Classic Rock

 UK

 
Classic Rock, established in 1998, is dedicated to radio format of classic rock ... focusing on key bands from the 1960s through early 1990s. One of the UK's best selling music magazines. (wikipedia)

2002 August

No. 43

 

Jazz Rock
By Tommy Udo, pp 46-47, 49-53


page 47:

Frank Zappa and his band the Mothers Of Invention shoved jazz – along with everything else, from Stravinsky, surf music, doo-wop and cocktail music – into their sound. 'Return Of The Magnetic Monster', on the Mothers' 1966 debut 'Freak Out', took the avant garde jazz of Coltrane, Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman into the pop arena – and scared the hell out of a lot of hippies. Later Zappa albums, particularly 'Uncle Meat', 'Burnt Weenie Sandwich', 'Apostrophe' and 'Hot Rats', were straight-ahead jazz rock albums. Zappa also worked with jazz fusion figures such as violinist Jean Luc Ponty, who later joined the second line-up of The Mahavishnu Orchestra, and keyboards wizard George Duke, better known for his funk/disco output in the late 70s and early 80s but a seminal figure in jazz rock, partucularly on his 1977 album 'The Dream'.

Source: Fulvio Fiore 

 

2003 November

No. 59

 

Trippin' The Light Fantastic
By Hugh Fielder, pp 66-80


This issue focuses on "acid rock" and contains long article by Hugh Fielder on 60s Los Angeles acid scene. Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart are both mentioned briefly plus a picture of the Mothers of Inventions is added.

 The contents list and full texts are available at Classic Rock archive. We don't have page scans, but look at the same article with same pictures in Russian Classic Rock, December 2003.

We can’t leave LA without mentioning Frank Zappa and his childhood and student chum Captain Beefheart, two of the city’s most famous freaks. Zappa was caustically anti-drugs, and albums like ‘Freak Out’, ‘Absolutely Free’ and ‘Lumpy Gravy’ with The Mothers Of Invention took the piss out of the hippies while defying them to see through his own avant-garde music.

The fact that most hippies didn’t get the joke enabled him to keep on playing it. Some of them still don’t.

Captain Beefheart was more ambivalent about drugs.

He was an artist, apparently, so he was allowed to take them. He described LSD as an “awfully overrated aspirin and very similar to the old people’s Disneyland”. He took a singular delight in breaking rock’n’roll conventions, and was outraged and disgusted when record company executives altered his strange rhythms and stranger harmonies to try to make them palatable.

His first album, ‘Safe As Milk’, sounded like a tripped-out Howlin’ Wolf as the Captain’s voice gear-shifted instantly from a soprano squawk to a sub-woofer growl while his band (including a 16-year-old Ry Cooder) beat out a bluesy grunge. But behind the gruff, almost menacing exterior there were plenty of deft touches that suggested this was no ordinary punk. Thanks to John Peel, the album was more popular in Britain than America. For the Captain, however, it was just the beginning.

 

 

2009 August

No. 137

 

Dee Snider of Twisted Sister on Frank Zappa/John Denver. pp 40, 42.


FRANK ZAPPA/JOHN DENVER
Back in 1985 I was fiercely opposed to the idea of placing warning labels on records. I appeared before the US Senate – along with Frank Zappa and John Denver. Frank and me were both concerned about how Denver would handle it. He had a successful TV show and a movie career; he was the clean-cut and mom's-apple-pie John Denver. They invited him assuming he would be on the side of truth, justice and the American way. But Denver hadn't forgotten how Rocky Mountain High had been banned for being a drugs song, which it wasn't. And Oh, God, the movie he did with George Burns [in 1977] was thought by many to be sacrilegious. So when Denver compared the idea of suckering records to Nazi book-burnings, the Senate was kind of surprised.

Zappa's children – Moon Unit and Dweezil – turned out to be Twisted Sister fans. I was there with my father, Bob, who's a police officer and an ex-Korean War veteran – a tough guy. Frank asked my dad to look after his kids while he testified. To this day it's one of Bob's fondest memories: "Hey, Dee, remember the time we were in Washington and Frank Zipper asked me to watch Dweezil Unit and Moon Zipper?" Bless him.

 

 

2009 September

No. 136

 

The Impossible Made Possible
Frank Zappa

By Dweezil Zappa, p 83


Special collector's issue "100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time" chosen by the 100 greatest living guitarists. Issue had 4 collectible covers: Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards and Frank Zappa.

One page on Frank Zappa with commentary by Dweezil Zappa. No Zappa content on the CD.

Russian edition of "100 Greatest Guitarists Of All Time".

