When Frank Zappa Shut Up 'n Stopped Playing Guitar

Zappa’s on-again, off-again love affair with his guitar

- By Noe Gold. Photography by John Livzey

The opening frame of Alex Winter’s 2020 intimate portrait “biopic” documentary, Zappa, shows Frank Zappa on stage at the Sports Hall in Prague, Czech Republic, in 1991 holding the Stratocaster you see on the cover of The Guitar World According to Frank Zappa, a 34-minute collection of rare Zappa solos on an audio cassette that Guitar World released in 1987. “This is the first time I’ve had a reason to play my guitar in three years — and now I will try and tune my guitar,” he says. It was to be his last recorded guitar performance.

In fact, it was several years before that — in October 1986 — that I interviewed Zappa at his Laurel Canyon Fortress of Solitude, now occupied by Lady Gaga, to plan out the tracks of that very same Guitar World cassette — and talk about guitar stuff. [A vinyl edition of the album was re-released on Record Store Day, April 13, 2019.]

As we — GW associate publisher Greg Di Benedetto and I — descended with Frank into the bowels of his private inferno, otherwise known as the United Muffin Research Kitchen (U.M.R.K.), he told me with a straight face that he hadn’t played serious guitar in two years and that he’d even lost his calluses.