-been, even though he couldn't play nearly as much guitar back then and wasn't nearly as strong a soloist.

Although he also had no competition as the grouchiest-sounding guitarist on Earth: That intentionally ugly tone, those stumbling cross-rhythms, that crabbing and crabbing and crabbing over one vamp, and those lines that just said right out, "You goddamn kids get off my lawn, growin' yer hair like girls and bangin' guitars and lyin' aroud, buncha lazy bums, why don'tcha try workin', I didn't fight Iwo Jima so you could burn the goddamn flag, why don't ya go to Russia where you belong, you goddamn kids get off my lawn......"

[Jefferson James]

Ridiculously imaginative phrasing, often unconventional note choices, the ability to construct an interesting solo that builds and climaxes, and great tone. When I saw him in '80 I was unprepared for his guitar wizardry, I was expecting goofy songs but not stuff like "Watermelon in Easter Hay", which was a show-stopping guitar tour de force. Bona fide genius.

[kingllama]

I'd go with "just about right" ...or just about perfect, actually. Frank definitely had attitude in his solos, and a very unique sound. Majority of listeners can pick out his playing without first knowing who they're listening to, and that fact shows how unique his approach was, which in my opinion, makes it just about perfect.


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[alucard]

I am always amazed to see him close up playing on video. He has this non - academic playing style, holding the pic between stretched thump and second finger and sweeping over several strings like stirring with a spoon in a coffee mug and his spidery left hand moves. I've seen no one else play this way. He gets this kind of slurry sound without being a master speed picker, kind of the opposite of Holdsworths precise legato playing, both inspired by Coltrane sheets of sound in a different way.

[DoubleDrummer]

Unique and thoughtful and simultaneously unconventional.
As good as he is as a guitarist, he was a better composer.

[Mister Triscuits]

Although he also had no competition as the grouchiest-sounding guitarist on Earth: That intentionally ugly tone, those stumbling cross-rhythms, that crabbing and crabbing and crabbing over one vamp, and those lines that just said right out, "You goddamn kids get off my lawn, growin' yer hair like girls and bangin' guitars and lyin' aroud, buncha lazy bums, why don'tcha try workin', I didn't fight Iwo Jima so you could burn the goddamn flag, why don't ya go to Russia where you belong, you goddamn kids get off my lawn......"

His guitar wants to kill your mama. You can't get grouchier than that.

[chalkpie]

Easily my favorite guitarist still by a large margin. There are not sufficient words to write here to fully get the point across of just how much I adore his solos.

[Reid]

Frank never "dazzled" me with his technique.What he did do,imo, was have a fundamental working knowledge of his axe,and his solos were (generally) cogent and filled with ideas.They told a story;they went to 'interesting places'.I seldom grew bored with a Zappa guitar solo.

This pretty much mirrors my sentiments, but FZ did dazzle me with his technique as well, because it's intrinsically linked to his musical ideas and expression. There's no gratuitous displays apart from the music. And outside of the soloing, he wrote so much incredible music for the guitar.

Here's a great example demonstrated by Steve Vai.

[GuitarGeek]

I am always amazed to see him close up playing on video. He has this non - academic playing style, holding the pic between stretched thump and second finger and sweeping over several strings like stirring with a spoon in a coffee mug and his spidery left hand moves. I've seen no one else play this way.

I remember Dweezil suggesting Frank's playing was difficult to emulate, because of his very idiosyncratic playing style. He said Frank didn't work out of the typical "boxes" that most guitarists use, in terms of positions and such. His left just went all over the neck, and reached for things in a way that might be consider counter intuitive by some.

But for me the great thing with Frank was his tones. He such great tones. I mainly like the tones he got during the 80's, with that souped Strat copy, with the Floyd Rose, Seymour Duncan pickups, and the custom EQ going into the Marshall, Carvin, and Acoustic guitar amps. He could dial in some great feedback tones, do all kinds of crazy things with the whammy bar, and that capture that on his digital delay units (which he used as primitive looping devices) to make strange rhythmic events. There's a great track on Guitar called When No One Was No One, where he does that, making this sort of machine like sound at the end of the track, by looping a bit whammy bar noise.

I also like what I call the "wet cardboard" tone, that he had in the early 70's, like on Burnt Weenie Sandwich or the Grand Wazoo.

And I love those chords he plays on Zoot Allures itself, too.

But I think the studio version of Watermelon In Easter Hay might be his finest achievement as a guitarist. OK, so it's sentimental. Fine, I'm ok with that. The thing that's great is how he squeezes so much emotion out of the guitar. Way more interesting than listening to Yngwie Malmsteen run through his E harmonic minor practice routines.

[Phlakaton]

I'm sorry but this question just made me laugh. I'm a little drunk but nobody can compete for me. I think he's off the charts. He has serious balls... chops... creativity... all of it. He's my hero. Period. Hands down. Nobody else. Ok... I'm done. I made my statement.

[Reid]

And I love those chords he plays on Zoot Allures itself, too.

The ultra slow live version on YCDTOSA Vol 3 is a favorite. Brilliant use of feedback and dynamics.

