Frank Zappa was fiercely passionate about music. When he loved an artist, he praised them to the hilt; when he thought an act was subpar, he was equally willing to let them know it.

Ian Anderson’s Jethro Tull fell firmly into the latter category. Zappa took repeated shots at the band, leaving Anderson — himself a huge Zappa fan — particularly stung. Years later, Anderson offered a theory for the electric guitar virtuoso’s hostility: he believed Zappa felt threatened by the success of British rock bands.

Zappa was never one to dilute his opinions. He took digs at the Beatles on the Mothers of Invention’s 1968 album We’re Only in It for the Money, and he expressed his dislike of the Velvet Underground and the “merchandising” nature of the Doors. In the late ’80s, he even incorporated a reggae-flavored version of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” into his live shows.

So when Anderson received an unexpected message from Zappa near the end of his life, he wasn’t sure how to respond.

“When Frank Zappa was terminally ill, I received a message to say he would like me to call him,” Anderson told Classic Rock in 2023. “I’d never met him. I was a fan, but my instinct was he really didn’t like Jethro Tull, so it was a little odd.”

Zappa had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1990 and died on December 4, 1993. Anderson wanted to return the call, but nerves got the better of him.

“I dialed the number three times,” Anderson recalled. “But each time I hung up in panic; I was embarrassed. What do you say to a dying man?”

Anderson never got another chance. Zappa died just weeks later, leaving the Tull frontman to regret his hesitation.

“From what I heard, he’d wanted to talk to a few people, just to say hi, and I was one of them,” Anderson said. “It wouldn’t have changed anything. Except I would have had my first and last words with one of the great original composers and performers of rock music history.”

Anderson has subsequently offered some insight into why Zappa may have had such a problem with Tull and other successful British bands.

“He rather resented us British bands — Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Deep Purple and so on,” he once told BBC Radio 2 (via Far Out). “We were going over there [to the U.S.] and making tons of money. Seemingly while he was struggling to run his band.”

Zappa’s former personal assistant, Pauline Butcher, offered a broader explanation for the lengths he went to establish himself as an artist.

“He worked out he wasn’t a pretty boy like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He didn’t play their kind of music, he didn’t even like it,” she told Classic Rock. “If he was going to get himself heard, he was going to have to do something radically different.

“He went out of his way to have outrageous photographs taken: the one on the toilet, the one with his pigtails sticking out like a spaniel, dressing up in women’s clothes,” she added. “All these things were calculated because he had to get himself attention.”

Whatever motivated Zappa’s attacks, they were difficult for Anderson to reconcile with his own admiration for the musician.

“People like Frank Zappa were rather disdainful of the British Invasion. They felt somehow threatened by it,” he said. “The memories I have were quite personally upsetting because I was a huge Frank Zappa fan. But he badmouthed us a couple of times publicly, and that was a bit hard to take.”

In related news, Zappa’s his former guitarist Adrian Belew has recalled his sobering last encounter with the late musician.

Anderson, meanwhile, has shared why he’s glad Jethro Tull rejected Woodstock and why he feels guilty about the band’s name.

More than three decades after Frank Zappa died of prostate cancer, Adrian Belew still vividly remembers the final time he saw the musician who helped launch his career.

These days, Belew is preparing to head back out on the road with Beat, the quartet devoted to the 1980s music of King Crimson. Belew — who played in that era of King Crimson alongside Robert Fripp — will join Steve Vai, Tony Levin and Danny Carey for a European tour that launches on June 7 in the U.K.

But in a recent Instagram post, Belew found himself looking much further back — to the final months of Zappa’s life. The guitarist recalled visiting Zappa shortly before his death in December 1993, a meeting he says left him deeply shaken.

“My last time seeing Frank Zappa face to face was just months before his death in December 1993,” Belew wrote. “I went to the Zappa abode for a short visit. He looked like the picture [in his Instagram post below], which was a shock.”

“Frank was obviously ill, his voice a whisper,” he continued. “There was an older man. Only 52, but seeming very weak and tired. In place of his usual habit of chain-drinking espresso, he was sipping orange juice freshly squeezed by his maid.”

Belew said Zappa spoke briefly about a new project before tiring and excusing himself to rest.

“Our interlude was over,” he wrote.

The guitarist’s connection to Zappa dates back to the late 1970s, when he was playing with the Nashville covers band Sweetheart. Zappa reportedly spotted Belew performing in a local club, and after a lengthy wait finally brought him in for an audition. Belew would spend roughly a year in Zappa’s band, appearing on the 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti and in the concert film Baby Snakes.

Though the stint was relatively brief, Belew has often described it as a formative experience.

“It was the first and only time that I’ve ever had serious instruction,” he once said of working with Zappa.

But Belew says the memory he prefers to hold onto is not their difficult final visit, but an unexpected exchange that happened about a year earlier.

“I prefer to remember a different ending,” he wrote. “One night in late 1992, I woke up from a vivid dream.”

In the dream, he and Zappa were laughing together and talking about music “like a friendship.” Unable to get back to sleep, Belew went downstairs and decided to send Zappa a fax describing the dream and thanking him for everything he had done for him professionally.

At the time, Belew said, he had no idea Zappa was gravely ill.

“Later that afternoon, I got a call,” he recalled. “It was Frank — what a great surprise! He said to me, ‘That was sweet’ — not a word you would normally associate with the acerbic, edgy satirist.”

The two then shared what Belew described as a warm, meaningful conversation — one that closely mirrored the dream itself.

“And that’s the way I remember Frank.”

Belew has been dealing with his own health issue. The guitarist said he required surgery on his left hand for carpal tunnel syndrome following the last Beat tour. The strenuous performances threatened to detail performances.

“It would get numb,” he says. “And during part of the tour, it would stay numb from the moment that I woke up, all the way until sometime during soundcheck.

“It was a little scary,” he adds. “I’d be like, ‘Oh, boy, you better wake up soon!’”

Hopefully non such problems await him as Beat return to the road October 9.

In the years after the Beatles broke up, John Lennon found a kindred spirit in an unlikely musician: Frank Zappa.

The iconoclastic composer and guitarist was an odd choice for Lennon. Zappa's music was avant garde and frequently irreverent. Lennon, on the other hand, was a pop songwriter. At the time he and Zappa met in 1971, he was on the verge of releasing his heartfelt ode to peace, "Imagine."

That said, Lennon had his experimental side too, as did his wife and musical partner, Yoko Ono. But the former Beatle wasn't just inspired by Zappa's music — he also liked Zappa's attitude when it came to leadership of his band, the Mothers of Invention.

As the former Fab revealed in his 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, he was unhappy dealing with artistic differences in the Beatles and, especially, with how he believed he was portrayed in the media alongside Paul McCartney and George Harrison.

“I’m sick of reading things that say Paul is the musician and George is the philosopher. I wonder where I fit in, what was my contribution?” he mused.

“I’d sooner be Zappa and say, ‘Listen, you fuckers, this is what I did, and I don’t care whether you like my attitude saying it. That’s what I am, you know, I’m a fucking artist, and I’m not a fucking PR agent or the product of some other person’s imagination.

"Whether you’re the public or whatever, I’m standing by my work," he added, "whereas before I would not stand by it.”

It didn't take long for Lennon to meet his new hero. It happened on June 6, 1971, in an unusual introduction that Zappa recalled on The Frank Zappa Interview Picture Disk, released in 1984.

“A journalist in New York City woke me up, knocked on the door, and is standing there with a tape recorder and goes, ‘Frank, I’d like to introduce you to John Lennon,’ waiting for me to gasp and fall on the floor,” he said.

“I said, ‘Well, Okay. Come on in.’ And we sat around and talked, and I think the first thing he said to me was, ‘You’re not as ugly as I thought you would be.’ I thought he had a pretty good sense of humor, so I invited him to come down and jam with us at the Fillmore East.”

Zappa and the Mothers of Invention were engaged in a two-night stand at the famed New York CIty venue for June 5 and 6. The shows were being recorded and would be released that August as Fillmore East — June 1971.

Lennon and Ono came out for the encore that second night and played for half an hour with the group. The couple were well-suited to Zappa’s idiosyncratic musical approach, and the show was a success.

Although Zappa didn't include the Lennon and Ono songs on the initial release of Fillmore East – June 1971, the recordings appeared roughly one year later on the couple's 1972 double-album set, Some Time in New York City.

A sprawling album containing songs inspired by the couple's growing activism for peace and justice, Some Time in New York City was a divisive effort among Lennon's fans. The politically themed content on the first disc was at times blunt and unvarnished, while the second disc showed the couple's more avant-garde side via recordings from a 1969 UNICEF charity concert in London (featuring George Harrison) and the Fillmore East concert.

But the fans' disappointment was nothing compared to what Zappa must have felt when he discovered Lennon and Ono had remixed one of the Fillmore East tracks and claimed it as their own.

“There’s a song that I wrote called ‘King Kong’ which we played that night," Zappa explained. "And I don’t know whether it was Yoko’s idea or John’s idea, but they changed the name of the song to ‘Jamrag.’

“[They] gave themselves writing and publishing credit on it, stuck it on an album, and never paid me. It was obviously not a jam session song: It’s got a melody, it’s got a bass line; it’s obviously an organized song. [It was a] little bit disappointing.”

In remixing the track, Lennon and Ono removed the vocals sung by Mothers members — and former Turtles — Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan. Only Ono's wailing vocals were retained.

“After they had sat in with us, an arrangement was made that we would both have access to the tapes,” Zappa explained. “He wanted to release it with his mix, and I had the right to release it with my mix, so that’s how that one section came out.”

Because Zappa was legally prevented from releasing his version of the Lennon-Ono jam until 1992, his mix of the recording didn't come out until it was featured on Playground Psychotics, one of the last releases before his death the following year. The set was also included on the 2022 expanded edition of Fillmore East – June 1971.

Although Lennon and Zappa had connected creatively, their relationship didn't last. Lennon was clearly eager to continue collaborating. It was around this same time that he asked Eric Clapton to form a new band with him that would pull him out of his drug troubles and “bring back the balls in rock ‘n’ roll.”

The former Beatle would continue to collaborate — and with more mutually satisfying results — in the coming years. In 1974, he and Elton John joined together for the recording of Lennon's hit song "Whatever Gets You Thru the Night." Months later, in January 1975, Lennon and David Bowie would join forces to write and record the hit track "Fame" and cut a cover of Lennon's Beatles-era song "Across the Universe," both from Bowie's Young Americans album.

Alice Cooper says Jimi Hendrix is responsible for turning his band’s fortunes around, thanks to a simple act that helped them land a record deal.

Before breaking out as one of rock’s most iconic frontmen, Cooper rubbed shoulders with stars and soon-to-be legends. He ran the L.A. scene alongside the Doors in the ’60s and even shared a house with Pink Floyd.

But it was another, more unusual living arrangement that sparked this all-important moment.

“In 1968, we were so poor in L.A. that we were living in the Chambers Brothers’ basement in Watts during the riots,” he tells Professor of Rock, referring to the uprising in the Watts neighborhood in August 1965. “Jimi Hendrix used to come over and they'd all smoke grass together, and we'd come out of the cellar like rats.

“Jimi was buying his grass from Shep Gordon, who at the time was just this New York kid that was selling grass to all these people at the Landmark Hotel.”

Beyond his knack for selling drugs, Gordon didn’t have a lot going for him at the time. As Cooper says, Hendrix saw him as a walking target for the police.

“Jimi says, ‘You know, they're going to bust you, man. You're a young guy. You've got a lot of money and you don't have an occupation.’

“He said, ‘I know a band that needs a manager. You should be a manager.’

“So he brings us over. I opened the door, and I thought there was a smoke machine inside! I walk through this, and there's Jimi, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin. They're all sitting there getting high.”

It’s not exactly the typical environment for a business meeting, but then again, this is rock and roll. It was the ‘60s, and Cooper was in the company of rock royalty — ironically, three future founding members of the so-called 27 Club.

“Shep hands me a handful of marijuana. And this is when marijuana was really illegal in LA.

“And I went, ‘That’s our manager!’” Cooper continues.

“The very next day, we were supposed to sign with Frank Zappa’s [record label, Straight]. We walked in, and Shep walked in, and they said, ‘Who's he?’ I said, ‘Oh, that's our manager.’ They said, ‘You didn't have a manager yesterday.’ I said, ‘Yeah, we got him last night.’”

An incredible 55 years later, Gordon is still Cooper’s manager and a vital ingredient in his success through the decades. Cooper says such was the informality of their arrangement, and their trust in one another, that they still don't have a contract.

The band's first album, Pretties for You, wasn’t a success, but their third album changed the record as their collaborative partnership with Bob Ezrin got off to a flying start. Ezrin later encouraged the band to revisit the Pretties for You track “Reflected,” ultimately turning it into a parody political anthem, "Elected", one of their biggest hits.

But by the mid-’70s, the original Alice Cooper Band — potently powered by Glen Buxton’s fiery lead guitar work — was no more.

“When we got Bob Ezrin, everything went through the roof,” Cooper says. “But after seven years, we never took time off. We just toured and toured. In those days, you made two albums a year.

“It was normal because if you didn't, somebody behind you was going to take you out. We had Bowie breathing down our neck. So we made two albums a year, writing these songs while on tour. The original band just burned out.”

They reunited for 2025’s The Revenge of Alice Cooper album, with Buxton, who passed in 1997, a notable absence. However, he still influenced the record courtesy of a rediscovered riff.

“I had a cassette of Glen and I, and Glen had an idea for this song he called ‘Astute Lobotomy,’” bass player Dennis Dunaway explains to Guitar Player. “And that’s all he had: the title and this riff, definitely a fiery, Glen Buxton riff.

“His spirit was in the room with us the whole time,” Ezrin adds. “We talked about him more than we talked about anything else, I think.”

That, of course, meant Buxton’s boots needed to be filled, and Bob Ezrin has told Guitar Player how they found their man.

More than three decades after Frank Zappa died of prostate cancer, Adrian Belew still vividly remembers the final time he saw the musician who helped launch his career.

These days, Belew is preparing to head back out on the road with Beat, the quartet devoted to the 1980s music of King Crimson. Belew — who played in that era of King Crimson alongside Robert Fripp — will join Steve Vai, Tony Levin and Danny Carey for a European tour that launches on June 7 in the U.K.

But in a recent Instagram post, Belew found himself looking much further back — to the final months of Zappa’s life. The guitarist recalled visiting Zappa shortly before his death in December 1993, a meeting he says left him deeply shaken.

“My last time seeing Frank Zappa face to face was just months before his death in December 1993,” Belew wrote. “I went to the Zappa abode for a short visit. He looked like the picture [in his Instagram post below], which was a shock.”

“Frank was obviously ill, his voice a whisper,” he continued. “There was an older man. Only 52, but seeming very weak and tired. In place of his usual habit of chain-drinking espresso, he was sipping orange juice freshly squeezed by his maid.”

Belew said Zappa spoke briefly about a new project before tiring and excusing himself to rest.

“Our interlude was over,” he wrote.

The guitarist’s connection to Zappa dates back to the late 1970s, when he was playing with the Nashville covers band Sweetheart. Zappa reportedly spotted Belew performing in a local club, and after a lengthy wait finally brought him in for an audition. Belew would spend roughly a year in Zappa’s band, appearing on the 1979 album Sheik Yerbouti and in the concert film Baby Snakes.

Though the stint was relatively brief, Belew has often described it as a formative experience.

“It was the first and only time that I’ve ever had serious instruction,” he once said of working with Zappa.

But Belew says the memory he prefers to hold onto is not their difficult final visit, but an unexpected exchange that happened about a year earlier.

