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The Latest Breaking News from Frank Zappa

“There was a certain amount of desperation in Frank returning my call and saying, ‘I don't believe you, but get over here and prove it'”: How Mike Keneally landed the Frank Zappa gig – after cold-calling his guitar hero

Keneally said he had a “Zappa jukebox” in his brain. The man himself wanted to test it out

Guitar World

“I took it into rehearsals and Frank Zappa said, ‘If you wanted to ruin your guitar, why didn’t you loan it to a friend?’” Adrian Belew shares unseen photos of “the first relic’d guitar” – which he created with Seymour Duncan

The pair’s process was a little more primitive than modern methods

Guitar World

“When he gave the family car back, his father tried to sell it as ‘formerly driven by Frank Zappa’”: The background that gave rise to music’s most eclectic iconoclast, by his wife and son

He developed his own form of expression at 9 years old, taught himself to compose music at 11, and hated the Summer Of Love, drugs and lack of effort. Here’s why there’s no such thing as an ex-Zappa fan

Louder

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“When we were finished gouging it with screwdrivers, spraying blops of paint on it, dragging it around the yard, and banging it on the driveway, we hung it up in a tree”: Adrian Belew on how he and Seymour Duncan made one of the first relic’d guitars

The prog guitar icon has posted new pics taken by Seymour Duncan that show off their handiwork as they turned Belew's new Strat into a relic and started guitar's most controversial trend

MusicRadar

“As anniversary editions go, this one is exhaustively thorough”: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s One Size Fits All, five decades on

The original nine tracks expanded to 58 – and while there’s some repetition and flawed live production, the energy is vigorous

Louder

"Even though he's dead, I believe that in a hundred years' time from now people will still be listening to him": Steve Vai on the wild genius of Frank Zappa – and the two words that made him want to join his band

They say never meet your heroes – Steve Vai would disagree

Louder

“Ozzy would say, ‘No. This isn’t Frank Zappa, this is Ozzy Osbourne. Go back and write me something else’”: Jake E. Lee revisits Badlands, the album the music industry doesn't want you to hear

Why can't we buy Badlands' self-titled debut? Who knows. The record label buried it. But former Ozzy guitarist Jake E. Lee swears it's his best work

Guitar World

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“A true artifact of musical genius”: Frank Zappa’s ‘Baby Snakes’ SG is heading to auction for the first time – and expected to sell for half a million dollars

The heavily modified SG copy was bought for $500 and became one of his most well-known guitars

Guitar World

‘I was called an enemy of the people’: how the US Senate went to war with the biggest rock stars of the 1980s

Forty years ago Prince, Madonna and Judas Priest were among stars dubbed the ‘Filthy Fifteen’ in a high-profile parents’ campaign against ‘objectionable’ music. Some of those artists, and supporters like Alice Cooper, recall a major moral panic

The Guardian - UK

Street battles, invented languages and gigs in psychiatric hospitals: France’s lost rock revolution of 1968

Bands such as Magma and Art Zoyd provided a soundtrack for the student protests that shook the country. Little remembered now, a new book reveals their decisive influence on later successes such as Air and Daft Punk

The Guardian - UK

Another day, yet another Frank Zappa reissue - and this one's glorious

Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention's landmark album One Size Fits All, reissued with extra bells, whistles, kitchen sink, etc

Louder

“His response to seeing a wilderness being bulldozed, he can’t resist also mentioning Bonnie Prince Charlie, Vikings and an ill-fated brontosaurus”: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Tomorrow Belongs To Me is a prog epic

Gravel-voiced bandleader plays eco-warrior, futurist and satirist on 1975 genre-crossing album wrapped in a sleeve where Roger Dean meets Marvel

Louder

Mark Volman, who co-founded The Turtles and performed with Flo & Eddie, has died at 78

Mark Volman, a founding member of the 1960s pop group The Turtles, whose hits include "Happy Together," has died

The Independent UK

“Mr Blue Sky is the song I always go back to. It’s such a feelgood track and it’s never aged”: The ELO classic led Crobot’s Brandon Yeagley to Frank Zappa, Protest The Hero and a whole world of prog

From a box of his parents’ cassettes to voracious filesharing, the vocalist always wanted to be the one bringing strange new music to his friends

Louder

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MusicRadar

“To those that have said I inspired them to start drumming, the first thing I say is: ‘I apologise to your parents!’”: A rare interview with legendary drummer Neil Peart of Rush

“After 40, 45 years of playing, I wanted to push myself and open up this whole new frontier,” he said

The Guardian - UK

‘It’s like having a button that makes the audience go nuts’: Deep Purple on Smoke on the Water

‘We went to see Frank Zappa at Montreux casino. But someone fired a flare gun into the ceiling and – whoosh! The whole building went up in flames’

Louder

“I thought he was taking the piss”: The time Ozzy Osbourne planned to beat up Frank Zappa

The story of the unlikely love-in between Frank Zappa and Black Sabbath

MusicRadar

“He had his own vocabulary. He had his own way of constructing chords. His own understanding of how they go on the neck”: Steve Vai on why Allan Holdsworth – the fusion virtuoso who wrote his own rules – was the GOAT

Most players Vai can work out where they were coming from. Holdsworth, he admits, was something different entirely

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Guitar World

“The year that I spent with Frank was the first and only time that I’ve ever had serious instruction”: Adrian Belew reflects on his game-changing year with Frank Zappa – and what the avant-garde musician taught him about music and the business

Belew was discovered and handpicked by Zappa in 1977 after the latter saw him playing at a bar in Nashville

Louder

"A high point in the FZ catalogue!" Frank Zappa's One Size Fits All gets lavish 50th anniversary reissue

Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention's 1975 album One Size Fits All has been resized, reupholstered and remastered for its 50th anniversary

Louder

“He picks his tools up and strikes the living crap out of himself with them. There was blood flying everywhere”: How a street musician who played with Frank Zappa inspired one of grunge’s greatest songs

Inspiration came from an unlikely place for one of the biggest 90s grunge hits

Guitar World

“They asked me to play the E string of a Chapman Stick with a bow for six minutes. Somebody else got that gig”: Why Nick Beggs passed on his audition for Blue Man Group – and what he learned from Frank Zappa

Nick Beggs played bass in Kajagoogoo – and almost every band you can think of

Louder

“A lost gem featuring the best of the best being put through their paces by the ever-controlling bandleader”: Frank Zappa’s unaired TV special Cheaper Than Cheep

A nearly forgotten 1974 afternoon show, with an audience of 100 and a short-lived Mothers line-up, rises from the avant-prog titan’s basement

Guitar World

“You’re talking about somebody who’s touched by the hand of God. You can’t even fathom it”: Paul Gilbert worshipped his playing, he tutored Luther Dickinson, and he remains, decades after his death, perhaps the greatest little-known guitarist of all time

He was made a guitar legend by his jaw-dropping speed, but Shawn Lane is more worth remembering for his sheer fretboard versatility – he aced country sessions, while blowing minds onstage equally with Southern rock bands and Indian classical-influenced ensembles

MusicRadar

“They told me to start playing along, but I didn’t even know what key the song was in. And by the end they said, ‘You’re the only one who made it to the end of the song — you’re hired!’”: The madness of Captain Beefheart’s masterpiece Trout Mask Replica

“Man, it was weird!” recalls bassist Rockette Morton

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