Despite building his early reputation on Gibson Les Pauls, Jeff Beck became one of the most celebrated Stratocaster players from the 1970s onward. But his affinity for Fender’s flagship model didn’t always translate into gentle treatment.

Dweezil Zappa learned that firsthand when he attended a costume party at the virtuoso’s house and saw a priceless vintage Strat damaged before his eyes.

As the son of Frank Zappa, and a fine guitarist in his own right, Dweezil has had many memorable meetings with guitar greats, from Eddie giving Eddie Van Halen a guitar lesson, to tapping up a ridiculous cast of shredders for his still unreleased track, “What The Hell Was I Thinking?”. This is another pearler, and it shows that, while to others, electric guitars can be near-mythic artefacts of great import to Beck, they’re simply tools of the trade.

“I was at Jeff Beck’s house for a costume party, of all things,” Dweezil Zappa says while guesting on the No Cover Charge podcast. “I went there dressed as King Arthur, in real chainmail, so it weighed [a lot]. It was heavy!

“I get to the door, he opens the door, and he’s also like King Arthur, but he has a sword, and he knights me at the door!”

They say that great minds think alike, so perhaps Beck respected the fact that they went to the same place when deciding on their costumes. Either way, the Blow by Blow riffsmith proved an accommodating host.

“Later in the party, he’s like, ‘Oh, let me show you this guitar,’” Zappa goes on. “And he had this Stratocaster. He’s like, ‘It’s a really early Stratocaster. I don’t remember exactly what number.’

“As he picks it up, he hits the corner of a stone table and puts a huge ding in it. He looks at it, and then he hands it to me, ‘cause he just didn’t care. And the serial number was #000001. He said, ‘I got this from Steve Marriott.’ And it was a crazy early version. It had some Jeff Beck grease at that point.”

As Guitar World points out, the guitar was unlikely to have had that exact serial number, given that the first serial-numbered Strat bore 0100 on its neckplate. But the point remains; Beck had dinged one of the oldest Stratocasters in the world, and was nonplussed by the incident. Indeed, as his time in the Yardbirds attests, he wasn’t against smashing six-strings to smithereens from time to time, either.

The onetime Yardbirds guitarist had an interesting history with the Fender Stratocaster. Speaking to Guitar Player in 1973, he slammed the guitar for being “cheap in feel” among other complaints.

A year later, he released his breakthrough album, Blow by Blow, which was predominantly tracked using his “cobbled together” Oxblood Les Paul, which sold for a record amount last year. Not long after, he ditched Les Pauls for the Strat. When asked why he loved the model so much during a 2013 interview, his answer hinted at a former naivety about what the instrument could do.

Elsewhere, Beck drummer Narada Michael Walden says the guitarist left behind a treasure trove of tracks they recorded together, and that he hopes to release them.

When it comes to Dweezil Zappa, the apple didn’t fall far from his father’s peculiar tree. The younger Zappa he has a back catalog of material and a gear collection full of rare instruments to back that up.

And now he's taken to YouTube to shine a light on what he calls “one of the coolest guitars that I own — and it’s also super unique": a heavily modded, fretless, and MIDI-bolstered Gibson SG.

It’s a model to make Gibson purists feel itchy, but his 2015 LP, Via Zammata, features the guitar extensively and shows that all the hacking and bastardizing of the once purebred instrument was worth the effort.

As the lovably oddball guitarist explains, the guitar was originally a Gibson Frank Zappa Signature "Roxy" SG, the limited-edition guitar released in 2013 as a tribute to Frank's iconic "Roxy" SG. Among its original features are a Vibrola-style tailpiece, a chunky whammy bar, and a mismatched Narrow Open Book headstock.

But Dweezil had another fate in store for the instrument, and what came out the other end of the Zappa workshop was vastly different.

“It obviously has some weird kind of electronics in it,” he says as he shows the rear of the guitar, which has a greatly extended control cavity and two slots for nine-volt batteries.

“But look,” he adds with a smile, “it’s fretless! It started its life as a Roxy SG, but we put a different fretboard on it – this is one of those mock ebony-style fretboards, and it has a Sustainiac [neck pickup] built into it.”

The true quirkiness, though, comes via the MIDI pickup, which can be found nestling beneath the bridge humbucker which by comparison looks relatively normal. That infusion of MIDI brings a whole host of envelope-pushing features to the fore, much like the Parker Fly Adrian Belew has been using as his main guitar during the recent Beat tours.

“This allows this guitar to have built-in autotune,” Zappa details, “which means if I was going to play it fretless, I could tighten up the tuning if I wanted, or instead of it glissing, it could go fully chromatic, and it would hit every pitch as I went up.”

Rotary switches allow for the storing of preset tunings, alongside the usual list of on-body controls, making it a versatile guitar for on-the-fly performances. And it's proven a valuable tool in the studio too.

“This guitar was played for probably at least four or five songs on the Via Zammata record,” Zappa continues. “Anything you hear [that's] fretless, like the song ‘Truth’ or the ‘Hummin'’ guitar solo, it's all this guitar!”

A new signature guitar, built by Shabat Guitars was added to his collection last year, and besides its wacky visage, it too has some impressive tricks up its sleeve.

Another story-rich guitar from his collection is his hand-painted Kramer, gifted by Eddie Van Halen, which he used at a school talent show to cover “Runnin’ with the Devil” after Eddie showed up with it.

The Zappa and Van Halen connection runs deep. The guitarist showed up at the Zappa family house when he was just starting out playing guitar, and he would later give Eddie some useful guitar lessons when Frank Zappa's riffs proved too hot for the guitar ace to handle.

When it comes to guitar in modern music, Dweezil Zappa says the guitar riff has lost its place as the hook of the song, or even part of the song at all.

It’s no secret that the electric guitar has faded in stature within popular music since the 1990s. Some outliers buck the trend, of course. Taylor Swift’s popularity has helped shine a fresh light on the acoustic guitar as a songwriting tool, and contemporary pop queens Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan find themselves in the center of a guitar solo revival.

But for the most part, the decline of the instrument has ultimately starved modern music of guitar riffs.

“A riff, in general, is a thing that has disappeared from modern music,” Zappa tells Matt Pinfield. “It used to be that you would have a singular type of phrase that was played on a guitar mainly, and — because of the personality of the guitarist, and the tone, and the vibe of it — you got into the song straight away. It wasn’t about all these other production elements. It was the real hook of the song.”

Taking Zappa’s comments at surface level, it would be easy to dismiss them as mere nostalgia chasing. Dig a little deeper, though, and it becomes an interesting observation of how songwriting, as an art form and a product has developed beyond the riff and the earworm it represented.

“You had guys like Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore and Jimi Hendrix that were great at writing these small, micro-encapsulated things that would stick in your head," Zappa says. "That also inspired you to pick up the guitar because it was so cool-sounding that you’re like, ‘I gotta find a way to do that.’”

Zappa has previously spoken about how he became obsessed with Van Halen’s music after hearing "Eruption" for the first time, which sent him down his pathway to shred. Little would he know his guitar hero would come to his house less than a year later, allowing him the rare chance to learn from him up close. Soon after, Eddie Van Halen showed up at his school talent show to gift him a rare Kramer guitar.

But apart from those lucky close encounters, Dweezil and so many impressionable teens like him were motivated to take up guitar by the power of guitar riffs.

Zappa points to some classic examples of rock tunes that remain popular today, many generations on, as evidence of the guitar power and the important role guitarists used to play in music writing.

“‘Smoke on the Water,’ ‘Purple Haze’ and songs that have these immediate things where you get into it as soon as you hear the guitar — that’s a really interesting way of thinking about how songs were written back in the day and what guitar players brought,” Zappa adds.

“‘Smoke on the Water’ is one of those riffs because it’s simple sounding. Compared to other things, it is easier to play on guitar, but it’s the feel and the timing and the way that he attacks the strings that gives it the personality that makes you really go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m into this.’”

As Deep Purple’s latest recruit, Simon McBride recently revealed, however, it’s a riff that many guitarists play wrong. The Irishman has stepped into Steve Morse's shoes after a lengthy 28-year spell as the band's lead guitarist and he's found that, when it comes to that iconic riff, simplicity is best.

“Some people overcomplicate the ‘Smoke’ riff by playing it like a guitar player — you know, they throw vibrato and other things into it – but then the riff loses its essence,” McBride says. “You just have to keep it simple. There are plenty of other places in the set for me to try new things.”

Dweezil doesn't go as far as to voice concerns about whether that could contribute to lower numbers of people wanting to learn the instrument, but it’s certainly clear that mainstream music is light on riffs and those eye-opening moments they can bestow on listeners the world over.

Having Frank Zappa as your dad has its benefits. At 12 years old, Dweezil Zappa found that out when his guitar hero, Eddie Van Halen, showed up unannounced at the Zappa family home. Two weeks later, the guitarist turned up again at Dweezil's high school to gift him a rare Kramer guitar and deliver a valuable guitar lesson.

Dweezil has likened Ed's availability to "having your own toy Eddie Van Halen." Inspired by their close encounters, the youngster was set to perform "Runnin’ With the Devil" at his high school talent show shortly afterward when Eddie unexpectedly appeared during soundcheck.

