Jimi Hendrix<\/a> and Kurt Cobain, among others. He was one of these people who just had to express himself creatively. He didn\u2019t have any choice. And that is the mark of a true artist: you have to do whatever it is that drives you.<\/p>\nYet Frank was also a very sarcastic type of guy. Whenever he walked into a room it felt like he could see right through you; he seemed to know intuitively what you were about. In fact when I was planning to move out to the West Coast I sent him a tape of my band. He came back to me saying that he thought my playing \u2018had potential\u2019.<\/p>\n
So when I got to LA in 1978 I started transcribing for him, because I had been composing my own material ever since I was a kid. There was just something about writing out charts on manuscript paper that had always fascinated me. I mean, some people get off on flowers or porno, but for me it was always about creating music.<\/p>\n
Anyway a couple of years later when I asked Frank if I could be in his band, he said: \u2018Why?\u2019 And I said right back to him: \u2018I know every one of your songs. I\u2019ve been listening to them ever since forever.\u2019<\/p>\n
Even though Frank is sadly dead now, I believe that in a hundred years\u2019 time from now people will still be listening to him and writing about him.<\/p>\n
Originally published in Classic Rock issue 80 (June 2005)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Credit: Frans Schellekens\/Redferns Steve Vai is one of rock\u2019s greatest and most influential guitar players, but even he had to start somewhere. And, as he told Classic Rock, that was as an apprentice to avant garde wizard Frank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2117721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[365154,381896],"class_list":["post-2117720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-frank-zappa","tag-steve-vai"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Steve-Vai-on-the-wild-genius-of-Frank-Zappa-\u2013.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2117720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2117722,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117720\/revisions\/2117722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2117721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}