Dweezil Zappa gave himself a difficult assignment a decade ago when he decided he’d take his father Frank’s music on the road.
“It’s definitely the most challenging music I’ve ever learned,” Zappa said. “I’ve always been drawn to complex and sophisticated guitar stuff. As a kid, I was obsessed with learning note-for-note solos by Edward Van Halen. My father’s music is at a much different level of complexity.”
Figuring out that music -- and understanding how his father worked -- continues for Dweezil, who will bring Zappa Plays Zappa to the Rococo Theatre Tuesday.
“Prior to learning it, I’d listen to it and wonder how it was created, what he was thinking of when he wrote this stuff,” Zappa said. “That process is still happening now. But I have discovered things, the tricks and tools that he uses ... Frank was certainly using different techniques throughout his whole career. Western music has 12 pitches. It seems to me Frank had a whole other set of pitches he was working with.”
Take, for example, “Be Bop Tango (of the Old Jazzman’s Church),” a nearly 17-minute song that Zappa Plays Zappa will play Tuesday night. It was even longer when originally conceived with an audience participation section left off the recorded version of the song, Zappa said.
“It’s a perfect example of the way Frank was making his modern compositions, giving people a taste of the composition in the opening, then having a spot of improvisation and audience participation,” Zappa said. “The composition is just the first two minutes. The rest is improvisation. But that two minutes is probably the hardest things I’ve had to learn on the guitar. There are some leaps in there just to get your fingers in the right place and get the pick there at the same time. And I’m only playing half the melody.”
“Be Bop Tango (of the Old Jazzman’s Church)” is the final cut on “Roxy & Elsewhere,” the live Zappa & The Mothers album that was recorded in 1973 and 1974. Zappa Plays Zappa will play the entire record, long considered one of Frank’s best, as a tribute to its 40th anniversary.
FRANK ZAPPA AT GONZO
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