Now 55, Dweezil gives insights into his journey with the electric guitar in a tell-all chat with Gibson TV. Understandably, Zappa — who released a signature guitar with Shabat Guitars last year — has a vast guitar collection, with Gibson SGs aplenty. But few have stories quite like his Kramer.

“Eddie Van Halen shows up at the house, and he's backlit in his Women and Children First jumpsuit, holding a guitar,” Zappa recalls of the first time he met his hero. “And for me, it was just like he was backlit with a smoke machine and 'Mean Streets' is already playing.”

The guitar in question was a purple, twin-humbucker Kramer, but with a piece of tape covering the name on the headstock to keep Ed's then-secret collaboration with the luthier under wraps. But at the time, the starry-eyed youngster didn't care about that.

“Without even getting into the 'Hi, how are you?' kind of thing, it was. 'Okay, play 'Eruption,'' ” he continues. “It was this amazing moment. When you see how someone really does what they do, where they play it, what strings they're playing on up close, that was burned into my mind. That was the coolest experience, until the next cool experience a few weeks later.”

At this point, Eddie Van Halen was the only guitarist Dweezil would listen to, aside from Randy Rhoads. He was obsessed, and so his high school band had signed up for the school talent show to play one of his songs.

“I don't know how this happened, but Edward Van Halen came to my soundcheck,” he says. “I was playing 'Runnin' With the Devil' with my 12-year-old buddies, I'm not only playing one chord wrong, but my guitar's not staying in tune. So Ed drives home and comes back with this guitar, which originally was cream-colored with an orange lightning bolt. He puts it on me and says 'You're playing it wrong'. He stands behind me, counts it off with the kids, and he does the pick slide, the whole thing. It was the craziest experience.”

After the show, Dweezil called his hero to thank him for lending him the guitar. Ed told him he could keep it, and it didn't take Dweezil long to make it his own. As those watching the video will see, the guitar is far from cream-colored anymore. At 13, he gave it a custom paint job as a homage to Van Halen and screwed in a Tom Anderson humbucker. A sticker declaring that 'Corporate rock still sucks' also features on the rear.

“It just made sense at the time… It probably still does now,” he laughs.

The relationship between Dweezil Zappa and Eddie Van Halen has been well documented. Eddie produced his first single, "My Mother Is a Space Cadet," and Zappa later gave Eddie guitar lessons to help him nail a particularly tricky Frank Zappa song. Eddie also features on Dweezil’s yet-to-be-released shredathon track, "What the Hell Was I Thinking?," which features guest spots from other elite players, including Steve Vai, Brian May, Steve Morse, and Angus and Malcolm Young.

Zappa's chat with Gibson TV also revealed an interesting anecdote about the kind of man that Eddie Van Halen was.

“He was the first person that called me when my dad died,” Dweezil reveals. “It's emotional because, when you have friends that step up and do something for you, it matters. But it was unexpected that it was him, at 5:15 in the morning like, 'Hey, what can I do?'

“He was the kind of guy that was inspired in the moment and he would just go for something. If it had to happen right then he would just do it. I think that's an amazing quality and something that I learned from him. Why waste time?”

Dweezil Zappa has come to the defense of finger-blurring shredders, believing they’ve earned the right to set alight their fretboards.

In a new interview with Masters of Shred, Zappa has hailed the time, dedication, and talent players must exercise to pull off Ywngie Malmsteen-sized fretboard feats.

"The attention to detail of what it takes to actually be able to do those things, whether somebody likes the music or not, you can't deny that somebody has built incredible talent,” he says [transcribed by Ultimate Guitar]. “You can't just be a guy that can play Yngwie Malmsteen stuff. You have to do that for, like, 15 years to be able to get to the point where you could play one of his songs.”

For a man who grew up obsessing over Eddie Van Halen guitar work — and then had Ed visit his house (“It was like having your own toy Eddie Van Halen,” he remembers) — Dweezil knows that paying attention to detail is an important skill to develop.

“The ones that like the solo style of guitar,” he says, “they are detail-oriented, and they're willing to put the time in to actually acquire the skill. If you have it in your head that you can visualize it and you say, 'I'm going to do this,' whatever it is, it's great when somebody just says, 'Olay, I'm going to go fully into this.'”

Indeed, for some, shred for shred’s sake does the reputation of lead guitar no good. Dweezil is far less concerned about how it may be perceived.

“Some people look at it like, 'Oh, that's lame. Who cares about what that skill is.' But you've got to put the time in to do it. There's going to be somebody that likes what that thing is. It might not always be the thing that makes you have a comfortable financial lifestyle, but if you go full forward into the thing that you love, I'm all for it.”

Talking to Rick Beato about the fateful night his guitar hero appeared at his front door, Dweezil explained how crucial Eddie Van Halen’s atypical techniques — and that all-important attention to detail — were to creating his iconic sound.

This included how Eddie would flick his tapping finger upward, rather than with the usual downward motion that most players prefer.

After starting his guitar playing days as a pupil of Eddie’s, Dweezil later found himself teaching the late virtuoso how to play some of his father, Frank’s, most difficult riffs.

“In that moment, it was a total role reversal,” he reflects, “because as a 12-year-old, I was saying, ‘Play "Eruption," play "Mean Street," ’ thinking I could never play that. So I had this complete oddball experience. It was like the Jedi mind trick or something. It was very strange.”

Speaking to GP at the start of the year, Dweezil discussed his father's idiosyncratic lead style, saying that Frank “was a drummer who became a guitar player, so the rhythmic element within his soloing is ridiculously strong.

“He didn’t necessarily have the chops to where every single note was executed perfectly, but the charm of his playing is that he’s going for things that he might not be able execute.”

Dweezil Zappa released his brand-new signature Shabat guitar earlier this year, and it’s a quirky-looking electric guitar with a host of tricks up its sleeve.

Every now and again it’s nice to read a story that reminds you that even the world’s greatest guitar players are still human.

Dweezil Zappa has one such grounding anecdote, and it involved him giving Eddie Van Halen a guitar lesson for a Frank Zappa song that was melting his brain.

Van Halen had an extremely close relationship with the Zappa family, with Eddie even producing Dweezil’s first single, 1982’s My Mother Is a Space Cadet. Fast forward to 2010, and suddenly the apprentice became the master.

Speaking to 100 FM The Pike, Dweezil, Frank’s eldest son, called the moment a “really interesting, fun experience.”

“He came to one of my shows back in 2010 and we were playing the song St. Alfonzo's Pancake Breakfast,” he explained (via Ultimate Guitar).

“After the show, he came up. He said, ‘What's that ‘pancake song’? What are you playing there?’ And I had to play this really difficult part and show it to him on the guitar.

“He goes, ‘I don't even understand how you're playing that. I could never play that.’

“In that moment, it was a total role reversal,” he continues, “because me as a 12-year-old, I was saying, ‘Play Eruption, play Mean Street,’ thinking I could never play that. So, I had this complete oddball experience. It was like the Jedi mind trick or something. It was very strange.”

It was an experience a whole universe – let alone a world – away from Dweezil’s humble early days playing the instrument. He remembers fondly when, at 12 years old, he got to use, and keep, Van Halen's 1982 Kramer for his band's cover of Runnin’ with the Devil at a school talent show.

But it happened, with the role reversal coming during Zappa Plays Zappa's tour supporting Jeff Beck, who was playing with an orchestra, on a string of US dates 14 years ago.

“We had a chance to play a bit backstage and I showed him some of the things I had to learn in order to pull off Frank’s complicated music,” Dweezil told Guitar Player that same year. “Eddie said, ‘I don’t know how your dad came up with that stuff, let alone how you figured out how to play it!’

“At a certain point, he laughed and said, ‘Who would have thought that you would be giving me a guitar lesson!’ Understand I say that with all the respect in the world. For him to even remotely acknowledge me showing him anything – that was an amazing moment.”

Dweezil has his dad's lineage as a drummer to thank for the riff's tricky nature.

“He was a drummer who became a guitar player, so the rhythmic element within his soloing is ridiculously strong,” he says. “He didn’t necessarily have the chops to where every single note was executed perfectly, but the charm of his playing is that he’s going for things that he might not be able to execute.

“I love that reckless abandon he had. The attitude of, ‘I’m going to go for the idea, even if my hands won’t let me do it.’ Not too many people are willing to risk that. I try and capture that spirit in my playing.”

Zappa’s prodigal son will play a set of his father's legendary music, celebrating 50 years since the release of Roxy & Elsewhere and Apostrophe(*), at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco on August 4.

The “Pancake song” – as Eddie put it – is expected to feature and Guitar Player Presents has teamed up with Goldenvoice to offer readers a chance to win tickets to the show.

Zappa is also expected to play his brand-new “microphonic” signature guitar, crafted by the luthiers at Shabat and unveiled earlier this year.

Dweezil Zappa is celebrating 50 years of his father Frank’s iconic releases Roxy & Elsewhere and Apostrophe(*). Guitar Player Presents has teamed up with Goldenvoice to welcome the Rox(Postroph)y Return of the Son of… tour to the historic Warfield Theatre in the heart of the City by the Bay on the first Sunday in August.

Dweezil Zappa is a Grammy-winning guitarist with over 2,000 concerts performed worldwide. Anyone who’s seen him perform his father’s music will testify that not only does Dweezil do it justice, he has elevated his own virtuosity to such a level that the improvisational sections are as thrilling as the compositions are deep.