“I prefer to remember a different ending,” he wrote. “One night in late 1992, I woke up from a vivid dream.”

In the dream, he and Zappa were laughing together and talking about music “like a friendship.” Unable to get back to sleep, Belew went downstairs and decided to send Zappa a fax describing the dream and thanking him for everything he had done for him professionally.

At the time, Belew said, he had no idea Zappa was gravely ill.

“Later that afternoon, I got a call,” he recalled. “It was Frank — what a great surprise! He said to me, ‘That was sweet’ — not a word you would normally associate with the acerbic, edgy satirist.”

The two then shared what Belew described as a warm, meaningful conversation — one that closely mirrored the dream itself.

“And that’s the way I remember Frank.”

Belew has been dealing with his own health issue. The guitarist said he required surgery on his left hand for carpal tunnel syndrome following the last Beat tour. The strenuous performances threatened to detail performances.

“It would get numb,” he says. “And during part of the tour, it would stay numb from the moment that I woke up, all the way until sometime during soundcheck.

“It was a little scary,” he adds. “I’d be like, ‘Oh, boy, you better wake up soon!’”

Hopefully non such problems await him as Beat return to the road.

Frank Zappa’s music was known for pushing boundaries, but his former guitarist Steve Vai says what he did to his collection of electric guitars was just as revolutionary. He even took a screwdriver to one of Jimi Hendrix’s most famous instruments.

Vai — who would later enjoy stints with David Lee Roth and Whitesnake following his time as Zappa’s onstage foil — learned a lot from the madcap musician. Beyond having his musical capabilities stretched to breaking point, and hearing Zappa prophesy his future as a guitarist, Vai also learned why he shouldn’t be afraid to hack away at his beloved instruments.

“Frank was completely irreverent when it came to guitars,” the guitarist tells the Rocktails with Ahmet Zappa podcast, hosted by Frank’s third child. “He manipulated them and did things to them at a time when it was taboo. Frank would have Midget Sloatman [his guitar tech] go into his little workshop and put in all these electronics.”

One great example of the Zappa-ification of a guitar is his Baby Snakes SG. Among its features were a custom onboard preamp with an 18 dB boost, phase switching and tone-shaping circuitry.

But the experiments weren’t limited to his own guitars. Zappa also modified a guitar Jimi Hendrix had used — and burned — at the 1968 Miami Pop Festival. He had been gifted the instrument in 1977 by Hendrix’s former roadie, Howard Parker, who had rescued it from being left in a dumpster after the show.

“He had the burnt pickups and everything removed,” Vai explains. “He put a parametric EQ in that Hendrix guitar. It was beautiful. And he would use all this stuff.”

It wasn’t long before his bandleader’s mad guitar science rubbed off on him.

“I started thinking, ‘I don’t have to play just a Strat or a Les Paul,’” Vai continues. “‘I can do whatever I want. Frank does it.’

“I went to Performance Guitar in Hollywood, and I said, ‘I want this, and I want that, and I want this,’ and I didn’t know anybody would care what I was doing.”

From his long-standing Ibanez signature JEM to his multi-necked Hydra — and, more recently, his twist on Brian May’s Red Special — Vai has since forged his own wacky luthiery legacy.

Speaking to MusicRadar in 2022, Vai credited Zappa’s “suck it and see” ethos as the precursor to his JEM guitars.

“Frank Zappa had no governor,” he said. “When it came to taking a guitar that Jimi Hendrix burned at a concert and then putting parametric EQs in it — it didn’t matter whose guitar it was. It looked cool. So I decided at one point — and this was simple, innocent, low-hanging fruit, not having any intention of making something that anybody else would be interested in except myself — and what that was, was the JEM.

“When you are doing things innocently, it’s not like you feel like you are being blasphemous. Like it’s blasphemous to put a whammy bar on a Les Paul? Fuck you! I’ll do what I want!”

Elsewhere, Vai has shocked Brian May by revealing a 1970s encounter the Queen guitarist was unaware of, and has named the one player he felt was even more revolutionary than Hendrix.

Guitar virtuoso Steve Vai says there was only one time that Frank Zappa commented on his future as a guitar great, and it proved to be a slice of advice that he’s held tightly onto since.

Before he was a superstar solo artist, becoming David Lee Roth's choice of guitarist to wage war against Eddie Van Halen, and before his rockstar spoils as a member of Whitesnake, a young Steve Vai began his career transcribing Frank Zappa’s music. It was no small task, and he’d soon be rewarded with a promotion to the band’s guitarist proper.

“There was only one time he ever commented on my future, and I'm reluctant to mention it,” he tells Billy Corgan's The Magnificent Others podcast. “We were in the studio, just him and me, playing ‘Sleep Dirt,’” an acoustic guitar duet from Zappa’s 1979 album of the same name. “Frank would look for special things in a musician; something that they could do that's quirky and interesting, and he’d pull it out of you and use it in his palette.

“So we were jamming. And I remember just stopping because I was stunned. Just some months before that, I was in my bedroom in Long Island listening to his records, and I had a moment of ‘What's going on?’”

As Vai explains, he was “brand new” at the time, and he found himself in the thick of life in the band of a man he’d spent years idolizing. Zappa, it seems, picked up on his insecurities.

“It was almost like an existential crisis or something,” Vai continues. “So I kind of tripped, and he looked up. He goes, ‘You okay?’ and I said, ‘Frank, I don't know what I'm doing here. How did I get here?’”

Cue the madcap musician to offer some words of wisdom. He asked Vai how many Tommy Marses there are, referring to his keyboardist, Tommy Mars. “There’s one,” Vai responded. He asked him how many Vinnie Colaiutas there are in the world — Colaiuta was the Zappa band drummer for much of his career. “There’s only one,” Vai quipped.

Then he turned the question onto his guitarist: “How many Steve Vais are there?”

“I didn't understand that, because I didn't see myself as anything special whatsoever,” Vai says. “I thought about it, and then he said, ‘I think you're a genius in ways that have yet to be discovered.’”

Vai didn’t let that inflate his ego.

“I just thought he was being nice,” he explains. “I just thought it was a nice thing to say. And I didn't understand what he said. I thought, ‘Well, maybe I'll do something great someday. I'm still trying to find it.’

“I think he saw my potential to do something obscure. But everybody is a genius when they find what they love, and they throw themselves into it without any excuses.”

Vai certainly did that, from wolf-whistling guitars on “Yankee Rose” to his insane taming of his multi-necked Hydra guitar, obscure isn’t all that obscure to Vai. His experiences at Zappa’s side — a man who regularly tested his mettle — set him up for greatness.

“I think he was just interested to see how far he could take me with playing crazy stuff on the guitar,” he told Guitar World of the infamous, mind-boggling “The Black Page.”

“But the things that I did with him that I think he got the biggest kick out of were ‘The Jazz Discharge Party Hats,’ or ‘The Dangerous Kitchen’ or ‘Drowning Witch.’ These are all pieces of music that just had an uncanny type of guitar expectations.”

Recently, not content with his prestigious lot, Vai has become Robert Fripp’s successor in the King Crimson spin-off band, BEAT. And when King Crimson’s hand-ruining guitar parts left Adrian Belew in need of surgery, Steve Vai came to his rescue.

Elsewhere, Van has recalled the guitarist he considers more revolutionary than Jimi Hendrix and explained how a theft helped him get Frank Zappa's phone number and kickstarted his career.

Frank Zappa’s Baby Snakes SG is heading to auction. The heavily modified electric guitar, which was one of the musician’s most beloved axes, is expected to fetch around $500,000.

Heritage Auctions is including the guitar in a lot that includes Pattie, an acoustic guitar formerly owned by both George Harrison and Eric Clapton. The guitar's nickname refers to Pattie Boyd, the model/photographer whom both musicians married and who was the inspiration for both the Beatles' "Something" and Derek and the Dominos' "Layla."

Although it appears to be a Gibson SG, Zappa's guitar is a knock-off created by Phoenix luthier Bart Nagel, who was just 19 and studying at Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery at the time he built it.

Nagel replaced the neck with a three-piece mahogany neck he made himself that added an extra fret, bringing the total to 23. He also bestowed its ebony fingerboard with intricate silver inlays. But it was its body that received the greatest modification, including gorgeous rosewood and ebony body detailing.

He presented it to Zappa in 1974, during a performance in Phoenix, and the guitarists snapped it up for $500.

The modifications didn’t end there. Additional changes were implemented by Rex Bogue, who had resurrected Jimi Hendrix’s charred Miami Pop Festival Stratocaster after Zappa secured from Hendrix’s roadie in 1968.

Bouge installed a custom onboard preamp that delivered an 18dB boost and included phase-switching and tone-shaping circuitry, all of which was controlled by the numerous additional knobs and switches found on the guitar's body.

Zappa used the guitar for numerous performances, including a 1976 appearance on the syndicated Mike Douglas Show. A year later, the guitar was featured in his Halloween 77 show at the NYC Palladium, and it appeared later in his Baby Snakes film, from which it got its nickname.

“The ‘Baby Snakes’ SG isn’t just a collectible,” says Heritage Auction's Aaron Piscopo. “It’s a playable piece of Zappa’s legacy, ready to inspire its next owner with the same innovative spirit.”

The auction house calls the guitar “a holy grail for Zappa fanatics and guitar nerds.” It has remained in good condition over the years and would be “ideal in the hands of a musician ambitious enough to carry on Zappa’s legacy of sonic exploration.”

Bidding at the December 5 auction is set to start at $300,000, but the guitar's prestige and condition lead Heritage to believe it will likely sell for a figure closer to half a million dollars.

Such a figure would make it by far the most expensive sale of anything from the Zappa vault, surpassing the Captain Beefheart original artwork that sold for $32,500 in 2023, far in excess of its $500-700 estimate.

Zappa's most unusual pieces of gear have remained in his family since his death in 1993. They include his futuristic $300,00 live rig, his Shut Up ’n Play Yer Guitar Les Paul Custom, and the custom Performance Strat that featured on his last tour in 1988.

The auction will take place on December 5. Head to Heritage Auctions for more.

In related stories, Frank Zappa saw one of his songs credited to John Lennon and Yoko Ono when it appeared on their album Some Time in New York City. And Eric Clapton has recalled his jam with Zappa, saying it “fucked me up completely.”

Steve Vai has revealed the mix of tenacity and luck that helped him get his break in music while he was still a teenager. It was that combination that led him to his big break working with Frank Zappa and, eventually, putting his impressive electric guitar skills to work as the maestro’s so-called stunt guitarist.

Long before he became David Lee Roth's guitarist, filled in for Adrian Vandenberg in Whitesnake and became known as one of modern music's great guitar virtuosos, Steve Vai was a kid growing up on Long Island, where he took guitar lessons from his neighbor, Joe Satriani.

Manhattan and its career opportunities was just an hour or two away. And it was there, circa 1976, that one of his friends came through with a key ingredient in Vai’s success: a Rolodex desktop card file containing phone numbers for a recording studio’s celebrity clientele.

“I was 16, and I’m in my little teenage bedroom, practicing, practicing,” Vai explains to Billy Corgan’s Magnificent Others podcast.

“And one of my friends came in, and he had stolen a Rolodex — that’s how you used to get phone numbers — from a studio in New York City.

“I’m sitting there, practicing, and he’s going [reading from the Rolodex], ‘Mick Jagger. Cool!’ ‘Pat Benatar!’

“And then he gets to the Zs and says, ‘I have Frank Zappa’s phone number.’ And I went, ‘You have what!?’”

Vai snapped to attention at the mention of Zappa’s name. Of all the guitarists in the 1970s universe, he was the player whose complex music resonated with him. He immediately took down Zappa’s phone number.

“And I tried calling — at 16,” Vai says. “His wife answered, Gail. And oddly enough, knowing Gail the way I know her now, the fact that she took the phone call… Because I’m like, ‘I’m just a fan, I got your phone number… Can I talk to Frank?’

“And she said, ‘Well, Frank’s on tour. Call back in six months.’

“So I did. Well, ‘Frank’s on tour again, call back in another six months.’ And I did that three times until I was 18. And I was at my friend’s apartment at Berklee, and Frank answered the phone.”

“Oh my gosh, he was so nice. I caught him at a good time, and he gave me his address, because I told him I knew he was looking for Edgard Varèse scores… and the Boston Public Library had those scores, so I Xeroxed them. I said, ‘Hey, Frank, I’d love to send you these scores. I have a transcription of The Black Page.’”

The name is one studio musicians gave to notoriously difficult transcriptions packed with flurries of notes. Zappa decided to compose his own “black page” and titled it accordingly.

Vai continues: “And I said, ‘…and I have a tape of my band.’

“And oddly enough, he said, ‘Well, just send it directly to the house.’ And he gave me his home address, and I mailed it, and that’s how it started.”

Zappa was so impressed he wanted to hire Vai on the spot. But since he wasn’t yet 18, Vai had to wait.

“He wanted me to audition for the band, and then, when I told him I was 18, he said, ‘Forget it.’ But I had sent them this transcript.”

Instead of joining Zappa’s band and touring, he spent his first years transcribing the avant-garde guitarist’s music, a position he held until he became a band member at age 20.

Over the next few years, Vai appeared onstage and on record with Zappa, often credited as “stunt” guitarist for his ability to play nearly impossible parts. In 1983, Vai’s own composition “The Attitude Song” was published as a Flexi-disc in Guitar Player, setting the stage for the release of his debut solo album, Flex-Able, released in January 1984.

Just goes to show what determination can do.

In related news, Vai recently revealed the grueling practice routine that helped him become a virtuoso—and why he did it.

From George Harrison to Joe Bonamassa, Eric Clapton has graced the stage with countless big-name stars, and plenty who could go toe-to-toe with his versatile chops. But only once did trading licks with another player leave him flummoxed.

Clapton’s own choice of words about that night are a little more colorful. He says his guest spot with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention “fucked me up completely.”

The pair had a good relationship, and Clapton held Zappa in high regard for his musical knowledge and guitar playing. That led him to hop onstage with the oddball maverick one evening in 1967. But it seems Zappa couldn’t help but be Zappa, and left Clapton high and dry.

“We were pals,” Clapton explained to Guitar World. “It started when I went to New York with the Cream and the Who to do the Murray the K show."

A celebrated New York City DJ, Murray the K is known largely today for his exploits with the Beatles when they landed in America in 1964. But Murray, like many radio disc jockeys of his time, also hosted concerts, which is how Cream made their American debut in March 1967 at his Music in the Fifth Dimension shows at the RKO 58th Street Theater from March 25 to April 2.

As Clapton recalled, it was a vibrant time in the city's downtime nightlife culture.

“We used to go down to the Village to find out what was going on," he said. "There were the Fugs and the Mothers [of Invention], and you’d be able to go into the Café Au Go Go and see B.B. King play. New York was unbelievable.”

Like so many others, the British blues legend was taken aback by Zappa's mad genius.

“The Mothers were at the Garrick Theater, and there would be nobody in the audience –— nobody,” he emphasizes. “They were experimenting every night. They’d have odd people, bag ladies and marines, on the stage, and Frank would come off and sit in the audience and talk to someone while the band played. It was madness!

“He took me home one night to his house and he told me to play all the licks I know into a Revox [tape recorder]. I was really flattered that he was interested, because it was clear this was a musical intellectual I was meeting.”

“He was very manipulative and knew how to appeal to my ego and my vanity, and I put everything on this tape. I think he just had files and files of tapes of people, and I was in there somewhere.”

