Frank Zappa Quotes

The most dangerous thing is improvising with a band and thinking, “Okay, now’s the time to play that diminished scale,” and somebody in the band is thinking, “Now’s the time to play a major chord.” Those kinds of accidents do happen.

If you listen to Indian classical music, it’s not just pentatonic. Some of the ragas that they use are very chromatic, all sustained over a root and a 5th that doesn’t change, and by using these chromatic scales they can imply all these other kinds of harmonies.

For years I had something called Music On The Desert Road, which was a recording of all kinds of different ethnic musics from different places in the Middle East. I used to listen to that all the time – I liked that kind of melodic feel. I listened to Indian music, Ravi Shankar and so […]

The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.

If it wasn’t for rap there would be no poetry in America. I think we went directly from Walt Whitman to Ice-T.

There will be no nuclear war. There’s too much real estate involved.

The fact is that no matter what first names I might have given them, it is the last name that is going to get them in trouble.

A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.