Dweezil returned to touring this year for the first time since 2020’s Hot Ratz Live! This time he’s tackling tunes such as Cosmik Debris, Stink-Foot, Village of the Sun, Echida’s Arf, and many more from the glorious year of 1974.

Dweezil’s studio, Hikari, is a state-of-the-art multimedia facility where he crafted the stereo and Atmos mixes for the 50th anniversary re-release of Deep Purple's legendary Machine Head in 2024, cementing his status as a unique voice in sound engineering.

Most recently, Dweezil announced his “microphonic” signature Shabat guitar, the uniquely spec’d Lynx DZ. Equipped with a push-pull phase shift that replicates the charm of an Octavia pedal, Zappa says that the new model “feels alive.”

Come listen to all of Zappa’s groovy gear with your own ears when GP and Goldenvoice welcome Dweezil back to the Bay Area on August 4 at the glorious Warfield.

Get your tickets now.

Win Tickets

For a chance to win a pair of tickets to GP Presents Dweezil Zappa in San Francisco, send an email to gp@jimmyleslie.com with “Dweezil” in the subject and simply include a sentence about yourself and why you want to go.

Phone contact is greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide their own transportation to the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco, California, on Sunday, August 4, and have their own accommodations in the Bay Area.

Best of luck!

Event Details

Guitar Player Presents Dweezil Zappa Rox(Postroph)y Return of the Son of Tour
Sunday, August 4 – The Warfield, 982 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
7pm doors, 8pm show

Free GP magazines, Martin strings

Get tickets

California’s Shabat Guitars has created a signature guitar for Dweezil Zappa, the uniquely-spec'd Lynx DZ.

Zappa says the Lynx DZ project began when chief luthier Avi Shabat presented a prototype model – based on the former's heavily modded Lynx – to the guitarist “out of the blue.” 

Aesthetically, it maintains that after-market chop shop vibe, thanks in no small part to the intensely relic’d look that chips away at its black nitrocellulose Lacquer finish, and its mismatched white and gold three-ply pickguards.  

Electronics-wise, the instrument shows its Zappa-esque character with an HSS configuration and a secret weapon hidden in its middle pickup.   

Those pickups comprise two Lollar Special S single-coils and a Lollar El Rayo humbucker in the bridge – preferred for its “percussive quality” – which has more in common with a single-coil, tonally, than it does a traditional P.A.F-style ‘bucker. 

There’s a five-way switch to get the most out of the pickups, with a push-pull phase shift helping turn the middle pickup into an octave pedal. 

“You will hear an octave sound pop out and that's super unique,” Dweezil Zappa explains. “[It’s] kind of like an Octavia without any pedal.” 

The tonewoods for the 25.5” scale length guitar stay close to a classic Strat build, with an alder body, quarter sawn hard maple neck, and a maple fretboard that sports 22 Dunlop Nickel Steel 6105 frets.

Its fixed bridge – a gold-finished Vega-Trem VT1 Ultra Trem standard – continues the Stratocaster theme and comes with a whammy bar. 

A single-knob setup means there is no Tone knob, while Kluson Deluxe turners, and a TUSQ XL nut round out its hardware.

“Something about this says ‘rock machine’ but [with] ‘boutique, hand-built craftsmanship,’” Zappa continues. “This is a very special guitar, it's exactly what I was hoping it would be. It sounds really alive.”

In the demo, Zappa begins knocking all over the instrument, with the guitar audibly picking up those “microphonic” interactions, saying it “makes you feel the guitar more.” 

This was achieved by adding 20 percent more body to the guitar, according to Shabat, helping eliminate feedback in the process.

“I've put a lot of time and effort into thinking about what this guitar could be,” Zappa continues. “It's got a vintage feel but it's got personality: You need to be drawn to the guitar. This is the ultimate rock machine – you feel like you can dig in and make this thing scream.” 

Unlike other signature guitars, the Shabat Lynx DZ is made to order, with fans able to choose from several parts of its spec, including its finish color – Black or Olympic White – and its aging. 

Head to Shabat Guitars to learn more. 

Through his long-running Zappa Plays Zappa band, Dweezil Zappa has sought to keep the music of his late father, Frank, alive. 

If there's one through-line you can draw through all of the elder Zappa's discography – one of the most wildly eclectic of any in popular music – it's that nothing within it is simple, compositionally or sonically. 

Consequently, Dweezil's devotion to reproducing his father's music as faithfully as possible is no easy endeavor. Indeed, he's currently set to auction off a huge amount of guitar gear to fund this summer's Zappa Plays Zappa tour, an endeavor the guitarist says costs $10,000 a day.

Though guitar gear, of course, has advanced in leaps and bounds since Frank Zappa's heyday, the elder Zappa enthusiastically pushed its technological limits, spending – as Dweezil revealed in a 2019 interview with Guitar Player – huge amounts of money to put together his way-ahead-of-its-time guitar rig. 

“His guitar tones changed frequently from tour to tour,” Dweezil told GP. “From the mid ’70s through the early ’80s he used a guitar rig he referred to as Ma Bell. It featured a complex system that allowed for amp and effects switching as well as presets, long before anyone else had that capability. I remember him saying he spent close to $30,000 dollars to develop it. That would be like $300,000 now!

“It also had three amps and two D.I.s, for a grand total of five individual tracks needed to capture his guitar sound,” Dweezil continued. “With only 24 tracks available on the tape machine, sub-mixing was a necessity.”

Dweezil went on to explain the mega-rig in further detail, revealing his father's enviable collection of amps and pedals in the process. 

“The amp configuration he used most featured a 100-watt Marshall Super Lead, a Vox Super Beatle and a Mesa/Boogie combo amp, with effects that included the MicMix Dynaflanger, Eventide H949 Harmonizer, MXR delays, a dbx 160 stereo compressor, and an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff. His guitars had preamps that brought them up to line level and made it possible to easily integrate rack-mounted studio gear into his system.

“In the studio he would sometimes re-amp the guitar audio, sending it through a few guitar speaker cabinets in the live room,” he continued. “He would use different microphones, but rarely would I see any Shure SM57s. He preferred the Sennheiser MD 421 and a Neumann U67 along with an AKG C 24 for the ambience. 

“The inclusion of a clean compressed D.I. sound was the real secret weapon. It added dimension and clarity within his overdriven sounds, as well as immediacy to the transient information.”

• Check out Dweezil Zappa’s upcoming gear auction at AnalogR, and his 2024 tour dates.

Electric guitar great Dweezil Zappa enjoyed a decades-long friendship with the late Eddie Van Halen. 

Famously, Dweezil – the son of Frank Zappa – got to live out the dream of millions of young guitarists, when, at just 12 years old, he got to use (and subsequently keep) Van Halen's own 1982 Kramer for his band's performance of Runnin’ with the Devil at a school talent show. 

Decades later, when the Dweezil-led Zappa Plays Zappa band opened for Jeff Beck, Dweezil found himself playing in front of Van Halen once again. When the two met backstage following the performance, the latter guitarist marveled at the complexity of the late Frank Zappa's music, and what it took for his son to master it.

“We [he and Van Halen] had a chance to play a bit backstage and I showed him some of the things I had to learn in order to pull off Frank’s complicated music,” Dweezil remembered in a 2010 Guitar Player interview. “Eddie said, 'I don’t know how your dad came up with that stuff, let alone how you figured out how to play it!'

“At a certain point,” Dweezil continued, “he laughed and said, 'Who would have thought that you would be giving me a guitar lesson!' Understand I say that with all the respect in the world. For him to even remotely acknowledge me showing him anything – that was an amazing moment.”

Elsewhere in the same interview, Dweezil reflected on the idiosyncratic nature of his father's soloing, and how the elder Zappa worked around his technical limitations. 

Frank, Dweezil said, “was a drummer who became a guitar player, so the rhythmic element within his soloing is ridiculously strong. He didn’t necessarily have the chops to where every single note was executed perfectly, but the charm of his playing is that he’s going for things that he might not be able execute.

“I love that reckless abandon he had. The attitude of, 'I’m going to go for the idea, even if my hands won’t let me do it – my brain says go for it,' is not one you find these days. Not too many people are willing to risk that. I try and capture that spirit in my playing, but I do have some more technical proficiency than Frank did, so I sometimes tone my chops down and slop it up a little bit.”

In celebration of Frank Zappa's birthday this week, we take a look back at some of the guitarist's choice amps and axes, courtesy of Dweezil Zappa.

The following is taken from the GP archives...

“Considering Frank rarely used anything stock, it’s difficult to ape his tones,” says Dweezil Zappa, who tries the best he can to get close to his old man’s sonic deviancy on the Zappa Plays Zappa Tour.

“For the most part, it’s really about having the right midrange, and being able to get controllable feedback at will. Frank devised a way to make that happen by fitting his guitars with onboard preamps that put drastic EQ control at his fingertips, and kicked out a ridiculous amount of boost – up to 18dB. 

"Frank really loved screwing around with stuff, and making it work for him and the way he played.”

Dweezil kindly gave us access to several of his father’s guitars and amps – which we’ve presented here with as much detail as possible, given the fact that mysteries still remain about some aspects of these instruments.