Their adoration for one another was mutual, with Zappa once calling him “dynamite." “I have a lot of respect for him as a musician,” he said, “but I was never so surprised until I sat down and talked with the guy, 'cause he's really into something.”

Eventually, their budding friendship spilled onto the stage when Zappa invited Clapton to do a guest solo spot during one of his shows.

Of course, Zappa is an esteemed player in his own right. Even Eddie Van Halen was perplexed by one of Frank's riffs when Dweezil Zappa showed it to him.

But the show with Clapton wasn’t a battle of licks — Zappa had a devious trick up his sleeve.

“I went to see him in concert, and he invited me to play,” Slowhand explains. “When I went out to do my solo, he did that famous thing of doing hand signals to the band." Zappa made frequent use of hand signals to direct his band through changes, stops and other musical cues.

"And they went through about 10 different time signatures and fucked me up completely! I couldn’t make head or tail of it,” Clapton griped.

Thankfully, Clapton's time jamming with B.B. King in New York City proved memorable for all the right reasons. King was grateful to Clapton and his cohorts in the British blues explosion for boosting his profile and turning thousands onto his music.

“In the early years, I thought that everybody seemed to get a break but me,” King told Guitar Player in 2000. "Finally, when the kids started to play blues, they opened up a lot of doors for B.B. King.

"I pray on it sometimes, and I say, ‘Thank God—better late than never.’”

As King explained to Guitar Player in that same interview, the tape of King and Clapton's jam may be hiding in the Jimi Hendrix collection held by his estate.

“I remember Jimi recording what we played that night,” King goes on. “He was supposed to give us a tape, but he died before I got mine. When I die, if I can find Jimi, he's going to give me my tape! Because that was a memorable occasion.”

And no mention of shifting time signatures. Lucky Eric.

In related news, Clapton has named the player that turned him from Les Pauls to Fender Stratocasters and explained how seeing a blues great perform convinced him to quit the Yardbirds and start Cream.

From his time with Frank Zappa through his work with David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson, Adrian Belew could be spotted onstage with a battle-scarred sunburst-finish Fender Stratocaster. Given its history, that electric guitar may be one of the most storied Strats in the history of avant-garde rock. How it came to play such a vital role in Belew’s career is a tale in itself, one that began in the 1970s, when the guitarist was still a young unknown from Covington, Kentucky, who was suddenly dropped alongside Frank Zappa, an unflinching perfectionist guitar virtuoso.

As Belew reveals to Guitar Player, his Stratocaster was certainly not the prettiest or most expensive example — just one that he could afford. And he rode it all the way to his breakout success as one of the premier Strat-slingers in history. Here, the guitarist talks us through his history with the Strat.

How did you come to own your first Strat?

I was in a band and had been playing drums, but I was starting to play guitar again. I’d always wanted a Strat, so I bought one with a natural wood finish at [Chuck Levin’s] Washington Music Center [in Maryland]. I drove up from Nashville and bought it off the rack — the plainest, simplest, cheapest Stratocaster that I could buy.

This was the same Strat you went to California with when you auditioned for Frank Zappa?

It was. I took it to California and auditioned with Frank. After I got the job, I used it during our three-month rehearsal and then on a two-month tour of the United States. But that Strat never returned to my house; it was lost in the shuffle. It’s out there somewhere.

How did you go about replacing it?

At the time, I was living here in Nashville. I went down to a little music store, and in the back they had a kind of really ugly Strat hanging on the wall. It was a brown sunburst, and it didn’t have a case. But that was okay, because with all the travel we were doing, I knew I would get a serious road case for it. I paid $285 for the Strat.

And that’s the guitar you ended up recording with while with Frank and beyond?

Yes. That’s the Stratocaster that I played on Frank’s records. And then I played it on David Bowie’s Lodger and toured the world with David with it. Then I played it with the Talking Heads, did the Remain in Light album with them, the Tom Tom Club album [with Talking Heads drummer and bassist Chris Frant\z and Tina Weymouth], Jerry Harrison’s solo debut, and so many other things.

Was that the same Strat you used in the 1980s with King Crimson?

It was. I played it with King Crimson on Discipline, and on my first solo record [Lone Rhino]. And then I finally switched to a guitar synthesizer. So that Strat has an amazing amount of history. It’s on a lot of records, and it only cost me 285 bucks!

What were some of the mods you performed on it?

When I first had one in the late ’70s, I put a [Alembic] Strat-o-blaster [preamp] in it. That really helped, but before that I just plugged the guitar straight into the amp. That’s the Stratocaster sound. It doesn’t have everything in terms of richness, overtones and sparkle... Well, maybe it does. It would depend heavily on the amp. But I’ve always gone into a compressor first, and that helped bring those sparkly notes and added sustain.

You found two winning Strats in succession in the 1970s. Is that indicative of the quality of older Stratocasters?

If you want to go right into the piece of wood called a Stratocaster, they’re different. You might pick one up and it seems flat sounding, but then you might try the one next to it and decide that it’s the one you should buy. I don’t know why that is. They’re made to the exact same tolerances, but they’re not the same.

What’s the key to finding the right one?

I think this is true for any guitar: It’s not about the sound coming off the guitar alone; it’s about how it feels under your fingers. Sometimes you pick up a guitar and it just feels right. I think that’s the Stratocaster you should have. For me, a Stratocaster is a fabulous tool. I think Leo Fender got it absolutely right, but there are other ways to go about it now and other improvements that have been made.

Do you prefer the depth of rosewood necks or the spank of maple?

I always loved rosewood necks. Recently I had some guitars made for the Talking Heads shows that I’ve been doing [Remain in Light] and I wanted to go back to Strats and get whatever was the best now. For example, I found a wonderful new tremolo to put on, and I went with a maple neck, thinking it was brighter for me. But I made a mistake; I think I’m a rosewood guy. I love the guitars, but if I had the chance to do it over again, I would have stuck with the rosewood.

You mentioned amps a moment ago. You’ve long championed the Roland Jazz Chorus. Is that what you’d choose to pair with a Strat, especially since it’s a great pedal platform?

Oh, gee. A Strat sounds great through a Fender amp. Now, with pedals… I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t play guitar — except acoustic guitar — without first putting it through a compressor. But that’s just me. Some people don’t like that sound. It seems to make the guitar hum a little better, and the notes have more sustain. I’ve always liked that.

But in general, Strats are really something. Once you have a good one and a good amp, you have 90 percent of the battle won. From there, it’s down to personal taste.

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.

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.”

The following interview with electric guitar great Adrian Belew was originally published on guitarplayer.com in 2005. In it, Belew tells the story of his nerve-wracking and unconventional – but ultimately successful – audition for Frank Zappa and his band.

“I was playing in a little Nashville club called Fanny’s, and I had just begun sneaking noises into the cover songs we did,” recalls the affable Adrian Belew. “All of a sudden, you’d hear the sound of a car horn, and you’d wonder where it was coming from. Ironically, the place is now a parking lot!

“Frank Zappa played a show in town one night, and he was looking to check out a local band after his gig, as he often did. Frank learned from the chauffeur that his favorite band was playing at Fanny’s, so Frank showed up with a large entourage that included Terry Bozzio. It was obvious to everyone that Frank Zappa was there.

“It was a special night and I lit up – playing and singing my best. Our band did covers by Stevie Wonder, Steely Dan, and other stuff like that. Forty minutes into the set, while we were playing Gimme Shelter, Frank reached up, shook my hand, and said, ‘Hey, do you want to audition for my band? I’ll get your name from the chauffeur and I’ll call you.’ 

“It generated a big buzz with the local musicians at the time, but then nothing happened for six months. About the point where I’d forgotten about it, he called me for the audition.

“Frank gave me a list of difficult songs from several different records, and his instructions were, ‘Figure out how to play and sing this the best you can, however you can.’ The music was pretty complicated for a guy who was just playing in a bar band. I had never played in odd time signatures, and I didn’t read music, whereas the rest of the Frank’s band did. And I was so poor at the time that I didn’t even buy the records. I borrowed them from my friends, because I didn’t know if it was going to work out anyway.

“The audition was pretty brutal, and I didn’t do very well. It was like the chaos of a movie set with people moving pianos around and so on. And there’s little me standing in the middle of a room with a Pignose amplifier and a Stratocaster trying to sing and play lots of Frank Zappa songs. 

“I was so nervous. I remember doing Andy, and Wind Up Working in a Gas Station. I thought I did poorly, and I had nowhere to go. I had just flown in, and was driven to his house, so I sat there all day watching everyone else. 

“I watched some really tough auditions, especially for keyboard players and percussionists. I didn’t see any other guitar players, but I was later told that he auditioned 50 guitar players.

“At the end of the day, when it all calmed down and people were finally leaving, I finally got my time to speak to Frank again. I said simply this: ‘Frank, I don’t think I did so well. I imagined this would have happened differently. I thought you and I would sit somewhere quiet, and I would play and sing the songs for you. And he said, ‘OK, then let’s do that.’

“We went upstairs to his living room, and we sat on his purple couch. I placed my Pignose amplifier face down on the couch so I could get a little bit of sustain, and I auditioned all over again. At the end of it, he reached out his hand and said, ‘You got the job.’ We shook hands, and that was an absolute turning point in my life.”

The following appeared in the February 2018 issue of Guitar Player

When Steve Lukather was a kid, he had a recurring dream: He’d walk onto a huge stage in front of a vast audience with a guitar in his hands. “But right before I’d play my first note,” says Lukather, “I’d always wake up.”

It was only in real life, at age 19, that Lukather finally experienced that dream.

“The first real show I played was at Red Rocks Amphitheatre with Boz Scaggs,” he says. “There’s a photo of me at soundcheck with this huge grin on my face, because I’m like, ‘This is my moment. I’m having the same old dream, but, this time, I know I’m not going to wake up.’ It was a magical night. It changed everything for me.”

Fast forward to October 21, 2017, and Lukather is living another dream: He’s turning 60 years old at Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas while backing a Beatle. “Why do I have Steve in my band?” says Ringo Starr before the show. “Because he was free [laughs]. He’s also good at getting the audience to stand and clap. Showbiz is his middle name.”

Lukather’s tenure with Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band is just one of many dream gigs the guitarist has lived out on stage and in the studio. The dreamiest gig, of course, is Toto.

Lukather established the multi-platinum rock group in 1977 with his North Hollywood homies (keyboardist David Paich, and the Porcaro clan of keyboardist Steve, drummer Jeff, and bassist Mike) – the same posse of studio aces who worked with Lukather in various combinations on legendary recording sessions for Boz Scaggs, Randy Newman, Michael Jackson, Don Henley, Lionel Richie, Quincy Jones, and other superstars during the golden era of session work in the late ’70s/early ’80s.

You can read all about it right from the source. Lukather’s adventures during the session era and beyond are detailed in the guitarist’s autobiography (co-written by Paul Rees), Steve Lukather: The Gospel According to Luke.

“I swear on the lives of my four children that every story is true,” he says, “Everything is in there. Well, maybe not everything. Let’s just say I can never run for office [laughs].”

At the time of this interview, Lukather was celebrating 40 years of Toto and, in a numerical coincidence, 40 million album sales worldwide. To mark the occasion, the band released 40 Trips Around the Sun (Sony/Legacy), a best-of album featuring remastered hits, as well as three previously unreleased tracks.

“Things have never been better for Toto,” says Lukather. “Everything we were told could never happen for us is now happening for us. And we don’t even have a manager!”

Why doesn’t Toto have a manager?

Well, I had to become Manager Guy. I have a staff, but Toto is my only client. I found out that classic-rock bands don’t need a manager just to call the agent, and say, “Book a tour,” and then take 15 percent.

All a band like us really needs is a tour manager, a production manager, good accounting, and a guy like me working with a great agent. And this new approach has really paid off.

We’ve always done well in Europe and Japan – that has kept us and all of our families alive – but the U.S. opened up for us in a huge way in the last few years, and that’s due to hard work. I mean, how many bands get a second chance in America?

Seeing Toto play at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles was amazing, because you’re the only band I can think of that has multiplatinum radio hits and takes things to the moon and back with extended solos.

We take pride in musically pushing things out there beyond what you might expect at a typical rock show, and we do give each member a moment to shine. I like to do my guitar spot within the context of a song.

I did “Red House” last year, even though Joe Bonamassa told me, “That’s the most over-played blues song in the world.” I said, “I used to do this one with dear Mike and Jeff Porcaro 25 years ago, so it has special meaning.”

Eddie Van Halen, Mike Landau, and just about every other pro musician who had the night off was watching you that night. Is it nerve-wracking playing for all those heavies?

I didn’t even think about it. I just looked at my ten-year-old daughter. Seeing her with a backstage pass and a walkie-talkie like she’s out on the road with us cracked me up.

Plus, I’m at an age where I am starting to get relaxed about things, because I’m not in competition anymore. Sure, there was a little pressure that night, but those guys are my friends. If I were to make a mistake, those guys would laugh with me, not at me.

When you were putting together 40 Trips Around the Sun, was it weird diving into the raw sessions for songs recorded way back in the early and middle ’80s?

It was like playing with Jeff, Mike, and my 23-year-old self again. I discovered some things, as well. On “Spanish Sea,” for example, we added new parts to the basic tracks, including a new chorus that I wrote.

The solo, though, was from the original ’85 session, where Paich said to me, “Just play the melody.” So that’s what I did, and, man, it’s the simplest, most non-flashy thing I’ve ever played in my life.

You’re really good at telling a story with your guitar – like on your solo tune, “Song for Jeff.”

As I get older, I realize that ‘playing pretty’ is what I do best. I can’t be Mr. Fast Guy anymore – not that I ever truly was. There are a billion guitarists who can play unbelievably ripping guitar better than I can.

I’ve changed my whole thinking about guitar. I’d rather be more like David Gilmour than anybody else. On the new songs, for example, I really held back, played simple stuff, and tried not to play the obvious notes.

It’s hard to classify what kind of guitar player you are.

I know! I’m not metal, not jazz, not country, and not funk, but I do all of it. And I do it all in my own weird little way. I’m probably more rock than anything else, but that’s a broad description. My job as guitarist in Toto has always been to put teeth on the parts.

What was it that motivated you to play music in the first place?

It was never for fame. People might think, “I want to be famous.” No, you don’t. Even at my low level of fame, it’s the weirdest, most bizarre thing in the world. I had to build a gate in front of my house, because people would just show up at my door and freak out my six-year-old autistic son. But that’s nothing. I have movie-star friends who have TMZ parked in front of their houses. That’s famous.

I started doing music because I saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. By today’s standards, it might seem fairly tame. They were in suits, and they didn’t even have long hair yet. But for me, it was like that part in The Wizard of Oz when life suddenly goes from black and white to color. My life changed in one moment. My goal was simply longevity – to have a long career – not to become famous.

Was there ever a moment when your faith in guitar as a career choice was shaken?

I had a humiliating audition with Frank Zappa when I was 17. He embarrassed me in a room full of other guitar players, and I walked out of there trying not to cry.

I thought my career was over. But when I got home, I thought, I’m going to turn this energy into a positive. I’m going to prove Frank wrong. I’m going to make it, and someday he’ll know who I am.

So I played mad and practiced my ass off.

When I fell in love with the radio as a ten-year-old and started playing guitar, I loved the aggressive lead guitar on Boz Scaggs’ “Breakdown Dead Ahead.” I found out later that was played by you.

That was back when guitar solos weren’t shunned, but welcomed. I was playing solos on everybody’s shit. Boz really helped us – though we really helped him, too. If it weren’t for us, he would have just been a blues guitar player working through the scene.

