One blues guitarist would inspire everything Frank Zappa did: “The first”
There’s an image of Frank Zappa that is forever stuck in my head. It sees him with a custard background, bounds of curly dark hair tied up in pigtails, with his facial expression akin to something of a bemused genius.
It sticks in my mind because it seems to represent everything he was. Not only was Zappa a serious musical talent bordering on a subversive savant, and don’t let anybody tell you differently, but he also had humour and a keen sense of experimentation. Zappa wasn’t your everyday rock star, and that showed in everything he did. It was there in his wild performances, it was there in his television appearance playing a bicycle as an instrument and in his likes and dislikes.
Frank Zappa was not an easy man to impress. In his day, the classical music prodigy-come-fret-churning-perfectionist developed a reputation as one of America’s most astoundingly gifted guitarists. Feared by his rivals and admired by his collaborators, Zappa could cut even the most celebrated musicians down to size — something he made sure to do on a regular basis.
Speaking in an interview in the 1970s, Zappa was asked to give his thoughts on some of his contemporaries; this he found quite difficult. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page: all of them, in Zappa’s view, were pretty run-of-the-mill players who had taken one too many honks of the old Peruvian marching powder. “I knew Jimi,” Zappa said when asked to name his favourite guitarists, “And I think the best thing you could say about Jimi was: there was a man who shouldn’t use drugs.”
Hendrix got off fairly lightly compared to some of the other members of the rock elite. For example, when asked to express his thoughts about Rory Gallagher, Zappa said: “We worked two jobs with Rory Gallagher on his tour and, uh…[long pause]…he’s still playing the blues”. That’s not to say that there weren’t some guitarists Zappa was impressed by; he named Jeff Beck “one of his favourite guitarists on the planet,” going on to note: “From a melodic standpoint and just in terms of the conception of what he plays, he’s fabulous. I like Jeff.”
But, on the whole, Zappa just wasn’t that impressed by rock guitarists, largely because he didn’t listen to rock ‘n’ roll. He was never a pop music consumer, preferring the dulcet tones of Chopin, Purcell and Webern. It was a position that helped to differentiate him from the rest of the rock and roll set, and, because of that, it is generally assumed that he probably amped up his influence on his music more for marketing purposes than to be truly honest.
Deep down, though, Zappa did have a soft spot for some of the early rock ‘n’ roll guitarists. Pushed to name the artists who helped him fall in love with the instrument, he said: “Well, my original favourite guitar player was Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, not from a technical standpoint but from listening to what his notes meant in the context they were played.” Wtason was a powerhouse who came out of the tracks like a steam train on a collision course with the future. However, sticking to the rails was never really Zappa’s bag.
Instead, it was an innovator, an early rock agitator, who perhaps had the greatest influence on Zappa, “also Guitar Slim, who was the first guitar player that I ever heard that had distortion – even during the ’50s. In a strange way, I think I probably derive more of my style from his approach to the guitar than the solos I heard before then”.
In 1954, Guitar Slim was the biggest name in the blues world thanks to his smash hit single ‘The Things That I Used to Do’, which saw him bring hitherto unseen levels of intensity to electric guitar playing. After years of playing house parties on the streets of New Orleans, the single established him as one of the most successful acts in the country, outselling all but two singles from the whole of the 1950s.
His exuberant style and thrilling on-stage acrobatics wowed audiences up and down America, setting a standard that the likes of Zappa would struggle to live up to for decades to come. But it would certainly dangle a light match over the fuel inside Zappa’s own creative being. Just becoming a rock star was never a part of Zappa’s plan and it was unique artists like Slim which proved he didn;t have to follow the rule entirely to achieve the sucess that he desired.
Today, he isn’t nearly as known as he should be.