Pignose Amp

This is the Pignose amplifier that was responsible for the bulk of the nasty guitar tones found on the Apostrophe(’) and Over-Nite Sensation albums. 

This little piggy couldn’t escape modification, as evidenced by the two XLR jacks on the back. 

Zappa appeared on The Mike Douglas Show in 1976, where he can be seen walking onstage to perform “Black Napkins” with this Pignose in one hand and the “Baby Snakes” SG in the other.

“Baby Snakes” Gibson SG

The “Baby Snakes” SG was Zappa’s main guitar for the latter part of the Seventies. The guitar is not actually a Gibson but rather the creation of “a guy in Phoenix,” who made his way backstage and sold the guitar to Zappa for $500. 

Though its feel is a lot like that of a Gibson SG, closer inspection reveals such non-Gibson details as a 23rd fret and some nifty inlays and ornamental woodwork.

Luthier/electronics maker Rex Bogue – the man who Zappa also tasked to bring Hendrix’s charred Miami Pop Festival Strat back to life – added various delights to this guitar, such as phase switches and an onboard preamp (Bogue passed away in 1996).

Mid-Seventies 100-watt Marshall JMP

This stock, mid-Seventies 100-watt Marshall JMP head was a mainstay in Zappa’s setup from 1974 on through the 1979-84 tours.

Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster

This ES-5 Switchmaster was used on the first three Mothers of Invention records. We also know that Frank plugged it into a Fender Deluxe for the album Freak Out!

He had the portly, knob-festooned jazz box later outfitted with Barcus Berry pickups and even more switches and knobs that, according to Dweezil, are no longer functioning.

Gibson Les Paul Custom

Pictured on the Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar cover, this Les Paul Custom is loaded with Seymour Duncan humbuckers and has been outfitted with a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer circuit (which was installed in the control cavity) and an XLR output jack. 

An extra knob located in the midst of the stock controls is a nine-position rotary switch that allows for single-coil/humbucker and out-of-phase options. The mini-toggle switch selects between series and parallel operation.

“Roxy” SG

This is the same guitar used and pictured on the 1974 Roxy & Elsewhere album. 

Though the two non-stock switches on the guitar’s lower horn were present in the Roxy era, the guitar has been augmented since those days with a mirrored top and various preamps, phasing switches, and active-filter circuits.

Martin D-18S 12-fret “Standard” Dreadnought

Martin’s Dick Boak helped us identify this acoustic guitar, which is a D-18S 12-fret “standard” Dreadnought with a slotted headstock, Brazilian rosewood fretboard, headplate, and bridge, and mahogany back and sides. 

It was used on the 1974 recording of “Sleep Dirt” and the tune “Blessed Relief” from The Grand Wazoo. 

Zappa traded a Telecaster to get the Martin from its owner, Mark Volman (a.k.a “Flo”), from Zappa’s early Seventies "Flo and Eddie" lineup.

Performance Guitar

Used on Frank’s last tour, in 1988, this custom-made Performance solidbody sports concentric knobs along with tiny screwdriver-adjustable trimpots to accommodate the tone tweaking Zappa was so fond of.

“The trimpots are identical parametric filter circuits,” Zappa’s tech, Midget Sloatman, told GP in 1995. “One trimpot is dedicated to bass frequencies from about 50Hz to 2kHz, and the other one affects the top-end frequencies from about 500Hz up to 20kHz. 

"The filters also featured a variable resonant frequency [or ‘Q’] knob that allowed Frank to control the feedback characteristics of his rig in any hall. He could basically tune his guitar to the room, determine how the room responded to the amplifier, and then use the Q control to elicit the feedback he wanted.

“Frank also used the active filters to emphasize the highs in the 4k-to-8k range in order to bring out the nuances of the strings."

Jimi Hendrix Sunburst Fender Stratocaster

Given to Zappa by a Hendrix roadie, this formerly sunburst Stratocaster was mutilated by Hendrix at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. 

Zappa had it hanging on a wall in his basement for years until Rex Bogue put it back together with Zappa-approved electronic delights, such as a Dan Armstrong Green Ringer and a Barcus-Berry contact pickup buried in its original replacement neck! This neck, however, is a fairly new addition, as is the tortoise-shell pickguard.

Dweezil shows the guitar and talks about it in the video below provided by Norman’s Rare Guitars.

An adventurous pedal to say the least, Totally Wycked Audio’s original Triskelion debuted in 2010 as an updated reproduction of the Systech Harmonic Energizer used by Frank Zappa, Greg Lake, Joe Walsh and other ’70s-era icons.

As described by TWA, the Triskelion was essentially a parametric midrange filter with adjustable peak and an obscene amount of gain. You could vary the mids to create cocked-wah sounds, and its powerful output allowed for massive distortion and infinite sustain. 

It also offered extended high-frequency range and the option of expression control over the filter sweep.

The Triskelion Mk. III (or TK-03) is the latest incarnation and features a more compact Hammond 1590B chassis, as well as several functions that were absent on the Mk. II version when it was released in 2015.

Back now are the Variant Mass boost switch, which adds upper-midrange emphasis to the filter, along with 30 or so hertz of low-frequency response that TWA says had “mysteriously vanished” from the Mk. II.

A wicked-looking pedal with its gloss-red paint, gold-hued knobs and raised throwing-star logo, the Mk. III is also easy to grok once you get used to how the knobs and switches interact.

On the right side is the Variant Mass knob, which dials in the frequency you want to boost, and on the left side is the Energy knob, which adjusts the peak of the selected frequency. 

Setting Energy halfway up and sweeping the Variant Mass clockwise from low to high is like working the rocker on a wah pedal, but with more lows and more highs.

Activating the VM Shift mini-toggle shifts the frequencies up an octave to provide more clarity and top-end bite, while the mini-toggle on the right activates the amplitude knob that adjust the gain of the circuit.

Turn up the knob to control the amount of boost, or you can connect a foot switch (not included) to the 1/8-inch jack marked FSW and turn the amplitude on and off. This is handy for setting a preset boost that can be kicked on and off as needed.

The 1/8-inch EXP jack lets you connect an optional expression pedal to manipulate the Variant Mass in real time and shape tones on the fly.

A related function that may be useful with some instruments is the low-cut slider switch (accessible though an opening in the right side) that trims the low end by 6dB per octave to allow fine-tuning expression pedal control of the VM range.

Played though a variety of amps from across the gain spectrum – from a Fender Deluxe Reverb to a Mesa/Boogie Mark 5:25 – and using single-coils and humbuckers, the Mk. III proved a powerful tone-sculpting tool that facilitates dialing in anything from glassy and super-funky clean sounds to crushing grind when driving a high-gain amplifier.

Set a dirty-rhythm tone on the amp and then click on the Mk. III to deliver a cool, punch-through lead sound.

We also liked using the Mk. III in front of a Fulltone OCD pedal (set to a moderate level of drive) to get controlled feedback and infinite sustain at the touch of a button. It’s easier and more predictable than angling your electric guitar next to the speakers to get the same effect, and the ultra-quiet Mk. III doesn’t add noise.

Three is a charm as they say, and TWA has put it all together with the Triskelion Mk. III. This pedal is a booster like no other and well worth the investment for anyone who wants to be able to dial in the exact tone and feel they’re after.

Specifications:

CONTROLS: Energy, Variant Mass, amplitude. Amplitude on/off switch (LED indicates whether gain is on (bright) or off (dim). VM Shift on/off switch (shifts frequency setting on the Variant Mass control up one octave)

FOOT SWITCH: S3 relay/mechanical true-bypass switching (in case of power loss the unit reverts to bypass mode)

I/O: In and out jacks. 1/8” FSW jack (allows Amplitude to be activated via optional foot switch). 1/8” EXP jack (allows optional expression-pedal control of the Variant Mass pot)

EXTRAS: LC slider switch cuts low-end by 6dB/ octave

POWER SUPPLY: 9VDC (adapter not included)

BUILT: USA

The Triskelion Mk. III is available here.

Released in 1979, Frank Zappa’s monumental Joe’s Garage is a three-part rock opera which tells the story of a character called Joe who forms a garage band using “a cheesy little amp with a sign on the front that said Fender Champ.” Unfortunately, poor young Joe’s comically tragic life spins out of control across all six sides of the triple album, with Zappa covering a vast amount of musical ground along the way.

Clocking in at ten minutes in length, “Watermelon in Easter Hay” is the first of two tracks on side B of Act III (the other being “A Little Green Rosetta”) and is themed upon Joe’s “last imaginary solo.”

The title refers to Zappa’s difficulty with a band that overplays: “It’s from the statement that playing a solo with this band is like trying to grow a watermelon in Easter hay,” he told one interviewer. “And most of the bands that I’ve had, it was like that. It’s been just recently where I’ve had rhythm sections that don’t get in my way and let me do what I am going to do.”

In this clip filmed in 1988 during his last tour, Zappa plumbs some mysterious depths of his soul to coax out one of the most emotional solos of his long career. He reportedly considered it the album’s best song, and Dweezil Zappa has deemed it the best solo his father ever played.

The electric guitar used by Zappa in this clip is a custom-made S-type sporting concentric knobs and screwdriver-adjustable trimpots to fascilitate the kind of tone tweaking he was so fond of.