Paich wrote him a bunch of hits, we played on those, and we sort of became the “L.A. sound,” if you will. Whether on purpose or not, Boz nurtured that sound, and soon we were all working all the time.

What was the biggest challenge of doing sessions back then?

Walking in with no rehearsal, having no idea what song you’re going to play on – or even what genre it’s going to be – and coming up with great parts. And you had to come with a good part quickly, because if you took too long, people would lose interest.

There was no editing your part together later in Pro Tools. Take the funky clean thing I came up with for Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature.” You’re in that room, you’ve never heard the song before, and Quincy Jones is two inches in front of your face going, “Come up with something funky for me right now.” That’s what we got paid for – not for reading the dots and playing what was written on the page, but for filling in the blanks where there was nothing on the page.

Being in that club of session players was great, because once you got in, you were in – if you got in. It was a hard club to get into. But while it took a little luck to get invited through that door the first time, it wasn’t luck to get asked back through that door a second time.

You played a pretty epic solo at the end of Don Henley’s “Dirty Laundry.”

That was a great session. Aside from punching in one spot where I made a little mistake, I think that was a first take. I was extra thrilled to be on that song because Joe Walsh – who I’m the biggest fan of – did the first solo.

When I was in there, I had a whole room full of people staring me down. It was intense. Jeff Porcaro was looking at me like, “You’d better bring it, asshole.” That’s how it was. We all encouraged and pushed each other, and we all became successful.

Denny Tedesco made a cool documentary about the Wrecking Crew. You guys came a generation later. Someone should make a film about you guys.

Maybe someone will someday – probably after we’re all gone. We’re all over Thriller – the biggest record in history – and we get hardly any acknowledgement for it. Sometimes, I think we’re the Rodney Dangerfield of Rock. We get no respect [laughs].

I’m not saying, “Poor, pitiful me.” That would be ridiculous, because I’ve had an incredible career, and I’m very thankful for it. I just wish the critics would take us a little more seriously, rather than “that joke ‘Africa’ band.”

If you don’t like Toto, that’s cool. I don’t like everything, either. But even if you don’t like my band’s music, I’m probably on more than one of the records in your collection. You just don’t know it.

You’re an interesting blend of alpha dog and sensitive cat.

I’m a very sensitive cat. People don’t realize that about me, because I cover it up with humor, but this is an intense business to be in. It can really eat you up.

Some people think I have an attitude because I’m defensive about my band, but try taking shit for 40 years and not have a little edge. I don’t mean to be that way. I’m the nicest guy in the world until somebody draws first blood. Then, look out.

A lot of sessions are done in home studios now. Do you think a truly great album can be recorded that way?

Some artists can get away with making a record at home with GarageBand, and that’s cool, but you can’t make Sgt. Pepper, The Wall, or Dark Side of the Moon in your living room.

There’s something about the wood of a great studio, the million-dollar console, the expensive microphones, the really great engineer, and the really great musicians and songs that make a record a classic that will last forever.

That’s why the Beatles got two billion streams in their first year on Spotify without even trying. No one’s ever going to catch up with those numbers. The Beatles are our classical music.

Speaking of the Beatles, what’s it like to play with Ringo?

It’s hard to describe how much I love playing with Ringo. Having recorded with both him and Paul McCartney on two songs on Ringo’s Give More Love album is the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten. I can die now.

Above all, I just love Ringo as a person. He’s a beautiful cat. He has a vantage you can only have if you’ve been one of the most famous people on earth for 50 years. You’re not going to get better advice than what he offers.

Plus, there would be no rock-and-roll drums without Ringo. He put drum fills on the map. Just listen to “Tomorrow Never Knows.” I’ve been with him since 2012, and he’ll have to kill me to get rid of me.

What’s your rig like these days?

It’s pretty straightforward. A few Ernie Ball Music Man guitars – including my signature models that are loaded with DiMarzio Transition pickups – and a couple of Bogner Ecstasy heads running in stereo.

I’m not even positive which pedals are in the loop these days, because my tech, Jon Gosnell, is so on top of things that I never have to think about the wiring. One pedal I use all the time, though, is The Luke. That’s my signature preamp boost from ToneConcepts. It works great as a distortion or a boost, or you can leave it on as a sort of mastering EQ for your rig.

I also use the Jam Wahcko wah and Waterfall chorus/vibrato. The Providence Anadime chorus is cool, too. No two choruses sound the same. Sadly, I’ll be forever known as the “Dytronics Tri-Stereo Chorus overuse guy,” because that title was somehow tattooed to me while I slept, due to one stupid guitar video that has followed me around forever like herpes [laughs].

There are TC Electronic and DigiTech delays, a MXR Uni-Vibe, an Xotic SP compressor, a Strymon blueSky reverb, and some other stuff on my pedalboard.

Lately, I’ve added Jeff Kollman’s signature Kollmanation pedal from T. Jauernig Electronics. I crank my Bogner up to about 8, kick on that pedal, and, amazingly, it doesn’t cause the tone to crash, as some overdrives will in that situation. It just makes things extra smooth.

Are you digging the next generation of guitarists?

Absolutely. Claims have been made lately that the electric guitar is dying, but I don’t believe it. They say sales are down, but I don’t believe that either. People are just buying stuff on eBay.

There are young kids who really get it. Sure, they start off playing the tricks and stuff – we all did that. But the cream rises to the top, and the best musicians are soon found out. I truly believe that Millennials are going rise up musically. It’s time. There needs to be an uprising of young 18-to-25-year-old kids who bring tunes that make us go, “Whoa!”

We need some amazing young kids who take a brave political, social, and musical stand, and bring on something positive. There needs to be another Beatles.

Order Toto's 40 Trips Around the Sun here.

Regarded as one of the most inventive guitarists in rock, Adrian Belew has worked with a host of stellar musicians including Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads and King Crimson.

Having toured and recorded with Zappa (Belew appears on his 1979 Sheik Yerbouti album) he was recruited by Bowie for his epic Isolar II – The 1978 World Tour, a.k.a. The Low/Heroes World Tour.  

Consequently, Belew is credited as lead guitarist on Bowie’s 1978 live album, Stage.

Released in 1979, Lodger is the only Bowie studio album featuring Belew. Following 1977's Low and “Heroes” LPs, it is the final instalment in Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy recorded in collaboration with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti.

In 1990, Belew returned to the Bowie fold as musical director for the Sound+Vision Tour.

In this fascinating interview, the King Crimson virtuoso recalls how Bowie’s encouragement “to try wild and unusual things” assisted his development as a guitar player.

Brian Eno had an unusual idea for your parts on Lodger, where you didn’t get a chance to hear a song before you played on it, and he took elements of what you played and rearranged them into new composite guitar parts on the album. Do you think, with hindsight, that if you’d had the chance to hear the songs first, you could have come up with something you might have preferred, or thought was better?

I definitely think I could have come up with different things if I’d had the time to learn the songs and really work on them.

I do quite like the way that they turned out though because it was very unusual. In a way, it started me down that road of people thinking that that was how I played. So I did. [laughs]

When you heard the finished tracks played back to you, did you think it sounded like they might be a bit tricky to play?

I figured I could do it. [laughs] The funny thing is that they did something similar with [Robert] Fripp’s work on "Heroes" on a couple of songs, but when I joined the band, nobody told me that.

I managed to figure out a way to play those parts which the band thought were impossible to play. [laughs]

I have a theory that Eno wasn’t particularly a fan of the guitar, so he sought to undermine guitarists by taking them completely out of their comfort zones.

I don’t know if that’s his motivation, but he does think completely outside the box about things.

He does like to come up with ways to trick you into doing things that you wouldn’t ordinarily do. I like that though.

Why didn’t you do any further studio albums with David?

It was really a matter of circumstances and scheduling. I was trying to get my own record deal and then I had the offer to join Talking Heads on their world tour which took up a year anyway.

King Crimson came after that, so there really was no time to do much else. We reunited for the Sound+Vision Tour in 1990 which was a major undertaking. It was a world tour with the intention to play the massive catalog of hits for the last time.

He made me the musical director of what turned out to be a very small band, so we used a lot of samplers on that tour. We had to cover all kinds of orchestrations and line-ups, so it was a huge task. We did 108 shows which was a fantastic experience.

How long would you spend in rehearsal for a tour of that magnitude?

A lot of time was pre-rehearsal with me and Rick Fox, the keyboard player, where we had to work out how to cover all the bases on the songs with a four-piece band.

Once we actually started rehearsing, that’s when David would join in. He’d maybe suggest key changes or different arrangements for some songs but mostly he was kind of standing outside looking in and cheering us on.

He let me have my way, which I think is what he wanted – someone trustworthy to make it happen.

Did working with David change the way that you played and approached music?

I think, especially in 1978 and 1979, those tours were extremely important for my development as a player.

Prior to playing with David, I was playing with Frank Zappa, and in Frank’s band, you didn’t need to be creative – you needed to just play his music consistently correctly.

David was quite the opposite. He wanted someone to throw lots of color at the canvas and he just turned me loose. He told me that he just wanted me to go wild on the guitar.

That gave me the impetus to do exactly that, and I carried that over into Talking Heads and King Crimson.

I think David’s encouragement to try wild and unusual things really helped me to do the things that I did on the guitar.

Order David Bowie's Lodger here.

If you’re like me, you may have thought about your melodic leads and improvisations at one time or another and said, “I’m sick of playing what everyone expects to hear in my solos. Always the same scales, the same arpeggios… I need to take some chances!”

It’s easier said than done, however. So how does one take real melodic chances without sounding like your guitar is falling down a flight of stairs?

The key to achieving this seemingly elusive objective is to use harmonic-melodic substitutions, or superimpositions. This means either performing a line based on an arpeggio that differs from the chord over which you’re playing, or employing a scale that operates outside of a given key.

I touched upon this concept previously in this lesson but offered only a hint of the possibilities. Each example’s superimposed arpeggios stayed within the bounds of the original key.

But there’s nothing keeping you from superimposing arpeggios that venture outside of the given key.

In jazz circles, this approach is referred to as “playing outside the changes,” or “playing out,” for short.

This concept was pioneered back in the 1950s and ’60s by innovative jazz legends John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk and others. Jazz and rock guitarists such as John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Robert Fripp, Frank Zappa, Robben Ford, Julian Lage, Mike Stern, Jim Campilongo and Wayne Krantz have also brilliantly explored this territory in their lead work.

To players unfamiliar with the practice, playing out can be a mystifying concept, seemingly based around the prospect of playing “random” notes that have nothing to do with the original key. But, I assure you, there is nothing random about this approach.

In this lesson, I’ll walk you through some of the mad methods of harmonic-melodic superimposition, with a focus on arpeggio substitutions, first by laying out the simplest approaches and then gradually exploring more complex and harmonically sophisticated methods.

The commentary on the examples will be primarily related to music theory – why we’re playing the notes, as opposed to how they’re played – so be sure to observe all the pick-stroke and fret-hand fingering indications in the notation, which should hopefully provide all the hands-on guidance you’ll need.

Let’s dive in!

BAR-LINE SHIFTING

The simplest approach to superimposition involves what’s called “shifting the bar line.” This means playing over the original chord changes without truly superimposing any new arpeggios over them, but rather extending the arpeggio patterns that match the chords.

This is done by either anticipating the next chord – melodically implying it before the chord change – or prolonging the previous chord’s arpeggio, so that the arpeggio of the previous chord or the next lays over the current chord in the accompaniment.

Ex. 1 presents a melodic line played over a repeating iidim-V-I progression in the key of C (Dm7b5 - G7 - Cmaj7), with each chord falling on the first beat of the bar (on “one”).

Instead of lining up each melodic arpeggio to change on beat one, along with the accompaniment, we’re either extending the arpeggio into the next chord (what’s called suspension) or starting to play the arpeggio of the next chord early, before it appears in the accompaniment (anticipation).

Although we’re not actually introducing anything different here, we’re emphasizing the tensions of each chord, meaning the scale tones that fall between the root, third, fifth and seventh, played an octave higher, which are the ninth, 11th and 13th.

For example, in bar 1 we play a Dm7b5 arpeggio (D F Ab C) over the that same chord.

In bar 2, however, we keep playing that arpeggio, prolonging it as the chord changes to G7 (G B D F) in the accompaniment.

While both chords share the notes D and F as common tones, in bar 2 you’re superimposing the notes Ab and C from Dm7b5 over G7, with those two notes now being heard over a G root note as the b9 and 11, respectively.

This melodic superimposition creates a decidedly jazzier and more dramatic G7b9(11) sound (G B D F Ab C).

As you study the remainder of this example, and all those that follow, notice that each anticipation and prolongation is indicated by a second, lower row of chord names, which identify the arpeggios played, with horizontal lines and brackets showing the extent of their duration.

THE HALF-STEP APPROACH

Here is where we start truly playing “outside,” or “out.”

When we talk about the concept of half-step approaches, we generally think about it in terms of a single tone that sits a half step above or below a chord tone and resolves to it within the course of one beat or less.

Because the resolution happens so quickly, even if the approach tone is out of key, it never truly sounds “out.” Instead, the half-step approach merely emphasizes the chord tone you’re targeting by resolving to it in short order, more like a grace-note articulation of the chord tone rather than a true disruption of the key.

To take our first steps outside of the key, we’re going to apply this approach not only to a single chord tone but to entire sequences of notes. We’ll accomplish this by playing an arpeggio that sits a half step above or below the accompanying chord, taking a chromatic approach but delaying the resolution to the “correct” key.

This allows for more notes outside of the key to sit between chord tones before resolving. By giving these outside tones some melodic structure – in this case an arpeggio instead of a single note – the eventual resolution to the accompanying chord is still perceived by the listener as if you were resolving a single note, albeit with a more interesting and jazzy approach, one that temporarily gives the listener a sense of unease that increases with each outside tone you play before finally resolving.

Ex. 2 demonstrates this melodic device applied to a simple two-chord progression, Am7 to D7, that’s based on the A Dorian mode (A B C D E F# G A).

Over the Am7 chord in bar 1, we superimpose a four-note G# m7 arpeggio (G# B D# F# ) on beat three, which represents a chromatic half-step shift downward from our “one” chord, then resolve it back up to Am on beat four.

Similarly, in bar 3 we superimpose an Eb7 arpeggio (Eb G Bb Db) over the underlying D7 chord (D F# A C), which represents a chromatic half-step shift upward. This move also creates dramatic tension that likewise resolves, or releases, satisfyingly on beat three, as we shift back down to the correct key and play a line built from a D7 arpeggio.

THE TRITONE SUBSTITUTION

Normally, when we think of chord substitutions we think in terms of changing the chord progression itself, or reharmonizing the accompaniment. But the same concept and approach can work effectively without altering the chord accompaniment at all, but rather by implying different changes over it melodically, via different, superimposed arpeggios.

The tritone substitution is among the most common substitutions, which also means it makes for a great superimposition as well.

Any dominant seven chord – a major triad (1 3 5) with a minor, or “flat,” seventh (b7) added – can be replaced by, or superimposed with, a dominant seven chord that sits three whole steps, or a tritone, above or below.

This works because the 3 and b7, commonly referred to in jazz harmony as the guide tones, are common to both chords, with their roles reversed – the 3 becomes the b7, relative to the new root note, and the b7 becomes the 3

Ex. 3 presents an adventurous melodic line played over a straightforward diatonic (scale- or key-based) chord progression in the key of C: Em7 - A7 - Dm7 - G7 - Cmaj7, or iii - VI - ii - V - I. If we were to replace each dominant seven chord with a tritone substitution, it would look like this: Em7 - Eb7 - Dm7 - Db7 - Cmaj7.

