Ship arriving too late to save a drowning witch

Frank Vincent Zappa (21 December 1940 – 4 December 1993)

An American rock/jazz fusion musician, composer, and satirist.

Born in Baltimore,Zappa was of mixed Sicilian, Italian, Greek, Arab, French, and German ancestry. He was the oldest of four children, with two brothers and a sister. His father, a chemist and mathematician who was born in Sicily, worked nearby at Edwards Air Force Base which had at the time a federal government chemical warfare research facility. Due to their proximity to Edwards AFB, he kept gas masks at home in case of an accident, and this evidently had a profound effect on the young Frank. References to germs, germ warfare and other aspects of the 'secret' defence industry occur throughout his work.

His parents were not musicians but had broad musical tastes also, and he grew up influenced in equal measures by avant-garde composers such as Edgar Varèse and Igor Stravinsky. After reading a magazine review panning Varèse's dissonant drum piece in "Ionisation" as 'a weird jumble of drums and other unpleasant sounds', the teenage Zappa became convinced that he should seek out Varèse's music.

In the early 1990s Zappa devoted almost all of his energy to modern orchestral and synclavier works. In 1990 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, a disease which caused his death in 1993 at the age of 52.

Zappa was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.

Zappa was married twice, once to Kay Sherman (1959–1964; no children), and then to Gail (Sloatman) Zappa, with whom he remained until his death. They have four children: Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan, and Diva Muffin.