“The trimpots are identical parametric filter circuits,” Zappa’s tech, Midget Sloatman, told GP in 1995. “One trimpot is dedicated to bass frequencies from about 50Hz to 2kHz, and the other one affects the top-end frequencies from about 500Hz up to 20kHz.

"The filters also featured a variable resonant frequency [or ‘Q’] knob that allowed Frank to control the feedback characteristics of his rig in any hall. He could basically tune his guitar to the room, determine how the room responded to the amplifier, and then use the Q control to elicit the feedback he wanted.

“Frank also used the active filters to emphasize the highs in the 4k-to-8k range in order to bring out the nuances of the strings."

Browse Frank Zappa's music and pick up Joe's Garage here.

"Growing up, I had the feeling that my dad was coming from a different place than other guitarists,” Dweezil Zappa says. “He seemed to mock the guitar hero idea in his physical movements onstage, and he expanded the possibilities of what soloing could be.”

Dweezil honors his father, Frank Zappa, by continuing to explore and expand the notion of what an electric guitar solo can be and digging into tone like an archeologist. He’s always building knowledge based on uncovered and recovered wisdom and utilizing the latest technology to “move the project forward.” That was obvious with his 2011 album, Live in the Moment, and it’s in evidence again on Live in the Moment II (Fantom), his brilliantly executed and flawlessly documented 2018 follow-up.

Both albums consist of material culled from his Zappa Plays Zappa tours, on which he performed renditions of Frank’s music using a stellar core band he curated himself. To that end, Dweezil has drawn inspiration from Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar, Frank’s seminal ’80s album that developed into a trio of records consisting mostly of live guitar solos.

“I love the tones, the playing, the spaces replete with feedback and all of the transitions,” Dweezil says of Frank’s Shut Up ’n Play project. “It represents total freedom of expression and showcases the unique circumstances that helped inspire those improvised moments. Making a collection of them is the real concept behind Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar and my Live in the Moment records. That type of record could be perceived as gratuitous, but I view it as a way to capture a lifelong journey, showing the snapshots of what took place along the way.”

Dweezil retired the Zappa Plays Zappa moniker in favor of using his own name, but he continues to revitalize his father’s music faithfully with an outstanding ensemble of relatively young musicians. Those shows are one way Frank’s music remains vital years after his death.

GP caught up with the guitarist shortly after he completed 2018’s Choice Cuts tour. Dweezil sat down to talk about the making of Live in the Moment II, offer insights into his father’s approach to soloing and share some deep details about how he recreates Frank’s classic tones onstage.

Frank had such a distinctive approach to soloing. Explain the art of the guitar solo as it pertains to Zappa world.

My dad didn’t subscribe to the pre-composed solo approach. He preferred playing live in the studio, and when playing live he loved to be inspired in the moment to spontaneously compose onstage. He described his playing as making “air sculptures.” Since sound waves move air molecules, he said that he was imagining shapes while playing.

Nowadays you can actually see what frequencies look like. I’ve Googled videos of grains of sand on metal shaker plates that reshape themselves when exposed to different frequencies. The patterns are fascinating and beautiful. It’s startling to realize that everywhere we go the sounds around us are creating invisible frequency tapestries, and we are walking right through them.

What’s your interpretation of his “air sculptures” concept?

It’s another way of saying that my dad was in “the zone,” that perfect place where music flows through you and you’re not impeding the process. He was the best I have ever seen at listening and reacting to the music in real time and seemingly never repeating himself or falling back on pre-composed ideas or licks.

It requires intense listening and takes some training to free your mind of technical thoughts, licks or really any distractions, allowing yourself to tune in to your surroundings and just react. It’s the coolest thing when you witness any musician enter that space. Only great things happen as a result.

And of course Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar is a great example of that philosophy. How exactly did Frank put it together?

He extracted performances from live concerts over a lengthy period of time from several different tours with different bands and different gear. Making things sound uniform wasn’t really a mandate for him. He used interstitial musical snippets as palate cleansers in between tracks to help with the transitions. That was brilliantly executed and helped keep the energy flowing.

His guitar tones changed frequently from tour to tour. From the mid ’70s through the early ’80s he used a guitar rig he referred to as Ma Bell. It featured a complex system that allowed for amp and effects switching as well as presets, long before anyone else had that capability. I remember him saying he spent close to $30,000 dollars to develop it. That would be like $300,000 now! It also had three amps and two D.I.s, for a grand total of five individual tracks needed to capture his guitar sound. With only 24 tracks available on the tape machine, submixing was a necessity.

The amp configuration he used most featured a 100-watt Marshall Super Lead, a Vox Super Beatle and a Mesa/Boogie combo amp, with effects that included the MicMix Dynaflanger, Eventide H949 Harmonizer, MXR delays, a dbx 160 stereo compressor and an Electro-Harmonix Big Muff.

His guitars had preamps that brought them up to line level and made it possible to easily integrate rack-mounted studio gear into his system. In the studio he would sometimes re-amp the guitar audio, sending it through a few guitar speaker cabinets in the live room. He would use different microphones, but rarely would I see any Shure SM57s. He preferred the Sennheiser MD 421 and a Neumann U67 along with an AKG C 24 for the ambience. The inclusion of a clean compressed D.I. sound was the real secret weapon. It added dimension and clarity within his overdriven sounds, as well as immediacy to the transient information.

What about Shut Up most inspired you to apply the concept yourself?

I was always in awe of my dad’s rhythmic and harmonic variety. He had a tremendous vocabulary, and he created such unique guitar tones. The Dynaflanger tone is my all-time favorite. It’s essentially a time-modulated sound that reacts to the envelope threshold being manipulated by the player. It creates an amazingly realistic double without the predictability of an LFO. It’s like a living thing that reacts to what you’re doing. It’s so cool! That tone has been one of the hardest to replicate, but it has also inspired me to play things I would never play otherwise. It’s a big part of Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar as well as my Live in the Moment records.

Can you describe how you’re taking advantage of cutting-edge live-recording technology?

From a technical standpoint, the equipment we use to capture the sound and shape it for the audience has never been better. We use the Waves Audio eMotion LV1 system because of its insane flexibility and creative options.

Nerd alert! We can recreate signal chains down to the DNA level. For example, if I know that my dad used an API console, a dbx 160 compressor and a Pultec EQ when tracking a certain part, we can use the software emulation in real time to process that same part live onstage. That can be done for every instrument and every song with seamless snapshot changes during the show. We’re able to get so close to the original sonic fingerprints. It’s quite impressive.

The Waves system improves our ability to deliver great live sound and gives me instant access to stereo mixes that sound like finished records.

You were an early adopter of Fractal Audio rack units. Can you describe how that changed the game for your rig?

I switched from tube amps to Fractals 10 years ago because the sound quality and flexibility is unmatched. They facilitate the layered sounds I’m seeking. I actually have three different rigs in different sizes. For a few tracks on Live in the Moment II, I used the nano rig, which is a Fractal AX8 self-contained processor and switching unit. It has a custom GoochFX analog fuzz, an Eventide H9 Harmonizer and a volume pedal, and it all fits in a Pelican case that easily travels in any overhead bin, so I use it to save costs on European tours. It can replicate 60 to 70 percent of the sounds from my big rig with sufficient layers of detail.

My medium-sized rig can replicate 70 to 80 percent of the big rig, which is the size of a refrigerator. Both are quad setups with two autonomous Axe-Fx II Preamp/FX Processors feeding two pairs of powered full-range P.A. speakers. I usually prefer the wide pair for modulated sounds and the interior set for direct sounds.

Each machine has an array of effects that can be activated via footswitch or MIDI preset autonomously in front, as well as H9s in the effects loops. The two machines also have an array of effects that will hit the input of both machines at once, including the wah. Those are only available as on-the-fly color changes, and I use them often. They are mostly different flavors of fuzz or overdrive.

Why do you still employ tons of pedals and rack effects when you have such processing power with the Fractals?

I hear that question a lot. Realistically, the Fractals can do everything, but they rely on a set of algorithms that determine the sound character, so I like to mix it up and have more colors, especially when it comes to fuzz. Analog pedals also have their own feel, and the subtleties of that feel can be integral to my playing ability and phrasing. Sometimes the perception of feel plays an even more important role than the sound itself.

I mostly use the Marshall, Fender and Hook amplifier models in the Fractal for the core sounds. The speaker IRs [impulse responses] are probably the most important elements of any Fractal preset. More than anything, they shape the personality of the raw amp tones.

Can you site some tonal references from Live in the Moment II?

“five-five-FIVE” starts my record, just as it did the original Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar album. I used the nano rig for that song, so I was a bit limited, but I was able to evoke the sonic spirit that sets the proper mood.

I used the medium rig on “Watermelon in Easter Hay” to dial in a pretty accurate emulation of the original album sound on Joe’s Garage. I used a Strat with custom McNelly pickups and a Trem King vibrato system on that track. The reverb comes from the H9 and is based on the Eventide Omnipressor. It auto-swells the reverb after the note is played and helps create that beautiful space. The distorted lead has the subtle version of the Dynaflanger and a slow phaser, just like the original.

One of my other favorite tones on the record is the gritty fuzz on “Badass Pony.” That comes from the “Montana” solo section.

Putting together a pedalboard is daunting for a lot of players. Can you share some insights you’ve gained from putting together your own rigs?