Note the chromatic root motion added to this modified chord progression, compared to the original, which moves very angularly in fourths/fifths.

Instead of replacing the chords, however, our example melodically superimposes these tritone substitutions over the existing progression.

The result is a lead that veers forcefully between tension and resolution with each alternating bar, creating a musically compelling feeling of forward motion.

PIVOT TONES

Another musically cool and effective technique for superimposing arpeggios from outside the prevailing key is to take a single note from a given chord and overlay a completely different arpeggio that shares that one note, or common tone, which is often referred to as the pivot-tone substitution.

Played over the same diatonic progression as the previous example, Ex. 4 keeps the tritone superimpositions over the A7 and G7 chords (Eb7 and Db7, respectively) and adds new superimpositions from pivot tones on top of the remaining chords.

Over Em7 (E G B D) in bar 1, we use the note B as our pivot tone and superimpose a B7 arpeggio (B D# F# A).

Conversely, over the Dm7 chord, we’ll superimpose an Fm7b5 arpeggio (F Ab Cb Eb), using the shared F note as our pivot tone.

In both cases, the superimposed melodically implied chords create a significant amount of tension that is only resolved when you finally land on the pivot tone.

Ex. 5 takes this idea even further. Here, over the Am7 - D7 progression found in Ex. 2, we split each bar and superimpose two arpeggios over each chord.

In Bar 1, over Am7, we first superimpose Ebm7b5 (Eb Gb A Db) using the A note as our pivot tone.

Then, on beat three, we switch to an Ab7b9 (Ab C Eb G Bb), with the shared C note serving as our pivot tone.

Moving into bar 2, we superimpose Am7b9# 11 (A C E G Bb D#) over the D7 chord (D F# A C), using both A and C as pivot tones.

On beat four, we switch to an E7 arpeggio (E G# B D) before resolving back to the root of Am to finish.

When exploring this and more advanced superimposing techniques on your own, put your best foot forward by starting your lick either on the pivot tone itself or on a chord tone from the accompanying chord, and then shift into the non-pivot tones of the superimposition.

The purpose of this is to give your melodic line a solid tonal foundation to build on. The tension that comes from playing out will be far more effective if you start from a more balanced sound that an accompanying chord tone will give you.

COLTRANE CHANGES

Tenor and soprano sax legend John Coltrane, one of the most innovative musicians of the 20th century, pioneered the use of multitonic systems in jazz.

’Trane most famously utilized his three-tonic system in his iconic compositions “Giant Steps” and “Countdown.” The chord progressions to these tunes would later come to be widely known as Coltrane changes.

Instead of operating in one key, as one normally would, multitonic systems operate in either three or four equidistant keys at the same time.

In a three-tonic system, the three keys are two whole steps, or a major third, apart from one another, whereas a four-tonic system uses four keys a step and a half, or a minor third, away from one another.

Ex. 6 takes the progression from Examples 3 and 4 and superimposes a three-tonic system over it, as implied by its arpeggio-based melody.

The parent key here is C major (C D E F G A B), while the remaining two tonics of the three-tonic system descending from C are Ab major (Ab Bb C Db Eb F G) and E major (E F# G# A B C# D# ).

After arpeggiating the accompanying chord Em7 (E G B D) in the first half of bar 1 – starting off in the key of C – we then arpeggiate Eb7 (Eb G Bb Db), which is the V7 chord of Ab.

From there we resolve the Eb7 to Abmaj7 (Ab C Eb G) and continue arpeggiating each V7 - Imaj7 cadence of the three tonics, continuing in descending order (Eb7 to Abmaj7, B7 to Emaj7, G7 to Cmaj7) with each implied Imaj7 resolving on the downbeat of the next bar.

On the last two beats of bar 4, we throw in one last Eb7 and B7 arpeggio, which are the V7 chords of the keys of Ab and E major, respectively, before ending on the original tonic chord, Cmaj7.

This creates an incredibly tense lead line that nevertheless resolves back to the original key, C.

With all of the keys being equidistant from one another, they create a sound that may be described as a whole-tone-like tonality – the whole-tone scale being a six-note scale wherein each successive note is a whole step above the previous one – only far more complex. It may take you some time to develop an ear for what works and what doesn’t.

But whether you’re looking simply to dip your toes outside the key or want to embark on your own jazz odyssey (not to be confused with the Spinal Tap song), these tools will act as a perfect roadmap for playing out with perfection.

Just remember, patience is key, and don’t be afraid to take chances when employing these techniques in your own leads. Be adventurous. Besides, what’s the use in sounding like everyone else?

The 1960s gave us the fuzz box, the treble booster, the wah-wah and a handful of other cool pedals, but the ’70s delivered the real boom in stompbox-sized effects, with creative designs busting out in all directions.

Arguably, none of the decade’s early developments offered the same combination of wild sonic melding and creative usability as the envelope filter, best captured in the seminal Mu-Tron III, which Musitronics unveiled in 1972.

Pioneering effects inventor Mike Beigel founded Beigel Sound Lab in 1971 to develop musical electronics, and notably was in early development of a groundbreaking synthesizer for Guild, which was shelved when the parent company went bankrupt.

Beigel then invented the Mu-Tron III in 1972, and founded Musitronics to manufacture and market the product, which was a near-instant hit.

The sound of the Mu-Tron III (and other similar envelope filters) is perhaps best described as a watery, wah-wah like effect that’s controlled by the strength of your playing.

Given these characteristics, envelope filters are often mislabeled as “auto-wahs,” although these two effects are differentiated by the ways in which their sounds are enabled.

A peaking filter produces a “wah” sound common to both, but this effect is triggered differently in each of them. In the envelope filter, a voltage-controlled filter circuit reacts to the intensity of the incoming signal – which is to say, the strength of the guitarist’s picking – to determine the depth of the wah sound. 

In the auto-wah, a modulation circuit, not unlike that in a tremolo or phaser pedal, determines the preset rate at which the effect is triggered.

Cast your mind’s ear back to classic funk tunes, and it’s not hard to conjure up the distinctive sound of an envelope filter. Chances are, if that sound was recorded in the ’70s, it was produced with a Mu-Tron III.

Ironically, some of the most notable examples feature instruments other than the guitar. Stevie Wonder’s hit “Higher Ground,” from his 1973 album, Innervisions, was recorded by tracking his Hohner Clavinet through a Mu-Tron III.

Just about anything bassist Bootsy Collins did had Mu-Tron III all over it, and his Parliament-Funkadelic keyboard cohort, Bernie Worrell, played plenty of his own riffs through the effect as well.

The granddaddy of envelope filters crossed over into many genres as well. Frank Zappa displayed a deep appreciation for the effect, as did Grateful Dead main man Jerry Garcia.

Steve Vai has often carried one in his pedal rack, and a young Larry Coryell made waves with the effect when he was a rising jazz star in the ’70s. Musitronics even hired him to record a Mu-Tron III demo album, which was released in 1975.

The seminal envelope filter wasn’t the only classic to come out of the Musitronics stable. In 1974, Beigel developed the Mu-Tron Bi-Phase, and in 1977 he invented the Mu-Tron Flanger, both of which now fetch major bucks on the collectors’ market.

The Mu-Tron lineup was manufactured by Musitronics until synthesizer maker A.R.P. purchased the brand in 1978, a deal inspired partly by Musitronics’ losses from the failed effort to develop the Gizmotron, a device invented by Lol Crème and Kevin Godley of the English band 10cc.

Beigel himself continued to invent and develop effects under other guises afterward, notably re-working the Mu-Tron III formula for Mike Matthews in 1996 as the Electro-Harmonix Q-Tron, an envelope filter that has flown the funk flag high and proud ever since.

Beigel founded Mu-Fx to produce more compact renditions of his ’70s classics in 2013. His products are once again being manufactured and sold under the Mu-Tron brand since he reacquired the name in 2018.

Even as a teenager, John Frusciante could shred with the best of them. 

Check out this rare clip of the guitarist performing with his band IKE in 1987, prior to joining the Red Hot Chili Peppers the following year.

Clearly influenced by the fretboard wizardry of ex-Frank Zappa guitarist Steve Vai, the ambitious virtuoso was aiming high from a young age.

Frusciante even considered auditioning for Zappa’s band, though decided against it once he realized his lifestyle wouldn’t be in step with the expectations of the unswervingly sober musical genius.

Nevertheless, Frusciante aspired to the reach same level of technical proficiency as his guitar hero.

In 2021, he spoke of his admiration for Vai on Sirius XM’s Guitar Greats show. “There was an issue of Guitar Player in [February 1983] that had [Zappa] on the cover with a tiny, little electric guitar,” he recalled. “It had an extra interview [with] who was then the guitar player in his band, Steve Vai, and it was called Zappa’s ‘Little Italian Virtuoso.’”

Of Italian heritage himself, Frusciante goes on to say, “I felt very connected to this person. I loved the way he talked about the instrument and the way he talked about his practice… There had never been a guitar player in Frank Zappa’s band who could do those things.”

“[Vai’s] duties in the band are mostly to play the hard-written lines and real complicated stuff that is beyond my capability,” Zappa told Bill Milkowski in 1983. “All that whammy bar stuff on Stratocaster.”

Vai’s superlative skills were the result of sheer hard work and dedication to practice. 

“I used to divide my day into about 12 hours,” he explained to GP’s Tom Mulhern. “The first nine hours were divided into three equal sections. I used to be ridiculous, because I would overload myself. I had finger exercises, scales, and chords. Eventually I added reading.”

Committing himself to a similarly intense regime, Frusciante regularly embarked on lengthy practice sessions, all the while lapping up as much of Vai’s recorded material as he could, including the Alcatraz album Disturbing the Peace and David Lee Roth’s Eat 'Em And Smile.

While speaking of Frusciante in this 2020 interview, Vai told Paul Reed Smith, “He’s such a dedicated player.”

In the above clip captured on tape in 1987, Frusciante is seen using a Vai-style SuperStrat and Zappa-endorsed Carvin X-100B amp.

He used the same rig to perform with the Chili Peppers after replacing founding guitarist Hillel Slovak in 1988.

In the following clip shot on October 8th that year, Frusciante is seen at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in L.A. playing one of his earliest gigs with the band.

This line-up includes former Dead Kennedys drummer D. H. Peligro (1959-2022) with whom Frusciante had struck up a musical friendship several months prior.

When they hit the stage, vocalist Anthony Kiedis introduces the Chili Peppers’ new recruit (who happens to be dressed in a comedy Superman outfit): “This is John. He’s only 18 years old.”

If you want to get your fingers and brain in sync with the exercises Frusciante uses before every gig, check out the John Frusciante Guitar Workout.

So many guitarists of the late ’70s and ’80s were using the Roland stereo chorus in the studio that it’s sometimes difficult to parse if the sound was coming from an amp (such as the JC-120), a pedal (like the CE-1, CE-2 or CE-3 Chorus Ensemble) or a Dimension D rack unit.

Regardless, “that sound” is all over countless classic recordings from the era.

When used in the studio, the JC-120 provided a meatier rendition of the tone that players had previously achieved by DI’ing their tracks.

As noted by Steve Levine, producer for Culture Club, China Crisis and others, “In the right hands it’s quite a tone palette, you can do a lot with it. It does bridge the gap between being a regular amplifier and a kind of DI’d monster.”

Billy Duffy of the Cult and other projects derived the clean, chorused element of his signature tone from a JC-120, often used in combination with a Marshall JCM800 or other tube amp.

Although the Cult hit “She Sells Sanctuary” has a heavy feel that helped lodge it as a classic rocker amid the British New Wave boom of the mid ’80s, the guitar tone on the song is clear and clean, and slathered with JC-120 chorus.

“The signature sound of the first two Cult albums was the Gretsch and a Roland JC-120,” Duffy explains on BillyDuffy.Com. “The Roland is great for the early, chimey stuff, because of that chorus sound – which I can really only get out of the combos. Some guys get a great sound with just one amp, but I’ve never been able to do it.”

Johnny Marr’s use of chorus with the Smiths was generally pretty subtle, but also an essential ingredient of his sound on many classic tracks.

“The Hand That Rocks the Cradle” and “I Don’t Owe You Anything” from the Smiths’ self-titled debut album reveal a nuanced chorus tone that might have been JC-120, CE-1 or Boss CE-2, while the swirl is a little thicker on songs like “The Headmaster Ritual” and “I Want the One I Can’t Have” from the 1985 follow-up, Meat Is Murder.

Marr turned to that sound again for his latest solo album, 2022’s Fever Dreams, where we hear it prominently on “Receiver,” “Ariel” and other tracks, shining through what is otherwise a denser mix than heard on early Smiths records.

“For this album, I also dug out my old Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amp,” he told Rod Brakes in Total Guitar magazine. “Transistor amps have a sonic presence that puts the sound right in your face. It’s sort of an Ennio Morricone sound.”

While Andy Summers’ seminal swirl on early Police hit “Message in a Bottle” is purported to be a combination of pedals, he is also a long-time devotee of the JC-120, and often had one in his touring rig with the band.

“The Roland JC-120 has been a staple in my collection of amplifiers for as long as I can remember,” he told Roland.com, “probably from the day it came out! I have used it on many recordings for its distinctive clarity of sound and always-superior chorus. If I am playing away from home and amps have to be supplied, my first choice is always the JC-120. It is a no-fail amp in just about every situation.”

While it might sound counter-intuitive, heavy metal icons Metallica have often turned to the JC-120 for the clean tones tracked by guitarists James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett.

Several songs on 1988’s …And Justice for All feature the amp, likely heard most prominently on “To Live Is to Die,” but also apparent in the mellower passages of “One” and the intro to the title track.

It’s no surprise, however, that a creative sonic sculptor like Adrian Belew might have fallen in love with the JC-120’s sound, as he did from the very first listen. “I first heard a JC-120 at a casual party in L.A. in 1977,” he told Roland. com. “Someone was playing some chords and noodling around – not very well in fact – but the sound mesmerized me.

“I had never heard an amp sound so pristine and beautiful. There was a shimmering clarity to every note. Then the player turned on the actual stereo chorusing. Wow! What an incredible sound. I nearly fell off my chair! I sat there speechless until I finally asked if I could play through it. Within the first two notes I played, I was madly in love with the JC-120.

“To me, the stereo chorusing and vibrato were the single most beautiful guitar sounds I’d ever heard an amp produce. I was in L.A. at the time rehearsing with Frank Zappa, my first big break in the music business. I told Frank about the amp, and the next day one showed up for us to investigate.

“Frank liked it enough to advance me the money to buy my first JC-120. I still have it ensconced in my studio. I still love it and still record with it.”

Belew’s first prominent use of the JC-120 appeared on the 1978 Zappa classic Sheik Yerbouti, but he also plastered the amp – with and without chorus and vibrato effects – on several tracks of David Bowie’s 1979 album, Lodger, the seminal Talking Heads super-group affair Remain in Light from 1980 and King Crimson’s 1981 smash, Discipline, which reveals that crystal-clear shimmer on Belew’s tour de force “Elephant Talk,” “Frame by Frame,” “Thela Hun Ginjeet,” “The Sheltering Sky” and others.

Visit the Roland website for more information on Jazz Chorus amps.

Click here for info on Boss chorus pedals.

On the Mothers of Invention’s 1969 Uncle Meat, you can hear Frank Zappa exhort keyboardist Don Preston to climb up to the Royal Albert Hall’s majestic pipe organ and belt out the riff to “Louie Louie.” Now 90, Preston was part of the all-star tribute band the Grandmothers of Invention, a touring group of alumni from various eras of the Mothers’ life.

