Gail Zappa Quotes

#1. Frank [Zappa]'s music was never for the mass audience. His music contains specific kinds of information that you won't find elsewhere in rock and roll.

Gail Zappa

#2. Certainly Apple has improved enormously. At the beginning, the sampling rate was an issue for me, but a bigger argument was over digital rights, which I had.

Gail Zappa

#3. If you think about how long it takes to write a piece of music for an orchestra, it's outrageous to me, outrageous.

Gail Zappa

#4. When you have a single composer writing his work, it shouldn't be doled out in singles based on the length of a piece.

Gail Zappa

#5. It's the ultimate identity theft when you start messing with somebody's work. Thinking that you could edit the work, or mix it differently, or re-EQ it, or make claims about it that aren't true.

Gail Zappa

#6. The problem with composers is that they are the most unrequired job in America.

Gail Zappa

#7. Live concerts were to train the ears and to introduce, constantly, new musical ideas to the audience so the next time they showed up or the next record they would be ready and receptive.

Gail Zappa

#8. I don't think there's a problem with people discovering the music unless there's no way to get to them. That's the problem that you always have.

Gail Zappa

#9. I think ingenuity is part of our DNA. That plus curiosity, plus the willingness to commit.

Gail Zappa

#10. It's nice to hear when someone gets something and the sincerity is enough to tickle you. They can have the wrong notes but the essence of it is there, so it makes you laugh, because even when Frank [Zappa]'s music is sad, it makes me laugh.

Gail Zappa

#11. My obligation is to release the music the way Frank [Zappa] released it.

Gail Zappa

#12. Musicians more than most people are in the moment. That's the dual nature of that job.

Gail Zappa

#13. It's one thing to write the music, it's another thing to write it down, it's another thing to play it, and something else altogether again to learn how to play it. These are the elements that are fascinating, and, you know, move my world.

Gail Zappa

#14. Frank [Zappa] was not a big fan of having lyrics, but sometimes he had things to say that lent themselves to lyrics.

Gail Zappa

#15. You can't get a guitar player like Dweezil without his commitment to the work that it takes A) to be the musician that he is and B) to the music itself.

Gail Zappa

#16. When I put out the records, when I make a distribution deal, those distributors tell me who they sell it to and how many copies. So I want nothing less.

Gail Zappa

#17. I never dreamed that my future would be my husband's past. But it's such a huge past in terms of the recorded content.

Gail Zappa

#18. Frank [Zappa] always wanted to do a sound library - he sampled so many great musicians. For piano, for example, he sampled every octave, not just one (that you could just transpose electronically), and he did all different types of attack, with and without pedals, all that kind of stuff.

Gail Zappa

#19. Frank [Zappa] said he probably would have been a major criminal, given his brain power and his attention to detail, had he not been a composer. But being a composer is not something you can't help.

Gail Zappa