The main challenge is always how pedals react with different guitars, other pedals and amp sources. If you need to play multiple guitars during a show, you don’t want to be changing knobs around on pedals to compensate for the different guitar outputs. It’s always important to find fuzz and overdrive pedals that don’t drop the output level when engaged and add character or boost functionality to your sound. Some pedals only sound good on an already distorted amp, while others can drive a clean channel nicely.

Obviously, you have to spend time finding things that work together and give you character and functionality. I typically prefer the drive sound from amps versus pedals. I do like fuzz pedals that allow you to tune the bias. I think of it as tuning the transient response or the front edge of the note.

Experiment with dynamics and how the pedal reacts. I like to have variation between how notes will bloom on either side of my stereo sound. In any case, it’s all a matter of finding the right tools for the job. If you only need five sounds, obviously your pedalboard will be much easier to put together. In my case, a two-and-a-half hour show may need as many as 50 different sounds mapped out in preset banks.

What are your main touring guitars, and what else is on Live in the Moment II?

I mainly use modified versions of the Gibson Frank Zappa “Roxy” SG. On this last tour I had my main guitar, which has a Fishman Powerbridge piezo installed as well as a Sustainiac pickup. I also had an even more customized version of that guitar with those features plus a neck that Echopark Guitars customized to be half fretless: The low strings are fretted and the high strings are fretless. My third guitar was a stock “Roxy” SG that I played mainly for the out-of-phase sound that it makes.

Certain material requires a Stratocaster, and there’s plenty of it on Live in the Moment II. “It’s in the Key of E,” “Tom’s Banana Experiment,” “What’s That Hose For?,” “Prelude in E Retrograde” and “Watermelon in Easter Hay” are all Strat songs. I love the fuzz sound that kicks in on “It’s in the Key of E.” It has the best representation of the note bloom variation I described. It also has some Dynaflanger, of course.

On “What’s That Hose For?” the tone that sounds like an Octavia is actually coming from the McNelly pickup combo. It’s the neck and bridge out of phase, but somehow it has a strong octave fundamental. You can hear the direct clean sound blended in as well.

Can you share harmonic insights about “five-five-FIVE”?

I play around with some of the same tonalities my dad favored. It’s basically G minor, but I sometimes play a six-note scale off of G that goes: 1 b2 3 4 b6 6. I also use C melodic minor. The song is based on different permutations of five [it is in 5/8 + 5/8 + 5/4 meters], which gives it an exotic sound.

About two-and-a-half minutes into the tune, it sounds as if you’re using the fretless SG.

I’m actually playing my main SG, but at that point I am utilizing the same sliding techniques I employ on the fretless guitar. I’ve been incorporating a lot of slides into my playing, as well as an approach where you bend from underneath the target note up to pitch. It has a slide-guitar kind of sound.

Can you detail how the endless sustain of the Sustainiac pickup fits into your playing?

The Sustainiac inspires a different type of melodic phrasing. It enables me to slide around and have notes bloom in different ways. The way that my rig allows me to select different fuzzes on each side of the stereo field helps. The Sustainiac offers a lot of vibrato variations as well. Sometimes it can even sound like a theremin, especially with the fretless guitar.

The Eastern sounds you make are especially cool. What are your inspirations?

I love the sound of microtonal instruments. On my Via Zammata’ record [from 2015], I played the oud and a Godin Glissentar [11-string fretless electro-acoustic guitar]. I’m inspired by a variety of Eastern styles, including Indian, Turkish, Arabic and Bulgarian music. I even recorded some music by the Bulgarian Women’s Choir on this album.

The two tunes I chose have resonated with me ever since my dad took me to one of their concerts. I orchestrated them for guitar in a way that also pays homage to one of my guitar heroes, Brian May. They have a lot of overdubs. Those are the only pieces that are not live. Even the transitions between songs come from different moments on tour over the years. There are lot of duck calls! If you listen carefully you might hear a duck call version of the Superman movie theme.

“The Road Less Traveled” and “Take a Left at Peru” are awesome takes of solos from “Inca Roads.” Frank also put multiple versions of “Inca Roads” solos on Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar.

“Inca Roads” is at the top of my list of favorite songs. The structure and the intervallic melody lines draw me in. Each performance is unique because of the improvisational sections. The two vamps on Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar feature some of my dad’s best guitar playing and tones. I can’t get enough of that Stratocaster sound with the Dynaflanger.

The two solos I include from “Inca Roads” have a touch of the Dynaflanger as a nod to the original album version [from One Size Fits All], which has an envelope follower. That vamp always inspires a slow build, and I try to make my solos a musical conversation with the band. It’s based on two chords, C and D. Major-triad stuff sounds great, as does A Dorian. I usually stick with that tonality.

The closer, “Watermelon in Easter Hay,” is deeply striking, just like the original. What it is about that tune that takes the soul to another plane?

That is by far the most emotional solo my dad ever played. The way he phrased the melody is so idiosyncratic and takes advantage of his rhythmic mastery. It’s very difficult to capture anything close. I worked hard to recreate the tones he used and play many of the landmark phrases, adding my own embellishments within context to the song.

For me, the penultimate emotional moment of the melody is the placement of the first note with that crying clean tone. I believe it’s the #11 working off of an A root. It has a beautiful resolution to E major. My dad favored Lydian mode in his writing and playing, and I love the Lydian sound as well, because it’s beautiful and can be moody, too.

What are you working on in the recording studio and otherwise?

I’m working on live albums, DVD releases and new music of my own. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to focus on my own writing. One day, I’d like to have my own studio and become a mad scientist. It would be great fun to have a space in which to operate musically like my dad did, doing – as he put it – “Anything at any time, for any reason at all.”

Browse Dweezil Zappa records here.

“When I think of ‘progressive’ music, I think of music that’s intended to specifically put musicians’ skills on display in a particular genre,” Dweezil Zappa says. 

“I like all the different approaches that come from bands that showcase good playing. Van Halen could be considered a progressive band just because of the musicianship. But I think that, in terms of musicality, my dad’s music is in its own category. There’s nothing that compares to it.” 

Frank Zappa was arguably the most progressive and forward-thinking musician in rock history. The incredible variety of music he created on the 60 albums he released make it obvious that he didn’t concern himself with the constraints many progressive artists faced when attempting to push rock’s boundaries while creating commercially viable music.  

Zappa was probably the ultimate nonconformist in that regard. As Dweezil explains, “If you’re looking at other progressive bands, whether it’s the Mahavishnu Orchestra or Yes, there’s a certain amount of variety in that music, yet so much of it feels like it’s all connected to a similar source. 

"Whereas, my dad’s music doesn’t feel that way to me. It was always about, How can I take these same 12 tones that everybody else has, and rearrange them in different ways and not repeat myself? There wasn’t a formula to it. He approached each piece of music as its own thing.”

As to how Frank created his multifaceted sonic vision, it started when he became interested in music. “As an 11-year-old kid, he used to draw music on paper, but he didn’t really know what he was making,” Dweezil explains. 

“He just liked the way it looked and wanted to know what it sounded like. So he went to the library and taught himself music notation, and he learned about how to become a composer and use an orchestra and create music for all the instruments. 

“That’s quite a challenge, but once he had the skills he needed, my dad did everything in his own way. Every element of what he composed was a total vision. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he orchestrated it and he wrote all the parts.

"There were maybe a handful of times where he had some collaborations with people, which were always right on the spot, but the majority of what he did was fully through-composed by him.

“So I think of him mostly as a classical composer who used a rock band as an orchestra. If you listen to The Yellow Shark, which is a German ensemble playing my dad’s orchestral music, they have versions of ‘G Spot Tornado’ and ‘Dog Meat,’ and you hear what it took for top-quality musicians to be able to play this music and create all these colors. 

“Now, if you want to talk about something that shows off his ability as an improvisational musician, there are other songs to consider, like ‘Watermelon in Easter Hay’ [from Joe’s Garage Acts II & III], which is one of the most amazing guitar solos ever performed. Who plays like that, and who phrases like that? 

“He’s playing over a relatively simple ostinato, and he creates this complex thematic solo with melodies that, even if you sat down to write them, you still wouldn’t be able to write like he improvised them. Some people can magically just do something like that. He was one of those guys who could play something from top to bottom and it was a spontaneous composition that took you on a journey.” 

For more than five decades, prog rock has been the cradle from which guitar virtuosity has crawled forth.

Here, in their own words, more than 20 pioneering prog-rock guitarists share insights into their craft.

Frank Zappa

“The history of pop music has a habit of telling us who we really are – ’cause if we weren’t that way, we wouldn’t have spent billions of dollars on those records, would we? 

“After careful training by media and merchandising people, the entire population (even guitar players) has been transmuted into a reasonably well-groomed, odor-free, consumer-amoeba which is kept alive only to service manufacturers and lives its life by the motto: ‘Biggest, fastest, loudest is most and best.’”

Listen To: “Watermelon in Easter Hay“

Robert Fripp (King Crimson)

“Originally, the [Frippertronics] system was introduced to me by Brian Eno. I worked with him on it for the piece of music that became No Pussyfooting. I began working on it on my own in June and July 1977, when I was living in New York. Frippertronics as such went public for the first time in February 1978 at the Kitchen [a New York City arts and performance gallery], where I was giving a solo concert. 

