“The most untalented musician”: Five artists who hated Frank Zappa
Known for being an outspoken misanthrope, Frank Zappa drew the ire of many in his time. From slamming politicians to criticising a range of his most prominent peers in the music industry, the American musician was not just a master of experimentalism but damning criticism too.
While this blunt and often highly critical character was something that he turned on himself and the array of musicians that helped bring his vivid sonic vision to life, he yielded the most damage when he turned his heat vision on others outside of his immediate sphere. From maintaining that he preferred the manufactured band The Monkees over The Beatles to generally resenting other British outfits who rose in their wake, the list of musicians Zappa took issue with is a long one.
While these critiques offer insight into the complex machinations of one of the greatest musical minds of the contemporary era, they would also divide opinion from other musicians, who were primed and ready to offer a hefty reply. Yet, it wasn’t only his personality that they would hate; some would also seek to undo what they perceived as his pretentious nonsense and attack the apparent flaws in his creative formula.
It’s only fair that someone so critical should get a taste of their own medicine. Although he probably didn’t give a hoot about what other people had to say, some of those who explicitly hated Zappa were well within their right to do so.
Find five musicians who hated Frank Zappa below.
Five musicians who hated Frank Zappa:
Brian Jones
The decline of The Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones is one of the most tragic of the classic rock period. When he was entering the dark juncture at the end of his life and career, he met an American musician who was making waves on the countercultural underground with his kaleidoscopic sounds. That man was Frank Zappa, and his group The Mothers of the Invention were among the most exciting of the era, thanks to albums such as their 1966 debut Freak Out!
Although Zappa always hated commercial rock ‘n’ roll, he was a big fan of the British band’s work. He once listed Between the Buttons as one of his favourite albums of all time, an interesting point given they openly hate the release.
However, in Let It Rock, Zappa recalled the moment he finally met the great Brian Jones and how his reception let him down. He seemed to dislike him or, worse, not care about his presence and the fact that he preferred Between the Buttons to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s. He said: “I remember seeing Brian Jones very drunk in the Speakeasy one night and telling him I liked it and thought it superior to Sergeant Pepper … whereupon he belched discreetly and turned around.”
David Bowie
Some guitarists are so great that they often get stuck between a rock and a hard place to use the classic adage. That was precisely the liminal space Adrian Belew found himself in one night in the late 1970s when he was working for Frank Zappa, but the cultural behemoth of David Bowie came calling. This would lead to a bitter argument between both musicians over the pioneering axeman’s services.
In 1978, Brian Eno watched a Frank Zappa show in Cologne. As he knew his friend and collaborator Bowie was looking for a guitarist, he called him up and told him he had found his man. The following evening, Zappa performed in Berlin, and following Eno’s suggestion, Bowie and friend Iggy Pop attended. Backstage, the Londoner and the former Stooges vocalist were waiting for Belew, who could not believe they were there.
Without wasting time, Bowie asked Belew if he wanted to be in his band. Under Zappa’s employment, the guitarist was reluctant, but Bowie persisted, saying the tour was nearly over and that his imminent run commenced in a fortnight. He asked Belew to dinner to talk it over, but the restaurant they visited later that night also happened to be serving Zappa and the rest of his outfit. So, when Belew and Bowie arrived, they sat with them, and Bowie, apparently trying to be “cordial”, praised Belew to Zappa.
Zappa knew the rug was about to be pulled from under him, so the typically prickly musician flew off the handle. Via a recollection Belew posted on his Facebook page, the moustachioed rocker said: “Fuck you, Captain Tom.” Belew continued: “David persisted, ‘Oh come on now, Frank, surely we can be gentlemen about this?’ Frank said, ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom’. By this point, I was paralysed. David said, ‘So you really have nothing to say?’ Frank said, ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom.’”
Belew concluded: “David and Coco and I got up and went back out the front door. Getting in the limo, David said in his wonderfully British way, ‘I thought that went rather nicely!’”
Dean Ween
Alternative rock’s perennial outliers, Ween, a duo that fuse genres with artistic panache and a hefty dose of surrealism, are often stylistically related to Zappa. Yet, according to Mickey Melchiondo, better known as Dean Ween, he doesn’t like the ‘Cosmik Debris’ singer and takes issue with his relentless sarcasm and, more pointedly, what he deemed his constant showing-off.
“We didn’t go to Nashville to make fun of these old country legends,” Dean told WBUR in 2017 about his debut Dean Ween Group record, The Deaner, from the previous year.
Taking a shot at Zappa, he continued: “We went there because we love that music, and we wanted them to be part of it. We wouldn’t go down there to make fun of it. There are bands that are sarcastic, and I don’t like it. I don’t like Frank Zappa for that one reason alone. A lot of times, he’s making fun of this genre he’s playing — there’s no doubt that he loves it or whatever, but it’s almost showoff-y. It’s not sincere enough for me.”
“It doesn’t mean you can’t have it both ways,” he concluded by touching on Zappa’s favourite Liverpudlian band. “I think The Beatles without the humour is not The Beatles at all.”
Joni Mitchell
Canadian pioneer Joni Mitchell has always been one of the most outspoken musicians of her generation. From poets to fellow female artists, many have felt her sting. Don’t let the harmonious nature of her work fool you; she has an acid tongue and is afraid of no one. So, she made it known when she lived next door to Frank Zappa, who was ruining her idyllic Laurel Canyon experience.
Not only was Zappa a hippie hater, but paradoxically, he believed in free love, and the latter was an aspect of his life that would grossly offend Mitchell and her mother one day. Luckily, the fact that both were prolific recording artists saved them from physically coming to blows.
“My dining room looked out over Frank Zappa’s duck pond, and once, when my mother was visiting, three naked girls were floating around on a raft in the pond,” Mitchell recalled. “My mother was horrified by my neighbourhood”.
Lou Reed
There is nowhere better to commence this list than with the late Velvet Underground leader, Lou Reed. His spat with Zappa started when the New York band were playing in Los Angeles as part of artist Andy Warhol’s collective, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Allegedly, The Mothers of Invention frontman made a snarky comment about his ‘Venus in Furs’ counterparts and their web of associates from the East Coast.
The critique felt more loaded because both were signed to MGM, which for Zappa exacerbated his hatred of his label mates, as he believed they were receiving more significant publicity than him.
In response, Reed would later destroy Zappa in the media. Even today, it seems strange that two inherently uncommercial acts should be warring over their prominence in the media, particularly when both were on record as hating The Beatles for their accessible sound and business model. However, artistic pride was at play, and both had hubris in bucket loads.
“Frank Zappa is the most untalented musician I’ve ever heard,” Reed angrily asserted, adding, “He can’t play rock ‘n’ roll because he’s a loser.” To which Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison added: “If you told Frank Zappa to eat shit in public, he’d do it if it sold records. I would do it if I liked to.”
In a strange twist of fate, in 1995, two years after Zappa had passed away after a battle with cancer, it was Lou Reed who inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, showing that his hatred for the musician had likely cooled.
