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The Latest Breaking News from Frank Zappa

“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

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“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

“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

Louder

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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

The Guardian - UK

“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…

Guitar World

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

The Guardian - UK

"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

Louder

“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

Guitar World

“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”

Metal Hammer

“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

Guitar World

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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

Guitar World

“Seymour Duncan went to work. He dragged it through the grass. Put motor oil on it. Chipped it. Frank Zappa said, ‘If you wanted to ruin your guitar, Adrian, why didn’t you loan it to a friend?’” Adrian Belew’s number one Stratocaster has lived a life

Is this the first relic'ed guitar? Belew says so, and it's graced records by Zappa, Talking Heads, David Bowie and King Crimson. It has been on the cover of GW. It is still in service

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Guitar World

“He had me play a couple of odd muted things and groove for a while, and then he said ‘OK, you're it’”: Esteemed bassist Tom Fowler, best known for his work with Frank Zappa, has died aged 73

In addition to his stint with Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention, Fowler played with Ray Charles, Jean-Luc Ponty, Steve Hackett, George Duke and It's a Beautiful Day

Louder

“When The Spirit Of Radio came on she sang every word. I knew right then she was the one”: Crown Lands’ Kevin Comeau discovered Rush at 14, forging two marriages made in Heaven

Multi-instrumentalist, who caught Canadian giants twice on final tour, once played alongside Alex Lifeson – and he’s hoping for a second date

Louder

"It was like a joy filled my eyes – and ears": Why I love The Mothers Of Invention's Freak Out!, by Steve Vai

Steve Vai recalls how buying this “abstract and experimental” double album inspired him to actually join Frank Zappa’s band

Louder

“Among fair fists at the greatest ‘hits’ are extensive improvisations that repeatedly just don’t work”: Frank Zappa’s Live At The Whisky A Go Go, 1968

Seems like there’s a reason this live recording remained unreleased in his lifetime

Guitar World

“I was so nervous my foot was shaking on my wah pedal. After the gig someone said, ‘Wow! How are you getting that sound?’” Weird Al Yankovic guitarist Jim “Kimo” West on shaky beginnings, parody rock glory – and his Grammy-winning third act

He found his way to fame via Frank Zappa, has scooped up multiple award nominations under his own name – and is so laid back that he didn’t mind when Rick Derringer played the leads on Al’s ’80s albums

Guitar World

“He took the lighter fluid, squirted it on the guitar and set it on fire. That might be the first relic’d guitar – and you can thank Seymour Duncan for that”: That time Adrian Belew DIY aged his Strat with a screwdriver, spray paint and motor oil

Belew bought a brown sunburst Strat to take on tour with Frank Zappa – but it wasn't deemed fit for purpose until going through a drastic cosmetic overhaul

Louder

"The freedom and joy we had, and the confidence in each other, is remarkable": Ian Gillan looks back at Deep Purple's Machine Head era

With Deep Purple’s original plans for their sixth album having literally gone up in smoke, Machine Head was a triumph snatched from the jaws of disaster

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