“I needed a name for it, so I came up with ‘Frippertronics’ because it was silly. Then it went very, very public in 1979 with a four-month solo tour – two months in Europe and two in America. And it was there, actually in front of people – in record shops, pizza parlors, record offices, small cinemas, museums, all matter of places – that I began to learn to work with it pretty well. 

“I would run the tape back and improvise on top of it. The original form was with two Revox tape recorders, but now I’m working with the Electro-Harmonix 16 Second Digital Delay. It was advertised as a Fripp in the Box. It’s far smaller, quicker, and easier to set up than two Revoxes, although the sounds one gets are quite different.”

Listen To: Let the Power Fall (Robert Fripp)  

Martin Barre (Jethro Tull)

“I learnt my lesson in 1967. I was in a studio doing a session for Eric Burdon and we were doing the backing track. Jeff Beck wandered in. We were in awe. When we finished the track, he picked up an old amp and guitar in the corner of the studio, plugged in and sounded amazing. 

“And it was Jeff Beck that produced that sound, not a particular amp or pedals. It was purely him. He was totally in control. He could’ve reproduced that anywhere in the world in any circumstances. That’s what I’m always aiming for.”  

Listen To: “Aqualung”

John McLaughlin (Mahavishnu Orchestra)

“Sometimes I can’t actually sit down and write music. I have to wait until I hear something. That’s why I like my iPhone: I get an idea and I can sing it directly into my phone, and it’s archived. 

“It might be just a melody, or it might be an idea I have for a particular chord progression, or it might just be a rhythmical idea. So I actually do so much with my iPhone and my voice. Who knows where I might be? I’m not necessarily going to be home when I get an idea, and if I don’t record it, it’s gone.”  

Listen To: “Birds of Fire”

Jan Akkerman (Focus)

“Focus is for me one of the few groups who know how to catalyze love for music and voice. We get into the theatrics strictly through the music, like with ‘Hocus Pocus.’ I want to reach the people with pure beauty. I want to make pure music.”

Listen To: “Sylvia”

Todd Rundgren (Utopia)

“Mahavishnu Orchestra was a revelation to us, so we started composing long, polymodal polyrhythmic marathons with bits of vocal and occasionally something that sounded like a song…. 

“We were comparing ourselves individually to our various heroes as well as to each other, and I developed a whole new relationship with the guitar. The material was structured in a way that left long passages without vocals and an uninterrupted focus on the instrument. For fleeting moments, I could channel the inner mounting flame.”

Listen To: “The Ikon“

Steve Hackett (Genesis, GTR)

“In Genesis, I was always writing solos. There were a few improvised ones, but there were not that many because there was always such an emphasis on writing with the Genesis team. I think I probably erred more on the side of blues than any of the other guys in the band. 

“I did always have the ability to be able to go into a blues. And I still do. It’s something you can share onstage with somebody else’s band, and I often have, where I don’t know the tune but I just wing it as a blues player. It’s stood me in very good stead.”  

Listen To: “Fifty Miles from the North Pole” 

Mike Oldfield

“When I listen back to Tubular Bells and Hergest Ridge, it sounds like yesterday. For a start, I use all five fingernails on my right hand, not a plectrum, so I get a very pure sound. That’s why people don’t seem to see me as a guitar player. 

“When there’s a video of me, I don’t look like I’m doing very much. I use violin vibrato. I can only think of Robert Fripp, who also uses that. And I often play just one note with a lot of power to start a melody.”

Listen To: “Ommadawn”

Steve Howe (Yes, GTR, Asia)

“I’ve always put [prog-rock] down to a post-psychedelia reinvention of rock music, because it had already got churned up quite a lot in psychedelic times, but I think it got broader then, and orchestral spirits came into it. I think what was great about [Yes, Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, and Led Zeppelin] was that each one of its members had a different story that they wanted to bring into the group. 

“I wanted to bring my writing into the band – my guitar ideas, my chordal ideas and songs. Bill [Bruford] wasn’t going to play 4/4, you know? He always knew what was appropriate, but he also knew what Bill Bruford would do with it.”  

Listen To: “Siberian Khatru” (Yes)

Steve Hillage (Khang, Gong, System 7)

“I was nine when I got my first guitar – a little acoustic with steel strings. I learned to play with a pick, and by the time I was 12 I’d got quite good. My first electric guitar was a Watkins Rapier, then finally I managed to get a Fender Stratocaster – my first pro guitar – in ’67. I think it was either a ’62 or a ’63. 

“I gradually found my own thing through a long series of experimentations with tape recorders, and later on I started getting into tape echo and various echo boxes. That’s how I really developed my personal sound and style.”  

Listen To: “The Glorious Om Riff” (Steve Hillage)

Alex Lifeson (Rush)

“I feel [my vibrato] is one of the more outstanding characteristics of my playing. I’m heavily influenced by Jimmy Page, and he has a fantastic vibrato. It’s so loose and so emotional. So as vibrato bars got better, I really wanted to create a subtlety in the right hand with the bar that matched my left hand. 

“I would push the left hand a little more, and I would ease off on the right hand. Of course, I did a lot of dive-bomb stuff in the ’80s, but I always wanted to have a very subtle vibrato on the whammy bar. It takes time, but it’s a very emotional thing. And very effective.”

Listen To: “La Villa Strangiato”

Allan Holdsworth

“I’ll just experiment with different voicings. What I usually do is just try to find the kind of voicings of particular chords that I like, and turn them around. I don’t like the sound of conventional guitar voicings. I love listening to jazz guitar – I listened to it a lot when I was younger, because my father introduced me to it. 

“But I very quickly tired of the sound of the chord voicings. I just decided that if I was going to get some chord things together that I might as well play some other voicings, instead of the kind of Jazz Book One or Jazz Book Two or Jazz Book Ten types of chords.” 

Listen To: “Metal Fatigue”

Tosin Abasi (Animals As Leaders)

“I would say the pure definition of progressive is to create new things. So advancing the scope of a genre – or the expression within a genre – is to be progressive. The minute you try to define what you’re doing is when you put limitations on yourself. I’m looking outside metal for my inspiration right now. That’s not to say that I don’t love my influences, because I do. But I want to keep moving.” 

Listen To: “Tempting Time”

Steven Wilson (Porcupine Tree)

“This idea of being ‘progressive’ is misleading. I don’t like the word, anyway. I certainly don’t like the word prog. There’s nothing on anyone’s record that you cannot relate back to something from the past. I am aware of that, and I kinda embrace it. 

“What we’re doing is trying to invest that musical vocabulary with enough musical personality that it still sounds fresh. For [Wilson's 2015 solo album Hand.Cannot.Erase.], I would say it’s conceptual rock music, with all the implications that may or may not have.”  

Listen To: “The Raven That Refused to Sing” 

Steve Morse (Dixie Dregs, Kansas, Deep Purple)

“To become a good guitarist, you have to be open to things. When I first played with Al Di Meola, I asked how he sounded so percussive. We switched picks and there was a difference, so I changed from nylon to celluloid for the rest of the tour. 

“I’d love to get to know Jeff Beck and see if he really is pulling it out of nowhere, which is how it seems. It feels like he’s really improvising and making art through his guitar.”  

Listen To: “Tumeni Notes”

Steve Rothery (Marillion)

“I fell in love with Genesis after I heard ‘The Knife’ on Alan Freeman’s Saturday Rock Show. After that, I discovered Camel, Yes, King Crimson.... For me, there’s only good and bad in music. Labels are meaningless. 

"The true meaning of progressive is music without any self-imposed boundaries. It’s having the freedom to work outside the constraints of conventional song structure, almost like a soundtrack-type approach to creating songs.”

Listen To: “Grendel”

Dweezil Zappa

“I love the sound of microtonal instruments. On Via Zammata, I played the oud and a Godin Glissentar. I’m inspired by a variety of Eastern styles, including Indian, Turkish, Arabic, and Bulgarian. 

“I even recorded some music by the Bulgarian Women’s Choir. The tunes I chose have resonated with me since my dad took me to one of their concerts. I orchestrated them for guitar in a way that pays homage to Brian May.”   

Listen To: “Funky 15”

Alan Morse (Spock's Beard)

“When I saw Yes, I felt like they incorporated everything I loved about music into one thing. I saw them play live when I was 12, opening up for Black Sabbath in Los Angeles, and they really changed my mind. I was raised with all this classical music and some jazz, and I loved the power of rock and felt like Yes particularly embodied everything that I loved about music.”  

Listen To: “The Man Behind the Curtain”

Omar Rodríguez-López (The Mars Volta)

“From a fretboard perspective, I work with shapes rather than patterns. I’m useless at running through scales, but I’m good at arranging my thoughts into geometric shapes and creating chords and melodies out of them. Thoughts have shapes, just like tones – they have waveforms. 

“You can translate the shapes of thoughts and emotions through your hands onto the fretboard. With experience, you start relating the shape of your hand on the fretboard to certain geometric shapes that enter your mind when you’re hearing those sounds or having those feelings. You hear people use shapes to describe things all the time, such as, ‘That guy is a square,’ or ‘This sound is really round.’”  

Listen To: “Eriatarka”

Mike Keneally

“I decided a good discipline exercise would be to learn all the guitar parts on all the Gentle Giant albums. It turned out to be very valuable. But even more valuable was the time spent learning from Zappa’s discs. 

