I stumbled onto a pdf of his whole book today doing google research on my above post.
There's a lot of Zappa books out there. I wore out my 1971 copy of David Walley's "No Commercial Potential", which Zappa hated.
Let's see - some of the ones I can remember include Candy Zappa's book about her older brother, which was nice. Other recent ones include "Zappa the Hard way", strictly about the 1988 Tour. I saw seven shows on this tour throughout the northeast, as he hadn't toured in over four years and I had become a rather rabid fan.
The most recent book, which I haven't finished yet, is by his English secretary of the late 60's and early 70's, Pauline Butcher. "Freak Out! My Life With Frank Zappa". This is possibly the most fantastic Zappa book out there, as it's a first person recollection of the Zappa household from 1968 to 1972. A helluva lot of stuff I never knew before and some great insight into Frank's often extremely eccentric way of thinking. It provides a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle that is Zappa.
Both books are nectar for a hardcore fan like me. Don't know if they would be nearly as appealing to a non-rabid fan, though.
When asked about the secret of his success, Zappa said; "First, don't stop. Second, keep going." As Bunk Gardner said of Frank in "Necessity is, the story of the Mothers of Invention", "Frank had the stamina of a bull." Frank's perseverance and faith in himself has been a life long inspiration for me. The clarity of his thinking and reasoning was so magnificent that self doubt simply was not an option.
I really gotta stop this Zappa fanboy stuff on DU. It's like I'm a 12 year old girl and Zappa is my Taylor Swift.
-jim
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