Top 100 Zappa's Quotes
#1. Zoyd remembered her...as a tall florid girl in a minidress that bore the image, from neck to hemline, of Frank Zappa's face, thus linking her in Zoyd's mind somehow with Mount Rushmore.
Thomas Pynchon
#2. I'm jamming 'Black Sabbath Vol. 4' all the time. Zappa's 'Cruising With Ruben & The Jets.' A lot of Gong lately. Some Hawkwind. The Residents' 'Duck Stab' is amazing. Some Fugs. Lots of stuff, man. I'm pretty schizophrenic with records.
Ty Segall
#3. In my opinion, Lenny Bruce was more of an influence on Zappa's satirical lyric's than anyone that I know of.
Jimmy Carl Black
#4. Jeff Beck is my idol .. sometimes he finds notes that I just do not have on my guitar. Frank Zappa's another one .. I loved Frank Zappa ... I do think Van Halen reinvented the guitar ... he's an excellent musician, a shrewd guitarist and as a person he's wonderful ...
Ritchie Blackmore
#5. 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
#6. But I mean, again, Zappa's far more musical than the Bonzos ever were.
Neil Innes
#7. 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
#8. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#9. They's making it worse, the labor movement got the mafia curse.
Frank Zappa
#10. Let's be realistic about this, the guitar can be the single most blasphemous device on the face of the earth. That's why I like it ... The disgusting stink of a too-loud electric guitar: now that's my idea of a good time.
Frank Zappa
#11. There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.
Frank Zappa
#12. Whatever you have to do to have a good time, let's get on with it, so long as it doesn't cause a murder.
Frank Zappa
#13. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#14. All that we got here is American made. It's a little bit cheesy, but it's nicely displayed.
Frank Zappa
#15. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#16. You can grow up being a troublemaker and then before you know it the next thing you're doing is listening to Frank Zappa whilst chilling out ... now that's the intelligent way out. What would a psychiatrist say about that?
Stephen Richards
#17. There will never be a nuclear war; there's too much real estate involved.
Frank Zappa
#18. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#19. This is a stupid song and that's the way I like it.
Frank Zappa
#20. I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?
Frank Zappa
#21. The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life.
Frank Zappa
#22. It's better to have something to remember than anything to regret.
Frank Zappa
#23. 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
#24. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#25. The crux of the biscuit is: If it entertains you, fine. Enjoy it. If it doesn't, then blow it out your ass. I do it to amuse myself. If I like it, I release it. If somebody else likes it, that's a bonus.
Frank Zappa
#26. I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it's reflective of the chords that I'm considering as I'm soloing, and at the same time I'm going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.
John Frusciante
#27. Musicians more than most people are in the moment. That's the dual nature of that job.
Gail Zappa
#28. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#29. You've got to be digging it while it's happening 'cause it just might be a one shot deal.
Frank Zappa
#30. How strange, when your father's wearing women's clothes and platform shoes, that a pair of loafers looks incredible.
Moon Unit Zappa
#31. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#32. One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.
Al Yankovic
#33. There's no difference in a lot of people's minds between good musicians and popular musicians.
Dweezil Zappa
#34. Do your job and do it right, life's a ball, TV tonight.
Frank Zappa
#35. Weedly-weedly-wee, make a face, hold your guitar like it's your weenie, point it heavenward, and look like you're really doing something. Then, you get a big ovation while the smoke bombs go off, and the motorized lights in your truss twirl around.
Frank Zappa
#36. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#37. Let's not be too rough on our own ignorance, it's what makes America great.
Frank Zappa
#38. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#39. Guitar playing, as currently understood, has more to do with sports than it does to do with music. It's an Olympic challenge type of situation. The challenges are in the realm of speed, redundancy, choreography, and grooming ... clouds of educated gnat-notes.
Frank Zappa
#40. I write the music I like. If other people like it, fine, they can go buy the albums. And if they don't like it, there's always Michael Jackson for them to listen to.
Frank Zappa
#41. Hendrix is one of the most revolutionary figures in today's pop culture, musically and sociologically.
Frank Zappa
#42. Your own experience keeps taking you towards something. My book adds the hope that it's a better something.
Moon Unit Zappa
#43. 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
#44. I think the music of the Fifties is really good. I suspect it's much better musically than much of what's available now. Not in terms of production, but in terms of content.
Frank Zappa
#45. I don't want to lose my name because that's how I know myself. There is a legacy here.
Moon Unit Zappa
#46. There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.
Frank Zappa
#47. A composer's job involves the decoration of fragments of time.
Frank Zappa
#48. We had two rules growing up in my house: If you're going to take a shower, do it with whomever you're dating so you don't waste water; and if you buy one for yourself, buy six, because everybody's going to want one.
Moon Unit Zappa
#49. Moses, Aaron, Abraham, they're all a waste of time. It's your ass that's on the line.
Frank Zappa
#50. The more you can escape from how horrible things really are, the less it's going to bother you ... and then, the worse things get.
Frank Zappa
#51. I have an important message to deliver to all the cute people all over the world. If you're out there and you're cute, maybe you're beautiful. I just want to tell you somethin' - there's more of us UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS than you are, hey-y, so watch out.
Frank Zappa
#52. If there's anything more mortifying than being famous at 14, it's being washed up right after.
Moon Unit Zappa
#53. Give me the enchilada with the pickle sauce shoved up between the donkey's ass.