“I managed to develop a pretty good memory by playing stuff off of them. One of Frank’s names for me was Evelyn Wood [of speed-reading course fame], because of my unusual amount of comprehension and fast recognition of patterns. I can read music, but I don’t sightread it.”  

Listen To: “Lightnin’ Roy”

Guthrie Govan

“I think the best way to become comfortable with odd time signatures is to not think of them as odd. You just have to develop a natural feel for the contour of the bar in any given time signature, so you can sense when the ‘one’ will return without having to do any literal counting. 

“However daunting the top number in the time signature may appear, there’s generally an underlying framework, so it’s helpful to focus on finding the most prominent pulses within each bar, which are generally separated by smaller, more manageable numbers, like 3 and 4.” 

Listen To: “Sevens”

Dweezil Zappa has partnered with Reverb.com to sell a number of custom guitars and other gear.

The collection is highlighted by one-of-a-kind custom guitars like a Neil Moser-built instrument graced with an illustration from Frank Zappa's 1979 Sheik Yerbouti album, and a green Charvel that can be seen on the cover of Dweezil Zappa's 1986 Havin' a Bad Day album.

The collection also features a number of pedals – a Fractal Axe-FX Ultra, Pigtronix Philosopher's Tone, and Vox wah among them.

"I have some really great things that haven't been out of the case in about 10 or 12 years," Zappa said. "So, I figured why not let somebody else enjoy those things. Let them be free in the wild!"

Zappa's green Charvel is particularly notable, as the six-string maestro wielded it in the music video for Don Johnson's 1986 pop hit, "Heartbeat." If you also dig the extremely of-its-time fashion in that video, the suit Zappa wore for it actually comes with the Charvel.

Other guitars in the collection include a Eric Johnson Fender Stratocaster fitted with a piezo bridge, and a custom PRS signature guitar with treble/bass clef inlays.

Dweezil Zappa's Official Reverb shop will go live on January 27, with some of the proceeds from the sale of the gear going to Feeding America.

For more info on the collection, stop by reverb.com.

“I’d been playing guitar for only six months or so when one day we got a call at the house saying it was some guy named Eddie Van Halen and he wanted to talk to my dad,” Dweezil Zappa recalls of the first time he met Ed, circa 1982. 

“He came over 20 minutes later, and he brought this purple Kramer guitar, but no one was supposed to know what it was. There was a piece of black electrical tape over the logo, but it was a two-humbucker Strat-style guitar.

“What I remember is that, when he started playing it, I just looked at all the places on the neck where he was playing, and the way that he was playing – how he would attack the strings and how he was holding the the pick... All of that stuff. Because I’d never seen that before.”   

Soon after, Eddie entered the 12-year-old’s life. He would have a profound impact on Dweezil, and the two remained friends from that day on. Ed came to Dweezil’s first talent show,  where he gave him a guitar with a better vibrato than the Strat he was using. He also coached Dweezil in the studio for the recording of his first single, “My Mother Is a Space Cadet,” in 1982.    

Dweezil, for his part, would go on to become a highly respected guitarist himself, not only mastering EVH’s style but also eventually taking his father’s music to audiences worldwide in his acclaimed group Zappa Plays Zappa.

In the days after Edward’s passing, he kindly spoke with us about a number of topics, including how Ed’s original Eric Clapton–influenced style quickly evolved into the signature sound that mesmerized everyone on Van Halen’s first record, an evolution akin to Jimi Hendrix metamorphosing from Jimmy James and the Blue Flames to the guitarist heard on Are You Experienced. Dweezil offered his savvy insights into how it all happened.

What would you cite as the primary things that happened when the signature EVH sound was forged? 

There was a combination of things. Some of it includes the equipment Edward got his hands on, which obviously shaped his sound and allowed him to play more in the way we know of. From the things that I’ve heard, when Van Halen were performing as Mammoth [in the early 1970s], and they were a trio, Edward had a little bit more of a traditional guitar sound. 

It wasn’t as pronounced as what it became, so you could hear some of that Clapton influence that he talked about. But that changed when he changed his equipment, and he had some other influences that really are still mysterious.

There’s a guy named Terry Kilgore who was popular in the same area as Edward, and they were doing similar things at the same time. Terry had a Marshall and an Echoplex, and he was doing a lot of stuff with the vibrato bar. A lot of the phrasing in Ed’s playing is somewhat similar to Terry’s.

There’s a particular song called “Liquid Lady” from Terry’s band, Reddi Killowatt [listen below], and there are similarities in their playing, but in a way that’s harder to pinpoint in Ed’s playing.

What are some of the qualities in Van Halen’s playing that most stand out to you from that point in his development?

Ed could play a song and sound like two guitar players because he was so adept at playing rhythm parts and then adding in musical interludes and phrases that fit between the vocals and other things.

It wasn’t that he was trying to make stuff sound busy; he just filled it up with the right stuff at the right time. Edward had a very deft touch with arrangements, and that kind of stuff is what really was the predominant change between Mammoth and what became Van Halen’s first album.

There was a short period, probably from 1974 to ’76, where the real developmental change came. By around about ’76 and ’77 you can hear bootleg recordings where Ed is playing a lot of the stuff that would be on the first album, including versions of “Eruption.”

In fact, there’s one bootleg that claims to be from 1976 at [West Hollywood nightclub] Gazzarri’s, and it sounds like there’s only three people in the audience. Ed plays a blistering version of “Eruption” and you just hear a couple of people go “whoo” and clap a little bit. They didn’t know what they were seeing at that time because there wasn’t anything like it in guitar playing.

What do you know about how his gear evolved from Mammoth to what he started using with Van Halen? 

I don’t know exactly what he was using. People have said it was a Bassman, which has less gain than the Marshall, even though the circuits are similar. I think the change in the equipment really was that he found a way to hit the front end of the amp with the Echoplex, and sometimes he was using a bit of EQ. 

You can see pictures of early boards where he had a graphic EQ. Edward also had some little preamp-type things that he tried. 

He had the MXR Micro Amp on his board at one point, so I think he was always looking for ways to have the amp sound like more of the amp itself, and just drive it hard enough that he had enough preamp gain when he wanted it, but not in a super-fizzy way, and he could still clean his guitar up by rolling the volume down.

He was always pretty adept at adjusting his volume knob to create the different tones that he needed, which isn’t the easiest thing to do when you’re playing busy parts. But I think that the real thing about his sound is he was never an overdrive guy or a fuzz guy – he was a raw-sound-of-the-amp guy.

How did the MXR Phase 90 fit into the picture? 

He used the Phase 90 as a way to boost and smooth out the highs. Marshalls can be very bright, so the Phase 90 was a good match because he could have smoother mids and highs. 

With the amount of gain he was using at times, the Phase 90, coupled with the way that he played, almost had enough midrange to sound like he was using a wah pedal. 

The envelope of the phase would have just enough high end when he was doing a certain kind of picking stuff that you would hear a note bloom in a way that was similar to a wah pedal. But I think you hear that more on the first album than on any of the others.

What can you tell us about how Ed developed his tapping technique? 

I do know that Edward talked about discovering the tapping technique in relation to imagining the nut of the guitar moving. If you played a few notes and then pulled off to an open string, you could have a pattern or sequence of notes. 

If you wanted to play that sequence or pattern in a different key, the open string would no longer be the right choice, hence he envisioned moving the nut around the neck and doing hammer-ons and pull-offs to re-create the same concept as the pull-off to the open string. 

It’s a complicated explanation, but it’s a practical concept. I also know that, when he was composing, Ed often played chords with his left hand and then tapped around with his right hand to hear possible melody notes. I once sat with him while he was working on a descending chord sequence. 

He was trying to create a melody for it, and he wanted to hear the motion of the chords and the melody at the same time. So he was essentially playing piano on the guitar. He wasn’t doing it with the intent for the guitar part to be played that way in the song, merely as a way to hear the melody at the same time as the chords. I wish I remembered the chord sequence, because it never appeared in any Van Halen song.

What was your takeaway from studying EVH’s style so exactingly? 

When I started getting into Edward’s style, I saw that he had a system of patterns that became visible the more I saw him play up close. There was sort of a go-to flow to a lot of the things that he did. 

He definitely had his preferences when it came to lead stuff, and when he wanted to go outside of that, it was usually a pattern-oriented thing – some type of symmetrical shape that he could manipulate easily on the guitar. It wasn’t based on a specific concept like, “I’m going to make this chord and I’m going to use this arpeggio and I’m going to do this voice leading.” 

He would base everything on a pentatonic bluesy feel and then add some oddball notes here and there that were handy, as part of his shapes. Sometimes he would add unison notes and other stuff, but he had some clever ways of going about it.

Even when you hear the Allan Holdsworth influence that came in – and you hear it a lot on 1984, and there’s even a hint of it on Fair Warning – the kind of stuff he was doing was all about keeping things in a comfortable pattern. He also wasn’t strict about having to pick every single note. He did a lot of hammer-on and pull-off type of stuff, and then added in picking.

Many of the players that became big guitar heroes after Ed were obsessed with picking every note, as if you’re not really technically proficient if you don’t. Ed never went with any of that stuff. He had some legato things, and he had combinations of the way that he would choose to pick notes, and to me that was always something very interesting in his playing.