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INSANE: 2 - The Real Truth

“He told me the story about a young guitarist he once let play his guitar at rehearsal. I said, ‘Brian, that was me’”: Steve Vai pays tribute to Brian May as he receives his radical custom Red Special

Guyton Guitars' highly customized version of May’s iconic axe is now in Steve Vai’s “humbled” hands

Guitar World

“I saw the Red Special. I pointed and said, ‘Is that it?’ Brian said, ‘Yup. Want to try it?’” Steve Vai says he once played Brian May’s guitar “like a baby giraffe on roller skates” – now the Queen icon has gifted him his own custom ‘Green’ Red Special

“I will treasure it for the rest of my life, and yes, I’m taking this one to the grave with me,” says Vai

MusicRadar

“We hung out in his hotel room ’til 7 in the morning. He put on Donna Lee – I couldn’t believe it!” When Jimmy Haslip met Jaco Pastorius at Frank Zappa’s studio

The Yellowjackets co-founder and then-bassist tells the story of his first encounter with bass royalty

Guitar World

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“I refused to believe the negative things he said because I couldn’t lose hope. But everything he said came to pass”: Terry Bozzio asked a question when he joined Frank Zappa. He asked the same question when he left

Drummer, composer and painter recalls his experiences with Captain Beefheart, UK and others, names the best band he’s ever been in and reveals how long it takes to set up his Big Kit

Louder

“My first boyfriend introduced me to The Wall. It was the only interesting thing about him”: Author and musician Joanne Harris on having the audacity to perform Pink Floyd, Rick Wakeman and Genesis music in her school band

She explains why prog makes her think of Barnsley, lists some of her favourite records and recalls taking her daughter to a Genesis tribute show only to hear her say: “Ah yes, Mastodon!”

Louder

“We got back together after 25 years and people came from all around the world, saying how important that album had been”: The Dutch quartet inspired by just five minutes of Soft Machine music

Their 1970 debut album, deliberately featuring no guitars at all, was inspired by the Canterbury band’s approach and Frank Zappa’s public persona – and it attained iconic status

Louder

“It was my first studio job. I wiped a Robert Fripp guitar section. He wasn’t happy”: A world-class producer recalls shaky start to his career

After the baptism of fire that was King Crimson’s Lizard, he worked on Tangerine Dream’s Rubycon, Frank Zappa’s Joe’s Garage and dozens of Van Morrison records

Louder

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“There was a certain amount of desperation in Frank returning my call and saying, ‘I don't believe you, but get over here and prove it'”: How Mike Keneally landed the Frank Zappa gig – after cold-calling his guitar hero

Keneally said he had a “Zappa jukebox” in his brain. The man himself wanted to test it out

Guitar World

“I took it into rehearsals and Frank Zappa said, ‘If you wanted to ruin your guitar, why didn’t you loan it to a friend?’” Adrian Belew shares unseen photos of “the first relic’d guitar” – which he created with Seymour Duncan

The pair’s process was a little more primitive than modern methods

Guitar World

“When he gave the family car back, his father tried to sell it as ‘formerly driven by Frank Zappa’”: The background that gave rise to music’s most eclectic iconoclast, by his wife and son

He developed his own form of expression at 9 years old, taught himself to compose music at 11, and hated the Summer Of Love, drugs and lack of effort. Here’s why there’s no such thing as an ex-Zappa fan

Louder

“When we were finished gouging it with screwdrivers, spraying blops of paint on it, dragging it around the yard, and banging it on the driveway, we hung it up in a tree”: Adrian Belew on how he and Seymour Duncan made one of the first relic’d guitars

The prog guitar icon has posted new pics taken by Seymour Duncan that show off their handiwork as they turned Belew's new Strat into a relic and started guitar's most controversial trend

MusicRadar

“As anniversary editions go, this one is exhaustively thorough”: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s One Size Fits All, five decades on

The original nine tracks expanded to 58 – and while there’s some repetition and flawed live production, the energy is vigorous

Louder

"Even though he's dead, I believe that in a hundred years' time from now people will still be listening to him": Steve Vai on the wild genius of Frank Zappa – and the two words that made him want to join his band

They say never meet your heroes – Steve Vai would disagree

Louder

“Ozzy would say, ‘No. This isn’t Frank Zappa, this is Ozzy Osbourne. Go back and write me something else’”: Jake E. Lee revisits Badlands, the album the music industry doesn't want you to hear

Why can't we buy Badlands' self-titled debut? Who knows. The record label buried it. But former Ozzy guitarist Jake E. Lee swears it's his best work

Guitar World

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Guitar World

“A true artifact of musical genius”: Frank Zappa’s ‘Baby Snakes’ SG is heading to auction for the first time – and expected to sell for half a million dollars

The heavily modified SG copy was bought for $500 and became one of his most well-known guitars

The Guardian - UK

‘I was called an enemy of the people’: how the US Senate went to war with the biggest rock stars of the 1980s

Forty years ago Prince, Madonna and Judas Priest were among stars dubbed the ‘Filthy Fifteen’ in a high-profile parents’ campaign against ‘objectionable’ music. Some of those artists, and supporters like Alice Cooper, recall a major moral panic

The Guardian - UK

Street battles, invented languages and gigs in psychiatric hospitals: France’s lost rock revolution of 1968

Bands such as Magma and Art Zoyd provided a soundtrack for the student protests that shook the country. Little remembered now, a new book reveals their decisive influence on later successes such as Air and Daft Punk

Louder

Another day, yet another Frank Zappa reissue - and this one's glorious

Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention's landmark album One Size Fits All, reissued with extra bells, whistles, kitchen sink, etc

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Louder

“His response to seeing a wilderness being bulldozed, he can’t resist also mentioning Bonnie Prince Charlie, Vikings and an ill-fated brontosaurus”: The Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Tomorrow Belongs To Me is a prog epic

Gravel-voiced bandleader plays eco-warrior, futurist and satirist on 1975 genre-crossing album wrapped in a sleeve where Roger Dean meets Marvel

The Independent UK

Mark Volman, who co-founded The Turtles and performed with Flo & Eddie, has died at 78

Mark Volman, a founding member of the 1960s pop group The Turtles, whose hits include "Happy Together," has died

Louder

“Mr Blue Sky is the song I always go back to. It’s such a feelgood track and it’s never aged”: The ELO classic led Crobot’s Brandon Yeagley to Frank Zappa, Protest The Hero and a whole world of prog

From a box of his parents’ cassettes to voracious filesharing, the vocalist always wanted to be the one bringing strange new music to his friends

MusicRadar

“To those that have said I inspired them to start drumming, the first thing I say is: ‘I apologise to your parents!’”: A rare interview with legendary drummer Neil Peart of Rush

“After 40, 45 years of playing, I wanted to push myself and open up this whole new frontier,” he said

The Guardian - UK

‘It’s like having a button that makes the audience go nuts’: Deep Purple on Smoke on the Water

‘We went to see Frank Zappa at Montreux casino. But someone fired a flare gun into the ceiling and – whoosh! The whole building went up in flames’

Louder

“I thought he was taking the piss”: The time Ozzy Osbourne planned to beat up Frank Zappa

The story of the unlikely love-in between Frank Zappa and Black Sabbath

MusicRadar

“He had his own vocabulary. He had his own way of constructing chords. His own understanding of how they go on the neck”: Steve Vai on why Allan Holdsworth – the fusion virtuoso who wrote his own rules – was the GOAT

Most players Vai can work out where they were coming from. Holdsworth, he admits, was something different entirely

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