“Musicians, guitarists mostly, often come up to me and ask, ‘How do I play like Zappa?’” Preston explains. “I say, ‘It’s simple – just listen to all the music Zappa listened to!’”

Like most teenagers growing up in California in the ’50s, Zappa loved doo-wop, R&B, blues and early rock and roll. But his adolescent musical imagination was truly set alight by Ionisations, a piece of percussive avant-garde music by French-born composer Edgard Varèse.

This gave him a taste for 20th-century modernist composers, from Charles Ives to Igor Stravinsky.

“He’d listen to that stuff like other kids were listening to the latest rhythm and blues song,” Preston remembers. “That music, the complexity of it, matched the complexity of his own mind. In the opening phrase of [Stravinsky’s] Petrushka, the flute is in 5/8 and the orchestra is in 2/4. On ‘Little House I Used To Live In’ on our Burnt Weeny Sandwich album [1970], the bass and drums are playing in 11/8 and the melody is in 12/8.

“One of the things that made him a genius was that he could play experimental music and get it over to the audience by throwing in doo-wop or pop music. He’d use real popular music to play real unpopular music.”

If there’s one thing that unifies the extraordinarily pluralist catalog Zappa created over his lifetime, it is this combination of “popular” and “unpopular” music. From the Mothers of Invention’s 1966 debut, Freak Out!, to landmark titles like Hot Rats, Apostrophe (’) and Zappa’s best seller, Sheik Yerbouti, he would create a progressive musical universe where every style – from rock to reggae, from surf-rock to Schoenbergian serialism, from free jazz to musique concrète – was up for grabs.

“When you’re adopting or adapting a style in order to tell a story,” the late composer once said, “everything’s fair game. You have to have the right setting to the lyric. The important thing at that point is to tell the story.”

His lyrics also reflected his complexity. Drawing on sex, deviance, politics and social concerns, Zappa would satirize, parody and mock pretty much everyone. His absurdist universe was populated by fake hippies, charlatan gurus, corrupt politicians, dental-floss farmers, dumb groupies and dumber rock stars.

If his overarching quest was a search for truth, he did it by exposing and taking the piss out of its opposite. Jon Anderson contends that progressive music began with Zappa. “It was a combination of things,” the founding vocalist for the prog-rock group Yes contends.

“If you listen to Zappa, the Beatles, Vanilla Fudge, Buffalo Springfield, and Charles Mingus and Roland Kirk, there was such a plethora of interesting music around the mid ’60s, and that all inspired me when Yes started to do long-form music. His music was really meticulously put together, and he was a comedian at the same time.”

Freak Out!’s blend of chart-friendly tunes (“You Didn’t Try to Call Me”), outré psych-rock (“Who Are the Brain Police?”), experimental jazz (“The Return of the Son of Monster Magnet”) and social commentary (“Trouble Every Day”) pointed the way.

Keyboardist/guitarist Mike Keneally played in Zappa’s band for his last-ever tour, in 1988, but was still a child when he first heard Freak Out! “Half of it is easy to get hold of, the other is absurdism,” Keneally says. “Frank was combining things in different ways.

“He was reading the zeitgeist nicely and expressing attitudes that a lot of people felt. It was surprising to see an artist who was of the scene but also apart from it, and commenting on it so acidly.”

The Mothers borrowed from the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s cover for 1968’s We’re Only In It for the Money, ridiculing the prevailing hippie scene on the hilarious “Who Needs the Peace Corps?”

“That album is Frank’s greatest and most sustained piece of social commentary, and a startling musical and technical achievement,” Keneally says “But he was using naughty words too, and there were sped-up voices!”

With its advanced multitracking and production techniques, 1969’s Hot Rats became a jazz-fusion landmark and contained one of the composer’s best-known works, the opening track, “Peaches En Regalia.”

Zappa disbanded the first Mothers lineup that year, and over the next decade his sound benefited from his evolving production smarts and growing reputation as a grandstanding, idiosyncratic guitar hero.

Over-Nite Sensation, Zappa and the Mothers’ 1973 release, features some of his best-known songs –  “Camarillo Brillo,” “I’m the Slime” and the absurdist masterpiece “Montana.” Zappa’s own Apostrophe (’) from the following year proffered “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and “Cosmik Debris.”

Both albums featured progressive orchestrations and virtuoso playing from drummer Aynsley Dunbar, keyboardist George Duke and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, but they also showed Zappa’s increasing, censor-baiting fondness for bawdy, scatological lyrics.

“Oh, he’d go for the jugular,” Anderson says. “A lot of time as a writer it’s difficult to say exactly what you’re thinking. I would use metaphors all the time, but Zappa didn’t give a damn. He just said what he thought.”

Zappa recruited newcomer guitarist Adrian Belew for the concerts that produced 1979’s Sheik Yerbouti. Belew recalls that the band had a show in Cincinnati, where his mother, a Sunday school teacher, was living. “She was so pleased for me, but I told her I didn’t want her to come to the show because of the things I’d be singing.

“She said something that shook me to the ground. She said, ‘Is it really true he’s got a song called ‘I Promise Not to Come In Your Mouth?’ I said, ‘Yes, Mom, that’s true.’ She didn’t go to the show.”

While accessible, Sheik Yerbouti tracks like “Broken Hearts Are for Assholes,” “Bobby Brown” and the disco-pastiche “Dancin’ Fool” feature knotty musical ideas. Yet the seemingly cold misanthropy of the lyrics might deter the fainthearted.

“I asked him about it once,” Belew says. “He said he just reflects the craziness around him. He’d see other people go nuts and then write about that. There’s a part of the audience for whom that is the appeal – that he’s really putting it out there with radical tunes like that.”

Zappa encouraged Belew to play in unusual time signatures. “Without that I don’t know how I’d have made it into King Crimson,” he says. “A lot of our stuff is based on polyrhythms and odd time signatures, me singing in one and playing in another. He taught me how to be a professional musician and drew out of me that I could play more complicated material. He challenged me.”

As for Zappa’s proggiest moments, Mike Keneally goes back to 1973’s One Size Fits All. “‘Inca Roads’ is the quintessential Zappa tune,” he offers. “The subject matter [aliens landing in Inca times] is cosmic, but it’s not social commentary, it’s not cynical or sexual, and the music’s a multipart suite that goes through endless time and key changes.

“The sound of George Duke’s keyboards is very prog, and the playing on there is virtuosic and exciting. For people into Henry Cow or Canterbury, Uncle Meat is ground zero. I think it was a huge influence on Fred Frith and Chris Cutler. Burnt Weeny Sandwich too. For Frank, that’s almost pastoral. I can see Genesis fans getting into that.”

In a 1992 interview, The Simpsons creator and lifelong Zappa fan Matt Groening asked the composer if he thought music should make progress, if a composer should do things that hadn’t been done before.

Zappa argued that, rather than be progressive, it was more important that music should be personalized. Music, he said, “should be relevant to the person who writes the music. It has more to do with the composer than with the style of the times or the school that might have generated the composer.”

By that time, Zappa, in failing health, had come full circle, throwing himself into contemporary orchestral music with Civilization Phaze III, which would be released posthumously in October 1994. An ambitious work composed on the then-cutting-edge digital sampling system, the Synclavier, it was complex, socially charged and, yes, fearlessly personalized.

It would be the last artifact from a seemingly inexhaustible imagination that offered up more than 60 albums over nearly three decades.

“He will eventually be remembered as one of the great composers of our time,” Belew contends. “Civilization and The Yellow Shark [Ensemble Modern’s 1993 release of Zappa’s orchestral works] are beyond anything anyone else has done. His use of Synclavier to create a new universe of sounds was incredible. He had so many sides to him, and the orchestral stuff is my favorite part of Frank’s work.”

“He’s very well respected,” Anderson agrees. “I did some shows with [youth orchestra project] School of Rock, and they’d just come back from doing a Zappa festival in Germany. These 30 kids could play Zappa music at the drop of a hat.

“Young people dig what he did.”

Alice Stuart is the only female guitarist to be a member of the Mothers of Invention. How cool is that? She was badass before badass was a word.

Stuart met Frank Zappa in 1964 and played acoustic guitar with an early version of the Mothers. She left shortly after, before the group recorded its debut album, Freak Out!, to pursue her love of electric blues.

There were few female guitar role models in the mid-’60s, when Stuart’s career took off, and like all the trailblazers I’ve interviewed, she is completely self-created.

What’s even cooler is she’s still out there playing. Make sure to catch her when you can. You can find her schedule and learn more about her here.

In an interview I read, you mentioned that Zappa taught you how to believe in yourself and your music. What was it about playing with him that helped you gain confidence?

Well, I was really trying to go in a different direction at that point. He wanted me to continue playing acoustic guitar, and he wanted to play things around the Delta stuff that I was playing.

The Mothers of Invention were a blues band then, and I wanted to start playing electric guitar, so we just basically had different ideas.

But because I was working with him and he was obviously a go-getter, it just made me think maybe I could do whatever I wanted to do. And by then I had already made my first album, [1964’s] All The Good Times.

Who were your electric guitar influences?

Probably my greatest influence on electric guitar is Roy Buchanan. I still listen to his first album and just marvel at his style.

Is that who inspired you to play Telecasters?

Yes, him and all the bare-bones kind of guitar players from the time, like Buddy Holly. I don’t think of myself as just a blues player; instead, I see myself more like a roots or Americana guitar player, with a bit of country and rock.

Were you aware of Memphis Minnie back then?

When I started recording for Arhoolie Records, [label founder] Chris Strachwitz gave me a bunch of her stuff, and I just went crazy.

I recorded her song “In My Girlish Days.” When I heard her, I thought, She’s been around for a while. She was really respected, won a bunch of guitar contests and stuff. I was really sad when I heard she’d passed away.

Do you think there’s anything uniquely feminine that women bring to the guitar, or do you think music has nothing to do with gender at all?

I definitely love to rip it up, but I also tend to play guitar like it’s an extension of my voice. I think of the melody, or, if I’m playing backup guitar, I think what’s going to accent what the other players are doing.

I played with Albert King, and he picked me up off the floor and said, “Honey, you play good guitar!” If Albert King says I can play, that’s all right with me.

I have young women come up to me all the time and say things like, “Oh, my god, you’re my role model! You’ve shown me that it can be done and that we don’t have to go back.” So that makes me feel good.

I think a lot of it is belief in yourself. It’s not like you need to think you’re better than anyone else, but you do need to feel that you’re playing on the level where you are, and not below it. You just have to know that you’re really good. No one makes me feel like I am less than I am.

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.

Over half a century ago, the guitarist formerly known as Antennae Jimmy Semens – simply known as Jeff Cotton these days – parted ways with Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band.

During his tenure between 1967 and 1970, the Magic Band established themselves as heroes of the underground psychedelic rock scene following the release of Strictly Personal in 1968, and the avant-garde masterpiece Trout Mask Replica in 1969.

An earlier Beefheart recording from 1967 featuring Cotton titled Mirror Man was released in 1971.

That year, the guitarist appeared alongside his old friend Merrell Fankhauser on Mu’s self-titled debut album.

The pair later relocated to Maui, Hawaii where Cotton still resides.

For the past 50 years, little has been heard of the talented musician who teamed with fellow guitarist Bill Harkleroad – aka Zoot Horn Rollo – on the Frank Zappa-produced Trout Mask Replica.

Until now.

Finally, Jeff Cotton is back on the scene, with his debut solo album – The Fantasy of Reality – slated for release on August 12th via Madfish.

The expansive 22-song album’s lead single, “Does It Work for You?” has now been released and is accompanied by a music video featuring close-up footage of Cotton's signature slide work.

“I sincerely hope that you experience some of the ‘old magic,’ and pick up on the lyrical positivity,” says Cotton.

“We’re all in this together. And because there’s never been a time quite like this, it is good that we remind one another that, in spite of it all, love is our ‘reality.’”

Featuring unmistakable guitar hallmarks of the late ‘60s Beefheart era, “Does It Work for You?” sets the tone as the new album's opening track.

“'Does It Work for You?' is basically the theme of the album,” Cotton told Guitar Player.

“It’s in the lyrics: ‘What we see, is it reality/Or is it really fantasy?’ This really sets the tenor of the album.

“I’m thinking that Magic Band fans will like the song because it’s pretty involved musically.

"It has a strong Delta blues influence, and it’s spoken, which is something Don [Van Vliet aka Captain Beefheart] did a lot too.”

Pre-order The Fantasy of Reality by Jeff Cotton here.

Twinned with Alex St. Clair, followed by Bill Harkleroad – aka Zoot Horn Rollo – on electric guitar, Jeff Cotton was vital to the sound of Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band during their groundbreaking era of the late ‘60s.

Following 1967’s infamous Mirror Man sessions (Cotton says he was spiked with a strong dose of LSD before entering the studio) that were eventually released in 1971, the group went on to record their second LP, Strictly Personal, in 1968.

Captain Beefheart’s 1967 debut – Safe as Milk – sounded… well, safe as milk in comparison to their overtly psychedelic sophomore album.

But that too appeared relatively tame when the Beefheart masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica, arrived in 1969.

Rumors abound as to what went on during those long months the Magic Band lived together in the same house, writing and rehearsing ahead of the album’s recording.

Cotton maintains they were held hostage by Don Van Vliet (“an expert in mind control”) until finally being released for a day’s recording session with Frank Zappa.

Having lived and breathed the music for months on end, the Magic Band were able to track their parts for the entire Trout Mask Replica double LP within the space of hours – an incredible feat considering the mind-boggling complexity of the album's music.

Sadly, having been badly beaten up by a stand-in drummer, Cotton left the Magic Band in 1970 to go and live in the desert where he continued to play guitar (and, he says, occasionally spot UFOs.)

Fast forward half a century and the artist FKA Antennae Jimmy Semens is back, this time with his own solo record.

Slated for release on August 12 via Madfish, The Fantasy of Reality is a Beefheartian extravaganza of 22 tracks that cut across genres, yet never stray too far from Cotton’s signature sound.

Guitar Player caught up with the guitarist who generously shared some of his hard-earned wisdom…

1) Get Out of Your Comfort Zone

As musicians we can kind of get dry. Like there's no inspiration there. If that happens, my advice is to pick up another instrument, or try another guitar tuning.  

All of a sudden, it’s alive again. You’ve got to do something different, maybe with another instrument that you don't have any history with. Because that can really limit you.

I mean, take Don Van Vliet [aka Captain Beefheart] for instance. Don couldn't play an instrument. He had no background at all. But he could take a guitar and sit down and make these funny sounds. And then he'd say, “Oh! Get that, man! Can you play that, man?”

So we would incorporate that in the songs, but he couldn't play more than two or three notes.

Early on, there was a time when Drumbo [aka John French] was kicked out of the band and I had to take over his position as the music director.

We had some other musicians come in who were really accomplished; one really good jazz guitar player, and a good bass player. But when people are schooled in a certain way, that's often where they stay.

One of the big positive points of being in the Magic Band is we cut through all the crap. I have great respect for jazz, blues guitar, all these genres. But we had a way of clearing all that stuff out and starting at ground zero.

And I think that's valuable for anybody in any walk of life – to be able to find a way of beginning again. Being in the Magic Band did that for me.

2) Reserve Judgement

I always want to be at the point where ego is no issue – where it doesn't even exist in the moment.

When a melody comes down to you on the guitar, the one thing you don't want to do while that's happening is judge it.

When I’m writing, I don’t force it; it just happens.

Don’t judge it because then you’re bringing your lower mind in – your reasoning, which has nothing to do with creation.

The reasoning mind is what concretizes or crystallizes the inspiration or that breath and brings form to it.

