Frank Zappa - Music Quotes

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I can't talk to you about music because you don't know anything about music. I can talk to you about politics or sociology and all that peripheral stuff, but I can't talk to you about music. There's not enough information in common that I could say to you so you'd be able to understand. Besides, the people who read OUI don't give a fuck about music anyway.

Frank Zappa
The manner in which Americans ''consume'' music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

Frank Zappa
Believe it or not, there are places in the world where music is important. There are places in the world where all the arts are a matter of national pride.

Frank Zappa
Do we really want to know how Michael Jackson makes his music? No. We want to understand why he needs the bones of the Elephant Man -- and, until he tells us, it doesn't make too much difference whether or not he really is ''bad.

Frank Zappa
I'll tell you what classical music is, for those of you who don't know. Classical music is this music that was written by a bunch of dead people a long time ago. And it's formula music, the same as top forty music is formula music. In order to have a piece be classical, it has to conform to academic standards that were the current norms of that day and age … I think that people are entitled to be amused, and entertained. If they see deviations from this classical norm, it's probably good for their mental health.

Frank Zappa
The richest people in the world aren't particularly smart or happy. And the happiest people in the world aren't particularly smart or rich.… That leaves me making music. But we can't talk about that.

Frank Zappa
Since I didn't have any kind of formal training, it didn't make any difference to me if I was listening to Lightnin' Slim, or a vocal group called the Jewels..., or Webern, or Varèse, or Stravinsky. To me it was all good music.

Frank Zappa
Everything on this planet has something to do with music. Music functions in the realm of sculptured air. Polluted as our atmosphere might be, air is the thing that makes music work. Since all other things that occur in the sound domain are transmitted to the ear through that swirling mass, depending on how wide you want to make your definition, you could perceive quite a bit of human experience in terms of music.

Frank Zappa
Music is the only religion that delivers the goods on earth.

Frank Zappa
The things that were happening in 1955 were cosmic … in terms of music history.

Frank Zappa
Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best…

Frank Zappa
I think the music of the Fifties is really good. I suspect it's much better musically than much of what's available now. Not in terms of production, but in terms of content. One good believable song about some guy's girlfriend and how they broke up — a sincere one — is better than twenty albums of English rock that's ever been produced.

Frank Zappa
If a person wants to write music and lyrics, he has a perfect right to express his views on a certain subject. I would feel wrong if I were to express anything that I didn't believe in. I write what I like to write. Those who like to listen to it, listen to it. And the ones who don't, watch football and drink beer, jog, go to discos and so forth. I never claimed to be a man for all seasons.

Frank Zappa
The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.

Frank Zappa
People have preposterous ideas about what those songs are about and what the music means. They start spouting all this shit that's so far off the mark, it's revolting. But if that's how they derive pleasure, who am I to deprive them of it? Let 'em enjoy it. It's there for their edification. But total comprehension is out of the question.

Frank Zappa
Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something.

Frank Zappa
Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Frank Zappa