May 1968: early morning in the sprawling, 18-room log cabin on the corner of Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Lookout Mountain Drive where the famous ‘freak-out’ artist Frank Zappa lives. Outside, finches and sparrows are chirping and the sun is burning off the first-light smog; inside, though, the atmosphere is still blinded and dark, the air choking with cigarette smoke.
As usual, Zappa has been up all night working at the piano and desk that dominate the enormous main living area, swivelling in his chair from desk to piano and back again as he composes his masterpieces, one after the other, while guzzling strong black coffee and chain-smoking the cigarettes that have been his only drugs since he was 11 years old.
