“Frank e il resto del mondo” the cover and the author, Alessandra Izzo © Andrea Sabatello

The man and the artist told 20 years after his death by journalist Alessandra Izzo

Died on 1993 December 4th, Frank Zappa has been one of the most brilliant musicians, authors, composers and arrangers of the story, with such unmistakable look and important mustache, penetrating gaze, the U.S. passport and the beloved Sicilian origins.
Frank Zappa was able to enchant an audience experiencing cross between rock, jazz, theater and cinema, animation and text featuring the sarcastic and serious complaint of the company.
“My book is a tribute to the man who more than anyone else has influenced my personal and business“, told  journalist and press office Alessandra Izzo (Rolling Stone, The Duelists, Rockstar, Radio 2) author of the extraordinary novel celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Zappa after his death, “Frank e il resto del mondo” (Armando Curcio Editore – Electi necklace), a true painting by words on paper of the life and works of what she calls “the greatest composer of the ‘900 “.

“I knew his music in my 70s Naples. I was kidnapped by the rock and fell in love Led Zeppelin, Bowie and many others, but Frank struck me most of all: the feeling was to listen to a sort of Mozart’s modern, musical lit a satyr, which was rebuilt puzzle why so varied from be kaleidoscopic and fascinating”
Alessandra in her work wanted to rebuild this historical mosaic of Zappa and his staff in 4 years of work, including a break because of the death of Jimmy Carl Black, a member of Zappa’s Mothers of Inventions and a great friend of ours.
“To rebuild the man I wanted to Zappa and literally had to chase many international personalities who accompanied him at different times of his life, his sister Patrice” Candy “eighty-Bunk Gardner, through Ike Willis and Ed Mann that I followed in length and breadth between the phone and skype, because engaged in world tours and recordings”

And Alessandra personally met Frank, “since I was a little girl determined to know the musicians who loved to learn more of their genius and completely in love. In the ’80s we were all ex-hippies and neo punk, I was chasing the American dream and go to Rome, I would not have been enough. I wanted to reach the cradle of music and film, Los Angeles, and managed enterprise. He gave me everything as a person and as a worker in this world: I am still like him, that he was a “maverick”, with a freedom that gave me more inspiration than anything else. What I regret is that he was so loved at home as here in Europe would definitely deserved”

A complete music, that of Frank Zappa, able to conquer his contemporaries and posterity by jumping across the arts, from film and animation through collaboration and the discovery of so many illustrious names of the thickness of the music and not just (Tanino Liberatore on all – Ed.) “Listening deeply to the music of Frank is still complex and avant-garde: he was able to mix a dense experimental poetry texts, bizarre and ironic at the same time. It was a well-known living artist total which differed from his contemporaries because his creativity was never conveyed by the use of synthetic drugs, for example, the hated and was very strict with his musicians especially in this difficult situation”
Just the severity of Zappa with her is one of the characteristics to be increasingly highlighted in stories and biographies, “admitted no errors on a technical level, and its test sessions of concerts and recordings were real live, perfect and complete . Not included improvisation, was a composer, although at the time of the concert in front of the audience indulged in small changes that surprised his musicians, which being so well trained they fell into the trap ”

Izzo approached Bob Dylan and David Bowie to the Maestro (“very great experimenters were in totally different areas, some more for the staging and aesthetics, and who for the most innovative message“), and tells how FZ precursor was even world music:
“He was interested in a genre capable of embracing the global consensus on accessible melodies that echoed traditional music, even before Genesis and Peter Gabriel, but his being a rebel and an outsider would not let him never to submit to the record companies and therefore obtain dynamic a mainstream recognition ”

And the music today?
“Everything changed, I can’t see those flashes of genius that there were up to the 90s, or at least not belong to me. I am the daughter of ’60s music, ’70s and ’80s, today the landscape is completely different and I find myself listening to the great giants of the era in the first place.
I really like Jack White, I enjoyed the first Strokes and Robert Plant today, my myth with Led Zeppelin.
Concerts and fans are different than in the past: there are insurmountable safety standards, while at the time you could even get backstage quite easily. Let’s say it’s all slowly changed after Lennon’s assassination”

According to Alessandra these dynamics widen the whole art including cinema, another hemisphere where he works as a press office for several films and events:
“The main problem is always money. In film producers invest less because they do not have enough, hence the film does not come out even if they are made and presented at festivals, and in turn the release does not mention it because they are not interesting in the media. It ‘sa bit like a dog chasing its tail.
I believe that the future is the network, of course, in a manner different from those of today, but I think the world of cinema will not implode as it happened to one of music that repeats the past and today lives by collecting a part or is purely commercial television and other.
Cinema is an art form different that the complaint and entertainment at the same time, and I think there will always be fans who will not fall back on the phones in the room to watch a movie. But the network has also destroyed many other things, such as the quality of the content. But that’s another story”
Why, then, a book to celebrate 20 years since the death of Zappa and do not form a film, documentary or fiction?
“I thought 10 years ago on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the death of Frank, when I wrote a short film inspired by him, but remained on the bench. Who knows, maybe in the future I might take it back in your hand to bring it to life … ”

“Frank and the rest of the world” valuable biographical history of Zappa between interviews and testimonies of those who knew him and worked there from Italy to the United States, will be presented on November 24 as part of the Music Lessons by Gino Castaldo and Ernesto Assante at the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, and the library of the capital Arion on December 3.
Following a short tour in bookstores Italian author, who will present his work.
“I’ve known her universe with this book and the story, including poetry, art, creativity, music and cinema“, says Alessandra Izzo.

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