Welcome to our collection of quotes (with shareable picture quotes) by Frank Zappa. We hope you enjoy pondering them and that you will share them widely.
Wikipedia Summary for Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa (December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993) was an American singer-songwriter, innovative rock guitarist, modernist composer, multi-instrumentalist, satirist, film-maker, and bandleader. His work is characterized by nonconformity, free-form improvisation, sound experiments, musical virtuosity, and satire of American culture. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works, and produced almost all of the 60-plus albums that he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse rock musicians of his era.\n\nAs a self-taught composer and performer, Zappa had diverse musical influences that led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical modernism, African-American rhythm and blues, and doo-wop music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach whether the fundamental format was rock, jazz, or classical.
Zappa's output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed "Project/Object", with numerous musical phrases, ideas, and characters reappearing across his albums. His lyrics reflected his iconoclastic views of established social and political processes, structures and movements, often humorously so, and he has been described as the "godfather" of comedy rock. He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education, political participation and the abolition of censorship. Unlike many other rock musicians of his generation, he disapproved of drugs but supported their decriminalization and regulation.
Zappa was a highly productive and prolific artist with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while critics found it lacking emotional depth. He had some commercial success, particularly in Europe, and worked as an independent artist for most of his career. He remains a major influence on musicians and composers. His honors include his 1995 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Some people. Some people like cupcakes exclusively, while myself, I say, There is naught nor ought there be nothing so exalted on the face of god's grey earth as that prince of foods. the muffin!
If classical music is the state of the art, then the arts are in a sad state.
The difference between religions and cults is determined by how much real estate is owned.
Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.
You've got to be digging it while it's happening 'cause it just might be a one shot deal.
The typical rock fan is not smart enough to know when he is being dumped on.
It's the same mysterious exotic oriental fragrance as what the Beatles get off on.
I knew Jimi (Hendrix) and I think that the best thing you could say about Jimi was: there was a person who shouldn't use drugs.
Hendrix is one of the most revolutionary figures in today's pop culture, musically and sociologically.
Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we have tolerated the last eight years?
If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they'll murder you in your sleep.
In every language, the first word after Mama! that every kid learns to say is Mine! A system that doesn't allow ownership, that doesn't allow you to say Mine! when you grow up, has -- to put in mildly -- a fatal design flaw.
I write what I like to write. Those who like to listen to it, listen to it. And the ones who don't, watch football and drink beer, jog, go to discos and so forth. I never claimed to be a man for all seasons.
Producing satire is kind of hopeless because of the literacy rate of the American public.
The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like.
Longer Version:
The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.
I'm not going to be Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled. I did inhale. I liked tobacco a lot better.
I'm probably more famous for sitting on the toilet than for anything else that I do.
There are three things that smell of fish. One of them is fish. The other two are growing on you!
Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition.
Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world. There's a world, you see which has people in it who believe a variety of different things.
Most people don't bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom.
The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively -- because without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins.
I think that people are entitled to be amused, and entertained. If they see deviations from this classical norm, it's probably good for their mental health.
Classical music is this music that was written by a bunch of dead people a long time ago.
The lifestyle that I have is probably neither desirable nor useful to most people.
The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar; now that's my idea of a good time.
Outdoors for me is walking from the car to the ticket desk at the airport.
I think love lyrics have contributed to the general aura of bad mental health in America.
Behind each breakaway movement is a breakaway demagogue who will set up his breakaway demagogue government.
He took a dog-doo snow cone and stuffed it in my right eye. He took a dog-doo snow cone and stuffed it in my other eye.
There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.
I mean, if you want to hurt yourself, go ahead. It's like, if you want to jack off, go ahead, just don't 'spoo' on a public bus or something . Do whatever you want to do. Just don't get it in somebody else's face.
The problem with drugs is that most of the people that use the drugs, use it as a license to be an asshole.
Cocaine decisions that you make today, will mean nothing later on when you get nose decay.
A drug is neither moral nor immoral -- it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary license to act like an asshole.
Hey, let's get serious... God knows what he's doin' He wrote this book here And the book says: 'He made us all to be just like Him', So... If we're dumb... Then God is dumb... (And maybe even a little ugly on the side).
She is an office girl, her name is Betty. Her favorite group is Helen Reddy.
The FCC extorts broadcasters by threatening to take away their licenses for infringements which are usually the result of complaints from an extreme, right wing, tiny bunch of individuals.
I don't expect that Albert Gore is going to become president, and I certainly hope we never see Tipper Gore in the White House. Can you imagine Tipper saying, Just say no?
Mr. Gorbachev has apparently stumbled onto one of the best-kept secrets in recent Soviet history: Communism doesn't work.
The richest people in the world aren't particularly smart or happy. And the happiest people in the world aren't particularly smart or rich.… That leaves me making music. But we can't talk about that.
So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there's no way you're gonna find out what it means.
Sexual gratification can only be achieved through the use of machines.
She lives in Mojave in a Winnebago. His name is Bobby, he looks like a potato.
People make a lot of fuss about my kids having such supposedly 'strange names,' but the fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it is the last name that is going to get them in trouble.
I would say that today, dishonesty is the rule, and honesty the exception. It could be, statistically, that more people are honest than dishonest, but the few that really control things are not honest, and that tips the balance.
Believe it or not, there are places in the world where music is important. There are places in the world where all the arts are a matter of national pride.
Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.
On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole.
I think that if you use the so-called strong words you'll get your point across faster and you can save a lot of beating around the bush. Why are people afraid of words? Sometimes the dumbest thing that gets said makes the point for you.
Scientology, how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion ?
Okay, it was the Tree of Knowledge. You eat this apple; you're going to be as smart as God. We can't have that.
The people of your century no longer require the service of composers. A composer is as useful to a person in a jogging suit as a dinsoaur turd in the middle of his runway.
I want a steamy little Jewish Princess with over-worked gums, who squeaks when she cums. I don't want no troll, I just want a Yemenite hole.
Since I didn't have any kind of formal training, it didn't make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin' Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels ... , or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music.
Is this something new, having people stomp on you? Is it what I need to do for your pleasure?