So don't judge before it's done. Put it all out there then come back later and judge. Because you're in no position to judge when you don't see the big picture.

If you judge you stop the creative flow.

3) Be In the Moment

I'm so grateful that I've had so many years of playing for hours and hours on end where you get to the point where you are no longer needing to be objective.

Except for when you start the song. You know what I'm saying? Everybody's got to be together then.

You get to the point where you're outside of your body, so to speak. I've been that way many times where I'm looking down on the band, but not having to be conscious of what I'm playing.

That's when the subconscious takes over – when you're in the moment to the point that you don't need any memory of the song or of technique.

It's like riding a bike. Once you learn to ride a bike, you don't really think about it anymore. So I try to be there as much as possible when it comes to playing guitar.

When you're playing with others you need to know what they're doing. And they need to know what you're doing. But once a band comes together playing something that's coherent, then you can go to the next level.

You know: ‘I don't care what you're playing. I don't care when I'm playing.’ Because I'm just in the feel of the moment. And that's the place to be.

4) Age is No Barrier

We're here to encourage and uplift one another.

Some older musicians it seems aren’t creative anymore. I can understand and fully honor and respect if they choose to live another life. But I've seen many who appear to wane creatively as they get older.

I don't understand that. For me, it goes the other way. That's why they call it a second childhood. The older you get, you begin to get those childlike perceptions again – gifts that allow you to able to see things differently.

It took me until my late 60s to realize this but playing is only an expression in the moment of a giant life that you have lived as a musician.

It's a way to express and bring down into objectivity something that's so big that we don't even comprehend it fully.

I recognize there's something a lot bigger than what I'm doing right there playing guitar. Call it God, or the theory, or the source, whatever.

When I sit down to play, I sometimes command my body to relax fully. And I take a deep breath. It’s a meditation. And it's a science. 

5) Connect

I don't like the word jam. Sit down and play. And by pure communication with those other musicians, or a feeling, you can keep going on your own trip. But your trip will come together with their trip because you have enough skill.

To me, it's almost looks like a cat of some kind – a beautiful black panther. The invisible body – all these beautiful contours and shapes working together. That's the way music should be.

To me, we are all one. Humanity is one. We have one heart. We are all in this crazy world together. But we have forgotten we are one because we've been suppressed and repressed.

When I first picked up my guitar, I couldn't play the first two notes of “Walk Don’t Run” [by The Ventures]. I had to practice them and gain some experience.

Connecting with other musicians is the same thing. It’s about time, energy, focus and care – cause and reality instead of fantasy. 

I mean, if we put 10 per cent of the time into connecting with another person that we just put into playing the instrument then we’d realize we are already connected.

We have to remember that and experience that. We are one! 

If you really are confident about what you do on your instrument, and so is the other person, it will fit together like a glove.

Pre-order The Fantasy of Reality by Jeff Cotton here.

A phenomenally talented electric guitar prodigy, Vai joined Frank Zappa’s crew in 1978 aged just 18. Having played in Zappa’s band throughout the early ‘80s he then went on to pursue a highly influential solo career.

Raising the bar for guitarists the world over, Vai continues to push the boundaries of possibility.

He has also been known to take some pretty extreme measures in preparation for an album. For example, in order to get into the zone for a track on his 1990 classic Passion and Warfare, he didn't eat for four days!

And while we don’t recommend starving yourself, we would encourage readers to dwell on some of the following wisdom Vai generously shared with Guitar Player back in 1999 soon after the release of his sixth studio album, The Ultra Zone.

1) Getting in the Zone

"It all starts in the mind. I wanted to see if I could bring my mind into certain emotional states. I would focus on an emotion – like tenderness – and try to touch the instrument as softly as I could and still get the notes out.

“If you can stay focused, it gets easier to feel what you're trying to express. That's how I coined the phrase the 'Ultra Zone.' It's a frame of mind where there are no distractions.”

2) Head First

"I prefer to start from the emotional side of things, rather than the mechanical. That's why I don't really come up with melodies by noodling. It's possible to write great melodies that way, but I'd rather hear it in my head first.

“But when we create, we tend to go to parts of our psyche that we're attracted to. For some people, that means politics or race cars or whatever. I'm sort of a seeker. I'm always questing for spiritual balance. On the other hand, I've got this intense technical ability, and my brain always seems to marry the two together."

3) Love Your Instrument

"As far as being a good student, first and foremost you need to have a love for the instrument. Once you've got that, you need to pick a goal and slowly and methodically work toward it.

“If that goal is to play a Limp Bizkit song, great. Find an instructor to help you learn that. If, on the other hand, your goal is to be a devastating, virtuoso guitarist, then you have a different set of priorities. But the way you achieve them is the same: through love and respect for your instrument.”

Steve Vai’s latest album, Inviolate, is available to order here.

Without Frank Zappa, where would the guitar world be? His approach to music – complex, unpredictable, and often cynical – never quite fitted in with the pre-programmed mainstream.

Elements of all types of music, including classical, jazz, disco, heavy metal, and practically every other recognizable form, are employed with equal stature in Zappa's work.

Hailed as an electric guitar hero for generations, Guitar Player spoke to the man himself back in the early ‘80s and gleaned some pearls of wisdom that still apply all these years later.

Here are just a few extracts from the mammoth interview that originally appeared in the February 1983 issue of Guitar Player…

1. One More Time with Feeling

“To say that a person has to start with Elmore James before he graduates up to fire-breathing guitar-playing status is stupid, because you really don't need to. If you don't have any feelings for that type of [blues] music, why involve yourself with it?

“I would rather see a guitar player totally ignore that realm of music in an honest way – saying, 'That's just not my stuff’ – than get a cursory glance of it and say, ‘Now I understand it,’ because they'll just do a parody of it.”

2. Take Me, I’m Yours

“If you pick up a guitar and it says, 'Take me I'm yours,' then that's the one for you. You don't go into a guitar store and say, ‘Hey, what a great paint job.’ You have to put it in your hand, because a real guitar that's going to be something you make music on – as opposed to a piece of machinery that makes you look good onstage – is going to have some relationship to your hand and body.

“It feels right when you pick it up. And that's the way I felt when I got the first SG that I had. It felt right in my hand, so I got it. Same thing with the Gibson Les Paul.”

3. Choose Your Weapon

“Each guitar has its own character and its own sounds that it likes to make, that come naturally to that instrument. So, I'm going to choose an instrument that matches the character of the song.

“I also have a Telecaster – one of the copies of the originals that Fender put out about a year ago. It's a real good blues guitar.

“The fifth guitar would be the SG copy that I got from this guy in Phoenix, Arizona. It says ‘Gibson’ on it, but it's handmade, and it's got an ebony fretboard with 23 frets on it; it goes one fret higher than a normal SG. I play that a lot.”

Pick up the Zappa movie here.

As one of the world’s most famous guitarists, George Harrison was on the receiving end of some stunning and groundbreaking guitars, including a prototype Rickenbacker 360/12 12-string, in 1964, and a prototype Fender Rosewood Telecaster, in 1969.

But as astute Beatles fans learned in recent years, in 1967 Harrison became the recipient of an unusual prototype fretless electric guitar built by the short-lived U.S. Bartell company.

How the guitar came to be, and how Harrison came to own it, are among the subjects explored by British author Paul Brett in his recently published groundbreaking tome, Finding Fretless: The Story of George Harrison’s Mad Guitar (This Day in Music Books).

Brett’s interest in the guitar was spurred when his friend, veteran jazz-fusion guitarist Ray Russell, posted a cryptic message to his Facebook page to mark the Beatle’s birthday on February 25, 2019, accompanied by a photo of a fretless guitar.

“He took a little post on Facebook and said, ‘I’m remembering George today. He gave me this old guitar. I don’t know much about it,’” Brett recalls. “That just triggered my interest. It was a Bartell. I’d never heard of it.”

Russell’s post sent Brett on a journey to learn more about both Harrison’s guitar and the Bartell brand, whose venture into fretless guitars in the 1960s is among the guitar world’s most unusual evolutionary branches.

At the heart of the story is Paul Barth, one of guitar’s unsung heroes. “People don’t talk much about Paul Barth,” Brett says, “but he was really one of the founding fathers of the electric guitar.”

Barth’s introduction to the guitar industry came in the early 1920s, when he went to work for his uncle John Dopyera, inventor of the resonator guitar, at the National String Instrument Corporation. By the 1930s, Barth was working with George Beauchamp at Rickenbacker, collaborating with him on the Frying Pan electric and Beauchamp’s design for a guitar pickup.

In the early 1950s, he helped Leo Fender set up his Santa Ana assembly line and built many of the woodworking jigs from which necks and bodies were shaped for Stratocaster, Jazzmaster and Jaguar model guitars.

His work even extended to Semie Moseley at Mosrite as well as Magnatone and Hohner.

He launched his own Barth guitar brand in 1956, and in 1964 the Bartell company was created by owner and company president Ted Eugene Peckels and Barth, who served as director and head of design. The Bartell name was derived by combining Barth’s and Peckels’ surnames.

It was Tom Mitchell, a paint finisher at Bartell – he went on to create Mitchell Amplifiers – who suggested the company make a fretless guitar, around 1966 or 1967.

“Ted Peckels said, ‘That’ll never take off,’” Brett relates. “But Paul Barth, being a designer and inventor, said, ‘Yeah, let’s give it a go and see what happens.’”

A few prototypes were made, including two for Jimi Hendrix and one that Frank Zappa acquired in 1973 from a Guitar Center in California. How Harrison came to own one required some serious sleuthing on Brett’s part.

A vital lead came from his friend Richard Bennett, a guitarist with plays with Neil Diamond and Mark Knopfler, who owned a Bartell as his first guitar.

Bennett related a story about Al Casey, the owner of Al Casey’s Music Room retail outlet in Hollywood, sending a Bartell fretless to Harrison when the Beatle was staying at 1567 Blue Jay Way in Los Angeles in 1967.

The home is famous as the place where Harrison wrote “Blue Jay Way,” the haunting track from 1967’s Magical Mystery Tour, while waiting for the arrival of Beatles press officer Derek Taylor, who’d lost his way in the fog.

While browsing the internet hoping to find a photo of the Beatles with the fretless guitar, Brett entered “Al Casey Bartell fretless” into a search engine and was rewarded with a vintage print ad for Al Casey’s Music Room.

“You must have heard about them by now, so come on in and see the Bartell fretless guitars and fretless basses,” went the ad copy. Below the call to action was a cryptic parenthetical: “George Harrison got the first guitar, maybe if you hurry you can get the second one.”

The ad ran in The Los Angeles Free Press from the first week of September 1967, lending support to Bennett’s story.

Brett then learned that on August 3, while in Hollywood, Harrison and Beatles assistant Neil Aspinall attended a recording session where guitarist Mike Deasy was playing one of Bartell’s prototype hollow-bodied fretless guitars.

Harrison spoke with Deasy about the instrument for 20 or 30 minutes before leaving. Afterward, Aspinall reportedly ordered a fretless guitar from Al Casey.

It’s certain that the Bartell fretless made it to Abbey Road Studio. The guitar is documented in Beatles history through British DJ Kenny Everett’s recorded interview with John Lennon.

Their chat took place at Abbey Road Studio on June 6, 1968, shortly after the Beatles began recording the White Album. Lennon is playing the guitar, which can be heard on the recording. “What kind of guitar is that?” Everett asks at one point. “Very strange looking.” Replies Lennon, “A fretless guitar.”

“We know it was the Bartell, ’cause it’s the only one they had,” Brett says. From talking with others who knew Harrison, he learned that Lennon was more intrigued by the guitar than Harrison was. “He was more likely to pick it up and mess around with it when they were looking for a particular sound or effect.”

But was the fretless guitar ever used on a recording by the Beatles?

No documentation exists to support the notion, but Brett and others familiar with the tonal character of the instrument are convinced it appears on two White Album tracks: “Happiness Is a Warm Gun,” where Brett believes it was used to perform the rubbery descending lick that precedes the lyric “I need a fix ’cause I’m going down”; and “Helter Skelter,” where it would have been used along with other guitars.

Brett says the sound of a fretless guitar is present and more apparent on the second take of “Helter Skelter,” a version clocking in at 12 minutes and 54 seconds, some four and a half minutes of which appear on Anthology 3.

“The suggestion is that it may have been used on others, mainly for overdubs, not as the lead guitar or the main instrument,” he says. “But you can certainly pick it out, because it is so unique.”

Brett points to an absence of the bright tone that comes from the strings vibrating against a metal fret. “I think George called it ‘fret sparkle,’” he says. Likewise, slides and bends sound different due to the absence of frets.

Brett also notes the microtonal characteristics of intonation that come from imperfect fretboard fingering. “The fact that it was a hollowbody guitar as well adds a bit to [the distinctive sound],” he says. “And I’m hearing the pickups – they weren’t great for volume as such.”

Though his research had proved where and how Harrison received the guitar, Brett was frustrated that he could find no photo of the instrument among pictures of the Beatles. But eventually his painstaking efforts paid off.

“It took me months of searching through tens of thousands of photos,” he says. “And there we had it: George Harrison at home with his collection of guitars.” The photo, taken some time in the 1970s, shows Harrison in a room at his Friar Park estate surrounded by mostly acoustic guitars. “And there it is right at the back next to him,” Brett reveals.

Harrison gifted the guitar to his friend Russell in 1985. In March 2020, it was featured on Antiques Roadshow, where it was valued at £400,000. Under the circumstances, Russell was unprepared to own and maintain an instrument of such value.

On October 13, 2020, this least-famous Beatles guitar went on Bonhams’ auction block, where it fetched a more conservative, but no less impressive, bid of £190,000 – roughly a quarter of a million dollars.

Brett’s dogged efforts have helped unearth yet another piece of Beatles history, but what tends to get overshadowed in the story is how Finding Fretless shines light on a previously unexplored tract in guitar history through research and stories about Barth, Bartell and other fretless guitars and their owners.

For his contributions, Brett has been nominated by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards (ARSC) to receive its 2022 award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

NAMM has also asked him to contribute to its oral history program when he’s in Anaheim for the annual musical instrument show next month.

“We’re hoping to have a reunion of Bartell while we’re there,” Brett says, “and give Paul Barth some of the recognition he deserves.”

Order Finding Fretless: The Story of George Harrison’s Mad Guitar by Paul Brett here.

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.

Oz Noy is that rare electric guitar player with full command of jazz harmony, mastery of pure and effected tones and an absolutely devastating sense of groove. He is renowned as a Strat cat with an unusual ability to utilize otherworldly effects in a sophisticated musical context.

Starting with his debut studio effort Ha! in 2005, Noy planted his freak flag in fusion territory and stood his ground.

Noy snagged the GP Readers Poll for Best Guitar Riff on a Record in 2007, earned Best New Talent in 2008 and then Best Out There Guitar Player in 2013.

Noy has been expanding into all sorts of different terrain lately. Last year he collaborated with drummer Tal Bergman (Joe Zawinul, B.B. King, Sammy Hagar) on the blues-rock cruiser Soul Stealer.

At the outset of 2022 he dropped Riverside featuring bassist Ugonna Okegwo (Clark Terry, Pharoah Sanders) and drummer Ray Marchica, a longstanding member of the Ed Palermo Big Band, which specializes in the music of Frank Zappa.

Riverside is a much more straight-ahead effort than we’ve ever heard from Noy, and it’s pretty wild to hear him cop traditional tones and tackle chestnuts such as “All the Things You Are.”

If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind that Noy’s twisted brain could straighten up and fly as high as the moon in a standard setting, Riverside is proof positive.