Source: slime.oofytv.set

 

2010 March

No. 142

 


Gene Simmons on page 36

FRANK ZAPPA

I knew his son, Dweezil, socially and he actually learned to play guitar from a guitar player I discovered ... Eddie Van Halen. So it all comes full circle somehow. Dweezil actually brought me over to see Frank before he passed away and we started to talk about stuff - music and life philosophies and so on, and after he passed away it was his family that actually gathered around the idea of doing something post his passing. I asked if they had any unfinished Frank pieces because I'd love to finish them and get the family around, and so we came together on Black Tongue, which was Frank's title, not mine. I had this 30-second bit that I built an entire song on, this loop, and I played all the instruments and got all the Zappa family in. It was the only song in the entire Zappa history where the entire remaining family members actually sang around the same mic.

 

2010 June

No. 145

The Freak-Out! List / 200 Motels
By Gavin Martin, p 98


Zappa doc, and his rock-biz movie reissued.

 

2010 July

No. 146

 


The issue included free poster mag The 50 Albums That Built Prog Rock. Freak Out is listed as first entry.


Excerpt from interview with W.A.S.P frontman Blackie Lawless, page 40:

FRANK ZAPPA

When the PMRC stuff was going on he really ran point on that whole thing for everybody. He had been through censorship stuff in the 60s and he had seen this monster rear its ugly head before. He knew it was about guys seeking a higher office, it wasn’t about censorship. We didn’t, we were kids, we were new. The thing I got off of him a few years later was I realised that he was running point for us. Specifically he was catching all the hell, he was paving that path for us to do the music we were doing without really giving it a lot of thought. Without thinking about pressure or being molested, so to speak.

I ran into him about a year before he died. I sat down and told him: "I want to thank you for what you did. I understand now why you did what you did." He was very humble about it; he just shrugged his shoulders and was like, "Hey, I was just doing my job."

 

2010 August

No. 148

Dweezil Zappa: Return Of The Son Of ...
By Charles Shaar Murray, p 88

2010 October

No. 150

150 Greatest Debut Albums Of All Time
- Freak Out

p 48

Buyer's Guide - Captain Beefheart
pp 104-105


On page 28 is Zappa At The Roundhouse event announced. The best part of this issue is Captain Beefheart buyer's guide on pp 104-105.

 

2010 December

No. 152

Zappa: The Hard Way
By John Doran, p 96


Review of Andy Greenaway's book Zappa The Hard Way.

 

2011 March

No. 155

Captain Beefheart, January 15, 1941 - December 17, 2010
By Mick Farren, p 21

Captain Beefhearts Far Cry
By Lester Bangs, pp 80-82, 85-86, 120


This interview by Lester Bangs was first published in Village Voice, October 1980. 

 

2011 December

No. 165

Portraits: Baron Wolman
By Baron Wolman, pp 70-73


This article is extracted from Every Picture Tells A Story: The Rolling Stone Years by Baron Wolman.

 

2012 October

No. 176

GTO's Permanent Damage (review)
By Mick Farren, p 67

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - The Lost Broadcasts
(review)
By Mick Farren, p 94

The Mothers Of Invention - We're Only In It For The Money (review)
By Ian Fortnam, p 102

2012 December

No. 178

The Fabulous Furry Freak Brother!
By Mick Wall, pp 76-79, 81-82, 129-130


If you need the full text: killuglyradio.

cover with cd

 

2013 September

No. 188

Frank Zappa's 200 Motels (review)
By Charles Shaar Murray, p 102


Source: Vitaly Zaremba

 

2013 December

No. 191

1993 AC/DC Meet Zappa!
p 75

Zappa Plays Zappa
By Dave Ling, p 121


Two short interviews with Dweezil Zappa. First one about Frank Zappa-AC/DC connection; the second one on Roxy & Elsewhere tour.

Source: Vitaly Zaremba

 

2015 Summer

No. 212

American Graffiti
By Mark Ellen, pp 78-82, 84-85


Throughout the 1970s, Frank Zappa hated the hippies as much as he did the establishment, loved jazz as much as rock and played dumb with incredible technical prowess, making his music thrillingly unique. 

