Interview By Robert L. Doerschuk & Jim Aikin
From A Definitive Tribute to Frank Zappa (Best of Guitar Player, 1994)

In late 1986, Zappa released Jazz From Hell, an album of diabolically dense musings concocted on the Synclavier. This was all the excuse Keyboard needed to feature him on their February 1987 cover.-- Editor

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Frank Zappa was born too soon. After years of running sidemen through impossible charts and resigning himself to the distractions and imperfections of live performance, he's finally got what he wants: an instrument on which he can nail down the complex sound blends, polyrhythms, and lines that could formerly come together only in his head.

No, it's not a souped-up guitar. Though he is known as a guitarist of formidable originality, Zappa hasn't touched the instrument much during the past two years. These says you'll most likely find him at his home studio, bent over the keyboard of a New England Digital Synclavier.

He's not necessarily giving up on live gigs, mind you. In fact, his upcoming ten-album compilation of concert performances is designed to show young listeners raised on sequencers and drum machines that the essence of real-time playing lies beyond the reach of studio hermits. But as far back as his first albums with the Mothers Of Invention, Zappa displayed a double creative mentality. As an improviser on guitar he could hold his own against Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and the best of the era. His strongest episodes, though, were often his written pieces, which required reading chops and discipline to a point beyond the reach of your typical blooz-'n'-boogie droner.

[Full Interview]