Zappa was a highly productive and prolific musician with a controversial critical standing; supporters of his music admired its compositional complexity, while detractors found it lacking emotional depth.

After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the family returned to Maryland, where Zappa's father worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility of the Aberdeen Proving Ground run by the U.S. Army.

[11]: 22  According to The Rough Guide to Rock (2003), "as a teenager Zappa was simultaneously enthralled by black R&B (Johnny 'Guitar' Watson, Guitar Slim), doo-wop (The Channels, The Velvets), and modern composers, such as Igor Stravinsky, Anton Webern and Edgard Varèse.

[1]: 29  Zappa's deep interest in modern classical music began[15] when he read a LOOK magazine article about the Sam Goody record store chain that lauded its ability to sell an LP as obscure as The Complete Works of Edgard Varèse, Volume One.

Wilson signed the Mothers to the Verve division of MGM, which had built up a strong reputation for its releases of modern jazz recordings in the 1940s and 1950s, but was attempting to diversify into pop and rock audiences.

Wilson nominally produced the Mothers' second album Absolutely Free (1967), which was recorded in November 1966, and later mixed in New York, although by this time Zappa was in de facto control of most facets of the production.

[11]: 140–141  It is an "incredible ambitious musical project",[31]: 56  a "monument to John Cage",[22]: 86  which intertwines orchestral themes, spoken words and electronic noises through radical audio editing techniques.

While living in New York City, and interrupted by the band's first European tour, the Mothers of Invention recorded the album widely regarded as the peak of the group's late 1960s work, We're Only in It for the Money (released 1968).

[45] The band thought Zappa had been killed—he had suffered serious fractures, head trauma and injuries to his back, leg, and neck, as well as a crushed larynx, which ultimately caused his voice to drop a third after healing.

In 1972, Zappa released two strongly jazz-oriented solo LPs, Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, which were recorded during the forced layoff from concert touring, using floating line-ups of session players and Mothers alumni.

[50] Other albums from the period are Over-Nite Sensation (1973), which contained several future concert favourites such as "Dinah-Moe Humm" and "Montana", as well as Roxy & Elsewhere (1974) and One Size Fits All (1975), which are notable for the tight renditions of highly difficult jazz fusion songs in such pieces as "Inca Roads", "Echidna's Arf (Of You)" and "Be-Bop Tango (Of the Old Jazzmen's Church)".

[11]: 261 In December 1977, Zappa appeared on the Pasadena, California radio station KROQ-FM and played the entire Läther album, while encouraging listeners to make tape recordings of the broadcast.

[61] However, he earned a ban from the show after the latter episode because he had done what producers called "a disastrous job of hosting" (Zappa reportedly did not get along with cast and crew in the lead-up to recording, then told the audience he was simply reading from cue cards).

[11]: 234  Zappa vehemently denied any antisemitic sentiments, and dismissed the ADL as a "noisemaking organization that tries to apply pressure on people in order to manufacture a stereotype image of Jews that suits their idea of a good time.

The story features singer Ike Willis as the lead character in a rock opera about the danger of political systems,[31]: 140  the suppression of freedom of speech and music—inspired in part by the 1979 Islamic Iranian revolution that had made music illegal[11]: 277 —and about the "strange relationship Americans have with sex and sexual frankness".

[73] The 2 hour and 40 minute movie has footage from concerts in New York around Halloween 1977, with a band featuring keyboardist Tommy Mars and percussionist Ed Mann (who would both return on later tours) as well as guitarist Adrian Belew.

[31]: 161  While some lyrics still raised controversy among critics, some of whom found them sexist,[11]: 284  the political and sociological satire in songs like the title track and "The Blue Light" have been described as a "hilarious critique of the willingness of the American people to believe anything".

The album included one complex instrumental, "Theme from the 3rd Movement of Sinister Footwear", but mainly consisted of rock songs with Zappa's sardonic social commentary—satirical lyrics directed at teenagers, the media, and religious and political hypocrisy.

[84] In May 1982, Zappa released Ship Arriving Too Late to Save a Drowning Witch, which featured his biggest selling single ever, the Grammy Award-nominated song "Valley Girl" (topping out at No.

[92] The album Thing-Fish was an ambitious three-record set in the style of a Broadway play dealing with a dystopian "what-if" scenario involving feminism, homosexuality, manufacturing and distribution of the AIDS virus, and a eugenics program conducted by the United States government.

Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts,[nb 11] and because of his insistence on precise tuning and timing, he was able to augment his studio productions with excerpts from live shows, and vice versa.

[154] Some of his songs, concert performances, interviews and public debates in the 1980s criticized and derided Republicans and their policies—President Ronald Reagan, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), televangelism, and the Christian Right—and warned that the United States government was in danger of becoming a "fascist theocracy.

What if the next bunch of Washington wives demands a large yellow "J" on all material written or performed by Jews, in order to save helpless children from exposure to concealed Zionist doctrine?

As Geoffrey Himes noted in 1993 after the artist's death, Zappa was hailed as a genius by conductor Kent Nagano and nominated by Czechoslovakian President Václav Havel to the country's cultural ambassadorship, but he was in his lifetime rejected twice for admission into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In the late Sixties his Mothers of Invention would slip from Stravinsky's "Petroushka" into The Dovells' "Bristol Stomp" before breaking down into saxophone squeals inspired by Albert Ayler The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004) writes: "Frank Zappa dabbled in virtually all kinds of music—and, whether guised as a satirical rocker, jazz-rock fusionist, guitar virtuoso, electronics wizard, or orchestral innovator, his eccentric genius was undeniable.

[179] Since his death, several musicians have been considered by critics as filling the artistic niche left behind by Zappa, in view of their prolific output, eclecticism and other qualities, including Devin Townsend,[180][181][182][183] Mike Patton[184][185][186] and Omar Rodríguez-López.

[206] Jimi Hendrix[207] and heavy rock and metal acts like Black Sabbath,[208] Living Colour,[209] Simon Phillips,[210] Mike Portnoy,[211] Warren DeMartini,[212] Alex Skolnick,[213] Steve Vai,[214] Strapping Young Lad,[215] System of a Down,[216] and Clawfinger[217] have acknowledged Zappa as inspiration.

[245] Belgian biologists Bosmans and Bosselaers discovered in the early 1980s a Cameroonese spider, which they in 1994 named Pachygnatha zappa because "the ventral side of the abdomen of the female of this species strikingly resembles the artist's legendary moustache".

[249] In 1994, lobbying efforts initiated by psychiatrist John Scialli led the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center to name an asteroid in Zappa's honor: 3834 Zappafrank.

[250] The asteroid was discovered in 1980 by Czechoslovakian astronomer Ladislav Brožek, and the citation for its naming says that "Zappa was an eclectic, self-trained artist and composer ... Before 1989 he was regarded as a symbol of democracy and freedom by many people in Czechoslovakia".