Frank Zappa

Barry Miles knew Frank Zappa intimately and was present at the recording of some of his most important albums. This sparkling biography brings Zappa the musician and composer, Zappa the controversialist, and Zappa the family man (despite his love of groupies, he was married for more than 30 years) together for the first time.

Barry Miles' biography follows Zappa from his sickly Italian-American childhood in the 1940s - when his father used DDT to clean the kitchen - to his death from cancer in the 1990s. Zappa's initial desire was to be a classical composer, but he soon came to realize that his ambition was more likely to lead to starvation than stardom, so he decided to join a band that played music people actually want to listen to. In the mid 1960s Zappa became the leader of a noisy band called 'The Mothers of Invention' who went on to be one of the most internationally famous rock groups of the era.