this bicycle sounded like a piece of crapYeah, Frank Zappa was musical genius, guitar god, and one of a kind. And yes - he knew Hendrix and all the greats. There's an excerpt in Shep Gordon's book about the Landmark Hotel and the musicians he met there while he was a "pharmaceutical" salesman. Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison, The Chambers Brothers... They all hung out, knew each other, and sometimes played together. Of course, Zappa never did drugs. Zappa helped discover Alice Cooper and wanted to sign him - Zappa told Cooper (then Vincent Furnier) to come by his home studio "at 7" for an audition and Cooper showed up with his band at 7 AM instead of PM. Zappa listened half asleep in his bathrobe and simply said "I don't get it". Which apparently meant it was great. At the time, they were musically awful (being all art majors instead of musicians) but Zappa saw the potential.
Anyway, Zappa was way ahead of his time. Here's an old TV clip of Zappa playing a bicycle on the Steve Allan show. Check out the haircut and the suit!!
[SIZE=+2]I know that we all know it by heart and hum it to our children nightly when we put them to bed so give this arrangement a moment of your time...
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One should also consider Clapton, Hendrix, Waters, Bowie, Jagger .... as being quality classical composers if they had chosen to do so.Even though he wrote great melodies for The Beatles, I don't believe McCartney would have made it as a classical composer. Too sentimental, he would have been a poor man's Rachmaninov at best.
Zappa's music is studied at the music programs in various universities. His only collaboration with Jack Bruce (Cream).
Of the list of great musicians, only Roger Waters would make it as a classical composer. And he'd be writing mainly operas. Of the others Hendrix and Bowie would come close, Hendrix would probably be a traveling virtuoso that other composers would compose for. He'd be like Joseph Joachim or Francesco Zappa. Bowie, not quite, awesome lyricist but some of his best music was written by Carlos Alomar and Robert Fripp.One should also consider Clapton, Hendrix, Waters, Bowie, Jagger .... as being quality classical composers if they had chosen to do so.