Frank Zappa

Frank was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 - cited as "rock and roll's sharpest musical mind and most astute social critic".

Zappa is the first, and thus far, the only artist to be inducted into both the Rock and Roll (1995) and the Jazz (1994) Halls of Fame.

Although he was awarded only two Grammys while he was alive, Zappa was posthumously given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

In 2005, the US National Recording Preservation Board included We're Only in It for the Money in the National Recording Registry - writing "Frank Zappa's inventive and iconoclastic album presents a unique political stance, both anti-conservative and anti-counterculture, and features a scathing satire on hippiedom and America's reactions to it … Zappa's radical audio editing and production techniques produced an eclectic blend of electronic, avant-garde and rock music that was influenced by composers such as Varese and Stravinsky, with pop melodies, virtuoso instrumental performances, verbal asides and sound effects that segue into a cohesive work … an electronic sound collage …".

In 1995, in Vilnius, Lithuania, a group of artists erected the world's only known statue of Frank Zappa.

In addition to his distinctive voice (which dropped a major third after he suffered a crushed larynx) and his virtuosic guitar playing, Frank was proficient on keyboards, drums, bass and Synclavier (an early sampler, synthesizer and sound processor).

A local newspaper article referring to him as "the Movie King of Cucamonga" caught the eye of local cops, who suspected that Frank was making pornographic films. He was approached by an undercover officer offering $100 for a "stag party" tape. As the faked "erotic" audio tape was about to be handed over, Zappa was arrested - the local paper reporting that "Vice Squad investigators stilled the tape recorders of a free-swinging, a-go-go film and recording studio … and arrested a self-styled movie producer." Police confiscated studio equipment and master tapes (many of which were never returned). Frank was threatened with the felony charge of "conspiracy to commit pornography", which was later reduced to a misdemeanor, for which he served 10 days in jail. The bizarre police entrapment and heavy-handed confiscation only served to further harden Zappa's already well-established anti-authoritarian personality.

With the money he earned from scoring Run Home Slow, Zappa purchased the small Pal Recording Studio (and its unique 5-track tape recorder) from engineer/innovator Paul Buff and renamed it Studio Z.

His high school English teacher, Don Cerveris, quit teaching and wrote a screenplay for what Zappa called "a super-cheap cowboy movie" - Run Home Slow (1965) - and helped Frank get his second professional film scoring job on it. Cerveris is included in the long list of names of people who helped and/or influenced Frank on the cover of Freak Out!.

After scoring "The World's Greatest Sinner", Frank appeared on The Steve Allen Show, speaking briefly about the movie and his soundtrack. The highlight of his appearance, however, was "a bicycle concerto" performed by "plucking spokes and blowing through the bike's handlebars". Zappa also created other strange and interesting sounds with the bike while accompanied spontaneously by the amused studio orchestra.

Zappa's first professional recording was a soundtrack for The World's Greatest Sinner (1962), an avant-garde, underground "cult classic" concerning a bored insurance salesman (played by Timothy Carey) who quits his day job to enter politics - attracting a growing group of followers who are drawn to his radical ideas about eternal life and begin to call him "God".

Zappa began composing classical music in high school, while playing drums in R&B bands.

In The Real Frank Zappa Book, Zappa reveals that producer Tom Wilson had taken LSD during the recording of Freak Out! : "I've tried to imagine what he must have been thinking, sitting in that control room, listening to all that weird sh*t coming out of the speakers, and being responsible for telling the engineer, Ami Hadani (who was not on acid), what to do."

The song "What's the Ugliest Part of Your Body," from We're Only in It for the Money, was either inspired by, or inspired, a 1960's advertisement for "Pretty Feet Deodorant".

Originally thinking it had signed a "white blues band", Verve Records (MGM) was convinced by producer Tom Wilson to spend $25-35,000 to record Freak Out!, the first album by "The Mothers of Invention". At the time, this was an enormous sum for an unknown group. By contrast, The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's cost approximately $60,000 to record, a record amount at the time. MGM was not happy once the total cost was known.

In 1989, Zappa wrote an autobiography/memoir co-written by Frank Occhiogrosso entitled The Real Frank Zappa Book. His official website calls the 1990 publication "the absolutely official book on Frank Zappa. 100% true and based entirely on reality." The New York Post was impressed, saying "This book belongs in every home."

Before Freak Out! was released, the record company (MGM) told Zappa that the band would have to change their name, saying no DJ would play a record by a group called "The Mothers". So the band's name was changed to The Mothers of Invention, in lieu of MGM's suggestion, "The Mothers Auxiliary".

On May 11 1980, Ladislav Brožek discovered a small asteroid which, after an internet campaign which included what may have been the first world-wide on-line petition, was named 3834 Zappafrank in honor of Frank Zappa.

In June of 1995, Christopher Wassif, Diana Cheek, and Robert Belas presented a paper entitled "Molecular Analysis of a Metalloprotease from Proteus mirabilis" in which they named "Gene Proteus Mirabilis ZapA", saying in their Acknowledgements : "We especially thank the late Frank Zappa for inspiration and assistance with genetic nomenclature."