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The Latest Breaking News from Frank Zappa

“He said he reflected the craziness around him – he’d see other people go nuts and write about that”: Frank Zappa’s talent for using popular music to sell unpopular music, by people who helped him

Jon Anderson, Adrian Belew, Mike Keneally and Don Preston discuss dealing with the filthy freak’s genius up close – and what you’re missing if you haven’t investigated his catalogue

Louder

“I had just taken my first acid trip, and I had an African spear and a Chinese Warlord outfit”: Arthur Brown’s wild tales of Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, David Bowie and more

Jamming with Hendrix, partying with The Who, getting hit on by David Bowie’s wife – The God Of Hellfire has done it all and more

Louder

“Jimi Hendrix came in with an old Duo-Sonic. I had just put together a Strat I’d strung up left-handed, and I went, ‘I’ll trade you.’ I was docked three weeks’ pay”: Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter recalls the questionable guitar deal he made when he met Jimi Hendrix

A young Baxter was working in a local guitar store when Hendrix came searching for a new guitar

Guitar World

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"It would have been cool if Jimi Hendrix had been the first": Pamela Des Barres on regrets, love and wild times with Jimmy Page, Jim Morrison, Mick Jagger, Keith Moon and more

Beneath Pamela Des Barres' infamous groupie exterior beats a romantic heart

Louder

“It dishonors that brand to say, ‘Now we’re King Crimson.’ But we do have the ability to say, ‘Look, this is legitimate – half of the band is onstage here”: Adrian Belew, Steve Vai and Tony Levin on how they made Beat – with Robert Fripp’s blessing

Performing material from King Crimson's trailblazing '80s oeuvre, Beat finds three kings of the strings with the peerless Danny Carey pushing the envelope and Steve Vai doing Robert Fripp proud

Guitar World

“Frank asked me to transcribe St Alfonzo’s Pancake Breakfast after I told him I’d learned Inca Roads by ear. Maybe it was a challenge to see if I was bluffing!” When bassist Arthur Barrow survived an audition for guitar genius Frank Zappa

The 26-year-old bassist from San Antonio was given just two days to learn a song about church pancakes, stolen margarine, and the patron saint of Portuguese smelt fishermen

Guitar World

A beginner's guide to Jack Bruce in 10 classic tracks

A short tribute to one of rock's all-time great bassists, Cream legend Jack Bruce

Louder

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“This was more than just music… It’s part of your DNA if you were that age at the time. It defines the times”: Yes, Genesis and Pink Floyd alumni on what The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper did for prog

Rick Wakeman, Roger Waters and Robert Fripp were among those listening when the BBC played the record in full in 1967 – and weren’t the only ones who experienced artistic epiphanies that night

Louder

“The creative tension helped here and there. At other times it did not help… it’s difficult to define”: Thijs van Leer reveals his only real regret as Focus roll on in their 55th year

He recalls breaking out of the Netherlands, his relationship with former guitarist Jan Akkerman, and the one album he’d like to remake

Louder

“Out of nowhere the phone rings and there’s a guy saying, ‘It's Edward Van Halen.’ 15 minutes later, he’s at the house with a guitar”: Dweezil Zappa on the first time he met Eddie Van Halen – after the guitar great unexpectedly called him

A Van Halen-obsessed 12-year-old Dweezil Zappa was minding his own business on a regular school night, when he received a call from the guitar legend himself...

Guitar World

“A cornucopia… Most impressive of all are the alternative monitor mixes”: Frank Zappa’s Apostrophe (’) 50th anniversary edition

Dazzling deluxe expansion of his best-loved solo album

Louder

“There’s a few stations that’ll play my music; very few, and usually after midnight”: Frank Zappa’s final print interview, and the 12 words he signed off with

In 1993 a future Prog writer landed a magazine interview with his hero – neither of them knowing it would his last

Louder

“He scoured the globe to find these guitars. I had given many away or sold them through the years, but he tracked them down”: A 1,000-page book showcasing Steve Vai’s iconic guitars has been announced – and it will be joined by a super-limited Ibanez JEM

Wire & Wood: The Guitars of Steve Vai took five years to complete, and tells the story of over 100 guitars in “exquisite detail”

Guitar World

“I am in the Gene Simmons business. I am the biggest fan of Gene Simmons”: Happy 75th birthday to Gene Simmons, Kiss bassist and unrepentant asshole

Self-confessed “asshole”, politically incorrect philanderer, money-obsessed businessman, rock superstar – god bless Gene Simmons

Metal Hammer

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Louder

“Tchaikovsky was a sort of mentor; if it was good, ABBA or whatever, we didn’t shut anything out”: When Gentle Giant revisited seventh album Free Hand

The reissue, complete with Steven Wilson remixes, was the band’s chance to look back on what the band had liked about 1975 release, and what they hadn’t

The Guardian - UK

Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa review – rock and a hard place

Frank Zappa’s daughter on her wildly inappropriate upbringing and its aftermath

Guitar World

“Heart pulled it off. But that’s Heart. If anyone else tries this celestial epic, well, they’ll think your stairway doesn’t reach all the way to heaven…” 10 songs you should never cover (or at least think twice before trying)

“Good evening, Long Island! Are we havin’ a good time? All right. Now we’re gonna do a song by the Killers. This is Mr. Brightside!” Not tonight, Satan…

The Guardian - UK

Earth to Moon by Moon Unit Zappa review – waspish, funny account of life as Frank Zappa’s daughter

This memoir about being fathered by the 70s rock oddball and ‘pagan absurdist’ is an extraordinary tale of survival

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Louder

"Joe Elliott knows more about Mott than I do. You just have to sit back and listen to him": Ian Hunter's stories of Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Bob Dylan and more

He’s Ian Hunter, solo artist and former Mott The Hoople frontman, and these are some of his stories

Guitar World

“He was, ‘I don't even understand how you're playing. I can never play that.’ It was a total role reversal”: Dweezil Zappa reveals the one Frank Zappa song that stumped Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen's decades-long friendship with the younger Zappa included gifting the 12-year-old Dweezil a 1982 Kramer guitar

Metal Hammer

“It’s like something Frank Zappa would do”: Serj Tankian names the classic System Of A Down song he finds “funny”

“I wanted to write a very heavy metal song about pyjamas”

Guitar World

“Billy Gibbons pulls out this big-ass yellow 17-string bass and he’s like, ‘Okay, we’ll play it for a song, right?’” ZZ Top’s Elwood Francis on teching for Joe Perry, lying to Steve Vai – and the curse of playing that viral 17-string bass

The gear-trashing DIY enthusiast once had to choose between Vai and Joe Perry, before being fired and rehired by Guns N’ Roses –in a matter of days

Metal Hammer

"I had never heard anything that raw and heavy and fast in my life": Dream Theater's Mike Portnoy picks the 10 albums that changed his life

These aren't Mike Portnoy's favourite albums - they're much more important than that

Guitar World

“We set up Eric and Duane in the studio, so they were face-to-face about two feet apart. They could literally touch each other’s guitars if they wanted to”: The Albert Brothers on recording Hendrix, Clapton, the Allman Brothers – and that Layla session

Ron and Howard’s innovative recording techniques became synonymous with the ’70s – but the humble siblings say they were just lucky to get to work with the best

MusicRadar

The Beethoven-inspired throwaway that become the most famous riff of all time: “We didn’t make a big deal out of it and it wasn’t being considered as a track for the album”

Now Deep Purple return to Montreux... with added smoke

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