Frank Zappa ( b30 )

Tape manipulation

In New York, Zappa increasingly used tape editing as a compositional tool. A prime example is found on the double album Uncle Meat (1969), where the track "King Kong" is edited from various studio and live performances. Zappa had begun regularly recording concerts, 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. Later, he combined recordings of different compositions into new pieces, irrespective of the tempo or meter of the sources. He dubbed this process "xenochrony" (strange synchronizations—reflecting the Greek "xeno" (alien or strange) and "chronos" (time).

Personal life

Zappa was married to Kathryn J. "Kay" Sherman from 1960 to 1963. In 1967, he married Adelaide Gail Sloatman. He and his second wife had four children: Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva.

Following Zappa's death, his widow Gail created the Zappa Family Trust, which owns the rights to Zappa's music and other creative output: more than 60 albums were released during Zappa's lifetime and 40 posthumously. Upon Gail's death in October 2015, Zappa's youngest children, Ahmet and Diva, were given control of the trust with shares of 30% each, while his older children, Moon and Dweezil, were given smaller shares of 20% each.

Beliefs and politics

Drugs

Zappa stated, "Drugs do not become a problem until the person who uses the drugs does something to you, or does something that would affect your life that you don't want to have happen to you, like an airline pilot who crashes because he was full of drugs." Zappa was a heavy tobacco smoker for most of his life, and strongly critical of anti-tobacco campaigns.

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