“Me against the laws of nature”: the two guitarists who inspired Frank Zappa’s guitar solos
Guitar solos are the bread and butter of every self-congratulatory rock star on the planet, but everybody has their own distinctive style when it comes to soloing. While many are content to play tarted-up scales for half an hour, others have more of an experimental approach to guitar playing. It should go without saying that Frank Zappa was in the latter camp. A largely self-taught guitarist, the Baltimore-born songwriter was never bound by the confines of normality or technical restrictions, free to explore a vast and vibrant world through the portal of his six-string.
That is not to say, of course, that Zappa’s distinctive style was plucked out of the ether; his deep adoration of music was born from the wide-ranging sounds he consumed as a teenager. Originally, Zappa began his musical journey as a percussionist during his teenage years, and he quickly developed an appreciation for the sounds of R&B that were rapidly emerging in the US throughout the 1950s.
At the same time, however, the budding young musician also retained an entrenched love of classical music and modern classical composers like Igor Stravinsky. There cannot have been many teens in the 1950s listening to Stravinsky alongside R&B and doo-wop simultaneously, but these wide-reaching influences go some way to explaining the vast sounds adopted by Zappa over the years.
It was in 1957 that Zappa acquired his first guitar, playing with local bands and rapidly developing his own personal style. Particularly during those early years, Zappa’s self-taught guitar stylings took major cues from the R&B landscape, with Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson being a constant, unwavering influence on the musician. Speaking on the influence of the guitarist, Zappa once declared, “Well, my original favourite guitar player was Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson.”
Watson seemed naturally suited to the sensibilities of Zappa; he was a true showman, renowned for his innovative R&B efforts, and flamboyant performance style. At the same time, Watson was constantly looking forward, reinventing himself and developing his guitar sound. In that sense, it is no surprise that he was one of the great loves of Frank Zappa.
“Not from a technical standpoint,” the songwriter continued in his unending praise of Watson. “But from a listening to what his notes meant in the context in which they were played, and also Guitar Slim who was the first guitar player I ever heard that had distortion — even during the ’50s.”
Both of these pioneering figures left their mark on Zappa’s playing style and his penchant for crafting mind-expanding guitar solos, in particular. “In a strange way, I think I probably derive more of my style from his approach to the guitar from the solos I heard then,” he added.
After all, Zappa’s solo style was unlike any other guitarist of the time; he played in a completely unique way, owing both to those R&B influences of Guitar Slim and Johnny Watson and to the unparalleled innovation of Zappa himself. Explaining his approach to the enigmatic world of guitar solos, the musician once revealed, “I have a basic mechanical knowledge of the operation of the instrument, and I got an imagination. And when the time comes up for me to play a solo, it’s me against the laws of nature.”
“I don’t know what I’m gonna play and don’t know what I’m gonna do,” he shared. “I know roughly how long I have to do it, and it’s a game where you have a piece of time and you get to decorate it.” That summary of his guitar solos could work equally well as Zappa’s inherent musical manifesto.
Darting sporadically from R&B to jazz, prog, blues, psychedelia, classical, and virtually every musical style under the sun, the performer was truly a force of nature, so it makes sense that his expansive guitar solos reflected that fact.