Oz Noy is a perennial GP Presents favorite.

Each event is completely different as Noy always brings a sense of adventure to his unique take on jazz, and with supernatural drummer Dennis Chambers (Santana, P-Funk) and bassist Jimmy Haslip (the Yellowjackets) in tow, the groove will surely be fathoms deep at Yoshi’s on Thursday, March 24.

We’ll be on site with free magazines and strings provided by Martin. 

Get tickets now here.

WIN TICKETS!

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

Phone contact greatly appreciated for confirmation.

Winner must provide their own transportation to Yoshi’s in Oakland, California on Thursday, March 24, and have his or her own accommodations in the Bay Area.

Here is COVID info.

Best of luck!

EVENT DETAILS

GP Presents Oz Noy Trio

Thursday, March 24

Yoshi’s Jack London Square
510 Embarcadero West
Oakland, CA.

7:30pm doors, 8:00pm show

Free GP magazines, Martin strings

Buy Tickets here.

We recently asked several of the guitar world's best-known players to recommend some of their favorite electric guitar solos. With one catch, however: they had to avoid the obvious. In other words, no Gilmour, Hendrix, Clapton et cetera.

Here’s what Steel Panther's fretboard extraordinaire Satchel had to say…

1) Frank Zappa | “Watermelon In Easter Hay” from ‘Joe’s Garage’ (1979)

GUITARIST: Frank Zappa

 “Zappa was inspiring on so many levels. He was in a universe all his own. There was nothing he wouldn’t try. He was innovative, unafraid to speak out against tyranny, and he didn’t care what was popular in music or anything else. He started his own record company way before indie was indie. He was such a legend that sometimes I forget he was also a fantastic guitarist. Then I listen to something like this and I’m reminded.

“This solo is so good. When I hear it, I hear a guy playing music – not a guy thinking about licks or trying to impress anyone. A guy who plays guitar wonderfully because he isn’t just a guitarist, he is a musician making music. And in order to make great music, you have to be in the moment. This solo captures the moment so well. I don’t know if it was one take, but it sure feels like it. It’s perfect, mistakes and all.”

2) Michael Schenker Group | “Rock You To the Ground” from ‘Assault Attack’ (1982)

GUITARIST: Michael Schenker

“This entire record is just awesome. I love everything about it. Graham Bonnet just killing it, Ted McKenna and Chris Glen holding it down, and Michael Schenker in his prime. His tone is so raw and his playing is so rock! This is heavy metal!

“His guitar playing has so much attitude and style, great vibrato and killer phrasing. And again, it’s not perfect, as you can tell. There are missed notes and mistakes if you pick it apart with a fine-tooth comb, but music is not about being perfect, and when you listen to a master like Schenker, it drives that point home.

“There are a hundred Instagram guitarists with flawless technique that have zero of the coolness and attitude of Michael Schenker. Can we just go back to the ’80s please, when people took the time to listen to entire records?”

3) Blue Öyster Cult | “E.T.I.” from ‘Agents of Fortune’ (1976)

GUITARIST: Buck Dharma

“He was one of my favorite guitarists growing up. Everything this guy played always seemed like it fit perfectly – the note choices, the phrasing, the attitude. Buck’s guitar playing would always take the song to some other place as well. And even though it seems like he must have worked out certain licks beforehand, the playing sounds like he improvised the whole thing. This guy is definitely one of the most underrated in the history of rock, IMO.”

4) Allan Holdsworth | “Metal Fatigue” from ‘Metal Fatigue’ (1985)

GUITARIST: Allan Holdsworth

“Holdsworth was from another planet. He was so far ahead of his time and so innovative, the guitar world is still trying to figure out what the heck just happened, 40 years later.

“I think he had, like, seven fingers on his left hand or something. Most of the time when I hear someone that sounds great technically, I still can’t wrap my head around how they are doing it, whether it’s sweeps or three notes per string or two-hand tapping or whatever. Not Allan. No clue.

“But he never sounded like he was repeating himself or just reaching into his bag of tricks. It always sounded fresh and new. And as fast and impressive as he could be, the real kicker is that he was sooo tasty and melodic too! Even when he was playing fast. It never sounded show-offy to me; just beautiful and natural and smooth. And scary. Like an 18-foot great white attacking you from below.”

5) Alcatrazz | “Wire and Wood” from ‘Disturbing the Peace’ (1985)

GUITARIST: Steve Vai

“I’ve always been a fan of Steve Vai, and he has continued to inspire guitarists for decades. This song is off a great Alcatrazz record that didn’t get the credit it deserved. And again, Graham Bonnet is on it! I think playing with Graham Bonnet must mean you’ve finally reached success as a guitarist. So many awesome players have jammed with him, and Steve Vai is definitely one of them.

“This solo, like all the solos on this list, is melodic. It’s got killer phrasing. It’s got great timing and great note choices and total conviction. One of the things I really like about it is the climax at the end. The improv skills of all the guys on this list are amazing, and Steve Vai has more than enough licks to improv for the rest of his life. But the construction of the solo is an art form as well, and Vai has always been able to construct amazing solos.

“This might be my favorite on this album, and that’s saying something, because everything he played on this record is killer.”

Browse Steel Panther's catalog 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.

It’s never too late to discover the minor pentatonic key of C sharp. Frank Zappa’s epic “Muffin Man” outro solo proves the point – and some! Featured as the closing number on Zappa’s 1975 (mostly) live album Bongo Fury starring his old high school buddy Captain Beefheart aka Don Van Vliet “on vocals and soprano sax and madness”, this standout track is a high point for many in the late, great guitar hero’s career.

While Zappa’s inimitable guitar tones were chiefly down to his singular technique, his approach to modifying instruments made him sound all the more distinctive. 

By fitting his electric guitars with midrange-boosting preamps, altering the phase of the pickups, and half-cocking his wah wah to emphasis certain resonant frequencies, Zappa was able to create a variety of dynamic tones which not only cut though the mix but also allowed him to control feedback in a highly musical way.

In this clip from a 1977 Halloween concert at New York City's Palladium Theater, Zappa is using his “Baby Snakes” SG – his main ax during the late ‘70s that he bought for $500. Though it appears to be a straight Walnut Gibson SG Standard from a distance, this guitar features a customised body, fancy fretboard inlays, an extra (23rd) fret, and bespoke-designed electronics including various preamp and phase switching options.

Check out the incredible Halloween 77 box set here.

With well over 100 album titles to his name, when it comes to Frank Zappa’s discography it can be hard to know where to begin. Here are five exemplary Zappa works from different points in his towering career as an electric guitar player...

1. Hot Rats (1969)

Harmonically pleasing tunes, warm jazz-fusion styling, terrific playing and incredible sound quality create a triumph of an album. “Peaches en Regalia” remains one of Zappa’s most enduring tunes, and Captain Beefheart adds bizarre vocals to “Willie the Pimp.” 

This is the record that people who don’t like Zappa are most likely to enjoy.

2. Roxy & Elsewhere (1974)

Most artists treat live albums as greatest hits with crowd noise, but Zappa used the format to present new and dramatically reworked material. Twisted jazz meets performance art on “Bebop Tango”, the funky “Village of the Sun” gives way to the monumental jazz-prog-percussion extravaganzas of “Echinda’s Arf (Of You)” and “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing?” while the low-budget horror tribute “Cheepnis” and the improvised skit “Dummy Up” provide comic relief.

3. Joe’s Garage Acts I, II & III (1979)

Joe’s Garage has all the elements any prog fan could wish for. A sprawling concept narrative, it takes in rock musicians’ peccadillos, individual freedoms, invented religions and government censorship, along with epic guitar solos, pop, reggae, rock, spoken word and, er, sex with domestic appliances. What’s not to like? 

For those who think Zappa’s music was cold-hearted, listen to “Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up” and the sublime “Watermelon in Easter Hay,” and reconsider.

4. Jazz from Hell (1986)

Frustrated that his complex instrumentals couldn’t be played by real musicians, Zappa created digital sounds from scratch and programmed all the music for this album (aside from the live track “St. Etienne”) entirely on Synclavier, a vastly more complicated job in 1986 than with today’s digital options. 

The result mixes flurries of notes with avant-garde sensibilities, deliberate dissonance with lush melodies, and fiendish rhythms with hummable tunes. It’s a stunning collection from a heavyweight modern composer.

5. Make A Jazz Noise Here (1991)

Along with 1988’s Broadway the Hard Way and 1991’s The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life, this album was recorded on Zappa’s final official band tour, in 1988. Many claim this lineup (which features Mike Keneally) was the best he ever took on the road, and these albums bring together threads of Zappa’s entire career. 

New and old tunes, and some eclectic cover versions, are played with incredible precision and brio. It’s a fitting testament to the range of a singular musical genius.

Check out the official Frank Zappa discography 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”

Today, it was announced that the 48-track recordings of the Frank Zappa ensemble's March 25, 1988 concert at the Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, NY – Zappa's final performance in the United States – will be released as a new live album, Zappa ’88: The Last U.S. Show.

With the announcement came a preview of the album, a recording of the Zappa ensemble's performance of the 1966 Zappa classic, "I Ain't Got No Heart."

You can check the recording out below.

Set for a June 18 release via Zappa Records/UMC, Zappa ’88: The Last U.S. Show was produced by Ahmet Zappa and Zappa archivist Joe Travers. 

The first posthumous archival release from the ‘88 touring band, the album features 29 unreleased performances, including two much-talked about covers – Zappa's offbeat versions of The Allman Brothers Band's "Whipping Post" and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" – from other shows, the former from a March 16, 1988 show in Providence, Rhode Island and the latter from a March 23, 1988 show in Towson, Maryland.

The album will be available digitally, or on 2 CD, 4LP 180-gram vinyl – itself available on both black vinyl or limited edition 180g purple vinyl – exclusively via the official Frank Zappa online store or uDiscover.

You can check out its cover art and track list below, and preorder the album here.

Frank Zappa: Zappa ’88: The Last U.S. Show

2CD/Digital
Disc 1

1. “We Are Doing Voter Registration Here”
2. The Black Page (New Age Version)
3. I Ain’t Got No Heart
4. Love Of My Life
5. Inca Roads
6. Sharleena
7. Who Needs The Peace Corps?
8. I Left My Heart In San Francisco
9. Dickie’s Such An Asshole
10. When The Lie’s So Big
11. Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk
12. Sofa #1
13. One Man, One Vote
14. Happy Birthday, Chad!
15. Packard Goose Pt. 1
16. Royal March From “L’Histoire Du Soldat”
17. Theme From The Bartok Piano Concerto #3
18. Packard Goose Pt. II
19. The Torture Never Stops Pt. I
20. Theme From “Bonanza”

Disc 2

1. Lonesome Cowboy Burt
2. The Torture Never Stops Pt. II
3. City Of Tiny Lites
4. Pound For A Brown
5. The Beatles Medley
6. Peaches En Regalia
7. Stairway To Heaven
8. I Am The Walrus
9. Whipping Post
10. Bolero
11. America The Beautiful

4LP Vinyl

LP1

Side 1

1. “We Are Doing Voter Registration Here”
2. The Black Page (New Age Version)
3. I Ain’t Got No Heart
4. Love Of My Life

Side 2

1. Inca Roads
2. Sharleena
3. Who Needs The Peace Corps?
4. I Left My Heart In San Francisco

 LP2

Side 3

1. Dickie’s Such An Asshole
2. When The Lie’s So Big
3. Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk
4. Sofa #1
5. One Man, One Vote

Side 4

1. Happy Birthday, Chad!
2. Packard Goose Pt. I
3. Royal March From “L’Histoire Du Soldat”
4. Theme From The Bartok Piano Concerto #3
5. Packard Goose Pt. II
6. The Torture Never Stops Pt. I
7. Theme From “Bonanza”
8. Lonesome Cowboy Burt

LP3

Side 5

1. The Torture Never Stops Pt. II
2. City Of Tiny Lites
3. Pound For A Brown PT. I

Side 6

1. Pound For A Brown PT. II
2. The Beatles Medley (Lennon/McCartney)
3. Peaches En Regalia

LP4

Side 7

1. Stairway To Heaven
2. I Am The Walrus

Side 8

1. Whipping Post
2. Bolero
3. America The Beautiful

Over the decades, Steve Vai has always been vocal about the role Frank Zappa – for whom he worked first as a transcriber and then as a member of his band from 1980 - 1983 – played as a mentor and teacher to him in the first stages of his illustrious career. 

Zappa's often-blunt but impactful advice, in particular, helped shape the young maestro's tone, which he often disregarded in his early days.  

"Well, it had to sound a particular way," Vai said to Australian Musician in response to a question about the gear he used while on tour with Zappa. "I used my Strat that I got when I was a kid for pretty much the whole thing. I only had one guitar. But then I got another guitar as a backup – I used Frank's Hendrix Strat as a backup, in case if I broke a string or something he let me use that.

"I'd use it a bunch of times – I used it on 'Zombie Woof' every night but I was very inexperienced when it came to tone because I never could afford a good amplifier, I gave precious little attention to tone.

"I remember after the first show that I ever did with Frank, I met him in the restaurant of the hotel in the morning, having breakfast, and I said, 'So, how was I?'

"And he said to me, 'You know, Steve, I think you're a really good musician but your tone sounds like an electric ham sandwich.' And I said, 'Well why? I mean, I've got the Strat, I've got the Marshall...'

"This is profound, and it's true, and I've used it my whole life, I go into great detail but Frank rarely went into detail, he would just say things and then they were unequivocal.

"So he said, 'The sound isn't in the amps, it's in your head.' Now, at first, I didn't know what he meant by that, I thought it was just some esoteric cool thing to say. But it wasn't until a little later on that I realized – yeah, that's exactly where your tone is!

"It cannot be any other place, it's gonna sound the way you're expecting it to sound. It's kind of hard to explain. And then you'll manipulate it to get it to where you want it to sound.

"But I gave very little attention to that. But I gave a little attention to a lot of things until I joined Frank's band and then I focused intensely on various things through his tutelage."

You can check out Vai's full interview with Australian Musician – where he discusses Zappa, the new documentary on Zappa's life and career – in the video above.

The trailer for Zappa, the years-in-the-making documentary on the life and career of Frank Zappa, has finally been unveiled. You can watch it above.

The first official Zappa documentary, the two-hour film was directed by Bill & Ted star Alex Winter, who was given full access to all archival footage and the Zappa family trust. It will be released in the US on November 27.

In addition to Zappa’s widow, Gail Zappa, Zappa features interviews with many of his musical collaborators, including Steve Vai, Ian Underwood, Pamela Des Barres, Mike Keneally, David Harrington, Bunk Gardner, Ruth Underwood, Scott Thunes, Ray White and many more.

"Frank Zappa was not only a creative genius, but also a great and eloquent thinker who articulated the madness of his times with extraordinary clarity and wit," Winter said.

"A legitimate maverick who lived and worked amongst other extraordinary people in historic times. Ultimately, Zappa is not a retro trip into the past, but a thoroughly modern exploration of a man whose worldview, art and politics were far ahead of their time, and profoundly relevant in our challenging times."

“I'm thrilled Magnolia is bringing the Zappa movie to the world," Ahmet Zappa, one of the film's producers, added. "This emotional journey began with my mother’s belief in Alex Winter and he’s made an extraordinary film.

“I’m so grateful to the fans who contributed to the Kickstarter campaign. Their support was invaluable as is our partnership with UMG. I feel in my heart Frank and Gail would be so proud of the documentary and I can’t wait for everyone to see it!”

For more info on the film, head on over to zappamovie.com.