Frank Zappa
#54. I'm not black, but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white.
Frank Zappa
#55. This here song might offend some, if it does it's because your dumb.
Frank Zappa
#56. 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
#57. I don't think there's a problem. First of all, I don't think music turns people into social liabilities. Because you hear a lyric
Frank Zappa
#58. Basically I'm in the idea business
whether it's a musical idea or a spoken idea ... If you wind up with a political system that wants to put idea men out of business, then you have worry on your hands.
Frank Zappa
#59. The manner in which Americans 'consume' music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie
it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.
Frank Zappa
#60. It's two o'clock in the morning, they're not going to get any nooky anyway, so this one guy and the guy with the t-shirt guy started sniffing the girls panties.
Frank Zappa
#61. Hey, you know something people?
I'm not black
But there's a whole lots a times
I wish I could say I'm not white
Frank Zappa
#62. My English teacher, he's like, he's like Mr. Bu-fu.
Frank Zappa
#63. There's a long tradition - certainly with country, but in all kinds of genres of music - to have humorous lyrics. Certainly with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and, if you look at country, Roger Miller and Jim Stafford.
Rick Moranis
#64. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#65. It's a despicable thing to share your personal inner torment for money.
Frank Zappa
#66. Scientists believe that the universe is made of hydrogen because they claim it's the most plentiful ingredient. I claim that the most plentiful ingredient is stupidity.
Frank Zappa
#67. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#68. Kid's heads are filled with so many nonfacts that when they get out of school they're totally unprepared to do anything. They can't read, they can't write, they can't think. Talk about child abuse. The U.S. school system as a whole qualifies.
Frank Zappa
#69. Scientology , how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion ?
Frank Zappa
#70. I'll take a drive to Beverly Hills
Just before dawn
An' knock the little jockeys
Off the rich people's lawn
An' before they get up
I'll be gone, I'll be gone
Before they get up
I'll be knocking the jockeys off the lawn
Frank Zappa
#71. Let's not be too tough on our own ignorance. It's the thing that makes
America great. If America weren't incomparably ignorant, how could we
have tolerated the last eight years?
Frank Zappa
#72. We are not a Zappa cover band. We only play Frank's songs that were recorded by the Mothers of Invention and I think a lot of those songs were complex.
Jimmy Carl Black
#73. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#74. Republican is fine, if your a millionaire. Democrats is fair, if all you own is what you wear. Neither of them's really right, cause neither of them care.
Frank Zappa
#75. Frank's bands could play the hardest stuff and make it seem like no big deal.
Dweezil Zappa
#76. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#77. You can bet everything will come to an end. It's going to be ugly and it's going to be a mess, and it's going to be something that somebody did in the name of God ...
Frank Zappa
#78. Fact of the matter is, there is no hip world, there is no straight world. There's a world, you see which has people in it who believe a variety of different things.
Frank Zappa
#79. The computer can't tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what's missing is the eyebrows.
Frank Zappa
#80. Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me. It's baffling whenever you find someone who's smart - incredible. Soon you'll have zoos for such things.
Frank Zappa
#81. I think that people are entitled to be amused, and entertained. If they see deviations from this classical norm, it's probably good for their mental health.
Frank Zappa
#82. I made enough money to buy a house. That's crazy, but fame proved ephemeral.
Moon Unit Zappa
#83. 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
#84. Nowadays I just don't care; I've taken the Frank Zappa stance. I am who I am! Some love me, some loathe me, some respect me and some despise me. But after all that's been, I still love the insane! As they're exciting, dangerous and highly explosive! For me mad dogs are gentlemen.
Stephen Richards
#85. 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.
Dweezil Zappa
#86. The whole music business in the United States is based on numbers, based on unit sales and not on quality. It's not based on beauty, it's based on hype and it's based on cocaine. It's based on giving presents of large packages of dollars to play records on the air.
Frank Zappa
#88. Find you a bridge and take a jump. Just make certain you do it right the first time, cause nothing's worse than a suicide chump.
Frank Zappa
#89. Everyone has flaws. It's a matter of finding the ones you can live with.
Moon Unit Zappa
#90. So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there's no way you're gonna find out what it means.
Frank Zappa
#91. I feel that through my father's music I've found my own voice in my own playing.
Dweezil Zappa
#92. And nobody knows where her new dorm room is - or even if she has one." She shook her head. "It's a mystery.
Shana Muldoon Zappa
#93. Hey, let's get serious ... God knows what he's doin' He wrote this book here And the book says: 'He made us all to be just like Him', So ... If we're dumb ... Then God is dumb ... (And maybe even a little ugly on the side)
Frank Zappa
#94. One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.
Frank Zappa
#95. Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition.
Frank Zappa
#96. 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
#97. 'Pastoralia' by George Saunders. Possibly my favorite book. It's one of the weirdest books I've ever read. If Monty Python and Thomas Pynchon had a love child, and it was raised by Frank Zappa on a weird commune, that would be this book.
Libba Bray
#98. It's the same mysterious exotic oriental fragrance as what the Beatles get off on.
Frank Zappa
#99. The devil, he's about this big. He had a red suit on and a widow's peak, and then a pointed tail, and like a sulfur reek. Yes, it was him alright, I swear.
Frank Zappa
#100. You know, people are basically shitty. It's when they prove it over and over again that it gets obnoxious.
Frank Zappa
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