Frank zappa album flow chart license#

'He said, 'I would really like it if you could be one of the people that could actually keep my music played, in some way, shape or form.' Those were his words,' Willis says. Willis says he talked to Zappa a week before the composer died. He now tours with Project/Object and other unauthorized cover bands. Willis is a singer and guitarist who worked with Frank Zappa on and off for 17 years. 'The main reason I'm doing this is because I love Frank,' Willis says. 'But it was not a statement made by Frank. 'We wrote something for Moon to say on the hot line,' she says. Gail Zappa insists that it's not what some fans and musicians have made it out to be. The message was read by Zappa's daughter, Moon Unit. The message says, in part, 'Just play his music if you're a musician. Many fans point to a message that was left on the hot line for Zappa's record label shortly after he died of prostate cancer in 1993. But some of the musicians who have been threatened by her lawyers have doubts.

Gail Zappa insists that she's not playing favorites. There are cover bands that the Zappa family does endorse, including Zappa Plays Zappa, a band fronted by Frank's son Dweezil. 'And they are telling the audience that's never heard it before that this is Frank Zappa's music. 'Somebody goes out there, plays music - it's not played very well it doesn't sound anything like what the composer intended,' she says. That's why Gail Zappa has a problem with some cover bands. That's always been the main thrill for me, is to come up with a musical idea and have it performed some way, and I'm especially thrilled if it's performed correctly.' 'Goal one for a composer is to just hear what it was that you wrote,' Zappa said, 'because you like to listen to music, as well as write it. As he told WHYY's Fresh Air in 1989, he struggled with symphony orchestras - and his own bands - to get his music right. She lost but plans to appeal.īy all accounts, Frank Zappa was a perfectionist who liked to keep a tight grip on his business and his art. It seems that Gail Zappa has never actually sued a cover band, but she has sued a 20-year-old festival in Germany called the Zappanale for trademark infringement. Music lawyers consulted for this story agreed.

Frank zappa album flow chart license#

'I'm not a lawyer, but that is the opinion and direction I've been given by probably a dozen lawyers at this point.'Ĭholmondeley maintains that as long as the venues he plays have paid for a blanket license from the performance-rights organization ASCAP, he is not doing anything illegal. But we can perform it,' says guitarist Andre Cholmondeley, who plays in a long-running Zappa cover band called Project/Object.

'You or I cannot record that material and sell it for money. But many of the people who continue to perform Frank Zappa's music say they don't need permission. Gail Zappa is going after cover bands she accuses of 'identity theft.' Her lawyers have sent scores of cease-and-desist letters. 'The people I'm going after are not licensing the music.' 'I don't really care who's doing it, as long as they get a license,' she says. She insists that anyone who does try to perform it in public needs to pay royalties to his estate. 'I want people to play Frank's music,' she says. Gail Zappa says musicians are still struggling to play what her husband wrote. Some of L.A.'s best studio musicians balked at the parts Zappa had written - until he picked up his guitar and tossed off the sections he'd written for bassoon and bass clarinet. Lumpy Gravy is a suite of three-minute movements, built on Zappa's love of 20th-century classical music (particularly that of Edgard Varese), R&B and jazz. It's almost as if Frank Zappa was writing avant-garde classical music in Top 40 segments, says Rolling Stone's David Fricke, who wrote the liner notes for the new set. 'At one point, he turned to me when we were listening, just to playback,' Gail Zappa says, 'and he said, 'Did I write that?' It was so shocking.' Zappa was a 26-year-old, self-taught composer with long hair and a funny goatee when he walked into a Capitol Records studio in Los Angeles and handed an orchestra charts for Lumpy Gravy. One session produced the Mothers of Invention album We're Only in It for the Money, the group's third release. It combines music - released and unreleased - that Frank Zappa recorded in 1967. The most recent effort from the Zappa Family Trust is a three-disc set titled Lumpy Money. It's part of an effort by his widow, Gail, to keep Zappa's legacy alive. He put out more than 60 records, and unreleased music is still trickling out more than 15 years after his death. Frank Zappa was called many things during his life, but lazy wasn't one of them.