"The Real Frank Zappa Book" Review

I finally finished the Frank Zappa book, Frank Zappa's autobiography and here is my review.

I'm a big frank Zappa fan and it's hard to find information about him that is reliable, so it was refreshing to read a book written in his own words as this one is, as there are a lot of crappy inferior Zappa books out there that just seem to guess at his motivations. His narrative style is similar to his lyrical style, I found it very funny and a pleasure to read with lots of great Frank Zappa quites. The book is also illustrated throughout with funny little cartoons in a similar style to many of his album covers. Bold and italics are used in the text to highlight particularly ridiculous passages which made me laugh.

His chapter on Captain Beefheart also made me laugh, he belittles Beefheart's entire career in the last paragraph, though I'm sure it was a joke between the two of them. After all if he wrote about all of Beefheart's career it would be Two books! I was also pleasantly surprised to find that Zappa was involved in the recording of "Trout Mask Replica" one of my favorite Beefheart albums.

Zappa also had quite a strange childhood, which explains a few things...

If you are a Zappa fan you will love this book, even if you've never heard of him you will enjoy it's comical edge. At the end he also talks a lot about his political beliefs (it was written in 1988, so these chapters are a bit dated now, but his general sentiment is still very relevant.) There are also some stirring cover ups he discusses at the end too that are worth reading about.

Available now on amazon at unbelievably low prices :)