But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.
Dweezil Zappa
Yes, but I view Frank's music as fully composed. In other words, the arrangements can work for any idiom such as a rock band or an orchestra. Frank was a brilliant arranger and could make his music work in any context. He proved that tour after tour and album after album.
I liked a lot of the things other people liked - Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Van Halen, AC/DC - but if I compared it to my dad's music, there just seemed to be elements missing.
Well, Steve Vai joined my dad's band right around the time when I actually started playing guitar. So he gave me a couple of lessons on fundamentals, and gave me some scales and practice things to work on. But I pretty much learned everything by ear.
About the only thing that I'll probably end up doing is I made this amplifier with Peavey. It's in the manufacturing stages right now, and there are a lot of orders that we just got for it.
I don't care about a social life.
I feel that through my father's music I've found my own voice in my own playing.
On the average, I don't spend more than 15 minutes in the car - to go to the golf course or the gym. And that's the only time I listen to the radio.
I know my name gets used illegally all the time all over the internet. You know, it is a trademarked name, so it will be something that we always have to deal with. I never needed to change it. It was always fine with me. It is a strange name; that's for sure.
If there's some work to be done that seems like it will be fun, I'll do it. I don't take anything seriously at all.
And, you know, my dad would show me some things sometimes, but the best things that I got to do were to actually see really good players play up close. That gives you an idea of fingering and technique and what not.
The thing with food is that you can give 20 people the same recipe and the same ingredients, and somebody's going to make it better than somebody else, and that's the creativity of it. It's like music. You could have a bunch of people playing the same piece, and somebody's gonna play it better.
Modern records are all made with virtually identical gear, software plug-ins and everything. Everybody wants everything to sound like the last thing that was popular because they're chasing their tails.
I'm game for anything fun.
While it is true that Frank had a great sense of humor, he was also very serious about composing music. In reality there are only a handful of skilled players who can play his most complex pieces. It takes a lot of patience to learn and requires a fantastic memory.
Well, I haven't been doing that much work with other people per se. I started doing more of that.
We will have close to 3 months of rehearsals to learn about 30 songs. Frank usually rehearsed a band for at least 3 months. If it took him that long to be comfortable we probably would need double the amount, but It's just not financially possible to do so.
There's no difference in a lot of people's minds between good musicians and popular musicians.
There are so many things that are misunderstood or not recognized about my father's music because they've been filtered by people who work for magazines like Rolling Stone.
The music that is played on the radio all the time or written about in magazines has nothing to do with musicianship.
Music can be so disturbing and frustrating. I mean the business side of it. The actual making music part is fun, but the business side of it is just so out of control, has nothing to do with anything.
Just because something has tubes doesn't mean it's the best. I mean, tubes are obviously good, but the circuit of this thing is designed well and it sounds good.
It was spontaneously composed as I was playing it. And then I added a couple of other overdub textures on top of it after the fact. But it's one of those things where I wouldn't be able to sit down and specifically write that. That's just what came out.
I would love to expose multiple younger generations to Frank's music. It's not an easy task because It's not ever going to be plastered all over the radio for the masses.
I really want younger audience members to see kids in their early 20's playing Frank's music and to be inspired to take things to a higher level themselves.
I mean, no offense, but I don't really see why, like guitar players from Creed, or something like that, are on the cover of guitar magazines. Almost anybody can sit down and learn to play those songs.
Frank's bands could play the hardest stuff and make it seem like no big deal.
For me, the most difficult thing is that I am learning melodies on guitar from some songs whose melodies were not meant to be played on guitar. Ever. They were intended mostly for keyboards or melodic percussion.
I didn't really hear any other music other than what my dad was working on until I was 12. My recollection of hearing other music was that I liked some things that I heard but I always thought, 'Where's the rest of it?' It didn't have the same amount of detail or instrumentation or imagination in the arrangements.