Source: slime.oofytv.set

 

2016 Sepember

No. 228

Frank Zappa: The Lumpy Money Project/Object/
Road Tapes Venue #1 - #3
By Ian Fortnam, p 92


  

Source: Fulvio Fiore

 

2017 November

No. 242

Dweezil Zappa. Get ready for 50 years of Frank and the Mothers
By Dave Ling, p 109


 

 

2018 May

No. 248

Zappa/Mothers: The Roxy Performances
By Ian Fortnam, p 101


 

 

2018 June

No. 249

Pamela Des Barres: I'm With The Band (book review)
By Emma Johnston, pp 104-105


 

 

2018 Summer (August)

No. 251

From Russia With Love
By Dave Everley, pp 64-66


Page 65:

...
Bon Jovi weren’t the band’s only champions in the US. Belov [Gorki Park guitarist Alexey Belov]  had met Frank Zappa via Stas Namin when Zappa visited Russia in the late 80s. Because Belov spoke English, he was assigned as Zappa’s driver. Zappa returned the favour by appointing himself Gorky Park’s unofficial mentor for the next few years.

“They were making their name for themselves over there, and they were one of the things that were brought to his attention,” says Frank’s son Dweezil Zappa. “I think it was a combination of musical and cultural things that drew him toward them. What was unusual at the time was this fusing of Western rock’n’roll with Russian cultural influences, from classical music to folk. They had a different kind of a sound because of their background. It wasn’t like they were trying to be a Russian Bon Jovi – they had their own thing, with an American production edge.”

Frank Zappa passed on nuggets of wisdom he’d learned from 25 years in the music industry: what to do, what not to do, when to talk, when to shut up. He invited the band to his house in Los Angeles. “Every time he did a new recording, he would invite us to his house,” says Belov. “We were at his place a hundred times.” 
...

 

 

2019 March

No. 259

100 Greatest Albums of the 60s
pp 21-79
   #49 We're Only In It For The Money
   by Ian Fortnam, p 38
   #39 Hot Rats
   by Paul Henderson, p 41


Source: Vitaly Zaremba 

 

2020 January

No. 270

Frank Zappa: The Hot Rats Sessions
By Paul Henderson, p 92


Source: Vitaly Zaremba 

 

2020 July

No. 276

Frank Zappa: Brighton Centre, April 16, 1988 (concert review)
By Tim Batcup, p 104


 

 

2020 August

No. 278

Frank Zappa: The Mothers 1970
By Hugh Fielder, p 93


 

 

2021 January

No. 283

Zappa (DVD) (review)
By David Stubbs, p 99


 

 

2021 May

No. 287

100 Most Influential Guitar Heroes
By various authors


page 26:

Frank Zappa. Being so lauded as a composer and arranger often overshadows Zappa’s unique playing as a guitarist, but his headspinning invention, mastery and syntax puts him in a category all on his own. Listen to this: Son Of Mr. Green Genes

 

 

2021 July

No. 289

Frank Zappa/The Mothers Of Invention: Hi-res reissues
By David Stubbs, p 91


 

 

2021 Summer

No. 290

Frank Zappa: Zappa 88, The Last U.S. Show
By Hugh Fielder, p 93


 

 

2021 December

No. 295

Frank Zappa: 200 Motels (50th Anniversary Edition)
By Ian Fortnam, p 83


 

 

2022 April

No. 299

Frank & Co: Conversations With Frank Zappa
By Hugh Fielder, p 90


Book by Co de Kloet reviewed.

 

 

2022 May

No. 300

Frank Zappa & The Mothers: The Mothers 1971
By David Stubbs, p 91


 

 

2022 July

No. 302

Cynthia Plaster Caster
By Dave Ling, p 11

Frank Zappa: Zappa/Erie
By Ian Fortnam, p 86


  

 

 

2022 November

No. 307

Frank Zappa: Zagreb '75
By Hugh Fielder, p 83


 

 

 

2023 January

No. 309

Frank Zappa: Waka/Wazoo
By Ian Fortnam, p 89


On page 106, Ian Anderson, My biggest disappointment:
When Frank Zappa was terminally ill, I reeived a message to say he would like me to call him. I’d never met him. Iwas a fan, but my instinct was he really didn’t like Jethro Tull, so it was a little odd. I dialled the number three times, but each time I hung up in panic; I was embarrassed—what do you say to a dying man? A few weeks later he died. From what I heard he’d wanted to talk to a few people, just to say hi, and I was one of them. It wouldn’t have changed anything, except I would have had my first and last words with one of the great original composers and performers of rock music history.

 

 

2023 April

No. 312

Frank Zappa: Zappa '80, Mudd Club/Munich
By Ian Fortnam, p 85


 

 

 

2023 June

No. 314


Page 106, Steve Harley, The Guitar Hero:
Frank Zappa. He was a one-off - unique as a composer, as a wit, and then as a guitar player. He played jazz, basically, and he hardly ever bent a note, it was all just brilliant technique. Play Stink-Foot from Apostrophe ('); he rips off this solo out of nowhere that is just beyond historic.