Died On This Date (December 4, 1993) Frank Zappa / Rock Music Icon
themusicsover Frank Zappa
December 21, 1940 – December 4, 1993
Frank Zappa was one of popular music’s most creative forces. As a musician, composer, and producer, his 60+ albums crossed most genres while influencing countless artists in their wake. One of Zappa’s unique talents was that he could could just as easily produce a pop rock hit as he could an avant garde movement, while not losing a fan in the process. The bottom line, he was one of popular music’s most difficult to categorize, and beloved for being so. Zappa’s interest in music began when he was a sickly child. Due to his ailments, the Zappa family moved from the east coast to southern California so he could live in a warmer climate. He began collecting all kinds of records when he was still a pre-teen, and that early exposure to such diverse genres as R&B, avant garde, blues, modern classical, and doo wop guided him down a path that would see him seamlessly merge those and other styles of music into something that could only be called his own. Fast forward to the mid ’60s when Zappa and his Mothers of Invention landed their first record deal with Verve Records, oddly, one of the world’s top modern jazz labels. Zappa’s debut album, Freak Out! immediately established him as one of rock’s strangest yet most respected new voices. What followed over the next 30-odd years was a series of albums, both with, and without the Mothers of Invention, that built perhaps one of popular music’s biggest cult followings. Never forgetting the diverse music that inspired him, Zappa occasionally released modern classical and jazz albums along the way. In 1982, Zappa released what would be his biggest hit single, “Valley Girl,” a song that helped launch a pop culture fad that is still mimicked to this day. In 1985, Zappa found himself reaching perhaps his biggest audience by testifying during the senate hearings that eventually forced the record industry to label albums that contained “offensive” lyrics. Zappa, of course felt that was a form of censorship and was their in defense of his fellow songwriters. Ironically, the stickering completely backfired as such labeling only made the “offensive” albums more attractive to young teens. In 1990, Zappa was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Although he continued to record, his focus was primarily on classical music during his final years. Frank Zappa was 52 when the cancer finally took his life on December 4, 1993.
What You Should Own
Tommy Bolin was an up-and-coming rock guitarist in his early 20s when he got the call to play in the post-Joe Walsh James Gang. Up until that point, he had be playing around with various musicians in the Denver area, most prominently, in a band called Zephyr. After two albums with the James Gang, Bang! and Miami, Bolin left to do session work. In 1975, Bolin recorded his first solo album which found him backed with by a stellar line up of musicians. That list included Phil Collins, Glenn Hughes, David Sanborn and Jan Hammer. It was around that time that he got the call to join yet another band, Deep Purple. The end of 1975 found the release of both Bolin’s first album, Teaser, and his Deep Purple album, Come Taste the Band. Bolin soon hit the road with Deep Purple, but reports began surfacing that his growing dependency on heroin was hindering his guitar playing. Following the Deep Purple tour, Bolin went to work on his second album, Private Eyes. What followed was a tour that found him opening for Peter Frampton and Jeff Beck. On December 3, 1976, Tommy Bolin performed one last show in front of Beck. The next morning, his lifeless body was found in his hotel room. Cause of death was presumed to be the result of heavy drug and alcohol usage causing his throat muscles to close up, thereby suffocating him. He was just 25.
Eric Woolfson was a much respected Scottish musician, songwriter and singer who is best remembered as one-half of the driving force behind the Alan Parsons Project. Woolfson started out mostly as a songwriter, penning songs for the likes of Marianne Faithfull, Peter Noone and the Tremeloes. In the early ’70s, he got into artist management, guiding the careers of Carl Douglas of “Kung Fu Fighting” fame and an up-and-coming producer, Alan Parsons who had previously engineered the Beatles’ Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. In 1975, the two began collaborating creatively and the Alan Parsons Project was born. Over the next decade, the group released such popular prog rock albums as I Robot, Pyramid and Eye in the Sky. Overall, they sold in excess of 40 million albums. By the early ’90s, Woolfson and Parsons parted ways with Woolfson moving into musical theater. Woolfson was later diagnosed with cancer and died from the disease on December 2, 2009. He was 64.
