Author Bradley Morgan, who wrote a spectacular book on U2’s Joshua Tree, which I previously reviewed here, brings us the book we needed about Frank Zappa, a man who wore his social conscience and well-earned disdain for systemic control over pure artistic expression on his sleeve. From the very first sounds emanating from Zappa’s legendary Mothers of Invention to the final missives of his solo career before his untimely death from cancer at age 52 in 1993, Morgan deconstructs and parses it all with equal measure celebration and deconstruction. Zappa was a complicated man and mercurial artist, and this book manages to capture his oeuvre completely and without compromise.
Broken into chapters that both work chronologically through Zappa’s career and catalog, but also dissects the serious subjects he composed compelling and challenging songs about and designed entire themed albums around – to name just a few; systemic racism, media propaganda, the religious right, the radical left, American hypocrisy, celebrity worship, sexual deviance of every kind, and definitions of what freedom means.
Much of Zappa’s material is as far afield of any semblance of political correctness or even societal norms, for his time, and certainly wildly out-of-step with today’s standards, however, Morgan, in the most detailed way you are likely to ever find again, frames the songwriter’s aims and methods that never wavered from intriguing. In fact, the book presents Zappa’s unblinking dedication to spreading his personal philosophy through satire as unmatched beyond any contemporary artist save for Randy Newman in blatant character-driven scenarios that cut bone deep.
Mostly, Frank Zappa’s America resonates as prominently today as ever. Many of the issues that plagued Zappa in his lifetime have raged to the fore today, making Morgan’s work here less history than portend.
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