[Dave (in MA)]

"Rating guitarists is a stupid hobby"

[flowerking]

I would have to say underrated just because most rock fans don't even consider him when talking about the best guitarists. I would rate Zappa's guitar playing as innovative more than virtuoso. He had the ability to compose solos on the fly and he was quite good at writing complex rhythm guitar tracks and getting a lot of different sounds out of his guitar playing. Unfortunately as he went on in the 80s, he shifted from being the all-around guitarist he was in the 70s to just doing solos.

[soundsweird]

Not underrated (everyone who knows about him rates him way up there), just underappreciated (most people don't know anything about him).

[nosebone]

Zappa's strongest guitar skill imo,
was his phrasing,

The guys rhythmic variations were mind boggling.

Check out The Frank Zappa Guitar book transcribed by Steve Vai to see what I mean.

I found a PDF file of this long out of print book - http://pop-sheet-music.com/Files/74c...06e3a7fed4.pdf

[Enid]

Some solos I liked,.some I did not. Some nights I thought he had the perfect sound\tone and other nights he felt the opposite. Example.....I was very impressed with most of his guitar soloing on Lather....but on a song like Whipping Post I felt nothing from him. At one time I owned about eighty some CD's of Zappa and became jaded with 80"s releases and several guitar solos featured on them. I really liked his soloing on Zappa In New York. I don't know why I didn't favor him as much in later years. He plays some really odd solos on Make A Jazz Noise Here that I admire. Great player!

[chalkpie]

All great praise here for the master. 13 notes played in the space of 4 is where his musical brain was at - not only in his compositions but in his improvisations. Its not easy to follow him sometimes - there are flurries of notes that will whiz right by you if you aren't 100% focused as a listener. Then there is the way in which he used motifs - playing off of them and sometimes recalling them several minutes later - like a computer that has information stored on a hard drive and then accessed at a much later time. That is the very definition of a genius player and musician.

I know I've told this story before but I'll make it quick - one night in Colorado during grad school at my buddies house flat - we were all jazz musicans but those other guys never really heard FZ play in any real capacity. I ran to my car, grabbed 'Shut Up', threw on disc 2 (starts with "The Deathless Horsie") , we hit a bowl until we couldn't open our eyes, cracked beers, and basically closed our eyes and jaws dropped for the remainder of the entire disc. A night I'll never forget, and an education in the process. My pals went from not knowing his playing to considering him the finest rock guitarist on the planet.

[Mr.Krautman]

Do you know ANY guitarist who can release a two hour long double instrumental CD made up of only live guitar solos without being boring for a single second ? I do, and his initials are not JH but FZ, and It's called "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar".

[mogrooves]

Some nice moments but "just about right." It would've been nice if he'd learned to play over some changes, mitigating an over-reliance on pentatonics. Never much dug his sound, and the treble end of his wah is too often used, I suspect, to obscure a fairly modest right hand. And, too often exemplary of the critical trope of the "endless guitar solo."

[GuitarGeek]

I would have to say underrated just because most rock fans don't even consider him when talking about the best guitarists. .

That's probably because "most rock fans" only know him as the guy who did Don't Eat The Yellow Snow, Titties And Bear, Jewish Princess, Catholic Girls, Valley Girl, etc. If all you hear from an artist are stupid satirical songs, most people are inclined to assume that's all they do, and if they don't like what they hear, they don't bother investigating the catalog further. I have a Catholic friend who's a big progressive rock fan, she went to several NEARfests, but she the one song she knew of Frank's was Catholic Girls, and she was so offended by it, she never troubled herself with hearing anything else by him (though given her reaction to The Muffins at NEARfest, I'm not sure she'd have liked Uncle Meat or Hot Rats, anyway).

I think there were a bunch of reasons why Frank went over to "just solos" and handed everything else to other players:

1. I recall reading in Guitar Player, when he was on the cover the second time, in 83, where he said he had difficulty controlling his breathing when he had a guitar strapped on. This, in turn, made it difficult for him to sing. I've heard it suggested this was a side effect of the Rainbow Theater incident (ie when the guy shoved Frank into the orchestra pit), though I'm not sure if that's true or not. Anyway, Frank said he didn't want to risk messing up the vocals while "pretending to be Bruce Springsteen". He said that was also why he got interested in using the D'mini miniature guitars he occasionally played on the 82 European tour (though Frank later said that the D'mini Strate had a "nasty tone and refused to stay in tune", which is weird given that in the GP piece, he sounded like he loved it).

2. He was writing more complex guitar parts, which apparently where beyond his ability to reproduce consistently. I believe it's been said at least one of the things that Vai had to play, Sinister Footwear, was derived from a late 70's guitar solo, which suggests Frank actually did play that written part, at least once, but to be able to recall at the drop at the hat, and make it sound good every time, was beyond him.

3. When it came to playing conventional rhythm guitar parts, like 12 bar shuffle type things, he once claimed that was very challenging for him. He found it "harder than fuck" to play a conventional blues riff or whatever.

So it would seem that between wanting to "get the vocals right" and wanting to hear guitar parts that he had difficulty with reproducing, he relinquished those duties to "stunt" guitarists who could more reliably provide what he wanted to hear in his music.